Authors: Nicholas Wolff
It is hard medicine. Markham claimed afterward that the two men attacked him while he was conducting the interrogation, but I have my doubts. I am for severe pursuit of Monk’s killer, but I cannot condone the murder of innocent men. I have remonstrated with Markham about this, but he only repeats the story of being attacked.
Lately, however, some of the natives have been emerging with nary a mark on them, and seem to have been pleased with the interview. I suspect Markham is using our discretionary funds, supposed to be used for buying flour and such, to prospect for information. I have asked him about these concerns as well, but Markham denies them. More and more, the leadership and daily business of the squadron is left to me, the captain now seeing himself as focused solely on the hunt for Monk’s killer and the tracking of Bule. Even Markham’s appearance is falling away from Corps standards; his hair is growing longer, he has not shaven in a week, and his adjutant reports that the captain wears the same underclothes day after day without washing them.
I will bring this up with Colonel Fine when we reach Cap-Haïtien.
October 9th: Markham killed another man today. We came to one of the unnamed villages that dot the sides of the mountains here on the road to Gonaïves, and he grabbed a teenager off the street and instantly went with him to a local house, throwing the inhabitants out from their midday meal. They stood outside and listened in fear as a series of increasingly horrible cries issued from their home. One tried to enter, but Dyer was at the door, guarding it.
Markham forces our hand in these situations. Once the Haitians spot any break in our ranks, any questioning whatsoever of our commander, they will overwhelm us. We can’t intervene, and in truth only a few of us would. But Markham grows stranger by the day.
As the interrogation continued, I was negotiating the price of some peaches with a bare-chested man in a tattered straw hat by the side of the road—his harvest spread across the ditch there—when I heard an ungodly scream. The locals were battering at the window to try and get a look inside. Dyer had another mob at bayonet point. I ran to help him, calling for reinforcements to push the crowd away from the poor hut, when there came the sound of a heavy blow from inside, as if a man had been thrown against one of its wooden sides. The whole hut shivered, and the Haitian women began to wail. I got to the door and rapped on it before entering.
I found Markham straddling the man, who was clearly near or past the threshold of death. His skull was crushed in on the left side and blood oozed out, and from his nose as well. Markham was unmoving, his hand on the man’s throat, feeling the pulse there. It was a macabre sight, and I cried out to Markham to ask what in God’s name he was doing.
He said nothing, just felt the pulse winding down.
“Leave me be,” he said finally.
When he turned to face me, his eyes were unfixed. I backed out of the foul-smelling place and took out my revolver.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Dyer asked me.
“The prisoner is being interrogated,” I responded.
I heard Dyer mutter a prayer and then yelled at the natives, “
Deplase tounen,
” or “move back” in their language. I have rarely seen people look at us with such hatred, but that is the order of the day.
The house emitted no sound, but I thought I heard muttering. Almost a kind of prayer as well, but I couldn’t catch the word. What was Markham saying to a dead man?
The captain emerged a few minutes later.
“Did he tell you where Bule is?” I asked as he passed.
Markham said not a word.
October 11th: We are two days’ march from Gonaïves, proceeding by foot in fine sunny weather. We were having breakfast this morning when the captain’s adjutant came to me and told me Markham wished to speak with me. I finished the last of my flapjacks, and went to the captain’s tent.
Inside it was dark and musty. The fact that the captain had not been washing was clear. I could see some book next to his cot and a scratch pad full of notes. I noticed the book was in Creole.
Markham didn’t look up at me.
“I know where Bule is. Twenty miles west, in a village called Saint-Michel-de-l’Attalaye.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Can I ask where you got the information?”
“A young man I interviewed two days ago. He turned out to be Bule’s nephew. He agreed to become a spy for me for the grand sum of one hundred American dollars. He wants to marry his sweetheart. I paid him twenty on account and I’ve been expecting word from him ever since. Yesterday I received it.”
I said nothing for a moment. If the boy had told him this, why wasn’t I informed?
“What about Colonel Fine?” I finally asked.
“What about him?”
“He has a Colt’s.” The Colt’s machine gun was our heaviest weapon in Haiti, besides our artillery pieces. “Should I send a messenger to tell him to meet us?” I took out my field map of Haiti and consulted it briefly. “Here,” I said, pointing. “At Saint-Michel?”
“No.”
“What about the men tracking us?”
Markham gave me a bored look. He couldn’t even be bothered to be angry; I am not, I’m sure, enough on his level to offend him.
“Joseph has assured me he’s put them off the scent, telling them that we’re on our way to Cap-Haïtien to rendezvous with Fine. He’s put out word that the Bule mission is over. We will proceed out of camp tomorrow, march to the outskirts of town, then turn on Joseph’s directions for Saint-Michel-de-l’Attalaye, out of the sight of the villagers.”
“You place a great deal of trust in this Haitian.”
“We’re interlopers here,” he said with a sigh. “We need to learn the place to get what we want. And we need allies. I have got us two: Joseph and the nephew.”
“He’ll sell out his uncle, the king of their sorcerers, for one hundred dollars?”
“What of it?”
“It seems a bargain price.”
“Perhaps you haven’t been poor, Godwin. I have. This man would have sold him for half the money.”
“Two more men are feeling the effects of malaria, and one of the mules . . .”
