Master of the Crossroads (23 page)

With Toussaint’s army Riau was an officer of the rank of
captain,
wearing boots and a sash and cartridge box, with power to order lesser soldiers how to fight, but when he felt too much like a horse in harness, he stripped off those officer clothes and ran with Jean-Pic to Bahoruco. There we heard that Halaou, who was both warrior and
hûngan,
as Boukman had been in the first rising in the north, was killing whitemen on the plain of Cul de Sac. Then I, Riau, I went to see this Halaou with my own eyes—ten thousands of men followed him then, all slaves risen from the
habitations,
so one more was not noticed. Halaou kept his camps across the Spanish border, some way north of Bahoruco, but would come out from his camps to kill whitemen on the plain, or fight against the
grand blanc
Frenchmen who had joined the English of Jamaica to make us slaves again. Halaou was a big man, and he went to the fighting like a
possédé,
and at the ceremonies strong spirits stormed around his head, but at other times he went quietly, so that he was not much noticed, and he always carried in his arms a white cock, tenderly as one carries a baby. In the cluckings of the white cock he heard the voices of his spirits.

Halaou ran to every fight shouting out that the cannon was bamboo, the gunpowder no more than dust. I, Riau, had heard such words before, from the mouth of Boukman (which was lipless now, for Boukman’s head was rotting on a stake on the dirt walls outside of Le Cap) and had seen men die because of them. This was not Toussaint’s way of fighting. Toussaint was stingy with the lives of his men as a whiteman with his coins. But when Riau followed Halaou to the fighting, there was Ogûn in his head, and the joy of war and battle belonged to Ogûn, and no harm came to the flesh of Riau, though others died and went beneath the waters.

Then Sonthonax came south to Port-au-Prince with his party of the French who were called Republicans, who stood against the
grand blanc
French, the old slave masters, who were with the English at Saint Marc. The
grand blancs
and the English wanted to take Port-au-Prince, where the Republican army was mostly colored men, and no one was certain how those colored men would fight, because many of them, too, owned land and slaves before the risings. Sonthonax did not have many whiteman soldiers fighting for his cause. But Halaou had heard that the slaves who were made free now called Sonthonax BonDyé, a god for their freedom, and the white cock clucked that Halaou must go to see this Sonthonax inside of his own eyes.

With ten thousands of his men Halaou went to Port-au-Prince, men beating drums and blowing conch shells and cow horns and trumpets made of metal, swirling bulls’ tails around their heads and shouting the name of Halaou. Many were mounted by the
loa
on that journey, but I, Riau, walked with myself alone and saw. The Commissioner Sonthonax came out to the ditches around Port-au-Prince, wrapped in the colored ribbons of France, and kissed Halaou on both his cheeks. He brought Halaou for feasting in the Palais National, and Halaou sat at the table among whitemen and colored officers in their uniforms, himself bare-chested but for the
ouangas
that hung from his neck, and holding the white cock always on his left knee or in the crook of his left arm. Halaou’s people had filled up the town, enchanted and shouting to see Halaou feeding the white cock from the commissioner’s table, but I, Riau, was silent in myself—I saw how we were many, but that the colored soldiers were better organized and armed in their small number. I understood such things from serving with Toussaint, and I saw how the colored soldiers looked at Halaou’s men, fingering the locks of their muskets.

After the feasting was done, Sonthonax sent Halaou to make agreement with the colored General Beauvais, who commended the Légion de l’Ouest at Croix des Bouquets. Riau went there also, to Croix des Bouquets, and stood with Dieudonné in the council room. Dieudonné had grown strong with Halaou, and the white cock trusted him, so that Halaou liked to keep Dieudonné at his back. As for Dieudonné, he had come to trust Riau. We stood with our backs to the wall, on either side of the window, while Halaou sat at the table with Beauvais and two of his officers. Halaou held the white cock on the table, stroking its feathers with his left hand and preening under its neck with his right finger. He and Bauvais were speaking in voices too low for us to understand their words. Afterward some people claimed that secretly Sonthonax had told Halaou to surprise Beauvais and kill him, and others said that the colored men had all along intended to murder Halaou. I did not know anything about it, though I felt that something bad would come from our going to that place. Why did the white cock not warn Halaou away? Two sergeants of the Légion de l’Ouest broke in through Beauvais’s office door already shooting, and they shot Halaou many times before he could rise out of his chair, but the white cock crowed and flew between us, out the window. Dieudonné and I turned over the table and went out the window, after the cock.

