All Souls' Rising (30 page)

His stroke was smooth and even, mesmeric, and the doctor’s mind went idling, as the sweat dried on his face and chest. The farther they went up the stream, the more tightly the mangrove branches laced them in. It grew dimmer, cooler, as they went upstream. A little black crab with hairy legs circled the narrow trunk of a sapling that grew straight from the water, hiding from them shyly. Somewhere above the forest canopy it began to rain and the doctor could hear it rattling on the leaves though few drops reached through to them.

By the time Toussaint moored the canoe, the rain had stopped. The doctor climbed out on a mudbank and followed him into the jungle. The slope was steep and muddy, scattered with bright red seeds from the bead trees. The doctor went haltingly, sweating in the damp, though it was rather cool here below the mountain clouds. After a while they reached a path where the going was much easier. The trail was not only worn, but
made
, with palm-sized flints packed close together in the mud like scales. When the doctor had caught his breath, he stopped and dislodged one of the stones and held it in his hand.

“The Caribs made this road in the time before,” Toussaint said. “Before the white people came.” He turned and went ahead; the doctor replaced the stone in its socket of mud and followed him. The terrain was changing slightly; it was no longer so wet as it had been underfoot, and there was not much undergrowth below the tall trees. The doctor heard shifting animal movement on one side of the trail, but whenever he stopped to look he could see nothing.

The thing, or things, seemed nonsensically large, a wild boar possibly, but invisible. The doctor stopped in place when he heard a dry rattle stirring a pale patch of deadfallen bamboo leaves, still shivering.

“You’re looking where he’s been,” Toussaint said, with his odd half smile. “You must look where he’s going.”

The doctor concentrated. At the next burst of ticking he raked his eyes in a circle around the troubled leaves and finally saw the lizard, blue striped and nearly a foot long, a slender beam of sunshine on the loose skin of its throat where it was breathing. Toussaint had gone on ahead. The doctor hastened to catch him up.

“Where are they now?” he said. “The Caribs.”

“They are gone,” Toussaint said. “All dead now, they would not be slaves…” He didn’t look back when he spoke.

The doctor followed on. It occurred to him that for all his knowledge Toussaint was not a native of this place himself and that no one surviving here was truly native to it. As he was thinking this, they came out suddenly into a wide clear slope above another river gorge.

In this field,
lantana
grew and blossomed. Doctor Hébert automatically began gathering it, breaking off the flower tops and stowing them in his cloth bag.
Lantana
was effective against colds, pneumonia…Each flower top bristled with small round blooms, yellow, white, and coral rose; they had a pleasant dusty fragrance. The doctor picked his way around the edges of the clearing. The grasses were damp here, and soon his boots were sucking at his feet.

A gray fringe of low-hanging cloud drifted over; higher up the sky was purple and engorged. Then the sun cut through the swollen weight of the clouds like a cutlass slashing through a bruise, and the whole hillside was drenched in a strange green light. Doctor Hébert was exhausted and terrified. He understood he was in the presence of God. The weird euphoria lifted a little distance out of his body and above his fear. Down the slope, Toussaint continued trimming leaves from a vine, as if insensible of the ray that held him in its nimbus, and yet the doctor felt that he must be absorbing it, and that he would have the power, when he chose, to give it forth as a healing light.

They were not alone. Down toward the rapid chattering of the unseen stream appeared two men, near naked, obsidian against the jungle green. One moved restively under the doctor’s observation, like a deer. Toussaint spoke without seeming to look at them, his voice low but carrying well in the damp air. “Yes, Riau, I see you. Now, come here.”

I, R
IAU
, I
CAME TO BE
on that slope in the sunshine because of many things. After the fighting with the soldiers, when I had found the horse, I rode away alone to look for Merbillay. The horse was green, gun-shy and half crazy from the smell of blood all over, but Toussaint had taught me to gentle any horse.

First I rode back to the place on the mountain where the women and the children had been hiding, but they were not there anymore by the time I came. I went along the mountains looking but it was a long time before I met anyone that I had ever seen before, days and weeks. After a while it seemed good to me to be alone. Sometimes I came upon other bands but since there was not anyone I knew among them I kept away. Also I was afraid for my horse. There was fruit to find and other things Toussaint and others had shown me were good to eat, or sometimes I was hungry, but it was good to be by myself this time, only Riau.

Sometimes the soldiers came out from Le Cap and walked all over the country looking for a fight, but the bands would not stand to fight them in the open country on the plain. The soldiers could not go too far from the city either, because the bands would attack it if the soldiers were far away. There were some attacks and some came near, but our bands could not come all the way into the city like we had wanted to at first.

Later I heard this but I did not go to these fights myself. The bands were too big now and the leaders becoming too strong. Biassou and Jeannot and Jean-François were all leading big bands that were like armies though the people still did not walk in step like people in a whiteman army would do. But these leaders had all been
commandeurs
in the cane fields and often they still behaved like they were driving slaves. There were more slaves than maroons in these bands and I did not like that so much either. I think many other maroons began to go back to the mountains then, some going to Bahoruco.

While I was alone in the woods, I practiced with the pistols I had got. I learned how much powder to put into each and how to prime them so they always fired and to hit what I aimed at most times if it was not too far off. One day I tethered the horse in the woods and ambushed two soldiers who came riding over the country in a place there was no road. These were not regular French soldiers, but from the
colon
militia, brave ones surely since most of the militiamen would not go out of the towns by this time. I shot one down from his horse at once. The other got down meaning to fight me with his sword against my cane knife, but when he came near I took out the second pistol quickly and killed him with one shot. I got some more powder and lead this way, and food and the things they carried in their pockets. And I caught both the horses, warhorses both well seasoned and well trained.

