Authors: Nick Lake
— You got whiskey? he said. You got kleren?
Biggie shook his head.
— I’ll get one of the shorties to bring you some, he said. Anyway, it’s not Baron Samedi I want.
The houngan smiled at me. Actually, it was more of a leer. I saw his crooked teeth, the gaps where some of them had fallen out. There was a smell of rot and alcohol from him. He was old. Like, forty, at least.
— It’s not Baron Samedi he wants, the houngan said, so he doesn’t bring whiskey. Little asshole.
I couldn’t believe it. Biggie, he once shot someone in the foot for saying his hair looked stupid with cornrows. Now the houngan was calling him an asshole.
I pulled my Glock.
— You watch what you’re saying, houngan man, I said. You disrespect Biggie, you get a full metal jacket in the eye.
Biggie put a hand on my gun, made me lower it.
— Chill, he said to me.
Then, cool as brushed steel, he turned to the houngan.
— I told you, Biggie said. I’ll get you some. You gonna let us in, or what?
— Depends what you want, said the houngan. You want maji? You want charms to put on the crossroad to protect your territory?
— I want Ogou Badagry, said Biggie.
The houngan’s eyes went big and wide. Biggie took out this bundle of notes, like, two months of drug money. He handed it to the houngan.
— We’re going to war, he said. We need serious maji.
— You need a shrink, said the houngan.
But he opened the door and he let us in.
Inside, it was a tip. There were magazines everywhere and a few books, too. There were dirty clothes, a few cups, and plates lying in the mess. On the sides of the van were shelves that looked like they were made out of bits of corrugated iron and wood the houngan had found in the street. There were jars on them, with powders and stuff. Veves were drawn on the floor. There was a rattle in the shape of a skull, drums. I could smell sweat and whiskey and rotting food. It was like how you’d imagine a houngan’s place, if you knew the houngan was a tramp, or mental.
The houngan gestured at a mound in the dirt that might have been a couch. Biggie didn’t hesitate, just sat down. I started to sit down, too, but I must have made a face or something, cos the houngan laughed and gave me a push, so I got down on my ass on the shirts and magazines and stuff. I caught my breath and I tried to slow down my heartbeat.
The houngan took a proper look at me.
— You got a pwen, he said. I can feel it.
I put my hand to my pocket, to the smooth pebble that Dread gave me.
— Yeah, I said.
— Good, said the houngan. That shit will protect you. Someone must like you, kid.
Biggie smiled.
— My soldiers got to be protected, he said.
The houngan laughed.
— None of them as protected as you, my man.
He pointed to a jar on the shelf opposite me. It was nearly empty, but there was a bit of gray powder left at the bottom.
— That’s Dread Wilmè, he said. What’s left of him. The rest is on Biggie here, keeping him safe from bullets. You want I should put the dust on you, too? There ain’t no gun will kill you, then.
— That’s Dread Wilmè? I said.
It was, like, the stupidest thing I ever said, cos he just told me it was, but it was all I could think of.
— Yeah. All I do is I call Baron Samedi and he rides me, and he takes the ashes and sprinkles them on you. That way he’ll recognize you when you’re about to be killed. When he sees you all covered in that dust, he knows not to take you. He leaves you alone, for sure. Dread Wilmè is sacred, man.
The houngan leaned forward. His breath was like something physical in the van.
— All you gotta do is bring me some whiskey, he said. And some money, maybe.
— He doesn’t need it, said Biggie. Shorty be blessed already. Dread saved his life – died right on top of him. Truth?
— Truth, I said.
— He’s
that
kid? said the houngan. Shit.
He held out his hand, and I shook it.
— You’re a legend in this part of the Site, he said. Is it true that Dread had a thousand holes in him when he died?
— I guess, I said. That’s what my manman says.
— And the dude still lifted a tank off of Shorty here, said Biggie.
It’s weird, the way everyone knows the story, not just me and my manman. I never get used to it.
— Stone-cold gangster, man, said Biggie.
— You Marassa, too? said the houngan. I heard Aristide took you both from your manman his ownself.
— No, I said. My sister is gone. I’m just me. I’m nothing.
The houngan nodded. He went over to the shelf – it didn’t take him long, it was only one step to the other side of the truck – and he touched the jar. Then he kicked some stuff out the way, cleared a space on the floor.
— You’re ready for this? he said to Biggie. This could be intense. Ogou is . . . Ogou is fierce. You’ve been smoking weed, playing with Baron Samedi and Dread’s bones. But this shit is heroin.
— Heroin is my shit, man, said Biggie. I been dealing with heroin since back in the day. Boston came into our territory. We got to wipe them out.
The houngan nodded again. He got out some chalk and started drawing a veve on the metal floor of the van. It was delicate, quick, and I didn’t expect that this wreck of a guy could draw like that. Then he poured some kind of powder on the floor, and he took up the drum and started to dance. As he danced he sang:
— Attibon Legba, ouvri bayè pou moin!
Ago!
Ou wè, Attibon Legba, ouvri bayè pou moin, ouvri bayè!
M’apè rentrè quand ma tournè,
Ma salut lwa yo.
Manman dragged us to a load of ceremonies, so I knew what he was doing. He was calling Legba to open the gate between our world and the world of the lwa. Legba doesn’t open the gate, nothing comes through.
The houngan beat and beat on the drum, singing that little song over and over again. I started to get a bit freaked out. Usually, when this kind of thing went on, the houngan switched over pretty quickly to some other lwa. Usually, there wasn’t this electricity in the air – I could feel it crackling in my ears, running like shivers on my skin. The smell of the houngan was gone. Now the inside of the van smelled like gunpowder and sex and flowers. It was like the walls were closing in on me, and I turned to Biggie and he looked like he just saw a ghost.
