The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (23 page)

                                          Fire!

(
They wound
POMPEY
.)

Come on, men, after them.

(
MANO
’s army battles with the
SOLDIERS
.)

YETTE
(
Singing above the chaos.
)

Oh, the soldier he leads a terrible life,

The soldier he leads such a terrible life,

He fights for man’s folly, confused by each cause,

And the captain prohibits his preference for …

(
The
SOLDIERS
are beaten off.
)

RAM

They killed the boys this time. General, we can’t keep fighting them like this, it ain’t make sense. Look how they kill Pompey.

YETTE
(
Moving in the field.
)

He fights for man’s freedom, confused by a cause.

And the captain prohibits …

Oh, they killed my blue-eyed captain.

MANO

How you feeling, Pomps?

POMPEY

                                              I feel cold in the heart, General.

I think the chief calling Pompey. He shoot me in a bad place, that feller.

MANO

Yette, get the man some water. I think Pompey grievous hurt.

POMPEY

Nigh unto death, as it say in the Book. Nigh unto death. How is so dark and so cold? Ain’t it noontime?

MANO

Cheer up, Pomps, we has great things to do yet in the name of freedom.

POMPEY

I dead tired, Mano. I can’t fight no more. We lose, is no use fighting.

Freedom will never come.

MANO

Look your friend Calico, Corporal.

POMPEY

I ain’t no corporal, Mano, a feller give me this uniform. You think we going win, Mano?

MANO

We was born free in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord won’t close his eye because the sun sink. One day, praise God, the freedom we was born with bound to come. See, your friend Calico here …

POMPEY

Calico, it have white fellers what dead down there. But they was soldiers. I spoil everything. I ruined the attack because I am a fool since I born.

CALICO

Everybody makes mistakes.

POMPEY

We all the same in the dark. We all in the same descending darkness. I ain’t know what to tell you, Calico.

YETTE

                                                       Pompey. Drink some water.

(
A trumpet blows retreat.
)

POMPEY

That’s a nice-sounding bugle. But is dark, eh? Where Ram?

MANO

Ram.

RAM

I here with you, Pomps.

POMPEY

Hello dere, you old coolie. You crying or what?

RAM

Bear up, Pomps; don’t give up yet.

POMPEY

It ain’t water I want, Yette. I want all you boys stick together, you hear? All you stick together and don’t hate nobody for what they is or what they do. This is all we land, all we country, and let we live in peace. I want all you hold hands there near me, and live like brothers. Calico, don’t ’buse coolie, and coolie don’t ’buse Mano, and, Mano, give the boys a break sometimes, because this is confusion time.

(
He dies. Trumpet.
)

RAM

They sending back a burial detail. We best get out.

YETTE

Where will they bury my blue-eyed captain, I wonder.

(
More shots.
)

MANO

If you don’t haul you tail out of here, they’ll bury you alongside your blue-eyed captain. Come on, Ram, we’ll come back for Pompey.

(
All exit running, except
YETTE
.)

YETTE

I could open a store with the pickings of dead soldiers’ pockets. (
She picks up a badge.
) It’s only a bloody badge for valour, no use to a woman.

(
Enter
SERGEANT
with
PATROL
.)

SERGEANT

Burial detail, halt! You still here?

YETTE

Woman’s work is never done, Sergeant. We clean up.

SERGEANT

You know we should have shot you right away, when you begun it,

Hiking up your flank and perturbing the regiment.

What yer waiting for, get on and bury them all

Or heap them in the cart!

(
The
SOLDIERS
gather the dead.
)

YETTE

His eye is on the sparrow, Sergeant, it wasn’t me.

It was your imagination that started the battle.

SERGEANT

Robbing the dead, what a ghoulish occupation.

YETTE

And there goes the lovely drummer boy.

SERGEANT

You women cause all the trouble.

(
YETTE
laughs.
)

What are you doing in such a rum game, girl?

You’re not with them, are you? I mean those fellows.

Seems a girl like you could live in a great mansion.

YETTE

I had that once, Sergeant, but it didn’t come to much.

You know, you find what’s honest and you live by that.

Are you happy in your trade yourself, then?

SERGEANT

I never thought much about it till you asked me.

Seen many dead in many parts of all the empire, but

As you were singing, the soldier’s life is hard.

Are you with that fellow, what’s his name?

YETTE

                                                                 Emmanuel Mano.

I’m with nobody, Sergeant. Man is a beast. Move your foot.

SERGEANT

What are you looking for?

YETTE

                                                I found it, it’s a Spanish coin.

It belongs to a friend of mine that’s ruined.

(
A
SOLDIER
comes up.
)

SOLDIER

We’re ready to move on now, Sergeant.

SERGEANT

                                            You go on ahead, Corporal. A coin?

YETTE
(
Holding up the coin.
)

It’s been worn and rubbed and abused, worn shiny

Like some of the good women in the world. Make a good chain, though.

Oh, look at poor Pompey, left alone in the dimming field.

Good night, poor sergeant.

SERGEANT

                                               There’s the bugler. Why poor?

