He reached into his pocket and drew out the crumpled, sopped bills and passed them into the woman’s outstretched hand. She took the money, shoved it swiftly into her clothing, so fast he could not say where it had gone, it had simply disappeared, and she said to him, The Lord of the Sea will protect you.
No, her, he said, pointing at Vanise.
Her, then, the mambo said, and she moved away from Claude toward Vanise and began there to shake her asson over Vanise’s bowed head and to pray for her. Moin la avec asson. Asson c’est Bon Dieu qui bailie li avec la foi….
The boat was now a half mile or more from land. Down in its broad-beamed belly, the bounds were busily loading the barque with offerings, arranging the food, flowers, liquors and perfumes with respectful precision, sweating under the morning sun, which had risen into a cloudless sky. The houngenikon sang as loudly as ever, with the energy of someone discovering her voice anew, and the drummers beat on as if they had found lost drums only a moment before, and the mambo, apparently finished with Vanise, stood at the mast and waved about her head a pair of white chickens held by their feet and chanted and prayed to Agwé and his mistress Erzulie la Sirène. The passengers, awash with sweat from the heat, their bodies stilled by it, nevertheless sang along with the houngenikon, keeping up the joyous pilgrimage despite the heat, the work and discomfort, the long hours it was taking.
Suddenly, one of the houncis assisting the mambo delicately plucked the white chickens from the upraised hand of the mambo and slit their throats and laid them on the barque below her, and at that moment, several women in the boat, one of them Vanise, were mounted by Agwé. She stiffened, her head snapped back on her spine and came as quickly forward and then slowly rose again, with her features changed, gone, replaced by the features of the Lord of the Sea, a powerful loa, dark and masculine, somber and even sad, a god who has watched too long the troubles of men and women on earth, who has seen too many bad times come back again. It was the very face of history that Agwé wore, skin tightened back to ears, lips grim and taut, eyes filled with watery understanding. There was no look of impatience and no look of patience, either: he was beyond the notion. Agwé in Vanise looked around the jammed, noisy, busy boat from one sweating black face to another, from the mambo to the houncis to the men arranging the barque to the sailors at the tiller and the boom, at these men and women and children from the hills of Haiti, even at the face of young Claude and his cousin Charles, and Agwé viewed them all with infinite compassion, as if for a moment a whale with a whale’s understanding of life had risen from the deep to view human life and had seen humanity’s busy terror, its complicated affections, its nostalgia and longing, its shame and pain and pride. Tears flowed down the face of Agwé. The people nearby said, Don’t cry, oh, no, don’t cry, please don’t cry.
The goat, blue as sapphire, is lifted overhead by a pair of young, muscular men, and the mambo shakes her asson in the animal’s yellow-eyed face, empties a vial over its indigo horns and chants, Agwé, Agwé, Lord of the Sea, protect your children. And taking a slender knife from her hounci, she slices open the animal’s throat. Blood billows over its silky chest, and the young men extend the goat, its eyes glazing over, beyond the gunwale. Blood splashes in sheaves into the sea, and the body of the blue ram-goat follows, drawn instantly to le zilet en bas de l’eau, the island beneath the sea. Agwé mounts a man, several women, the drums rise in tempo and timbre, the conch shell bleats, the houngenikon’s voice takes on strength and fairly shouts its affection and awe, and when the mambo signals with her bell, the young men lift to the gunwale the loaded barque. The boat dips, and the barque slides into the sea. It floats for a moment on the waters and then, as if clutched from below by a gigantic hand, is gone.
It is midday. The gods are properly fed. The wind dies, then it shifts. The boat turns, and the Haitians silently resume their separate journeys.
<p><strong>Selling Out</strong></p>
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