Continental Drift

As the Jamaican follows the old man up the long, gradually narrowing gorge in the Barrens and hears the drums grow louder and more insistent and the singing and chanting more coherent, as he glimpses through the bush flashes of light from candles and kerosene lanterns, he believes that, when he finally arrives at the hounfor, he will be able simply to move through the crowd as if he were at a camp meeting or revival back in West Kingston and tap each of his passengers on the shoulder and draw him or her away from the crowd and down the hill to the settlement, where they will quickly pack their bundles, take their money out of hiding and follow him down to the beach, where he will run them out to the Belinda Blue in the dinghy six or eight at a time. While he sweats and gasps for breath from the effort of keeping up with the old man, Tyrone busily speculates and worries about how he and Dubois might hide the Haitians once they are aboard, cover them with a tarpaulin, maybe, so the boat will look empty to a plane crossing overhead in daylight. Then they might be able to get across the straits and enter crowded waters by nightfall tomorrow, drop the Haitians south of Miami and be in Moray Key by midnight, drinking beer in the Clam Shack. Tyrone is an eminently practical man; he believes that someday he will own his own boat. This Haitian mumbo-jumbo is country nonsense to him, an embarrassment of sorts, because they are black West Indians and he is a black West Indian also, and white people can’t easily tell the difference between them. He’ll be glad when this part of the journey is over.

Dubois will be glad too, Tyrone thinks. The man’s nervous, worried that his wife will find out he’s dealing in Haitians. As if it matters what she knows. Dubois told Tyrone his wife believes they’re taking a party of Canadians out of Nassau and will be gone for no longer than a day and a night and the next day. Now, if they’re ten or twelve hours late getting back to Moray Key, the woman will fret. And she may do something stupid, like call out the coast guard. This Dubois is trouble. Men like him should stick to fishing.

Suddenly, the old man leading Tyrone has entered a clearing, and Tyrone has automatically followed and has found himself in a crowd of men, women and children, their faces raptly attentive to what’s going on beyond them. They are looking into a cleared space the size of a large room, covered with thatch, where a service is being conducted. The drums have ceased, and the people have been stilled, and the action de grâce, the formal invocation, has begun.

An elderly man with spectacles and dressed in white, the prêt’ savanne, stands by the centerpost and reads from a prayerbook. In the dust at the base of the centerpole, an elaborately geometrical vever has been drawn in flour and ash, and a short ways behind the post, an altar has been set up, a long table covered with white cloth over which have been carefully arranged lithographs of the saints, a plastic crucifix and vials of holy water, lighted candles, bowls of food — rice, cassava, chicken, bananas, corn — and glasses of coffee, orange soda, Coca-Cola.

A short way to the right of the pret’ savanne, a woman in a red satin dress, the mambo, is seated on a kitchen chair. She’s rocking slowly back and forth in the chair, her eyes tightly closed, her right hand rhythmically shaking the asson in time to the drone of the old man with the book, who chants on and on, occasionally rising to song and then falling back to chant again. Every now and then, as if to punctuate a particular phrase or prayer, the mambo calls out, “Grâce mise’corde!” and the audience repeats her call, “Grâce mise’ corde!”and the prêt’ savanne drones on, “… au nom de Dieu, au nom de Sainte Vierge de Ciel, au nom de Saints de Tè’, au nom de Saints de la Lune …”

The Jamaican scans the crowd for familiar faces, but is momentarily distracted by the sight of a group of animals tethered to a small mahoe tree off to his right and attended by a trio of young women wearing white, full-skirted dresses and scarlet headbands. The animals are various and peaceful together, several ruffle-feathered chickens, a pair of doves, a black, yellow-eyed goat, a small gray pig and a large black boar. Beyond the animals is a cookfire and next to it a second altar table covered in white and loaded with bowls and bottles of food and drink. Tied to the top branches of a tall cottonwood tree are several white and red banners, hanging limply in the windless moonlight.