The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [96]
A tall, bowlegged old man with a tangled gray beard, wearing three layers of clothing padded with straw, walked up behind me. His clothes and hands were covered with dirt, but his face was clean, smelling of vanilla and coconut. His eyes seemed a bright cerise, lush and dense like velvet. The washing women called him “Pwofese” and cackled as he circled his arms around my waist.
“Where are you going, Pwofese?” they took turns asking, as though playing a game of chant.
“Grass won’t grow where I stand,” the professor whispered in my ears, in a voice that I could tell was rarely used, except perhaps on frolicsome occasions like this one. “I’m walking to the dawn.”
Before I could drag myself away, the professor planted a damp kiss on my lips. I scrubbed the kiss off, reaching into the river for a fistful of water to cleanse my mouth. The washing women threw their heads back, opening their mouths to the sky to laugh.
“The professor’s not been the same since the slaughter,” one of them said. “Don’t rub it off. Leave his kiss on your lips. Don’t you know that if you are kissed by a crazy man, it brings you luck?”
As the professor ran off into the open plains, I walked towards a bare-chested boy who was sitting on the riverbank scribbling in a small drawing book. I had been told that he could help me find someone who could take me across the edwidge danticat river. Squatting beside him, I dipped my feet in the water. The current bubbled, gently pulsing beneath my soles, like a baby’s fontanel.
“Do you know someone who can help me cross the border without papers?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the water. The boy said nothing until he finished writing a whole phrase in jumbled schoolboy lettering.
“If you want to cross the border without papers, it will have to be at night,” he whispered.
“Can it be tonight?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
That night, I was met on the road before the bridge by a man in a black jeep. The man, the sole driver and occupant, ran a lottery along the border area—at least that’s what the boy had told me. He wore a denim cap on his head and a red bandanna over half his face, starting at his nose.
Stepping out into the night, the man showed me the place he had reserved for me in the back of the car, a small hollow beneath a heavy blanket behind the front seat.
“They know me at the crossing,” he mumbled in Kreyol. “They won’t trouble with me.”
I squeezed myself into the cramped space, trying hard to ignore the stabs of pain coursing through my knee. Keeping my head down, I reached out and gave him the payment that he and the boy had agreed on. He eased the side door shut and we started on our way.
There was only a brief pause at the first border crossing. The driver slowed the car at the Haitian customshouse to deliver a bribe to the night guards.
We came to another stop at the Dominican post on the bridge. I heard voices, lifted the sheet, and raised my head to one of the side windows.
“Stay down,” the driver commanded.
In spite of what he said, I kept my eyes at the bottom edge of the window. The border guards expressed regret for the wait and quickly opened the car gates for the driver.
“Until tomorrow night,” the driver said as he handed the guards more money.
I slept through most of the military checkpoints leading towards Alegría. Sleep had been a comfort to me for the last two decades. It was as close to disappearing as I could come.
The sun had risen when I woke up. The car was speeding along a dirt road between two walls of violet cane. The driver had removed the red bandanna from his face, but still had the cap tilted on one side of his head. He was watching me through the raised mirror in front of him, and I in turn examined his eyes. They were deep set and far apart, the color of clouded amber.
When he saw me looking at him, he removed his cap and turned away. He was a young man, younger than Sebastien when he had disappeared. His hair was braided in long thin plaits, dropping over his ears.
“So it is fitting now,” I said in