A Rendezvous in Haiti (3 page)

McAllister issued brief orders. His men secured their gear and crooned to their horses. McAllister and Evans walked side by side, and McAllister said, “When I was a second lieutenant and had not seen combat, gunnery sergeants were next to God.”

Evans grunted: this was good sound doctrine.

“And now I am a first lieutenant, with scars, and I remember what they told me at the Academy: that when I was all grown up sergeants would call me ‘sir'.”

Evans said, “Aye aye, sir. Sorry, sir. In this goddam country it is like all white men are brothers and we can be careless with our speech. No offense, sir.”

“None taken,” McAllister said. “It only made me feel small in front of the platoon. That's bad for me and bad for discipline.”

“Sorry, sir. It won't happen again.”

“No,” McAllister said, “I don't think it will.”

Even in the shade of mahoganies, Haiti baked. The horses had cooled down and watered; men also; no use; they broke a sweat standing still. There was no need for pickets; the trees were sparse here and they could see for miles across the shimmering plain.

In the camp at Hinche there stood one house, headquarters, occupied by Captain Healy and his staff. It was an old house, of stone and mahogany, with a spacious veranda before and, in a small gable, an old-fashioned bull's-eye window. Captain Healy was an Alabamian and said that the smell of slavery lingered—over a century since what these people called emancipation, but still the house reeked of it, the spacious house, the high ceilings and the cool rooms and the phantoms of servants. He knew a plantation house when he saw one; more so when he lived in one. He had never before lived in one. “White trash,” he liked to reassure his lieutenants.

From the veranda next morning McAllister and Healy surveyed the encampment: shelter-halves precisely aligned, posts vertical and guys taut. The rows stretched the length of a football field, and there was room between them for the clattering Ford truck that brought meat and produce from the town; the truck stood sagging now, steaming and hissing, and in its shade a swarm of children squabbled. The Marines were domestic this morning, policing the camp and sewing buttons on shirts, and sorting laundry for the Haitian men who would call for it and deliver it.

Mules came too, and scabbed local horses, and Haitian vendors offering vegetables, which were refused (“You know what they use for manure”), chickens, which were sometimes purchased, and eggs, which were deemed safe if uncracked and cost one gourde for half a dozen. That was less than a penny each, and eggs were fresh, and beat beans. The cooks kept one of those half dozen as a fee for frying up the other five.

McAllister had discovered an extreme partiality to banana fritters with lime juice, and with Captain Healy was now destroying some three dozen of these. They were served by Lafayette the yard-boy. Lafayette was not his real name. His real name was Emilien-zézé or some such. “This war will never end,” said Healy. The captain's hair started about where his ears finished, and his little blue eyes were usually merry above his potato nose, and most of the day he chewed on Havana cigars that he had free from the U.S.-administered customs. He was wearing britches and a sleeveless white undershirt. He was talkative, and liked to say that a few dozen of him were in charge of finance, customs and police for a country of two million people most of whom were Roman Catholics and also believed that God was a snake. “You young fellows. War doesn't blunt your appetite. Or maybe it is young love. The colonel's daughter draws nigh.” Healy had not been lucky enough to serve in France, and it was understood that he could therefore take a spoofing tone with McAllister.

“Fritters,” McAllister apologized. “They are so damn good.”

“It is the French influence. You find a Haitian who knows how to cook, and he's a real chef. The food has improved considerably since the Spanish-American War.” Healy had served in that one; he was restoring the balance.

“Can't imagine what sort of hound's mess you ate back then,” McAllister said. “I heard we lost more to food poisoning than we did to the Spanish.”

Healy squinted into the past. “Human meat,” he said lugubriously. “Sick cows. Decayed hogs. Those Chicago packers made millions. They put the stuff in cans and it was like a hothouse. Every disease known to man and I believe a few that have not yet been classified. We only lost about six boys in combat in that whole war, and they were all Texans and thought we were at war with Mexico. The rest died of overeating, by which I mean eating that garbage at all. I lived on local beans and eggs and yams, and sucked cane for dessert. I was a corporal then and smart.”

“And I was about eight years old,” McAllister drawled. “Didn't even know I was white.”