I’d as soon be back home, cold as it is at this time o’ year,

And not conquering the heathen but defending me own hearth.

I had nothing against the little fellow, but my job.

And that I can’t think about. I’m sure you’ll win, though.

There’s many in England and all over the world

Who wish you the best. Good dusk to you, then. March!

(
Exit
PATROL
to slow drum.
)

EPILOGUE

Night: The field. Enter
MANO, YETTE, RAM, CALICO, GENERAL YU
looking for the body of
POMPEY
.

MANO

All you fan over this field, but watch out for soldiers.

This Pompey so troublesome, you can’t find him when he dead,

Like he misplace his own corpse? Anybody see him?

YETTE

See him here, Commander, serious as a stone. Ram, the spade,

This have to be one rapid burial, and don’t make no noise.

RAM

A man supposed to be buried sitting up, in my religion.

YU
(
Holding the body.
)

Nonsense, burning the body is custom, then scatter ashes

Of this salt of the earth, as the wind shall see fit.

RAM

Leggo, leggo the body, you foolish Chineeman. I say leggo …

CALICO

But anyone know what religion Pompey practised?

MANO

Pompey was an everythingist, now he is a nowherian.

But too much contention, we giving him general burial.

Lord, can’t a man even get a good rest when he dead?

YETTE

Well then, blow the bugle faintly, and, Mano, say some words.

MANO

Kneel in your own peculiar fashion, enough of the wrangling.

All the nations of this earth is compounded in one man.

YETTE

Don’t shout, man, the soldiers.

(
They all kneel.
)

MANO

                                                 I going say all that I can quick.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;

In the name of Tamoussi, Siva, Buddha, Mahomet, Abraham,

And the multitude of names for the eternal God,

Amen. O God, this dust was once mankind and none will listen,

We are gathered together, before whose eyes there is no night,

To bury one significant fragment of this earth, no hero,

But Pompey … Corporal Pompey, the hotheaded shoemaker.

But Pompey was as good as any hero that pass in history,

For this is the hinge on which great nations revolve,

For Pompey’s squingy eyes perceived the salvation,

Which Thou preparedst in the presence of our enemies,

Before the face of all people …

RAM

                                                        Hurry up, hurry up.

MANO

Before Calico people, and General Yu people, and

Before Yette kin, and Ram generation. Now you all.

(
They file past the corpse.
)

YETTE

I remember him pinching my flank and stealing the supplies.

RAM

I remember him who loved peace, compelled to play soldier.

CALICO

I remember how he forgave me, though I didn’t do him nothing.

MANO

General Yu?

YU

Remember he couldn’t eat, heart full of sorrow.

RAM

What happen now, you done?

MANO

                                                    Put this dust back in the earth.

(
They lower the body through the trapdoor.
)

YETTE

Bury him with the coin that Calico gave him.

MANO

Fling it to hell, into darkness and oblivion, for this is the enemy that bring man into division. Look, it mark “In God We Trust,” but a man face carved on it.

(
He tries to get the coin from
YETTE
.)

YETTE

Mano, this is only a symbol. It not evil in itself. And it have its good uses, if power won’t abuse it. Think, Mano, you ain’t never going to be so rich as to know how strong it is.

MANO

Is only sometimes I can’t bear our history, our poverty, and the wrangling of them fellers. And we part of the world, girl? What we could do without power?

RAM

We only a poor barefoot nation, small, a sprinkling of islands, with a canoe navy, a John Crow air force, and a fête father philosophy, but in the past we was forged, Mano, and, oh, I can’t talk enough to tell you, but for this Pompey dead, stupid as he did seem. I wish I could talk. Oh, where the feller with the language to explain to this man?

YETTE

All you taking this too serious, is only a play.

Pompey boy, get off the ground, before you catch cold.

RAM

                                              I ain’t like the way he quiet, yes?

YETTE

Shout in his ear, that the emancipation going come,

That the bells going ring out, and a new age begin. Pompey!

You holding up the works.

(
The bells start ringing.
)

Oh God, the battle won, the emancipation beginning.

RAM

You mean all the history of our past going fuss over one man?

A poorakey shoemaker who can’t even act good?

(
CROWD
comes on, curious.
)

POMPEY
(
Suddenly jumping up.
)

Who the hell can’t act good, and who you calling poorakey?

And how is emancipation, today is federation.

You there, Sergeant, you had no right to hit me so hard.

(
He runs among the
CROWD
.)

MANO

Lord, trouble again, trouble again. Thank God the little men of this world will never keep still.

(
The
CHORUS
appears above.
)

POMPEY

How you mean, man? The man nearly mash up me memory.

But I feel it coming back.

CHORUS

That web Columbus shuttled took its weave,

Skein over skein to knit this various race,

Though warring elements of the past compounded

To coin our brotherhood in this little place.

And now, Time’s steward, memory, hoists his mace,

Quadrado’s ghosts whirl backwards in a wind,

The foam laurels those sailors fished so deep,

Those marching men, those horns and seas we sounded,

That all night long split the unquiet sky,

Faint, in the dim shell of the echoing mind,