Read Online A Rendezvous in Haiti by Stephen Becker - Free Book Online Page B

holster at his belt, a revolver, the Colt .45 of 1917; in a sheath hung a long slaughtering knife and in a pocket nestled a smaller clasp knife. He carried ammunition in his belt and in bandoliers. He liked money and wanted more. In other respects he considered himself prosperous. The sun and rain fell soft upon him; what he ate tasted good, and he bathed in pure streams.
    He called his horse Sammy because the French liked that name for animals. He had once been fond of a dog called Sammy. He had no idea what the horse had been called by its former owner, a huge blustering Caco chief who had believed that shouting and caracoling would scare Blanchard to death. The saddle was old, and did not count in Blanchard’s financial estimates. It might be a French saddle from long ago, a hundred years or more, that had lain unused in a shop or attic or tack barn for decades. The silver was tarnished but he was polishing it bit by bit, and the leather had sprung back nicely, sucking in bean oil and gleaming with new health. Or Spanish. He did think some about that: it might be Spanish. A high pommel. He was not sure that the French used high pommels in the old days.
    The taste of anger was still strong, but it was a habitual taste. For many years now the rage had been working in him. That was a phrase he had acquired somewhere, a book or a magazine or maybe a preacher: the rage was working in him. He turned his mind to Cleo and immediately cheered up. He did not smile, but he patted Sammy. Cleo’s was an establishment of quality, with a wooden floor, walls and a true roof. The house was set upon four stone footings. Cleo kept four women and kept them strictly.
    He entered the city by night, walking Sammy through familiar alleys, and was challenged only once: a shadow emerged from shadows, and Blanchard saw the faint gleam of a blade. He asked, “Ou v’lay balle dans lobwi?” and the shadow fled down a lane. A handy phrase, condensing much foolish conversation: “Would you like a bullet in the belly-button?” Blanchard moved along amid the odors he remembered, wood-smoke and grease, filth and poverty, dried fish; but also an unquenchable waft of forest and blossom, slipping down these leeward hillsides on the confused trade winds.
    Cleo’s house marked the edge of the true city, with buildings of stone and wood rather than huts of plank, withe, sheet metal and oil drum. Within the wall and behind the house stood a shed; he led Sammy there, and pumped water into the trough. He heard motion in the house, and Cleo’s voice, sharp: “Qui moon?”
    â€œC’est moins,” he said. “Ouvri p’r moins. I’m hungry.” The Creole was musical and reminiscent on his tongue, crooning and purring as if it were his cradle talk.
    Cleo showed open pleasure: “Oh my Blanchard! Welcome home!” She pronounced his name the French way, and he liked that; and if her love was purchased, the friendship in her voice was free. “Eggs and bread?”
    â€œAnd coffee.”
    â€œI have tripes too.”
    â€œNo jokes before sunrise.”
    He heard her issue commands, heard other voices. He was pleased. He was home. He hung Sammy’s tack and gathered his bedroll and weapons, and climbed the three wooden steps to his town house.
    He woke with the sun high: no shadows in Cleo’s little room. He slipped into a pair of loose cotton trousers and padded out to the jakes, and then to the pump. This pump was why the fence: thieves respected Cleo and kept their distance, but ground water was a valuable commodity, and women would have come a kilometer with buckets. Gift of a grateful politician, the pump was. So much was, here: life from the grateful rich, death from the ungrateful.
    Clean and awake, he turned to Sammy. Cleo had been at work: a truss of hay, and the horse munching at a generous heap of it, and water in the trough. He entered the house and greeted the girls: four, each