Then, in his incongruous, improbably deep voice, Toussaint told me that the Conseil Electoral Haïtien* had published that morning the final ballot for the upcoming election. He had heard the announcement on the radio. Johel’s name had not been listed as a candidate for the office of sénateur from the Grand’Anse.
“It must have been a mistake,” I said.
For the first time in our relationship, Toussaint looked at me with the cynical eyes of a grown man.
A little later, Kay called. She was waiting for Terry and the judge at his campaign headquarters.
“Come on down, will you?” she said.
“Is anything wrong?”
“I just want to see a friendly face.”
I had seen Jérémie only hours before the anticipated landfall of a Class 3 hurricane, and the town had remained unfathomably calm. There had been no lines to buy water; the families who lived on the banks of the river, which would rise if the hurricane hit and drown them, stayed right where they were. The women shopped, the men played dominoes, and the children went to school in their bright uniforms even as radio forecasters predicted imminent doom. But the townies were right: Hurricane Gilda changed course at the last minute and blew harmlessly out to sea.
Now the moment was different.
There was a corner of the Place Dumas where the marchandes who came down from the mountains sat. I bought some mangoes on my way to campaign HQ.
“A pile of problems today,” said the lady who sold bananas.
“Always a pile of problems. The good Lord will save us,” said the mango lady.
“They eliminated Juge Blan.”
“Juge Blan won’t accept that,” said Banana. “People won’t accept that.”
“Juge Blan won’t accept that at all,” said Mango resolutely.
“The Devil’s motorcycle never breaks down,” said Banana proverbially.
Mango nodded. Then she said, “Juge Blan, he saved me one time.”
“Didn’t know that.”
“It’s true, it’s true. Juge Blan didn’t help me, my little one would be in the coffin today.”
“Didn’t know that.”
“Juge Blan put money in my pocket when he had the fever.”
“Didn’t know that.”
“People will take the streets today for Juge Blan.”
“The Devil’s motorcycle,” said Banana, putting her bananas back in the basket. “A pile of problems.”
Campaign HQ, when I eventually arrived, was packed: the usual gang, but others also, people I had never seen before who had come to the office that morning out of solidarity with the judge. The big room with its impermeable cinder-block walls was hot and smelled of old sweat. People had been there since the night before, when the CEH held its press conference.
I found Kay sitting at her desk, her back to the wall, headphones on, watching a video of blond yogi performing a series of unnatural complications. Kay’s hair was matted with sweat.
“You startled me,” she said.
“I wonder how he’s going to get out of that,” I said.
“I watch this when I get stressed.”
I sat on the edge of Kay’s desk. She closed her laptop. Her eyes were red-rimmed and tired.
“Can you believe?” she said. “I heard in the middle of the night. Terry woke me up and said, ‘Kay, they eliminated Johel.’ ‘They shot him?’ I said. I swear to God, that’s what I thought. He was like, no, they eliminated him from the ballot.”
“Did they give a reason?”
“Terry said he heard from his guy on the CEH that Johel wasn’t a Haitian citizen.”
“He told me he never got American citizenship. Just a green card.”
“Of course he’s Haitian,” she said.
“And no one can stop them?”
She said, “Johel said it was legal.”
“How’s he taking it?”
She said, “Terry said he’s not going to take it lying down.”
“Does he have a choice?”
“I guess he’s going to take it standing up.”
The ceiling fans succeeded only in swirling the anxiety around the room, producing eddies, ripples, and riptides of unease. We were about to be submerged by a rogue wave when I proposed that we get something cold to drink.
There was a small crowd milling outside of campaign headquarters. Mid-August in the Caribbean is a month to be endured. The sky was gray like steel. I thought the dog on the Place Dumas was dead, but then it scratched its snout. A small crowd was assembling in front of headquarters. It didn’t take much to get a crowd together in Jérémie — any hint of excitement would do — and Radio Jérémie had already announced that the judge was going to speak later that morning.
We followed the dusty road to the little bar kitty-corner to campaign HQ. A dozen children shouted, “Blan!” and each time, Kay winced. The bar was a dark place with a bead curtain to keep out the flies, and there was a scent of sea salt and sewage in the air. Kay had a drop of sweat on her upper lip. I asked her what she wanted to drink and she asked for a Coke. I ordered one too.
“Boat’s not here yet,” the waitress said. We’d been waiting for the overdue boat for days. The shelves of every store were empty.
Kay attempted to order a Sprite, a Fanta, a Cola Couronne, a Limonade, and a Tampico; I asked for Prestige; we settled on a bottle of water, which came to the table warm enough to make cocoa.
“What does Terry say about this?” I said.
“Who cares?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I look awful.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do, and you know it. I haven’t slept in two days—”
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She breathed deeply, held the breath a heartbeat, and exhaled raggedly.
“How long have you known?” I asked.
“I always knew. I just didn’t want to know.”
“How did you find out for sure?”
“He was talking to her on the phone, saying, you know. Two days ago. Saying things.” She looked away and swallowed. “You always think it’s not going to matter, or you’re going to be adult about it all, but when it happens, it does matter. It matters so much.”
“What does he say?”
“He tells me that I don’t understand.”
“And what do you say?”
“I tell him he’s right. That I just don’t understand.”
Kay looked at anything but me for a minute. She looked at the refrigerator that wasn’t cold, at the ceiling fan that didn’t spin, at the clock that didn’t tell the time. She looked at her fingernails, which were, despite everything, neatly painted. She looked at the sign on the wall that informed clients that credit made enemies.
“Maybe you should be thinking of going home,” I said.
“It’s too hot. The inverter’s broken, we don’t even have a fan—”
“Home, home. Back to wherever you come from. Back to the Gap and Zara. Not here.”
Her face was covered in a film of sweat. Little blond tendrils clung to her temples. She seemed so intensely alive, so present in the moment: sometime in the future, when she was showing couples starter homes, I thought, she might even remember this moment, improbable as it seemed, with something like affection.