The Farming of Bones (14 page)

29

By the time we reached Dajabón, it was almost dark; still the whole town was lit up like a carnival parade. As we walked towards the square, we passed galleries full of people, some dancing, others drinking as they played dominoes with acquaintances peering over their shoulders. Rows of fringed colored paper were strung in front of the houses, with murals of the Generalissimo’s face painted on side walls.

A wide new macadam road was filled with crowds heading for the town square, across from the cathedral. Musical groups grew from children beating on enamel and tin cups, women scraping forks against coconut graters, and men pounding on drums.

Ahead of us was a pack of schoolgirls and boys wearing blue, red, and white uniforms and carrying banners with the Generalissimo’s name.

“Viva Trujillo!” The children echoed the chants of the crowd.

I looked down at my clothes, which were soil-stained and wrinkled. Yves, Tibon, Wilner, Odette, and me, we all looked the same. Our bundles, as carefully as we tucked them in front of us, gave us away as people who had hastily prepared for flight. We tried to mix, wanting to appear like confused visitors from the interior campos rather than the frightened maroons that we were.

I followed Yves as he wound his way through the dense crowd, trying hard not to let him wander beyond my sight. Tibon was walking behind me, and occasionally he’d put his skeletal hand on my shoulder when we had to stop and let a group of people squeeze by.

During one of those stops, Tibon leaned forward and told me that Wilner and Odette had left us. They’d gone to look for someone they could pay to help them cross the river safely. They wanted us to wait for them at the big fountain in the middle of the square.

I pushed my way towards Yves to tell him.

“We’ll try to wait,” he said, keeping his eyes down as we snaked through the tiny spaces between the swell of bodies.

The cathedral was covered with lights from the steeple down to the front door. Ladies in dinner frocks with nipped-in waists and crisscross necklines merrily skipped from their automobiles to the front door of the church, leaving their escorts a few bow-trimmed-shoe paces behind. I couldn’t help but ask myself if Señor Pico was there. There were army trucks lined up in front and others scattered all around the plaza. The soldiers were reviewing the crowd, searching for threats of disturbance.

I gathered from many scraps of conversation that the Generalissimo was inside the church. Earlier he had given a speech to the crowd, restating that the Dominican Republic’s problems with Haitians would soon be solved.

There was glee in the voices that recounted this. Some thought the Generalissimo was going to war with Haiti to force all of us to return there. I also heard some worried Kreyol-whispering voices, people who might have wanted to walk with us, but perhaps feared that gathering in large numbers would be dangerous for all.

Some of the Dominicans who were closest to us gave us looks that showed they pitied us more than they despised us. Others pointed us out to their children and laughed. They told jokes about us eating babies, cats, and dogs.

The crowd spilled into the square across from the cathedral. People waited anxiously for the Generalissimo to come out of the church. It was as though his presence were a sacred incident, something that might transform the rest of their lives.

La Orquesta Presidente Trujillo was playing in front of the fountain where Wilner had asked us to wait for him and Odette.

Yves grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the edge of the crowd. I turned around to make certain Tibon was following.

We moved towards a dark corner behind an acacia grove wreathed by crimson birds of paradise. A group of five young men watched us from beneath a frangipani a few feet away; they had deeply reddened faces as though, like us, they had spent the entire day walking in the sun.

“Best if we go to the border now,” Yves said, watching them watch him. “I don’t know if we can count on my friends. I don’t even know if they’re still here.”

Tibon agreed, but he wanted to give Wilner and Odette some time to find us.

“We should go immediately,” Yves spoke from behind his teeth, without moving his lips. “We should go while there’s a lot to occupy the soldiers and the crowd.”

The young men moved away from the frangipani and started towards us. They raised handfuls of parsley sprigs over their heads and mouthed, “Perejil. Perejil.”’

A few of the people on the benches walked away in fear as the young men came towards us. The soldiers were too far away, and I didn’t think they’d want to defend us in any case.

The young men surrounded us, isolating us from most of the crowd faithfully watching the church doors and waiting for the Generalissimo to come out. As they circled us, Yves pulled out his machete and held it like a metal sash across his chest. Two of the young men lunged at him and wrestled the machete out of his grasp. The other three ripped off Tibon’s shirt and poked a broomstick at his skeletal arm. Tibon tried to step back, but the young men shoved him forward, towards the stick.