“I hope you know it now.”

“You talk as if Virginia wasn't the South.”

“It ain't,” Healy said. “And anything within fifty miles of Washington ain't even Virginia. You know they sent mostly southern boys down here because we know how to handle these people. Good Marines got to hate niggers, Jews and all foreigners.”

“I don't hate anyone,” McAllister said.

“Oh Christ, one of those.”

“A matter of family style,” McAllister said. “The decaying gentry cling to good manners.”

“Just don't be too polite with these Cacos. Kindly bear in mind that they have mutilated dead Marines.”

“I bear that in mind every time I lead a platoon. I also recall Captain Vogel.”

Healy was not pleased. Captain Vogel, serving across the border in San Domingo, had been charged by the Corps with killing and mutilating prisoners. Every couple of wars the Marines turned up some avid collector of body parts. Confined to quarters and awaiting court-martial, he had committed suicide with a small civilian pistol. “Some things we do not discuss at the table,” Healy said. “Anyway, you can stay. I need young heroes to do my dirty work. Lafayette! More coffee.”

The lithe, very black yard-boy had almost anticipated him; two steps, and hot Haitian coffee steamed into their cups. Lafayette was perhaps thirty, perhaps fifty. His face was sleek, his eyes were bland. He wore white cotton trousers and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt, and he went barefoot. He was rumored to have several dozen children in the mountain villages.

The officers sipped in silence. The house faced east to catch what trade winds crossed the plain. Afternoons the veranda was shadowed and they could enjoy beer, rum or absinthe like gentlemen, but now the risen sun scorched.

Captain Healy said, “You'll move out again tomorrow. Tell your men they have twenty-four hours and they may be out for a week.”

“They know that, sir. I believe we could move out this minute if we had to.”

“Might as well rest the horses, and I suppose the goddam fools will go into town tonight. I do not have the heart to forbid it or set guards on them.”

“They'll be back in time,” McAllister said. “And while morals is morals, they do fight better after bending a few rules.”

“We can't all be engaged to a colonel's daughter.”

McAllister said, “I can't afford a ring,” and they set down their cups and withdrew in good order, to consult maps and lists in the cool gloom of the salon.

Next morning the platoon took its leisurely departure after a large breakfast. Captain Healy's career had taught him the military value of reliable and abundant food. “By God, keep your eyes and ears peeled,” he said. “Every ford is an ambush, I told you that many a time.”

“No scouts needed on the open plain,” McAllister said. “We ride bunched for the first day, maybe two days. Questions?”

A silence. Then Evans: “No problems, sir. Let's go make the world safe for democracy.”

Captain Healy gurgled and wheezed. “They just had seven presidents in seven years,” he said. “If that ain't democracy, what is?”

Laughter broke the tension, and McAllister was glad; he wanted his platoon full of pep and not forebodings. They rode out with a jaunty creak and jingle.

He led his platoon along the edge of the plain, with cover sparse, and the standing untended crops dwarf yams and stunted maize, and not cane, and little livestock grazing. Tambors reported their progress: the interminable Haitian drums. The beat thumped at them from all directions, and was eerie: the Marines were unassailable but surrounded, while the enemy was assailable but invisible.

For a day and a half they saw not a Caco, but the drums seemed to follow them. They crossed the plain and rode into upland foothills and then into the “mountains”, what the Haitians called mornes, three or four thousand feet and easy enough going, and plenty of open slope. “Last thing we want is cover,” Gunny Evans explained to Clancy. “This way we can see a mile.”

“And they can see us.”

“Scares 'em off,” Evans said.

Late in the second day they approached their objective. The village was called Deux Rochers. It stood on a steep hillside and the only serious approach was across a swirling river and through a mile of rain forest. They reconnoitered for half a mile upstream and downstream of the ford, and then camped and set pickets. In the morning they made plenty of noise, like campers or picnickers, and cooked up another big breakfast, and reconnoitered again. They would cross on foot and hike up, leaving the horses well out of range with Flanagan's squad. Sergeant Flanagan was a former groom who had joined the Marines when his livery stable became a garage. McAllister liked the man and felt a kinship, and left one of the four Browning Automatic Rifles with him. Reassuring weapons: thank God for the BAR.

