The person who was watching him hadn't learned this. He also hadn't learned the other important rulealways stay out of sight; if you're going to see, don't be seen.
He was standing on the rocks, away from the crashing water, part obscured in the mist; a tall, thin man in ragged blue trousers and a long-sleeved Rolling Stones T-shirt that was torn and frayed around the hem. He was looking right at Max without a trace of an expression on the little that could be seen of his face under the thick mop of shoulder-length dreadlocks hanging from his scalp like the legs of a dead mutant tarantula.
Chantale reappeared on the rocks, shaking the loose water out of her ears and slicking her hair back with her fingers. She stepped down into the stream and started walking back toward Max.
At the same time, Dreadlocks stepped into the water and also began to head his way. There was something in his hands, something he didn't want to get wet, because he was holding it high up above the stream. The worshippers who weren't in some other mental space got out of his way, exchanging worried looks, some hurrying for the bank. A possessed woman made a wild grab at what he was holding. He smashed his elbow into her face, sending her flying back into the water. The spirits fled her body as she splashed back to land, blood running down her face.
As Dreadlocks drew closer, Max motioned to Chantale to go back to the rocks. He was near the bank now. Max thought of pulling his gun on him and getting him to stop, but if the guy was a nutcase that wouldn't do anything. Some people just wanted you to shoot them because they didn't have the guts to put themselves out of their misery.
Dreadlocks slowed down and stopped right opposite Max, up to his ankles in water. He held out what he had in his handsa battered, rusted tin box with some of its original designa large, blue roseclinging to it.
Max was about to walk toward him when a large rock flew out and hit Dreadlocks on the side of the head.
"Iwa! Iwa!"
Children's frightened yells, right behind Max.
Suddenly Dreadlocks was hit from all sides by a crossfire of rocks and large stones, thrown with surprising accuracy, all striking some part of his body.
Max ducked and moved back up the bank, where the stone throwers were gathereda small group of children, the eldest being maybe twelve.
"Iwa! Iwa!"
This emboldened the worshippers who, up until that moment, had stood stock-still, watching. They began to pelt Dreadlocks with stones, but they didn't have the children's accuracy and their shots went wide, hitting the frozen human crosses and sending them toppling into the water, or striking the possessed and either completely exorcising them or driving them into even more demonic spasms.
Then Dreadlocks's hands took a direct hit. He dropped the box, which fell into the stream, disappeared below the surface, and then bobbed back up a few feet away.
Dreadlocks went after it, running as fast as he could, pushing through the water, pursued by volleys of stones and a few of the bolder pilgrims who, thinking he was fleeing them, made after him with sticks, but were in no hurry to catch up with him.
Dreadlocks vanished down the stream.
When it was clear he wasn't coming back, natural order returned to Saut d'Eau. The spirits repossessed the bodies they'd abandoned, worshippers returned to the stream water to soap themselves and climbed up the rocks to the falls, and the children on the bank resumed tending to their baskets.
Chantale came back. Max handed her a towel and a new set of clothes from the hamper.
"What's 'e-wah' mean?" Max asked as he watched her dry her hair.
"Iwa? Means devil's helper. People who work with bokors," she said. "Although I don't think that guy was one. He's probably just a local freak. Plenty of them around. Especially here. They come here normal, they get possessed, they never leave."
"What did he want with me?"
"Maybe he thought you were a loaa god," she said, pulling on a sports bra.
"That would make a change," Max laughed, but as he replayed the incident he didn't find it so easy to dismiss. He was sure Dreadlocks had known either who he was or what he was doing there, whom he was looking for. It was in the way he'd first stared at him, deliberately, making sure he got his attention. Only then had he made his move. And what was in the box?
Chapter 36
CLARINETTE WAS A village on its way to becoming a small town. The bulk of it was situated on top of a hill overlooking the waterfalls, but the slopes of those hills were littered with a tumble of one-room houses, huts, and clapboard shacks so randomly ordered that, from a distance, they made Max think of a forgotten cargo of cardboard boxes spilled out of a long-gone truck.
People stopped to stare at them as they got out of the car. The adults scoped them out from head to toe, checked out the Land Cruiser, and went on about their business as though they'd seen it all before but were still interested in the upgrades. The children all ran away. They were especially scared of Max. Some went and got their parents, to point him out to them, others went and got their friends, who all came in cowering three-foot gangs and then ran off screaming as soon as he looked at them. Max wondered if their fear of him was only due to their never having seen his kind before, or if suspicion of the white man was something that had been passed down in the genes, mixed into the DNA.
Clarinette's tallest building was its imposing churcha mustard-yellow ring of reinforced concrete, topped with a thatched roof and a plain black cross. Four times the size of the next-biggest structurea blue bungalowit dwarfed the other amateurishly constructed clay and tin hovels clumped untidily around it. Max guessed from the way the church was positioned, right in the center of the village, that it had been built first, and then the community had evolved around it. The church didn't look much more than fifty years old.
The top of the cross scraped the clouds that hung incredibly low here, sealing the village in an impenetrable veneer of dusk, which the sun, although at its fullest, couldn't overcome. The gradual erosion of the nearby mountain ranges had brought the sky that little bit closer to the touch.
There was a freshness to the air, healthy nuances of oranges and wild herbs undercutting the smells of woodfires and cooking. In the background, over the hubbub of people going about their business, was the constant sound of the waterfall a few miles below, its great roar rendered as a persistent gurgle, water running down a drain.
They walked through the village, talking to people along the way. No one knew anything about Charlie, Beeson, Medd, Faustin, or Leballec. They weren't lying, as far as Max could see. Questions about Tonton Clarinette produced only laughter. Max wondered if Beeson and Medd had really come here, if Désyr hadn't deliberately misled them.
As they got closer to the church, they heard drumbeats coming from inside. Max sensed the rhythms going straight into his wrists, midtempo bass notes catching in his bones and creeping into his veins, getting in sync with his pulse beats before they eked down into his hands and fingers and moved up and down them, making him clench and unfurl his fists as though he had pins and needles.