The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [62]
Yves stood alone, far away from the others. He was leaning against the largest tree in the yard, holding a dusty brown sandal he had picked up from the dirt. He kept looking up, as if to find a patch of the sky between the tiny spaces left open by the wide kapok branches.
I moved towards him, wanting to say something quickwitted, like what a marvel it was that we not so long ago were looking down at these same trees and now were standing beneath their branches.
He looked up again, in spite of himself, it seemed. I followed the rise of his face. At first I couldn’t tell what they were, these giant presences, which cast no shadows on the ground. They were dangling at the end of bullwhip ropes: feet, legs, arms, twelve pairs of legs, as far as I could count. Their inflated faces kept the nooses from releasing them. Three men. Five women. And two young boys.
A brown leather sandal was suspended, close to falling, from one of the feet, a man’s foot. Yves had the other sandal in his hand.
I slapped the back of my neck where an insect—or a whole group of them—stung me. I cringed from the bruise of my own blow. Yves dropped the sandal on the ground.
“We must go,” he said, moving towards the cabins. “If we go now, we reach Dajabón by nightfall.”
It took some time to gather everyone.
“Why not stay here for the night?” Tibon asked when we found him. Well-lit now, his pipe stuck out between his lips.
“What if these people were chased away?” Yves said. “Those who frightened them will surely return tonight for all this tobacco. And the people who set the fires in the mountain villages, they may come this way, too.”
Everyone agreed then that we should leave.
“I have people in Dajabón who may receive us,” Yves said, as we entered the woods.
“We do, also,” Odette said.
29
By the time we reached Dajabón, it was almost dark; still the whole town was lit up like a carnival parade. As we walked towards the square, we passed galleries full of people, some dancing, others drinking as they played dominoes with acquaintances peering over their shoulders. Rows of fringed colored paper were strung in front of the houses, with murals of the Generalissimo’s face painted on side walls.
A wide new macadam road was filled with crowds heading for the town square, across from the cathedral. Musical groups grew from children beating on enamel and tin cups, women scraping forks against coconut graters, and men pounding on drums.
Ahead of us was a pack of schoolgirls and boys wearing blue, red, and white uniforms and carrying banners with the Generalissimo’s name.
“Viva Trujillo!” The children echoed the chants of the crowd.
I looked down at my clothes, which were soil-stained and wrinkled. Yves, Tibon, Wilner, Odette, and me, we all looked the same. Our bundles, as carefully as we tucked them in front of us, gave us away as people who had hastily prepared for flight. We tried to mix, wanting to appear like confused visitors from the interior campos rather than the frightened maroons that we were.
I followed Yves as he wound his way through the dense crowd, trying hard not to let him wander beyond my sight. Tibon was walking behind me, and occasionally he’d put his skeletal hand on my shoulder when we had to stop and let a group of people squeeze by.
During one of those stops, Tibon leaned forward and told me that Wilner and Odette had left us. They’d gone to look for someone they could pay to help them cross the river safely. They wanted us to wait for them at the big fountain in the middle of the square.
I pushed my way towards Yves to tell him.
“We’ll try to wait,” he said, keeping his eyes down as we snaked through the tiny spaces between the swell of bodies.
The cathedral was covered with lights from the steeple down to the front door. Ladies in dinner frocks with nipped-in waists and crisscross necklines merrily skipped from their automobiles to the front door