The Rue des Ecuries was the cleanest street Max had seen in Haiti so far. There wasn't a scrap of garbage anywhere, no stray animals and vagrants at the sides, no graffiti on the walls, and not a single crater or pothole in the road, which was immaculately paved with gray stone. It could have been any quiet, prosperous, middle-class side street in Miami or L.A. or New Orleans.
Max banged on the Thodores' gate four times, as Mathilde had asked him to. Soon after, he heard footsteps coming from behind the wall.
"Qui lŕ?"
"My name's"
"Mingus?" a woman asked.
A dead bolt snapped back and the gate was opened from the inside, groaning horribly on its hinges.
"I'm Mathilde Thodore. Thanks for coming." She beckoned them in and then made more infernal sounds as she pushed the gate shut. She was wearing sweatpants, sneakers, and a loose Bulls T-shirt.
Max introduced himself and shook her hand. She had a firm grip that went with her direct, almost challenging stare. Had she smiled more, she might have been an attractive, even beautiful woman, but her face was hard and unyielding, the sort of mien you develop after seeing too much of the downside of life.
They were in a small courtyard, standing a few feet away from a modest, orange-and-white bungalow with a sloping tin roof, half hidden by untended bushes. A thick palm tree grew tall behind it, draping the structure in a blanket of yellow-dappled shade, while off to the right stood a swing, its chains rusted solid. Max guessed Claudette had been an only child.
Then his eyes fell on two bright green dog bowls set out near the swing, one holding food, the other water. He looked back, toward the wall, and found a big, house-shaped kennel.
"Don't worry about him. He won't bite," Mathilde said, noticing Max staring at the kennel.
"That's what they all say."
"He's dead," Mathilde answered quickly.
"I'm sorry," Max offered, but he wasn't.
"The food and water's for his spirit. You know how this country runs on superstition? We feed the dead better than we feed ourselves here. The dead rule this land."
* * *
Inside, the house was small and cluttered, the furniture too big for the available space.
The walls were covered in photographs. Claudette was in every onebright-eyed, open-mouthed baby pictures framed and hung on walls, pictures of her in her school uniform, snaps of her with her parents, grandparents, and relatives, all of their faces orbiting hers like planets in a solar system. She was a happy child, smiling or mugging in every picture, the center of attention in group shotsphysically and photogenically, the eye of the camera drawn to her. There was a photo of her standing outside the Miami church with her uncle Alexandre, which looked like it might have been taken after a service, because he was in his robes and there were smartly dressed people in the background. There was another of her standing next to a black Doberman. At least a dozen showed the girl with her father, whom she seemed to favor in both looks and with the lion's share of her affections, because she didn't smile so broadly or laugh at all in the few snaps of her and her mother.
The couples sat on opposite sides of a dining table. Caspar had given his guests a nod and a quick grip of the hand when they'd walked in, but he hadn't so much as said a welcoming word.
He didn't take after his brother. He was short and stocky, thick arms, bulky shoulders, neckbreaker hands lashed with veins, flat, wide fingers. His manner was gruffness skirting rudeness. His hair, thinning on top and cut low, was more salt than pepper. His facefar more forbidding than his wife's, starting to droop at the jowls and pool under the eyescoupled with the way he was grinding his teeth, gave him a passing resemblance to a pissed-off mastiff. Max placed him in his midforties. He wore the same clothes as his wife, who sat next to him, drinking a glass of juice.
"You Bulls fans?" Max asked them both but looked at Caspar, hoping to break the ice.
Silence. Mathilde prodded her husband with her elbow.
"Lived in Chicago sometime," he answered, not making eye contact.
"How long ago?"
No answer.
"Seven years. We came back when Baby Doc was overthrown," Mathilde said.
"Should've stayed put," her husband added. "Come back here, want to do some good, bad's all that happens to us."
He said a little more but Max didn't catch it. He had a gravelly voice that buried more than it carried.
Mathilde looked at Max and rolled her eyes, as if to say he was always like that. Max guessed then that Claudette's disappearance had hit him the hardest.
He found a picture of father and daughter, both laughing. Caspar looked younger there, his hair darker and fuller. The picture wasn't that old, because Claudette looked as she did in the shot her uncle had given him.
"What else happened to you?"
"Apart from our daughter?" Caspar asked bitterly, finally looking Max straight in the face, his eyes small and bloodshot, silver points mired in sad, angry crimson. "What hasn't? This place is cursed. Simple as that. Ever notice how nothin' grows here? No plants, no trees?"
"It hasn't been good for us here," Mathilde quickly picked up. "Caspar used to be a fireman in Chicago, then he had an accident and got an insurance payout. We'd been talking about giving it up in the States and coming back here, so when we got a chance we thought let's go for it."
"Why did you leave Haiti?"
"We didn'tI mean, our parents did, in the early sixties, because of Papa Doc. My dad had some friends with links to dissident groups in Miami and New York. They tried to mount a coup, which failed. Papa Doc didn't just round up the culprits, but all their families and friends and their friends and family. Just to make sure. That was his way. Our parents guessed it was only a matter of time before the Macoutes came for all of us, so we got out."
"Why did you want to come back?" Max asked. "Chicago's not a bad place."
"What I been tellin' myself every time I kick myself," Caspar grumbled.
Max laughed, more out of encouragement than mirth. Caspar dead-eyed him back. Nothing was shaking him out of his grief.
"I think we both grew up in America with this sense of loss for what we'd left behind," Mathilde explained. "We always called this place 'home.' We had all these really fond memories of old Haiti. Especially the people. There was a lot of love here. Before we got married we swore we'd come back to live here one daywe swore we'd come 'home.'