Suddenly, the houngan stopped. There was silence, but it was like the silence you get before thunder, or before a dog barks. Then his head snapped round to look at me, and his eyes weren’t his eyes anymore, but were like gates that have been opened, and there was emptiness on the other side of them, and it made your head hurt, like when you think about how big infinity is.
— What do you want? he asked, and it wasn’t his voice – it was something that echoed.
The houngan, or whatever it was, wasn’t looking at Biggie, he was looking at me, but it was Biggie who answered.
— We want Ogou Badagry, he said. We want to go to war. We need his help.
— I am the crossroad, said the houngan who was Papa Legba. You are at a crossroad. So you get me.
— Yes, said Biggie. But can you bring us Ogou Badagry? We need war in our met tet, we need to be strong . . .
He tailed off, cos the houngan had turned to look at him, and Biggie got a load of those eyes.
— No, said Legba.
— No?
— No.
He touched Biggie’s head and Biggie shivered.
— You are full, Legba said. You have a dead man inside you.
Then he touched my head.
— And you are empty. You were Marassa, now you are nothing. You are half a person, but you won’t be for long. The ceremony has already been completed. It was completed many years ago. Ogou Badagry is not for you.
— But our enemies, said Biggie. We need to destroy our enemies.
— This one knows how, Legba said, touching me again. This one can destroy anything, if he wants. He can build things, too, but it’s up to him what he does.
I felt like I might pass out, but I dug my nails into my palms. Papa Legba is the crossroad, I thought. He can find anything, and give anything. He can return things that are lost.
— Will I get my sister back? I said to the houngan who was Papa Legba.
— What the fuck are you talking about? said Biggie. What the fuck is this?
The houngan looked at me.
— I don’t know what you’re talking about, he said. I don’t deal with that door.
— What door? I said.
The houngan shook his head.
— I don’t . . . This is all . . .
The houngan’s voice was back to normal now; it didn’t echo anymore. It was like a dub mix had stopped and we were back to the normal song. He slumped to his knees and the old eyes fluttered open, the bloodshot ones, not the ones that were blankness forever.
— What happened? the houngan said to us.
— I don’t know, said Biggie. You were Legba, I think. He said that I was full. He said Shorty was half a person. You know what that means?
The houngan looked at me and he frowned.
— No, he said. But it doesn’t sound good.
He turned as if we were done.
— Hey, asshole, said Biggie. I’m not paying for that. Give me the money back.
The houngan shook his head.
— I did what you wanted, he said. Not my fault the lwa didn’t help you.
— I didn’t want bullshit talk, said Biggie. I wanted protection. Aggression.
The houngan shrugged.
— Take it up with the lwa, he said.
— No, said Biggie. You take it up with the lwa.
He took out his Glock.
— Wait, said the houngan. You need me.
— No, I don’t. You already gave me Dread’s maji. Anyway, you called me an asshole. It’s a matter of principle, you get that?
He emptied the Glock into the houngan, and the guy got thrown back so far he knocked down all those shelves, including the one with Dread in it, and it smashed as it fell on him. The powder went all over him, but it was too late for him. He was dead.
— You can destroy anything? said Biggie to me. Better come up with something quick, then.
The weird thing was I did think of something.
After we went to the houngan, everything sped up. Ever since Legba touched me it was, like, I don’t know, it was like there was a door that was open in my head, and all kinds of stuff came through. I went out on patrol, and I helped Biggie put charms on the roads that led into Solèy 19, and I helped him sort out some guys who’d been short on their payments, and all the time it was like I was in this completely different place, where there were a lot more trees and shadows.
I’d also been having this weird dream about a castle and a carriage. It gave me an idea. I had it all worked out.
— Listen, Biggie, I said one night. I’ve got a plan for how we can take out Boston.
— What? said Biggie. Like, all of them?
— Yeah, I said. All of them.
We did it at night. Biggie wasn’t so happy about giving up his whip, but I told him:
— If we pull this off, you can have as many cars as you want. We’ll own the whole Site if we take Boston out. Think about it. You want to sell half the heroin in the Site, or all of it?
He gave us the car.
I told you I was the Mechanic, right? Show me a broken engine and I would fix it, no matter if the engine was in a car or a chainsaw.
So, I got this servo mounted to a gun in the back. I had a remote control in my hand, like the ones you get with a toy car. That was the hardest thing to find – we had to cruise pretty much a whole day through the Site, asking people. Kids don’t get toys in the Site, but eventually we found some kid who had brought his from the country when his parents moved to Port-au-Prince to get better jobs – and ain’t that a joke, like they say in the songs? We paid him 50 dollars for it. So now I’d got the servo out the toy car, you get me? And it was hooked up to this AK in the back of the whip. Packed into the trunk and the footwells was a load of dynamite, grenades, and rockets. I couldn’t believe all this stuff when Biggie showed it to me. He said it was from Aristide, from when he wanted the gangs to secure the country for him, but Biggie said he never knew what to do with that shit, so he just left it in a shack.
— That stuff is dangerous, he said.
— Yeah, I know, I said. That’s the point.
So, whip, servo, gun, explosives. The rest was just ghost-riding.
Some of the guys, they didn’t like it. They said that Biggie shouldn’t be listening to me, that I’ve had crazy shit in my head ever since we went to see the houngan.