I picked up a branch and tossed it into the water. It broke up Terry’s circles.
“So you think there’s a point to it all?” I said.
“There better damn be,” he finally said.
Terry and I didn’t talk for a while. That house was making both of us feel pretty lugubrious. I let Terry chuck gravel in the water like he was taking aim at bad memories, and I walked out onto the road. Nobody shouted at me or asked me for money. People just averted their eyes when they walked in front of Père Samedi’s house. I was so grateful when a little kid ran up to me with a big smile that I gave him all the change in my pocket.
Finally the judge came out of the house.
“Père Samedi sends you his best,” he said.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” I said.
“He’s not feeling well.”
A few minutes later we were on the road back to Jérémie.
“How’d it go?” Terry said.
“He told me he’s had the same donkey a lot of years, but it wasn’t carrying its weight. He told me he’s in the market for a new beast of burden.”
“And what’d you say?”
“Hee-haw.”
He said it with so little affect that I couldn’t figure out what happened.
“So that’s good news?” I said.
“He’s got it in for the Sénateur, that’s for sure.”
“That’s good for you, then,” I said.
The judge nodded. His face was like a mask. He had imported the heavy air of the priest’s house into the vehicle. It wasn’t easy to breathe.
“It’s about the dentist?” I said.
The judge shook his head. “No. The Sénateur could find a dentist, that’s what it took. No, there was a little girl on the Trois Rivières. That’s what this is about.”
“What about her?” I asked.
But Terry had already understood. “Man, have I got to take a crap.”
“I had no idea,” I said, thinking of that flock of children I had seen playing in the priest’s garden. Even if you’re looking, even if it’s all right in front of you, sometimes you don’t see the story. Then you wonder why you’re always so surprised by how the world turns out.
Johel nodded. We didn’t talk. Out at sea, you could see thick clouds and rain, a heavy storm over a small patch of big ocean. But it was sunny where we were.
She was nine. Her mother was taking her to Port-au-Prince. She had a toothache.
PART SIX
1
Coming in from the airport, just out front of the police commissariat, the first thing you saw was the judge’s face, twelve feet high and fake-smiling. He fake-smiled at the marchandes walking up the coast with baskets of fish on their heads, at the kids in parrot-bright uniforms heading off to school, at the old men rocking in their chairs and admiring the goats. The judge fake-smiled at the UNPOLs dropping off prisoners at the police station, at Balu, the chef de transport, buying beer at Marché Soleil, and at the Uruguayan soldiers heading down to the beach. He fake-smiled at the motorcycle taxi drivers and at the vendors of used American clothing. He fake-smiled at all of Jérémie, his bright, round face reminding every voter of the promise of a new day.
The new billboard was the start of the electoral campaign. Kay told me that the judge had hired a company out of Port-au-Prince to execute the work and had personally approved the heavily photoshopped image that hung there: the man that overlooked the rue Abbé Hué was some twenty pounds lighter than his fleshy reality. He had settled on his campaign emblem: a hawk soaring above two lines that suggested a road. This was Toussaint Legrand’s only successful artistic accomplishment. He had created the image in a single, perfect moment of inspiration. Beneath the judge’s face was written “Célestin: The Road to Prosperity.”
Although the campaign was in its earliest days, I couldn’t imagine that the judge had spent less than ten thousand dollars already and seemed prepared to spend much more. Johel in his own financial affairs was generally parsimonious. I had seen him pass ten infuriating minutes patiently bargaining down the price of a basket of bananas. His salary as a judge was barely more than an honorarium, if the government succeeded in paying him at all; but I understood that he had some family money and savings from his career in corporate law on which he relied, and he had inherited two apartment buildings in Port-au-Prince, one near Canapé Vert and the other in Pétionville. The rental income from these properties was probably sufficient for his needs.
Still, the prospect of financing a senatorial race out of his own pocket was daunting. Haiti is poor, and the Grand’Anse is the most remote corner of Haiti; but politics in the Grand’Anse were not cheap. I made a back-of-the-envelope calculation: the judge needed SUVs to transport him, his aides, and his security from place to place; he probably needed at least three vehicles, and he needed them for at least three months. He needed radio time, and pigs and goats to feed people at his campaign rallies. He needed tens of thousands of T-shirts imprinted with his smiling face. He needed to pay campaign staff and people to walk around the hills telling his story. He needed big crowds to attract big crowds at his rallies, and crowds of paid supporters don’t come cheap. He needed to pay kids to graffiti his name all over town. And above all, he needed to buy votes, because what poor man is ever going to give away something as valuable as a vote for free? And even that’s not enough, because the judge needed to buy the people who counted the votes.
There were diverse rumors explaining how the judge funded his campaign. One story, widely repeated, was that he was funded by the CIA. The story was not implausible: the United States did have a sordid history of meddling in Haitian politics, both covertly and overtly, and the Sénateur, with his socialist politics and fervent denunciations of the “cold nation” to the north, had not made himself any friends among that small coterie of powerful Americans who interested themselves in Haitian affairs. (I also heard stories that the Sénateur, whose campaign was equally expensive, was himself funded by the CIA, his rhetoric and ostensible political convictions an elaborate ruse.) Variants on these stories had the role of the CIA played by the secret services of Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia; or various narco-traffickers; or a consortium of real estate speculators eager to profit from the construction of the road.
There was one story, however, more widely diffused than any other, a story that had the additional merit of being true. I heard the story first from Toussaint Legrand, who, after his success with the logo, had painted a portrait of a three-legged yellow dog (he ran out of paint before applying the final limb) that he was proposing to sell to me. With the proceeds of the sale, he intended to buy a bottle of cologne, brewed locally and known as Lightning, so-called for its effect on the ladies. Toussaint indicated the subsequent step in his plan with a sheepish smile. I bought the painting, and Toussaint threw in the story for free. I later gave the painting to Kay White, who said, “That’s interesting.” She had heard the story also, and fleshed out further details. But the definitive version was told to me by the judge himself, speaking on the dual condition that the story would remain confidential for as long as he pursued or held political office, and that I remove Toussaint’s painting from the wall above the toilet of campaign HQ, where Kay had hung it.