A Series of Short Stories about William the Bloody

Blood and Cigarettes

I was part of a mission trip to Haiti that winter, back in 1990, partially because building a school for a rural village seemed like a useful and good thing to do for the world, and partially because spending Christmas break in the Caribbean sounded much more appealing than spending it in Nevada with the 'rents or back at school in Minnesota. OK, so I'm selfish. I admit it. But I tried.

But it didn't work out as I had hoped. I imagined beautiful water and sandy beaches. I found beautiful water and rocky shores. Each day we got an early start, took a long lunch, and finished up by two. Warm caribbean days don't inspire the Protestant work ethic as much as freezing Minnesota days. And each day, when we got to the work site, all the kids would crowd around, yelling "Give me one blood! Give me one blood! Give me one cigarette! Give me one cigarette!" I was so confused when I heard that. What on earth does it mean?

It's an odd thing to wake up to a radio broadcast telling you there's a coup attempt. It really makes you appreciate the United States. Major power shifts happen every 2 to 4 years, but none of it has to do with the use of weapons. The good thing was that we were on la Gonave. Most of the violence occurred in Port-au-Prince. There were a couple of places near the airport where I saw black marks on the road where people had been necklaced.

The army decided not to follow the Tonton Macoute, so government went back to the way it was, and eventually Aristide would take the presidency. The first elected president in the history of the country. Mostly they just claim it. With guns.

The day we got back from la Gonave, we stayed in a compound the church had in Petit Guave. We knew that there was a sundown-to-sunup curfew, and hoped that the US media would be world-watching enough to alert our families that things weren't normal here. Chris, Reverend Bob and I went into town to the phone company and made a collect call to Mom and Dad, telling them we're fine, things are calm and giving them a long list of phone numbers to contact, the families of the others.

On the way back, we bumped into a woman in the Peace Corps. Evidently that's how it works; you see another white face in Haiti, and you have a friend. She could tell we were Americans because we were white, too. He had a long conversation. She was an ecology grad student taking some time off from her thesis by doing the work of ecology in Haiti. Her name was Kimberly and went to school at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. It turned out she knew a friend of mine, Chuck. He was a high school friend of mine and was one of her students when she TA'd Intro to Biology. She had long brown hair she kept in a braid and this beautiful necklace. The pretty kind, not the horrible kind. Hand-made. Beads and twine, mostly, but it was well-made and it worked hair with her dark hair and dark eyes.

After dinner, we went to sleep, and some time at night, we started hearing dogs in the area barking. Then, there was a deep rumbling. First it was quiet and in the distance, then it grew louder. The trees and the wall were high enough to block any view of whatever it was, but it sounded like trucks or tanks or a train or something. But louder than a train. If you haven't been stopped by a train, you haven't been to Minnesota, and this was louder than four diesel engines pulling 40 cars of cattle and grain. To this day, I still have no idea what it was. But it was enough to wake me. I stayed away, considering the noise and the geckos on the ceiling when I heard these voices out the window.

"I told you this would be a bloody bust. If we can get out of here soon, luv, we should be able to get to Bagdhad before everything goes boom. Take advantage of the situation."

"I remember the grand parties, with the party favors. All sticky sweet and red inside."

Their voices reminded me of the Young Ones. Definitely British. The male sounded like Nigel a bit.

"Papa Doc always threw the best bashes, didn't he? Well, these ain't the old days."

"Make them be again, Spike. Please do it."

"Sorry, luv. Time must move forward. The way of the bloody world and all that. But that girl was a rare treat in these parts."

"She tasted fishy."

"She tasted nothing of the sort. Certainly not the feast that we had hoped for, but a rare jewel nonetheless, kitten. And she gave us this."

"It is so pretty. Such a pretty bauble on such a pretty girl."

I dared a look. I just had to see who. She looked a bit like a girl I had seen in a mosh pit at a Soul Asylum show. All "Dead Can Dance" goth girl, but without the nose ring. He looked a lot like Nigel, actually, except a blond instead of a redhead, and without the stars in his forehead. It took a second, when he struck a match against the compound wall and lit a cigarette, but then I could tell. It was Kimberly's necklace.

"The heat's died down, I warrant, so we should be able to get to the good doctor. He'll mojo us to where we wanna go. Fancy Prague, luv?"

"There's screaming and crying and beating there, Spike."

"Sounds bloody wonderful, don't it?"

I walked the wall before we went back to Port-au-Prince, and I found a cigarette butt stained a rusty brown. I never found out if it was Kimberly, but Chuck told me later that she didn't come back to finish her thesis.

It turns out, by the way, that "blood" is pidgin for "balloon". I think a shortend form of "bladder", or something. "Cigarette" means candy. The kids were asking for balloons and candy. I keep reminding myself this.