Then the colored soldiers began to kill the men of Halaou. We were many and they were few, but they had the better guns, and discipline, and Halaou’s men were in terror because Halaou was killed and they had seen the white cock fly away, deserting them. They dropped their bulls’ tails, which would no longer fan away the bullets, and threw down their
lambi
shells and ran—many were killed there and thrown in the ditches of Croix des Bouquets, and the rest scattered.

After this had happened, Hyacinthe came out of prison, released by Sonthonax. Like Halaou, he was both warrior and
hûngan,
and many of Halaou’s men had been with Hyacinthe before, and went back to him now he had returned, but the colored men teased Hyacinthe to a meeting and killed him, as Halaou was killed. Bébé Coustard attacked Croix des Bouquets with men that had been with Hyacinthe and Halaou, and all the colored men were trapped in the church, but one of them came out alone to parlay and killed Bébé Coustard with his musket, and seeing him dead the men were afraid and threw down their weapons and scattered.

I, Riau, went with Dieudonné, who gathered some of those men who had run together again at Habitation Nerrettes. Then the English and the
grand blanc
French came both in ships and overland to attack Port-au-Prince, and Sonthonax had no soldiers left to fight for him except colored soldiers who wanted to go over to the English anyway, so Sonthonax ran away to the colored General Rigaud in the south. When he stopped at Nerrettes plantation, Sonthonax gave his ribbons and the big commissioner’s coin to Dieudonné, and said with this gift went all his powers that he had brought out of France, and he warned Dieudonné against the colored men, saying,
Do not forget, so long as you see colored
men among your own, you will not be free.
But later on we learned that when Sonthonax came to Rigaud, he gave Rigaud the command of the colony as he had given it to Dieudonné (though only Dieudonné had the medal and the ribbons).

A boat had come from France, bringing a paper of French government that said the slaves of Saint Domingue were free, but Sonthonax climbed into the boat and sailed away. If he was the BonDyé for our freedom, he was gone now, like Halaou’s white cock.

Fok nou oué nan jé nou—
we must see with our own eyes. Yet I thought it had cost Halaou very much to look at the face of Sonthonax, so I left Dieudonné then and went back to Bahoruco, where I sat inside the clay walls of the
cay
which shut out the sunlight, and looked at the whiteman things by the candle flame. Sonthonax had gone away. In the west wherever the English came they brought back the
grand
blanc
French who had been slave masters, and whatever the paper said, there would be slavery under them. Rigaud might say he fought for the Republican French who wrote the freedom paper, yet he and the colored men with him had all been slave masters before the risings. Whatever black leader put his head above the rest was cut down and killed like Halaou. Perhaps after all there was only Toussaint.

The whiteman must know a reason for each thing which he does, but with the people of Guinée, it is not so. I had a spirit walking with me, whether Kalfou or Ogûn-Feraille, and had only to go where the spirit would lead me, as Halaou followed the white cock. I stopped the candle and put the whiteman things back into the hole in the wall and covered them, and then went out of the
cay
. The sunlight was a shock to my eyes, so that I stood blinking. I had not eaten since I woke, but I was not yet hungry. I went up into the provision ground behind the
cay
. Butterflies floated over the flowers on the plants of
pwa rouj.
The beans were not yet ready to pick, but the corn tassels were turning brown. I picked some ears and piled them, and then dug yams with a pointed stick hardened in the fire, until I met Jean-Pic coming the other way along the planting. He looked at all the
vivres
I had gathered and then into my face.

“I am going north,” I said. “Will you come?”

Jean-Pic looked all around, at the green trees hanging to the sides of the mountain, the red-earth cliff across the gorge, with terraces to hold up
cays.
He scratched the back of his head, and said, “Was it the
cacique
who told you to do that?”

