The Foreign Service Journal, June 2005

from the shoulder toward the center of his chest. The large man seemed to remember the boy and said to the others without turning, “We stay here tonight. Put him down.” He motioned toward the tree. “La. Over there.” The men shuffled with the weight of the boy, and dropped him heavily beneath the tree. Jean-Philippe noticed that they were careful to place their own belong- ings at a distance from where they left him. They slept through the hottest part of the day, and then sat together for warmth as the sun dropped, next to a small fire made from precious branches that Jean- Philippe’s wife had gathered over the past month. Jean- Philippe stood with his rifle in his usual position at sunset, near the single tree, shifting his gaze every 15 minutes or so. The men, once they had grown comfortable with the idea of approaching darkness in unfamiliar surroundings, let their attention wander, except for the large man, who seemed intent on Jean-Philippe’s actions. Finally, he spoke. “How you guard a border that keep changing? No trees is Haiti. Where them trees is Spanish territory. Look,” said the man, grabbing one of the yet- unused sticks from the ground and throwing it at his com- panion’s feet. “I change the border. You in Dominican Republic now.” They all began to laugh. Jean-Philippe looked past their heads at the falling sun. The smoke that covered the horizon in the morning somehow remained even now, like the suggestion of a kiss blown in the air. The large man noticed the smoke as well, and removed his sunglasses. “They burning everything. All the land is burning, you see? All that will be left is carbon that every- one make from what is burned. “This is what is coming, guard man. Everything you see now gonna be black and burnt, and they gonna sell it all, burnt like it is, and what is not burned by the grace of the Almighty will be what’s left for us, to start again.” “For a long time now, for many people in this area,” said Jean-Philippe, “there has been nothing left to burn . Nothing grows because there is nothing to hold the soil when the rains come in the mountains.” The large man stood andmoved close to Jean-Philippe. “You think you king here? Away and above the rest of us? We chimeres have seen how it is there, where the smoke comes from. What you think you king of, my friend?” Jean-Philippe remained silent, unwilling to look into those eyes, red and filmy like the beginning of a scab. “I tell you something,” the large man said. “Even when you think things changing, they don’t change. But you best know how to change yourself, guard-man. Some things, many things, are bigger than you ever be.” The others laughed as the big man motioned to his crotch. T he injured boy did not live through the night. The chimeres prepared to leave in the early morning, silent and in foul moods, with the thought of the day’s journey ahead. The large man came up next to Jean- Philippe as he stood watching the unheralded first moments after the dawn, and put on his sunglasses. “You bury him,” the large man said. “You will not help.” The man said nothing. “What is his name?” “His name?” “For the grave marker.” “You call him whatever you want, guard-man. It don’t matter.” He walked around the building and motioned for his companions to gather their things. The dead boy lay on his back where they had laid him the night before, partially upon Titide’s grave. One of the boy’s legs was bent stiffly and his heels were together, forming a tilting “v”. The men began walking down the hill toward the bor- der, and were nearly out of sight when the large man turned around, lifting his sunglasses to his forehead, and called back to Jean-Philippe. “Why you need a name when you dead?” J ean–Philippe stared at the dead boy’s face through- out the morning. “He is the same as Titide now, Maman?” asked Bibou, looking at the body from the doorway of the guardhouse. “He is nothing like your brother, Bibou.” “Be quiet,” said Jean-Philippe. “The boy is Haitian; that is enough.” “I do not recognize a single thing about his face.” Jean-Philippe was surprised by the sharpness of his wife’s voice as she came to look at the boy. “You say he is Haitian. I do not know what he is or what that means.” Jean-Philippe walked over to the tree and looked at the footprints covering his son’s grave, the dirt scrab- bled by the hard rubber soles of the men’s boots. The few sticks that served as both headstone and marker for Titide had been pushed askew, and now hung as if look- ing for support from the ground below. F O C U S 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 5