The sun rises above the trees, and soon the day is dry and hot. A car rumbles down the lane to the crossroads and slows as it passes; the driver, a skinny black man wearing a painter’s cap, does not seem to notice them. A few minutes later, a boy on a red Honda putts by, changing gears and gunning his motor at the intersection, spinning his rear wheel as he turns to the left and heads up the rise and over it out of sight. Soon schoolchildren emerge from the houses and from the woods on narrow pathways. They are dressed in white and blue uniforms and carry books and papers under their arms and in satchels. Behind them, on the far side of the crossroads, a store has opened to the street, and several of the children stop there in the shade for box milk or Coke. They ignore Vanise and Claude and the baby as they pass, but look back at the trio when they have got behind them.
At the tops of breadfruit trees and utility poles, turkey buzzards perch and show their backs and stretch dew-wet wings to the sun. Doves coo in the crackling underbrush, and long-legged egrets stalk the marshes and gutters and now and then rise awkwardly from the moist ground and soar, suddenly graceful, against the cloudless blue sky. The sun moves slowly higher in the sky, and the shadow of the cottonwood tree in the center of the village of Kew shrinks until it is no larger than the circumference of the tree itself, a blot on the dusty gray round. Vanise and the boy are thirsty now, and the boy, Claude, finally, after thinking about it for close to an hour, asks his aunt if he can try to buy a Coca-Cola at the store behind them.
No, she says. We must wait for Papa Legba. We cannot leave. Besides, we have no more money. She reaches down and plucks from the ground next to the
The lad smiles and sucks contentedly on the stone. After a moment, he, too, reaches to the ground and retrieves a smooth pebble, which, with a broad, understanding smile, he gives to his aunt.
The hours pass, and as the afternoon comes on and the day begins to cool slightly, women and older girls emerge from the darkness of their houses and stroll down the road past the cottonwood tree to the store, to the butcher over the low rise beyond, to their neighbors’ houses. All of them ignore the strangers, the boy and the woman and her baby. They see them, of course, but this is a shy, careful people, a patient people as well, not like Jamaicans or Bahamians, not like Cubans, either, all of whom would have accosted the strangers by now and demanded to know why they were sitting in the center of their town, where did they come from, what do they want here.
It’s nearly four in the afternoon when a yellow, three-legged dog steps with precise delicacy from the brush at the top of the rise in the road facing Vanise and Claude, looks toward them, turns and approaches them at a lopsided trot. Vanise saw the dog the instant it emerged from the trees and recognized him at once.
With the baby asleep in her arms, she stands, pulling the boy off the wall to a standing position beside her, and together they watch the yellow dog draw near. He has an intelligent, slightly cockeyed face, one ear perked, the other flopping, and he moves on two front legs and one hind more easily, it seems, than if he had all four. He walks with a slightly airy lope, as if gravity did not hold him quite the same way other creatures are held.
A few feet away, the dog stops and stares orange-eyed up at them, one eye looking straight at Vanise, the other studying the boy. He sniffs the air, then suddenly darts toward the basket at the boy’s feet.
Feed him! Vanise whispers hoarsely. He wants to be fed!
The dog pokes his muzzle at the bottom of the boy’s basket and then looks up and says in a smooth voice, What have you got in there? I want what I smell in your basket.
The boy looks wonderingly over at his aunt. Feed him! she commands. He wants the ham. Feed him.
Quickly, the boy yanks the top from the basket and reaches down, gropes past the clothing and comes to the ham his mother carefully wrapped two nights ago in Allanche. He draws it out, unties the knot in the red kerchief and lays the meat and bone on the ground next to the drawing in the dust. The dog watches warily.
Put it at the top, above the cross, Vanise says in a calm voice.
The boy obeys, moves the ham and stands, and the dog leaps upon the offering, grabs the meat with his mouth near the smaller end, sinks his teeth deeply into it and lifts it, the heavy end dragging the dog’s head down on one side like a man with a pipe in the corner of his mouth.