I moved to an empty space on my left and found myself stepping on one of the young men’s feet. His cheeks ballooned. He spat. I reached up and touched the glob as it rolled down my face. It was green with chunks of parsley.

Tibon thrust his muscular shoulder at one of the youths who was poking the broomstick at his chest. He was a child really, perhaps fourteen years of age, jabbing at Tibon as though he were sitting by a pond and teasing the small fishes circling around his feet. This boy was caught off guard when Tibon charged towards him; the broom fell from his hand as he staggered and tried to remain on his feet. Tibon encircled the boy’s neck with his more developed arm and tightened his grip. He dug his teeth into the curved bone behind the boy’s left ear, keeping the boy’s scream buried in his throat by pressing his bony forearm down on the boy’s lips. Two of the boys’ comrades began pounding their fists against Tibon’s back, but Tibon only squeezed the boy’s neck harder. The boy began choking, blood flowing from his nose, down Tibon’s forearm. The rest of the boy’s face paled while he gasped for breath.

Yves attempted to tug Tibon away. Tibon would not let go. The boy was struggling for every breath now, his neck limp, his body shaking.

One of the other boys grabbed Yves’ machete—Félice’s machete, Doña Sabine and Don Gilbert’s machete—and plunged it into Tibon’s back.

Tibon seemed startled by the intrusion of the cold metal into his back. It was as though he had been in the middle of a dream. Releasing the boy, he reached behind him to check his wound. The boy fell to the ground, coughing, rolling beyond our reach.

Tibon thrust his hands in front of him once more, clutching at the air. The others kneed Tibon in the ribs and watched him fall to the ground. Tibon turned on his side and closed his eyes. The boy whose neck he had been squeezing slowly rose to his feet. He regained his balance and kicked Tibon in the chest.

Now the others circled Yves and me. La Orquesta Presidente Trujillo started playing the popular hymn “Compadre Pedro Juan.” The crowd cheered as they watched one of the youngest players squeeze his accordion while holding it over his head.

I fumbled with my parcel and tried to find my knife. The bundle slipped from my grasp and someone grabbed it. I saw hands clutch it and then watched it disappear above the heads into the crowd.

Yves and I were lifted by a mattress of hands and carried along next to Tibon’s body. Two soldiers laughed, watching. The young toughs waved parsley sprigs in front of our faces.

“Tell us what this is,” one said. “Que diga perejil.”

At that moment I did believe that had I wanted to, I could have said the word properly, calmly, slowly, the way I often asked “Perejil?” of the old Dominican women and their faithful attending granddaughters at the roadside gardens and markets, even though the trill of the
r
and the precision of the / was sometimes too burdensome a joining for my tongue. It was the kind of thing that if you were startled in the night, you might forget, but with all my senses calm, I could have said it. But I didn’t get my chance. Yves and I were shoved down onto our knees. Our jaws were pried open and parsley stuffed into our mouths. My eyes watering, I chewed and swallowed as quickly as I could, but not nearly as fast as they were forcing the handfuls into my mouth.

Yves chewed with all the strength in his bulging jaws.

At least they were not beating us, I thought.

I tried to stop listening to the voices ordering the young men to feed us more. I told myself that eating the parsley would keep me alive.

Yves fell headfirst, coughing and choking. His face was buried in a puddle of green spew. He was not moving. Someone threw a bucketful of water at the back of his head. A few more people were lined up next to us to have handfuls of parsley stuffed down their throats.

I coughed and sprayed the chewed parsley on the ground, feeling a foot pound on the middle of my back. Someone threw a fist-sized rock, which bruised my lip and left cheek. My face hit the ground. Another rock was thrown at Yves. He raised his hand and wiped his forehead to keep the parsley out of his eyes.

