Continental Drift

Tyrone has backed off one careful step at a time, with Claude and the baby beside him, until they have moved out of the group and are standing in the gorge a ways below the others. He sees the red-eyed face of old François in the bushes next to him. The old man sneers at the mambo and shouts at her. “Nen point mambo ou houngan passé Bondieu nan pays-yà!” There is no mambo or houngan in this country greater than God.

The woman shrieks at him. “Enhé, enhé, enhé!” she curses. “Papa Ogoun qui gain’ yun mangé, tout moune pas mange’ li!” Now, she says, where are my children? “Coté petits moin yo?” She turns and looks across the faces of the crowd.

Signaling to the pair of men with the machetes, she starts back up the rocky path toward the hounfor, and they follow. The others mill about for a second, cease their movement and watch her go. Then they turn, Vanise included, and begin filing down the path after Tyrone.

As one by one they pass the old man, he cackles and taps them on the shoulder with his stick. Then at last they are gone, and the old man is standing alone in the narrow gorge, mumbling and every now and then breaking into a dry laugh, as if he knows what no one else knows.

“C’est pas faute moin!” It’s not my fault, the old man sings. “C’est pas faute moin! C’est pas faute moin!”

3

Where the stream enters the sea, the Haitians come alone and in twos and threes from their huts to meet the Jamaican. In the bay, a half mile away, the trawler rocks lightly in the soft lavender predawn light, and beyond the hook of beach that protects the bay, open sea stretches straight to Africa, where the eastern sky is born, cream-colored near the horizon, fading to zinc gray overhead. In the west, above Florida, the sky deepens to purple, with glints of stars. A pair of gulls cruise hungrily along the beach toward the sandy hook, while overhead, its huge, motionless black wings extended like shadows, a frigate bird floats, watches, prepares to dive.

The Haitians are wearing their best clothes: for most of the men, clean white shirts, dark trousers, black shoes; for the women, brightly colored cotton dresses, sandals, headscarves. They carry cardboard suitcases, woven bags and baskets into which they’ve packed a change or two of clothing, if they own that much, a few personal items, maybe a small bottle of perfume or cologne, a family photograph in a gilt frame, a Bible or prayerbook, their gardes and wangas, and food for the journey — fruit, cassava, chicken, a bottle of clairin, some tinned milk. They may own more than these pitiful few possessions, a pot and a pan, some dishes, gourds, tools, bedding, a bicycle, but they don’t hesitate to leave these things behind, for they are starting over, and soon, they know, they will own all the things that Americans own — houses, cars, motorcycles, TV sets, Polaroid cameras, stereos, blue jeans, electric stoves. Their lives will soon be transformed from one kind of reality, practically a nonreality, into a new and, because superior, an ultimate reality. To trade one life for another at this level is to exchange an absence for a presence, a condition for a destiny. These people are not trying merely to improve their lot; they’re trying to obtain one.

Tyrone, the Jamaican, greets them as they arrive at the beach, and he takes each of them off a few steps from the others to complete his business with them privately, for he has agreed with them separately on the cost of the journey. When he has obtained all the money, he divides it into two packets, one thicker than the other. The thicker packet he will turn over to Dubois, telling him that’s all he was able to extract from them. The other, smaller packet he will keep in a separate pocket for himself. He feels no guilt for this; without him, Dubois would have nothing to show for his trip from the Keys but a sunburn and a gasoline bill at the marina in Coral Harbour.

When the Haitians have assembled on the beach, Tyrone drags the dinghy out of the bushes and across the gray sand to the water. He jumps in, seats himself at the stern and points out the first six and waves them over toward the bow of the boat.

He hollers to the boy, Dorsinville, and instructs him to hold the bow and help the others into the boat, and the boy jumps to the task. First the old lady and the young woman with her two children come aboard, then an old man going to Florida to be with his son and daughter, and a woman whose husband went over four years ago, and a young man whose older brother is in New York.

Tyrone signals the boy to push the boat out, which he does, and then he starts the motor, brings the boat around toward the sandbar, and in seconds he has the boat slicing through the still, velvety-gray water of the bay toward the Belinda Blue.

At Sea