And the other guy says, “Huh.”
Soon the judge was hearing the same thing everywhere, from ordinary people. His neighbor comes over for rum sours and says, You should be senator, Judge. Get that road built.
Huh.
The pharmacist sells him some ibuprofen for his headaches and says, Judge, this country wouldn’t be the way it was, men like you were in charge. We’d get this done.
* * *
Everywhere Mayor Fanfan goes, he’s hearing laughter. He figures folks laughing at him on account of him still driving the Camel while the other mayors be cruising. He’s out near the Protestant church, and he hears a little boy giggling. Mayor Fanfan gets down from the Camel, takes the belt right out of his pants, and teaches that boy that no one laughs at legal authority. Then one of his ladies asks Mayor Fanfan just why his face is so sour, whether he shoved a lemon up his ass. He talks; then she says, “Fanfan, you so angry about the motorcycle, you go get it. Be a man.”
Mayor Fanfan starts feeling angry. Calls the judge in the dead of night. Judge wakes himself up and says, “Listen, Fanfan, you want the bike so bad, come and get it yourself.”
Mayor Fanfan says he will.
Not that night but the next, Mayor Fanfan gets to drinking clairin infused with ginger. That kind of brew makes a mild man headstrong, and a headstrong man wild. What Mayor Fanfan starts thinking is how good it’s going to feel driving his new motorcycle back to Les Irois, his people seeing what kind of mayor they got for themselves. How nobody be laughing then, they be seeing him riding low and nice on the blan’s motorbike.
That’s how it happened that Maximilien “Fanfan” Dorsainville presented himself at Johel Célestin’s very home at three in the morning, the judge saying, “Let’s go get that motorcycle now, Fanfan.” The judge and Fanfan driving right down to the commissariat together. And even in jail Mayor Fanfan was telling the other prisoners that Johel Célestin stole his damn motorcycle.
* * *
Then the judge starts thinking it over at night, when he’s alone and he’s sitting out on the deck nursing a whiskey and listening to Coltrane. Johel thinks of what Ogoun told him: Trees will come across mountains and fish will live on land. He thinks of big trucks laden with fruit, of flatbeds filled with mangoes, bananas, breadfruit, avocados, and papayas; he thinks of the fishermen putting their redfish, mahimahi, tuna, and bonito on ice.
The judge starts wondering whether he could win the election. That’s what he asks Terry the next day. They’re sitting out at that little restaurant at Anse du Clerc, taking a break from the roads and the heat, celebrating the arrest of Mayor Fanfan.
Terry says, “Honestly? You know what I think? I think you and I got a destiny. I think of all the things that brought us here, all the crazy luck and weird chances, and I don’t think we’re just out here by accident.”
* * *
A couple of weeks after the arrest of Mayor Fanfan, a Haitian lawyer presented himself at Mission HQ. He represented Toto Dorsemilus, and he said that a member of the Mission had severely violated the rights of his client.
The lawyer for Toto Dorsemilus claimed that his client had been returning to his home from an evening at a Jérémie nightclub when a paralyzing electrical shock caused him to tumble from his motorcycle. The fall caused skin abrasions of the forearms and face. Toto Dorsemilus, lying on the ground, was shocked multiple times. He was then beaten unconscious with a heavy stick, the blows concentrated on his legs, arms, and abdomen. He had lost multiple teeth in the beating. His pants were then pulled down around his knees, and the toothbrush on which his client habitually chewed had been forcibly inserted into his anus. A blow from a boot had caused the toothbrush to puncture his bowel.
Toto Dorsemilus claimed to recognize his assailant as the “blan” who had been present at his arrest all those months ago.
The case was referred to the Special Investigations Bureau of the Mission for further investigation. The SIB quickly discovered that Terry White was checked in on the night of the alleged assault to a Port-au-Prince hotel, where he had been traveling with Johel Célestin to attend a judicial conference. Mission travel logs confirmed travel to Port-au-Prince the day before the assault. Investigators from the SIB spoke with Judge Célestin, who confirmed that he had dined with Terry on the evening of the alleged assault. No physical evidence linked Terry White to the assault, and although Toto Dorsemilus insisted that Terry White was his assailant, he failed to pick out Terry White in a photo array.
The investigators from SIB sent the dossier to the review board with a recommendation that no further action be taken, owing to insufficient proof of the assailant’s identity. All members of the Mission enjoy complete immunity from local prosecution under the Status of Forces Agreement signed by both the United Nations and the government of Haiti, and the case was dropped.
PART FOUR
1
I met Toussaint Legrand just a few days after I came to Haiti. I was walking to the beach, about a mile from the center of town, and all along the way, little voices shouted, “Blan!” I waved and dispensed casual smiles and received in reply giggles, grins, and suspicious stares. The yellow sun cast sharp, sparkling shadows on the white dirt road. It was cockfighting day, and the men carried roosters, the birds’ heads stuffed into socks. The way it works, a rooster can’t see, he thinks everything’s copacetic: soon as the sock comes off, first thing he sees is some other damn rooster there, disrespecting him.
I was halfway to the beach when a very skinny kid with an incongruously deep bass voice stopped me. If you closed your eyes, it was like talking to Sidney Poitier. Open them, and there was a malnourished kid who looked about twelve, with a large plastic bag of potatoes and manioc balanced on his head. He had a face like a space alien, with very big eyes, a broad forehead, and prominent cheekbones tapering down to an angular chin. I don’t remember how he began the conversation — that we were conversing at all was a sign of what a natural salesman he was — but the upshot was this: he was seventeen years old and called himself a student; his family had no money; he had no money; his mother had no money; his little brothers were hungry; and he wanted to be an artist. He asked me for money to feed his little brothers and I gave him the change in my pocket. His name, he told me, was Toussaint Legrand.
A few days later Toussaint presented himself at the front gate of the Sénateur’s mother’s house. Jérémie is a small place, and Toussaint, going from neighborhood to neighborhood and door to door, had found me. As he waited for me, he had a look on his face of patient, fragile hopefulness. I invited him into the house, where he drank a glass of orange juice. Much later I learned that he was so excited to see me that he hadn’t slept the night before. That’s exactly the look he had on his face as he sipped his orange juice, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he, Toussaint Legrand, of Carrefour Prince, Haiti, was sitting there on my terrace drinking orange juice.
In the weeks and months thereafter, no pretty lady has ever been courted by such an animated and constant suitor as I was courted by Toussaint Legrand. He came by the house all the time. He was unshakable.
My wife and I tried many schemes to convince Toussaint to leave us alone. We told him that he was allowed to visit only every third day. Every third day without fail he showed up at our door. We asked him to visit only after five in the evening, with the result that we had a standing appointment with Toussaint Legrand at 5:01 p.m. Once, we asked him not to visit us at all. Hah! He was resistant to hints, oblivious to suggestions. What did he want? Not just to ask for money, but also to say hello, or to eat a meal, or to hang around, or to ask a question. What he wanted more than anything, I think, was to be part of the family. He wanted to sit with us out on the terrace in the evening and belong.