The faces in the crowd were streaming in and out of my vision. A sharp blow to my side nearly stopped my breath. The pain was like a stab from a knife or an ice pick, but when I reached down I felt no blood. Rolling myself into a ball, I tried to get away from the worst of the kicking horde. I screamed, thinking I was going to die. My screams slowed them a bit. But after a while I had less and less strength with which to make a sound. My ears were ringing; I tried to cover my head with my hands. My whole body was numbing; I sensed the vibration of the blows, but no longer the pain. My mouth filled with blood. I tried to swallow the sharp bitter parsley bubbling in my throat. Some of the parsley had been peppered before it was given to us. Maybe there was poison in it. What was the use of fighting?

I thought I heard a bugle, a cannon blast, then another bugle. La Orquesta Presidente Trujillo stopped playing.

The air vibrated with a twenty-one-gun salute. People applauded and stomped their feet and sang the Dominican national anthem. “Quisqueyanos valientes,” they began. Perhaps Señor Pico was there, somewhere, watching, listening, advising, participating. I heard sirens and cheers and the stampede of feet over my head, occasionally landing on my hands and shoulders.

The Generalissimo was leaving the church. The sirens. The voices. The hum of army trucks, then another twenty-one-gun salvo for good measure. Cheers erupted as the Generalissimo’s car sped away with a caravan of soldiers and La Orquesta trailing behind him.

I attempted to get up many times, but was shoved back down by people rushing to glimpse the back of his head or to catch a last mote of the dust raised by his automobile.

Finally most of the crowd departed, leaving only a few dawdlers who cursed themselves for missing a glimpse of the Generalissimo, or a glance from him at them, even if only out of the corner of his eyes.

“Get up now.” A couple was standing over us. “Rise.”

Yves was already on his knees, trying to stand. He staggered to his feet and grabbed the side of the fountain to support his weight. Tibon’s face was pressed into the ground, his back covered with foot marks.

A hand lifted me, a soft shoulder was offered for me to lean on.

“The river is not so far away,” a woman’s voice whispered in my ears.

“The river is not so far away,” a man repeated.

I recognized the voices and immediately tried to speak, to ask, “Odette, Wilner, is this truly you?”

My voice came out in one long grunt.

“Save your strength,” Odette said.

“We waited for you and Wilner, Odette,” I tried to say, but I uttered only another long groan.

“Calm yourself,” Odette said. “While these people are running after their Generalissimo, we’re going to a house Wilner knows of. Tomorrow we will go to the river. It is not so far, the river.”

“Will they beat us again, Odette?” I tried to ask.

She thought I wanted to know about Yves and Tibon.

“Only Yves will be coming with us,” she said.

Tibon’s body was left face up near the fountain at the square. Yves and I were dragged down a dark alley between two small houses. Odette’s nervous movements made me feel as though I were being attacked all over again. When I moaned in pain, she thought I was asking about Tibon.

“We leave the dead behind,” she said. “Tibon is dead.”

“We should not leave him,” I tried to say. “Who will bury him? Besides, he was the one who wanted to wait for you and Wilner, Odette.”

She stopped and looked at my face. That time I thought she understood what I was saying.

“We cannot take him with us,” she said. “He is dead. Let your lip rest a bit now. It’s as big as a melon, your lip.”

“But how can we be sure he is dead, Odette?” I asked.

“Oh wi, your lips are as big as melons,” she replied, “and you’ll only waste more blood if you keep knocking them together like this.”

They dragged us into a tiny room behind a house across from the square. The room was almost empty, with only a few sacks of cement piled against the back wall.

Wilner moved around as if trying to find something in the dark. He gave up, went outside, and came back with a cup full of salt water, which Odette held up to my lips. The salt stung my mouth. I spat it out on the front of what was left of my dress.

“We will rest here tonight,” Wilner said, sounding like the echo of his own voice. “Tomorrow, we go to the river.”

Yves sat with his back pressed into one of the cement piles, his shirt soaked with blood. He watched as Odette spread a coarse, itchy blanket over me while I shivered from a fever slowly rising from the hollow of my bones. My chipped and cracked teeth kept snapping against the mush of open flesh inside my mouth. All the pain of first being struck came back to me. I reached up to touch my misshapen face. Odette moved my hands away from my jaws. Wilner was pacing back and forth speaking to himself under his breath. The hand he lay on my forehead when he stopped smelled of parsley. Odette’s clothes smelled of parsley. I closed my eyes and entered a darkness of parsley.