The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [67]
We waited for some time to see if some guards would be coming that way. There were none in sight except for the sentinels at the bridge.
“We can perhaps cross now,” Wilner said.
There was a splash from upstream; something had dropped from the bridge.
“They are throwing corpses into the water,” Odette whispered.
“Don’t listen,” responded Wilner. “We need only look for the guards on patrol. I will go in last.”
The marshlands led abruptly to the water’s edge. The river reached up to our chests when Odette and I slipped in together. Odette turned her face back to the bank where Yves was still feeling his way in and to Wilner who was still watching the bridge.
A strong scent of wet grass and manure wafted through the current as we forded farther in. I tried to find footholds in the sand, wedges to anchor my feet. The water was so deep that it was like trying to walk on air.
When we were nearly submerged in the current, I yanked my hand from Odette’s. I heard her sniffle, perhaps fearful and shocked. But I was only thinking of one thing: If I drowned, I wanted to drown alone, with nobody else’s life to be responsible for.
An empty black dress buoyed past us, inflated by air, floating upon the water. It was followed by a clump of tree branches and three empty sisal knapsacks. A man floated past us, face down. I swam towards him and moved his head to the side.
Sebastien?
No.
I turned the head down again, wishing I knew a ceremonial prayer to recite over the body.
The water guided Odette downstream. She was not paddling or swimming but simply letting herself be cradled by the current; her head dipped under now and then, and when it came up again, she opened her mouth wide to gulp in the air.
I swam after her, grabbed her waist with one hand, and fended my way across with the other. When she raised her face above the current, she looked frightened, but stifled her coughs as the water spilled out of her mouth.
Behind us on the shore, someone was calling to Wilner, “¡He! ¡He!”
We stopped our struggles immediately, letting the current carry us downstream.
I reached for Odette’s mouth and sealed it with both my hands when the shot rang out. Wilner did not even have time to reply.
During the dull silence after the shot, the soldier called out to his friends not to fret, that it was him, Segundo, and he, Segundo, was fine. Odette bit deep into my palm, scraping the inside flesh with her top and bottom teeth.
It is the way you try to stun a half-dead bird still waving its wings, a headless chicken courageously racing down a dirt road. I kept one hand on her mouth and moved the other one to her nose and pressed down hard for her own good, for our own good. She did not struggle but abandoned her body to the water and the lack of air.
The soldier who had shot Wilner continued marching upstream. Perhaps if he had wanted to, he could have seen us, but maybe the river itself, though good for discarding the corpses, was considered not favorable for shootings.
I covered Odette’s body with mine and framed her in my arms as Yves and I continued swimming towards the shore.
Yves was the first to land on a sandbar on the other side of the river. He crawled back on his belly and pulled Odette away from my chest. Taking hold of a boulder, I eased myself out of the current.
We lay Odette facedown. Even though she was still breathing, she would not gain consciousness. It was as though she had already made her choice. She was not going on the rest of the journey with us.
All I had wanted was for her to be still, to do her part in helping us live.
Yves was staring down at Odette as though our futures were written in those eyes that she refused to open. She had saved us at the square, so we wanted to save her too.
He picked her up and carried her onto the dusky plains in the dark. Following the track inland, we approached a cluster of parrot trees whose furry leaves looked like soft hands reaching down from some higher place, encouraging us to