I lifted my shoulders and let them fall. The
cacique
had not spoken any language that we understood, which Jean-Pic knew as well as Riau, but maybe it was after all because of the
cacique,
or because of Maît’ Kalfou.

“Men . . .”
Jean-Pic scratched his head again, looking all around the
bitasyon.
It was still early-morning light, with the mist still lifting off the slopes around us.
“Sé bon isit-mêm,”
he said. It’s good right here.

“Sé vré,”
I answered, and it was true, and yet I would go anyway. I lifted the
vivres
I had gathered and began walking down toward the
cay.
I had known Jean-Pic for a long time, since we were with Achille’s band in the north, but Achille was killed in the first risings, and since then Jean-Pic and I traveled sometimes together, sometimes apart.

Bouquart came after me, out of the corn. He moved in a fast, rolling lope in spite of the two
nabots
fixed to his feet, and caught me with no great trouble.

“You are going,” he said. “Why do you go?”

I lifted my shoulders. A whiteman might have answered it was because I hoped to find Merbillay and Caco again, or because of the thoughts in my head about Toussaint, or only because there were few women at Bahoruco. But Riau had no such thought. At other times I had left Dieudonné, and I had left Toussaint’s army. I had left Habitation Bréda when I ran away to the maroons and before that I left Guinée to be a slave in Saint Domingue. Now I was leaving Bahoruco. Bouquart stood with a cane knife hanging from his hand, the flat of the blade against his knee, sweat shining over his scarred chest where his breath moved, and his smile uncertain.

“I will go too,” he said, and lost the smile when he closed his mouth, watching Riau.

I looked at the two
nabots
on his feet, and at the muscles that swelled up from his ankles to his hips. Bouquart had told the story, how he had limped through his days in the cane field, after the whitemen gave him his
nabots,
but by night he had practiced walking, then running, in the secret dark by the river. Now he could run as fast with his weighted legs as any other man without. If ever the
nabots
were removed from his legs, Bouquart would run faster than a horse.

“Dako,”
I said, agreed, and Bouquart smiled more fully.

Together we made ready to leave, putting the corn and the yams in a straw sack. I carried the watch and pistols and the candle ends in a smaller straw
macoute
with a strap for my shoulder, and I put the empty writing papers in there too, but the bundles of letters I left in the wall, in case the whiteman words should twist in my sack to betray me.

We left Bahoruco before midday and traveled until dark came, then walked through the next day also, but after that we slept through the days, hiding in the bush, and walked by night, because we did not want to meet any whiteman soldiers. Because the English were at Port-au-Prince we passed on the other side of the salt lake at the end of the Cul de Sac plain, over the Spanish border, and then climbed into the mountains toward Mirebalais. Neither Bouquart nor Riau knew who was holding the town that time, so we went around it on the heights until we came to the south shore of the Artibonite. The river was too deep for Bouquart—his
nabots
would have drowned him, and also there were caymans in the water, or might have been. We passed one day in cutting wood to build a raft, and when we put it in the water we learned that neither Riau nor Bouquart had good skill to guide it, so we drifted a long way downriver before we could reach the other side, almost as far as Petite Rivière. On the north shore people told us that the English had come out from Saint Marc to build a fort at La Crête à Pierrot, above the town, so we went around Petite Rivière to the west, leaving the river, and kept following the mountains north toward Gonaives.

The Savane Désolée was there when we came out of the mountains, all cactus, dust and salt pans, with water too salt to drink. The road was flat and open but Riau was uneasy walking it—we could be seen from a long distance in that open country. While we were walking, a dust cloud rose ahead, toward Gonaives, so we left the road and hid among the cactus and
raquette
trees. The army was a long time passing, with many horsemen, and even more foot soldiers, and mules dragging cannons behind. When it had gone by, and the dust settled, we went back to the road. Some camp followers were still coming along in the rear, women or old men leading donkeys packed with provisions. I called to a woman in a spotted
mouchwa têt
riding sidewise on a little
bourik
with a wood saddle.