Markham waved me away. “Shoot the mule and have the men put into litters, or any damn thing you please. But have everything ready by eight a.m. I want to be heading west by ten at the latest. That will give us most of the day to reach Bule.”
I saluted and saw to things. The two sick men were given extra water rations and said they could walk.
We left the camp the next morning by 9:15, with myself, Markham, and five specially chosen men forming our rear guard. The track was the same as everywhere. Broken ground packed hard by travelers’ feet, buzzing mosquitoes, and the occasional lowing of a cow. We came on a farm that was divided into small twenty-foot plots, which we soon realized were rice paddies. After that was a string of small houses, with black faces in the windows and lank, thin figures lolling in the doorways, and then scrub jungle.
Fifty yards into the trees, Markham gave the agreed-upon signal—his left hand held out to his side—and three paces later the eleven of us simply stepped into the jungle, far enough so that even someone traveling on the same path wouldn’t spot us. The mosquitoes found us, as I’d known they would—I’d given the men extra doses of quinine to ward off the malaria.
After twenty minutes, Markham emerged. A young black man stood beside him in a tattered white shirt and stained khakis—Joseph. I hadn’t realized he was going to meet us, but I have stopped trying to predict Markham’s maneuvers.
“He’s spoken to the nephew,” Markham whispered, his eyes bright with excitement. “Joseph will take us to Bule.” I gave a low whistle. The other men emerged, and Joseph led the way. Not fifty paces away, Joseph made a turn and I saw his white shirt descending down a rocky path. We followed him. We were climbing down the hill and heading west. We could hear nothing of the enemy trackers; I assumed they had accepted the “cover story” and given up on following us.
We walked in silence, occasionally swatting at a bug. Joseph had chosen his route well; we rarely came upon any natives, only once surprising a naked boy leading a goat by a frayed rope, lost in his own thoughts. When he saw us, the child dropped the rope and stood as if he’d been rendered into black marble. Markham patted the boy on his head. He was in a fine mood.
By three p.m., we made the outskirts—beet fields and the occasional roadside shack, which passes for an “outskirts” in these parts—of Saint-Michel-de-l’Attalaye. I saw Joseph growing more attentive to the land, his head darting left and right as we made our way into the village. He was apprehensive, it was clear. He looked like a safari guide when you’ve crossed into the lion’s domain.
October 11th, cont. Forty yards on from the last shack, we came in view of what in Haiti you could only call a fortress: ten-foot-high tan-colored walls made of concrete surrounding a compound of some sort. There were two rust-colored gates, fairly new, and they looked sturdy; they were solid iron of some sort, without openings to see inside. We regarded Bule’s hideout from a small grove of pitch-apple trees that offered us reasonable cover. There was no one outside the building, and we could see nothing of the compound’s interior.
“Here is Bule,” Joseph whispered, pointing nervously and searching Markham’s face. “It is just him and his family inside.”
“Guards?”
“Two.”
Markham studied the fortress.
“We agreed,” Joseph said. “You pay me now and I will give the nephew his money.”
Markham pulled out a small wad of notes, moist from the heat of his body. He held it up so Joseph could see it.
“Not yet,” Markham said. “Not until Bule is ours.”
“This is impossible. You said—”
“I don’t give a damn what I said. Get us into this compound and you will get your money.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying. They will kill me if they suspect.”
Markham unsnapped his holster and pulled out his service weapon. “And I will kill you if you delay one minute longer.”
Joseph appeared to be sick; I thought he would faint. He glanced around, as if estimating his chances of escape, but they were none. If Markham didn’t put him down, the rest of us would have.
“You are killing me.”
Keeling,
he pronounced it.
Markham, tired of talking, pushed at Joseph’s side with the gun. Joseph stumbled forward and walked toward the doors.
“If that gate doesn’t open, I’ll shoot you from here.”
Joseph looked back, hate in his eyes, and walked toward the gate. His progress was slow; twice I thought he was going to turn and dash for the tree line, taking his chances on our marksmanship. But he had seen enough of it to know his odds were low. He continued, as cows lowed in the fields beyond the fortress.
Once Joseph reached the rust-colored gate, he put his hand up and banged on it, then called out something in Creole.
There were male voices from inside, barking out questions. Joseph called back, his voice strained, and his eyes darting back to the pitch-apple grove where we waited.
“Good boy,” Markham said.
There was the small report of a chain rattling, and then a bolt slid clear of its sleeve, the sound reaching us despite the considerable distance. The left gate opened, and Joseph stood back and began to argue with the man inside, whose view of us was blocked by the solid door. We ran for the nearest corner of the compound wall, keeping clear of the area that would expose us to the guard’s view. Joseph watched us nervously out of the corner of his eye, his voice rising the closer we got. When we were just ten feet away, the man inside must have attempted to pull the gate shut because Joseph reached out suddenly and grabbed the door by its edge. We reached Joseph quickly, pushed him back, and went around the door at full speed. Dyer hit the first guard like a fullback, and he went sprawling into the dirt.
We were inside fast, all eleven of us, our Springfields at eye level, checking off doorways. The house was two levels, the finest structure I’ve seen in Haiti outside of the courthouses, and there were chickens and women and children flying in every direction. I spotted a man with a carbine cocked against his hip, and I shot him as he stood. The man collapsed. When I ran up to him, blood was pouring out of his mouth and pooling on the packed earth. He was, I determined later, the second guard.