The platoon would climb eastward but they would be in rain forest and the sun was not a factor. Six men crossed while the rest of the platoon covered them; when the far bank was secure the platoon followed. McAllister deployed them in two columns with a rifleman at point and another trailing, and flankers out wide, and the two laden mules at the center.

They proceeded with caution—but with safeties
on
, by God. The village had promised peace and loyalty, and requested gifts; and while this rendezvous—negotiated by dubious Haitian gendarmes with inscrutable dark warriors and village elders—exposed the Marines to disastrous betrayal, Deux Rochers and its people came first. McAllister had seen more than one scampering child or bewildered crone shot to death, the Marine sighting swiftly through brush, or a mist of sweat, or a haze of ground heat, and the victim tumbling.

With luck they would be away in an hour and camped on the plain by sunset. Luck. Around the neck Haitians wore little bags full of luck, ouanga bags they called them, and when McAllister stripped a corpse and opened one of these bags, he found shiny colored pebbles, petrified lizards' tails, dried hummingbird feathers, a lead bullet, unidentifiable tiny bones, a small wooden crucifix. Luck.

He inhaled the mingled odors of sweat, mule, scrub. His scouts were out wide, his men were veterans. His eyes ached: every bush was—well, an ambush. Fine time for jokes. He would tell Caroline when she arrived. Fine time to think of Caroline. Still, if he was to die he would like to be thinking of Caroline. She had honored him with plain talk, a steady eye and an honest blush. A hell of a thing, love.

Not now! His eyes roamed a screen of trash trees. A thrush screeched and fled, a lizard scurried. Easy enough to imagine a skirmish line of Cacos only yards away; to imagine a volley, half a platoon of Marines wiped out in seconds. It never happened. Only at fords. But the Cacos were learning.

A fat black bee buzzed toward the lieutenant like a lazy bullet, and veered away.

Women and children. McAllister had returned from Belleau Wood with vivid memories of anonymous entrails and detached limbs—who was who? friend or foe? Waste, waste. In war was much waste. He had become a stingy killer.

Life was too sweet. Love, he decided, did not improve an officer.

Slowly and in silence the platoon worked uphill, scanning the slopes, noting unconcerned birds and lizards; pausing for long minutes to catch any break in the rhythm of birdcall and rustle.

McAllister's shirt was soaked, his boots were leaden. He was twenty-nine years old and breathing hard. The climb was heavy going for a horse Marine, and when Clancy flung up a hand McAllister was glad of the pause. In the hot silence a cuckoo whistled; when a breeze whispered through the forest, and leaves rustled, it was like the sudden passage of a summer storm.

Evans pushed through the brush. “Looks good.”

“It does. Quiet but not too quiet. Push on for the village but have your trailer keep a sharp watch behind. Safeties off now, but what I said about women and children still goes. Questions?”

“None, sir.”

And Evans melted into the brush, replaced by Clancy.

“Tell Dugan,” McAllister said. “Have him pass the word to the rear: sharp watch fore and aft. Then come here to me. You're my runner.”

Clancy said, “You need a point man, sir.”

“I'm your point man, Clancy. Now do it.”

No one came at them from flank or rear, and quietly they closed in. Like many Haitian villages Deux Rochers was built about a dusty grassy sort of common; a dozen huts of wood and thatch, and as usual one, the houmfort, was outsize, and served as festival hall or voodoo temple. A stream flowed outside the dwellings, doubtless into the river below; in it two boulders loomed like tutelary gods. Livestock ruminated, and noted their arrival: goats, kids—in all seasons, here—a scrub bull and a mangy cow. Chickens scratched and pecked. This was a prosperous village.

In the doorway to the houmfort stood a very old woman, wizened, all in blue cotton.

McAllister saw the crucifix, nailed to the post beside the old woman: Christ on the Cross, wrapped about with a green serpent. He saw paintings on the lintel: an egg, a stick figure, a thundercloud and raindrops. He did what he could with Creole: he used his working French and slurred it. “B'jou. We have come as planned. Are you the mamaloi? Is there a papaloi or a houngan?”