Continental Drift

“Yeah? What, exactly?”

“Oh, shit, man, you know. The two of us, a coupla hicks outa the hills of New Hampshire, ending up like this. Running coke from Colombia and niggers from Haiti. It’s fucking incredible.” “Yeah. Incredible.” “I mean, who’d have thought it?” “Yeah. Who’d have thought it.”

“I mean, you,” Ave says, pointing a finger at Bob, and he starts to laugh again. “The Granite Skate! You!”

Action de Grâce

1

A few miles west of Coral Harbour and Elizabeth Town on the southwest shore of New Providence Island, the beach hooks into the sea and offers a shallow, sandy-bottomed shelter. Inside the bay and about two hundred yards off the silvery, moonlit beach, the Belinda Blue cuts her engine and drops anchor. It’s close to midnight, under a nearly full moon in a cloudless sky, and the boat, even without running lights, is easily visible from shore, a low, wide trawler fitted for sport fishing with outriggers and, according to the antennae atop the bridge, with navigational equipment.

She rocks lightly in the quiet waters for a few moments, then there’s a splash from the starboard side. A motor-powered dinghy curves at low throttle around the stern of the trawler and heads toward shore. A black man is alone in the dinghy, half standing, one hand on the tiller, while aboard the Belinda Blue a white man can be seen making his way to the bow, where he gives several sharp tugs on the anchor line and, evidently satisfied, returns and disappears into the darkened cabin.

It’s a warm, balmy night splashed silver-blue with moonlight, and the low waves and swells in the bay are streaked with phosphorus. Along the beach, tall, gracefully arched palms lay dark blue shadows against the white sand at their feet, and a short ways up the beach, a freshwater stream down from the inland hills emerges from the brush, broadens and empties discreetly into the bay.

The black man in the dinghy nears the shore, then cuts to his left and cruises along the beach just beyond the breaking waves, until he passes the shallow gulley in the beach where the stream enters the bay and the waves are calmed, neutralized by the counterflow of the stream, and here he’s able to bring the boat in to shore easily and step from it directly onto the gravel. He draws the boat to shore and drags it a short distance into the brush.

Walking quickly inland along the east bank of the stream, he’s soon beyond sight of the trawler anchored in the bay and, moments later, of the bay itself. His eyes adjust to the darkness, and he starts to see what he expected to see, a small village set among palm trees and scrubby undergrowth, a settlement of huts and shanties. He smells old woodsmoke from cold cookfires, and he smells garbage also, and human excrement and urine, poultry, pigs and goats.

A dog starts to bark nearby, probably from underneath one of the several huts set on cinder-block posts, and then another picks it up, and then a third and fourth in the distance. The man leans down to the pathway, gropes around for a second and picks up three small stones, rough bits of limestone. He hefts them in his right hand and walks hurriedly on.

Except for the several dogs, whose harsh cries pick up and join each other and erratically leave off, the village seems deserted. The cabins — sad, tiny, patched-together shelters against rain — are closed up and dark, with no cracks of light under doors, no orange glow from kerosene lanterns or candlelight flickering through windows. The man knows country villages well, and even as late at night as this, there are usually plenty of signs of life — men on stoops talking quietly, a child bawling, a boy chatting up a pretty girl at her door. This particular village is known to him, though he’s only been here in daylight, and it was crowded then, Haitians, whole families of them and separate bits and pieces of families, too, people from all over Haiti. He did his business with them, got their names down, set the price, and said he’d return soon with the boat. Now he’s back again, and he has the boat; but all the Haitians are gone.