The man at the tree place told me about a cash-for-charcoal scam that ended in nobody getting any charcoal. The man at the art kiosk across the street from the mission told me about a middleman scheme. The man who built the wooden A-frame houses that were meant as temporary housing, but which the people who bought or received them meant to last a hundred years, told me about a strike-and-extortion scheme, which yielded nothing. “I have a hundred bodyguards,” the man said, although he only had two. A farmer in Artiste told me of a scam where Sebastian tried to sell electricity he was stealing by tying barbed wire to the new power lines the president was running up the mountainsides. “Does he think I don’t have barbed wire?” the farmer said. “Everyone has barbed wire.”
Almost every day, Sebastian asked me for more money. He said his nephew needed money to give the school for photocopies. He said his niece needed money for needle and thread. He said the church needed money for sound equipment. He said his father needed money for a saw and a lathe and a level, so he could start a new business as a carpenter. He said he knew a man whose father had a tumor the size of a small grapefruit on his prostate. He said he needed money to take out the tumor and the prostate. “Let me see this man,” I said. “Take me to see this man.”
We walked down into Sebastian’s village. “Don’t be alarmed,” Sebastian said, “when you see their eyes.” All the members of the family had a degenerative eye disease. They all went blind by age twenty-five. “My friend is twenty-three,” Sebastian said. “You can see it already. The disease is eating his eyes.”
There were eight small children, two teenage girls, Sebastian’s friend, and his father and mother, both of whom were in their seventies. Sebastian’s friend was a very late child. (“A miracle child,” I said. “A shame and a burden,” Sebastian said.) The teenage girls and the children were the sons and daughters of sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters who had long since fled for the city. These were the unwanted children, or the too-many children, or the children taken early by the blindness. Sebastian’s friend was working for tips at the Hotel Kinam to bring in money, and tending the garden in the mornings. When he was gone, people stole from the garden. There was no one in the family able enough to do anything about it.
We greeted Sebastian’s friend. “My friend,” he said, “my good friend. You will come see my father.”
He led us through a maze of banana trees, past the hundred-year-old stone house, to the unfinished concrete house at the back of the property. It had holes for windows and a hole where the roof would go. The old man sat shaking in a chair at the center of the one room. Piles of construction sand filled the four corners.
The old man leaned on his cane and shook. He waved us near him and spoke. He had the breath of brown death. After he said half a sentence, he paused to catch his breath, and Sebastian translated. “I saw you in a dream,” he said. “Bondye sent you from America. Your journey took you over the sea. You are estranged from your mother. You are wearing glasses and you have beautiful shoes.” Most of these things were true. “Bondye said this man will come,” he said. “You will show him your wound. He will lay hands on your wound, and your wound will be healed.”
He pushed on his cane. With some effort, he sat upright in his chair. With his shaking hand, he handed the cane to his son. With great effort, he reached both hands to his pants button and his zipper. He said, “I will show you.” He unbuttoned his pants, and he unfastened his zipper. With both hands, as if presenting a bouquet of flowers, he held himself out to us. What he showed was mostly tumor. His penis and his testicles had shriveled to a flaccid tininess. Most of his hair had fallen away. Only a slight smear of peach fuzz remained, and it was slick with a yellowish-white discharge from a suppurating wound that was on the tumor but not of the tumor.
“Bondye said,” the old man said again, “this man will come. You will show him your wound. He will lay hands on your wound, and your wound will be healed.”
Everyone was looking at me. Sebastian, with his good eyes. The man’s son, with his cataracting, failing eyes. The old man, with his blind eyes. Even the tumor seemed like a giant dying eye. The man’s son was nodding, as if to say: Go ahead. Sebastian was watching, as if to see what kind of man I was after all our time together.
I held out my hands. I cupped them as if I were preparing to draw water from the river. I put them on either side of the tumor. My right wrist grazed the old man’s tiny penis, and my left wrist grazed his testicles. The skin swollen by the tumor was hot, and the skin covering the genitals was as cold as a slab at the morgue. “You must pray,” the son said. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” I said. It wasn’t a prayer to the sky. It was a prayer to the people in the room. If there was any belief to borrow, it was all theirs.
Then I couldn’t remember the rest of the words to the prayer, even though it was the most famous prayer in the world. In my mind, it had become conflated with a less famous poem, by an American who had once been my teacher at the university. Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk. Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks. I ought to start with praise, but praise comes hard to me. I stutter. .
I had not memorized the whole poem, but I did remember the ending, the beautiful ending. The drunk, praying, thinks of himself as an old-time cartoon character, a poor jerk who wanders out on air and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees eternity, and suddenly his shoes no longer work on nothingness, and down he goes. The drunk prays: As I fall past, remember me.
It seemed as fitting a prayer as the one I had forgotten. I cobbled together bits and pieces of both, and drew on the language of special pleading I remembered from all those dreary years at the Cherry Road Baptist Church. I used the words suppurating, and grapefruit, and hot and cold, and shrivel and shrink.
When I was done, nothing happened. Everyone was as blind or cataracted or tumored or lying or despicable as we had been before we prayed, and my hands were wet with white and yellow pus. I told the old man I was sorry. Nothing happened. He had not been healed. I must not be the man Bondye had sent from over the sea. He said, “We must wait. Bondye’s time is not our time.”
Outside, I asked Sebastian, “How much is the surgery.”
Sebastian said, “All surgeries are three hundred dollars.”
I said, “I have four hundred dollars in my pocket. I’m going to give all of it to him.”
Sebastian said, “If you give him four hundred dollars for his surgery, they will use it to buy sand and Portland. Or they will use it to buy a window. Or they will use it to buy corrugated aluminum for a roof. The old man will die soon no matter what you do.”
“What can I do?” I said.
“You can give the money to me,” Sebastian said. “I will take it to pay the doctor, and I will pay the tap-tap to take him to the doctor.”
I looked at him, and I knew. He would take the money and put it in his pocket, and I would never see him again. Or I would see him again the next time he wanted some money.
“No,” I said, quietly. “No, no.”
I put the money back in my pocket and vowed to return after we did the count in Mirebalais — in three weeks. Pick up the old man myself. Take him to the hospital myself. Pay for the surgery myself.
In later years, a woman told me: Who do you think you are, to play God? Who do you think you are, the savior of the world? I said: I only wanted to save this one man for a little while. I knew he was going to die soon.
Three weeks passed. We returned to the village. Another casket, a cheap one, was marching up the street. So many of the pall-bearers were blind. “Don’t worry,” Sebastian said. “You took his tumor in your hands.” “But I didn’t cut it out,” I said. “You should have given me the money,” he said.