Raymond aimed the car straight for the Macoutes. The men stopped short, uncertain whether to dodge the oncoming vehicle or stand their ground. At the last second, Raymond yanked the wheel right, hurtling the Datsun onto a narrow side street. He floored the gas pedal and the engine roared. He veered left to avoid hitting a woman carrying a large basket of bread on her head. Pedestrians yelped as they leapt out of the way, cursing angrily.
Raymond’s forehead burned with a sudden fever as he squinted into the rearview mirror. Among a melee of men and women darting for the sidewalk, he caught sight of the Macoutes’ Jeep, its silhouette gaining on him in the mirror. The barrel of a rifle glimmered in the dying light. Raymond stomped harder on the gas. In the backseat, the infant burst into tears as Raymond swung the Datsun to the right, tires screeching in protest. Raymond’s heart was pounding a tam-tam in his chest. His mouth and throat were parched. We’re all dead.
Behind him, the Jeep kept pace. A Tonton Macoute’s head popped out of a window, and Raymond saw his arms flailing in the wind like skeletal tree branches. The Macoute was resting a rifle against his shoulder, adjusting it, aiming. Boom!
Raymond hung a left, hurtling the wrong way down a narrow one-way street. A stray dog jumped onto the sidewalk just in time. Raymond swung down another narrow street. Behind them came a screeching of brakes and rending of metal against stone, followed by a howl. The dog’s fate was clear. He took another right, then two quick lefts down the tightest streets in Cité Simone, and then, finally, the little taxi burst out onto Boulevard La Saline. Raymond squinted at his mirror. No Jeep.
The speedometer’s needle quivered at sixty, then seventy. The shadows of mango trees and palms traveled over his windshield. He hurtled past coral, salmon, and indigo stucco walls, plantation doors and shutters, swerving in front of a blue Ford, ignoring drivers’ furious honks. The Datsun hopscotched from lane to lane, avoiding Vespas and tap-taps, and following the flow of Cadillacs, Nissans, and Oldsmobiles like a fish in water. Finally, the taxi lost itself in Port-au-Prince’s dense traffic and crowds, the streets clogged with merchants, business owners, and motorists. Everyone rushing to get home. The smell of diesel and muffler fumes hung thick in the air over Boulevard Harry Truman.
Raymond drove reflexively, brilliantly. In fact, all his adult life, Raymond had seen cars before seeing people. In his mind, life itself was like a fast car. He’d spent most of his waking time inside vehicles, bent over engines, fixing and oiling auto parts.
He shifted gears at the Bicentennaire road, leaving behind the wharf, the cruise ships, the monuments, art galleries, and empty tourist shops.
It was just after seven now, and the peddlers and street vendors had already packed up for the night. The Rue du Magasin de l’Etat was still and silent, save for a few stragglers flirting with the danger of breaking the fast-approaching curfew. Raymond picked up speed again. He wouldn’t make it home in time if he didn’t get these people out of his car. This was madness. Pure insanity. He had his own family to think of, and if he got caught in the streets past eight o’clock, he might never see his children again.
He leaned back and felt his sweat-soaked skin clinging to his shirt. “We lost them.”
The sound of his own voice startled him. He glanced in the rearview mirror—his mysterious passengers sat stiff as statues against the scorching vinyl, the child still crying and the woman patting his back to soothe him.
“Look, I don’t know who you are or what you did, but we’re coming up on Portail Léogâne,” Raymond said, glancing over his shoulder. “That’s where you get out.” “Thank you, brother,” the man said.
Raymond caught a glimpse of the man’s face in the mirror. He was staring up at a slice of sky through the window. The man seemed almost sedated, his frightened eyes shrinking slowly as he took the time to breathe. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Thank you.”
Raymond looked away. That voice. Where had he heard it before?
Portail Léogâne sprawled before them, bubbling with curfew’s chaos. It was a transportation hub that Raymond was all too familiar with. The trucks and buses sped away from the curb at full speed, zooming past Raymond’s Datsun in a blur of hibiscus reds and canary yellows, their frames lacquered with biblical paintings, portraits, and quotes from Scripture. The drivers parked along the sidewalk honked impatiently under a row of palm trees, their horns blaring “La Cucaracha,” weaving yet another song into the street’s antic brouhaha. Street vendors swarmed through the parked cars, sandal-clad feet stomping against the hot asphalt, headed home with their products tucked away in baskets atop their heads. Others were still brave enough to linger behind, raising oranges and roasted peanut toffees to the windows, desperate for one last sale. “Bel zoranj, bèl chadèk! Beautiful oranges, beautiful grapefruits! Won’t you buy a dozen, darling? Good prices for you, pratik!”
A mother grabbed her daughter’s arm and ran across the street in pursuit of a southbound bus. Raymond honked his horn at a vendor, and the old woman scrambled to move her straw basket as he pulled to the curb. Finally, the Datsun came to a halt.
“We’re here,” Raymond said quietly over his shoulder. If there were Tonton Macoutes at the station, Raymond was certain he and his passengers would all be apprehended.
A bus loomed over the little cab, and its driver stretched his neck out a window and bellowed, “Move your bogota, man! You’re blocking me! I need to get out of here!”
Raymond raised his hand to placate the anxious driver as his passengers were scrambling out. At Raymond’s window, the man’s hands trembled while he dug through his pockets. “God bless you,” he muttered.
“Just go,” Raymond said. “Get on that bus, get out of town! I don’t want your money.”
The man peered into his eyes.
“Not a cent,” Raymond insisted, holding his palm up. He would not make money off of someone who’d almost lost his life to the Macoutes, no matter how desperate things were. It would be dishonest, even immoral. Somehow, he knew, taking money would upset the balance of things. He just needed to leave, to get away from these people, to make it home by eight o’clock. Thankfully, home was just a few minutes from here. The more time he spent with these fugitives, the more he was convinced danger would haunt him.
“I owe you—”
“Go!” Raymond repeated. “Get on that bus!”
The woman stopped on the sidewalk, staring back at them. “Milot, let’s go!”
The man leaned in closer to Raymond at the window, and the bus driver let loose a fresh string of obscenities.
“God bless you for all you’ve done for us today, brother,” the man said. “You saved our lives. If you ever need help, come to the town of Marigot, past Jacmel, and ask for me on the beach. The blue house with red windows. My name is Milot Sauveur.”
Raymond frowned. Sauveur. That name was familiar. And that voice? Raymond’s face brightened and he leaned closer. “Milot Sauveur? The reporter from Radio Lakay?”
Sauveur nodded. Raymond couldn’t believe it. Here was that voice, in the flesh, a voice he’d spent long afternoons listening to in his kitchen while shining his shoes. Here was that voice, whose reports he’d so come to trust. Six weeks ago, when Milot Sauveur had suddenly gone silent, everyone had assumed the worst. Raymond was thrilled to see him in one piece, but what did this mean? He was alive, but for how long? People like Sauveur had only two fates these days: imprisonment or death—the same thing, effectively. Sauveur leaned in and tossed ten gourdes on the dashboard before Raymond could refuse. The bills fluttered around and fell on Raymond’s lap.
“I’ll never forget this,” Sauveur said, squeezing Raymond’s arm. Raymond could only nod in response.
Then Sauveur ran toward his wife, grabbed her hand, and shepherded her and the baby onto the bus. There was a brief commotion inside. Raymond could hear passengers sucking their teeth and caught a glimpse of eyes rolling in annoyance as the family stumbled