Silence. Claude, wide-eyed at the sight of the large, loud man, clings to the side of his basket with both hands. Vanise’s face is expressionless, impassive, as if she has turned herself into a stone.
The man points to his thick chest.
Vanise listens closely, but nothing the man says makes sense. Now and then a word or string of words sounds familiar, but she loses the meaning instantly. She can read the man’s face, however, and his body and the tones of voice he uses, bass tones, not harsh, not sweet, either, but rising and falling in a low range, as if he were trying to tell her a funny story.
He’s playing with them, she knows, treating them like babies. And he likes to drink, drinks quickly and deeply with obvious pleasure and need. He lives alone: the house and yard are of a man alone; no signs of a woman or children here; no clothes drying on a rope, no toys scattered in the dirt, no curtains in the windows. Except for the yellow dog, no animals, either. The henhouse seems empty, and there are no chickens or roosters in the yard scratching and pecking in the dust. No pigs or goats. The man probably doesn’t even eat here much; he comes home to drink alone and sleep and go out again. His scars tell her what happens when he is out at night in the bars. Another man must tend his crops, she decides, because this man is too bulky to be a farmer, too quick and nervous in his movements. And he has a calculating look, the look of a man who likes to buy things low and sell them high, who likes to haggle with people, not with the ground, the rain and the sun. And despite his playfulness, she can tell that he is not a kind man.
George goes on talking to Vanise, almost as if she understands his words. He tells her about the other Haitians from the boat, how they’ll be kept in jail until they can be shipped back to Haiti, how stupid they were for trusting someone to bring them all the way to America in a boat small enough to get through the reef off North Caicos. The police are used to Haitians coming ashore here, and most of them get caught and sent right back. A few hide out, they’re good farmers and stonemasons and sometimes metalworkers, and they work cheap, because they’ll be turned over to the police if they don’t, same as up north in the Bahamas. The Haitians who got caught this morning, he points out, were not as smart as Vanise. They stayed bunched up like cattle at Bellefield Landing, where they were bound to be seen. They should have separated and run into the bush, as she did, where they might have been lucky enough to meet up with someone like George McKissick, who would be willing to help them. Instead, they’re in jail tonight, and she and her baby and little brother are here, with George McKissick, on his farm.
He goes silent for a few seconds, scratches his belly, swigs from the rum bottle, stands and takes up the white enameled cup from in front of the dog. He fills it from the barrel and drinks. Refilling the cup, he passes it to Vanise, and she drinks, hands it back. Then the boy. George sets the cup afloat in the rain barrel and studies it for a moment.
He’s decided not to turn them in to the police, he announces. At least not tonight. He smiles, faces them and goes inside.
The sun has edged close to the horizon beyond the field, and the sky is splashed with long, broad, plum- and silver-colored streaks of cloud moving in from the east. The sea breeze has shifted and become a land breeze, bringing with it the smell of cassia trees and heat-dried corn stalks from the meadow in front of the low house.
What’s he going to do? Claude asks.