Then at last I went into the big camp that Jeannot had made at Habitation Dusailly near Grand Rivière. There I found Aiguy and César-Ami and most of the women who had been in our band before the killing of the whitepeople began. Merbillay was there too which was why I had come in. Also it was hard for me to manage the three horses alone.

I gave up two horses to Jeannot when I came into the camp, the green one and a good one but the other I kept, along with the pistols and other small things Jeannot did not have to know I had got. Jeannot had made himself like a little king of Guinée in this place, but a mean spirit ruled him. Erzulie-gé-rouge was his
maît’tête
, all spite and jealousy and malice mixed together. Each morning when he woke he drank a mixture of blood and tafia from the round top part of a whiteman skull he used for a cup and he went on from there all through each day. A palisade was around a part of the camp and on each fifth post a whiteman head was stuck. Jeannot had a lot of prisoners here and every afternoon he would bring out a few and with his favorites try to think of new ways to kill them slowly. He had a whiteman priest of Jesus who had gone over to him to help him make the Hell of Jesus for these whitemen, and there were whitewomen too, a lot of them, that Jeannot used for himself or his favorites and would give to our women as slaves when they were all used up.

Merbillay had her baby in this place. He was long and thin and chocolate-colored, pale on the palms and the bottoms of his feet. His bones were a little bent at first from being folded up in there and his hands and feet were wrinkled like a turtle from the sea. He had a lot of hair in tight black curls all over his head and his eyes looked tired like he had come on a long long journey without rest.

I carried him all around the camp or sometimes I would take him out. I had a watch from one of the soldiers, and he liked to hear it ticking and watch it swing on its gold chain, or he would touch it with his fists, though he could not collect his fingers to hold onto anything yet. He would go anywhere with me gladly and almost never cried. I was the man now, since Achille was dead. Only Riau. I took him horseback up the river to a little spring that fed into it from the woods. Here there was a hollow of moss and dragonflies and butterflies would be there. The moss was soft for him to lie and sometimes I would hold him so the spring water ran over his feet. The water was cold but it did not frighten him. He would move his feet in it and make low sounds I think he meant for words.

Then we would go to the camp, through the palisade where the centipedes were crawling in and out of the eyeholes of the rotting heads and the air was torn with screams of whitemen being tortured. I had not disliked these things myself but it was a bad place for a baby, though he didn’t seem to mind it. Merbillay had not given him a name.

Then Jean-Pic left the camp of Biassou and came to join us who were with Jeannot. It was he who had the idea of leaving that place and going to the maroons at Bahoruco. It was no longer good where Jean-Pic had come from, there with Biassou. The black men who were pretending to be white officers were wanting the others to be like white soldiers too. To drill and train and exercise even when there was not any fighting. It meant that they killed the whitemen more easily, with less danger, when they met them in the mountains, but still Jean-Pic did not like it. I did not like it either when I heard of it, though it was not happening then in Jeannot’s camp.

Also Jean-Pic told me that Toussaint had come to Biassou. I do not know why it did not surprise me, though I think I would also have believed it if I heard that he stayed by the whitemen all along. I felt his hand in all the doing of whiteman soldier things that was beginning with Biassou, though the hand did not show. If Riau broke a horse, there at Bréda plantation, the horse would not know it was Toussaint’s hand that moved Riau. I thought that I did not want to feel that hand moving me again and so I was glad when Jean-Pic said that we would go to Bahoruco.

But that was not all. Some weeks before a jolly little fat white-man priest of Jesus had come to Jeannot’s camp. His name was Père Bonne-chance, and he prayed to a different face of Jesus than Père Duguit, the kind face instead of the cruel one. For that reason Père Duguit did not like him. Père Duguit whispered to Jeannot that he should kill the little fat father or drive him away. But the little fat father pretended not to know about this, and he went around the camp smiling kindly at Père Duguit the same as anyone else he met. The little fat father had children with a
quarteronnée
woman he had brought there to the camp, and maybe it was because of that Jeannot did not hurt him. But it was hard to know why Jeannot did any of the things that he did. Also the little fat Père Bonne-chance wanted to baptize all the children and the babies who were being born in this camp.

Merbillay did not like this, so the little fat father came to me. At first I did not want it either. After the little fat father had talked to me, I took the baby away into the jungle. I laid him in the grassy place beside the spring which ran where he could watch it bubbling. He did not know how to walk or crawl so I knew he must stay there where I left him. I went away through the jungle crying and howling and beating my hands bloody on the walls of trees. This was because I could not remember the name of my father or my mother and I didn’t understand anymore the language of Guinée. I thought then that if I ever did reach
Guinée en bas de l’eau
I would be a stranger there and no one would understand me any better.

Then I thought it would be better for me to swing the baby by his heels and smash his brains out on a tree. But when I came back to the grassy place I saw how quietly he lay there trusting for me to return and bring him home again. I took him then to Père Bonne-chance, and saw him christened with the name Pierre Toussaint. I told the little fat father that I was choosing this name because Toussaint had been my
parrain
and had sponsored me when I first was brought as a
bossale
to Bréda, and that Toussaint had taught me the whiteman way of Jesus. This was a half-true thing that I said, and the little fat father smiled to hear it.