Mr. Clarinet

"They made him play his clarinet while they strung his buddies up by the legs and opened their throats into a bucket. They didn't do that to him. They put him in a box and buried him alive right here." Philippe touched the ground with his foot. "They say they heard him playin' his clarinet long after they'd put the last fistful of dirt down over his head. Went on for days, this thin music of death. Some people say when there's a strong wind blowin' through here, they hear the sound of the clarinet mixed in with the stench of these oranges here no one wants 'cause they feed off the dead."

"What went wrong with the spell?" Max asked.

"If you believe in that kind of stuff, Baron Samedi turns up to claim the bodies the slaves have offered him and he finds the kid still alive. He adopts him as a sidekick, puts him in charge of his children's division."

"So he becomes the children's god of death?"

"Yeah—only he isn't a god as such, 'cause no one worships him like they do the Baron. He's more a bogeyman. And he don't wait for the kids to die neither. He just takes 'em alive."

Max remembered what Dufour had told him about going to the source of the Mr. Clarinet myth to find out what had happened to Charlie. He was here, at the source, where the myth had sprung. So, where was the answer?

"How do you know all this? About the soldiers and stuff?"

"I grew up with our history. My mother told me when I was a kid. Her mother before that, and so forth, all the way back. Word of mouth keeps things alive better than books. Paper burns," he replied. "Fact, unless my radar's all wrong, my mother's the one you come here looking for, right?"

"Your mother?" Max stopped, confused. "What's your last name?"

"Leballec," Philippe smiled.

"Why didn't you say so sooner?"

"You didn't ask." Philippe chuckled. "You come 'bout the boy, right? Charlie Carver? Same as them other white guys did."

Just then, Max heard heavy footfalls and twigs snapping in the orchard right behind him. He turned around and saw three large oranges rolling across the ground toward the fence.

"So your mother's the—?"

"—bokor, yeah, that's right. Bet you wasn't 'spectin' that, right? Woman be up in here, runnin' shit? Women do everythin' in this country 'cept run the damn place. They did, Haiti wouldn't be on the train to Shitsville like it is now." Philippe nodded.

"Where is she?" Max asked.

"A short way away." Philippe nodded his head eastwards and started walking; then he stopped and turned around and looked Max right in the eye. "When you get out?"

"When did you?" Max asked back. He could always tell an ex-con from the tension in their neck and shoulders, the way their bodies were in a permanent state of alert, ready to fend off an attack. Philippe had it in spades, and so did Max.

"Two years back." Philippe grinned.

"They deport you?"

"Sure did. Only way I was ever gettin' out this side of a body bag. I was one of the first they sent over, the guinea pig."

"You ever meet someone called Vincent Paul?"

"Nope."

"Know who he is?"

"Yup. Sure do."

Philippe motioned with his thumb for them to get going, took a few steps forward, then stopped again.

"'Case you wonderin' what it was I did—it was a murder," he said. "Pre-meditated. Got into some shit with a guy. Escalated into a no-way-out situation. One day I just rolled up to him and blew him away. Only part I regret's gettin' caught. You?"

"Same ballpark," Max said.

Chapter 37

THE LEBALLECS LIVED half an hour away from the cemetery, at the end of a dirt road that crossed another field and was broken up by a stream, before leading down a sharp slope to a grassy plain overlooking the waterfalls. They hadn't had to look far for the building material: their home was a sturdy one-floor rectangle whose walls were made of the same sandstone as the abandoned building shell near Clarinette.

Philippe made them wait outside with the dogs while he went to talk to his mother.

Max heard the hum of a generator coming from behind the house.

A dark shape appeared at the bottom of the window nearest the front door, hovered in the glass for a moment, and then vanished.

A while later, the door opened and Philippe beckoned them in. The dogs stayed put.

Indoors it was cool and dark. The air smelled pleasantly sweet, like a well-stocked candy shop, with hints of chocolate and vanilla, cinnamon, aniseed, mint, and orange, all threading in and out of range, never quite settling into a definite fragrance.

Philippe showed them into a room where his mother sat waiting at a long table draped in black silk cloth, trimmed with purple, gold, and silver thread. She was in a wheelchair.

The room was windowless but brightly lit by thick, purple candles positioned in tight rhomboid formations on the floor, or placed in multiple brass candelabras, stood on objects of varying height and length, themselves also shrouded in black cloth. The candles on the ground were three-quarter crosses, the heads substituted by the flame.