Mr. Clarinet

Dark telegraph poles leaned out of the concrete, tilting slightly forward, toward Pétionville's brightly lit center. The wires were slung so low and loose Max could have touched them if he'd wanted to. He was walking in the street, barely feeling his footsteps, bracing his body against the downward pull of gravity, which threatened to send him sprawling flat on his face. Behind him, people were coming out of the bar, spilling conversation and laughter, which faded to murmurs and splutters in the deep silence that confronted them. Some Americans tested the rigidity of the stillness with a one-off scream or shout or a bark or a meow, but the quietness sucked the noise into more silence.

Max didn't know exactly which street he had to turn down. He couldn't remember how many he'd passed on his way up before he'd noticed the bar. He was close to the center of town, but not that close, somewhere in the middle. He passed one road, looked down it but it wasn't the right one. There was a supermarket on the left and a graffitied wall to the right. Maybe the next road. Or the next. Or the one before. He'd meant to ask Huxley for directions, in between one of the four or five other drinks they'd had together. He'd forgotten. Then he'd stopped caring sometime after he'd lost count of the drinks he'd had. The Barbancourt had told him he'd find his way home no problem. He carried on walking.

His shoes were starting to pinch the sides of his feet and scrape off the flesh on his heels. He hated them, those nice, new, shiny, leather slip-ons he'd bought at Saks Fifth Avenue at Dadeland Mall. He should have broken them in before he'd put them on. He didn't like the clack-clack the heels were making in the road. He sounded like a young horse in its first shoes.

And then there were the drums—not any closer than when he'd first heard them, but clearer, the sound raining down from the mountains like rusty cutlery; a full battery of snares, tom-toms, bass drums, and cymbals. The rhythms had a jagged edge. They'd gone straight for the drunk part of his brain, the part he'd hit when he'd fallen off the wagon, the part that would hurt like a motherfucker in the morning.

Someone tugged at his left sleeve.

"Blan, blan."

It was a child's voice, hoarse, almost broken, a boy's.

Max looked from side to side and saw no one. He turned around and looked back up the road. He saw the bar's lights and people in the distance, but nothing else.

"Blan, blan."

Behind him, the other way, downhill. Max turned around, slowly.

His brain was on the graveyard shift, everything taking its time to fall into place, adjust, calculate. His vision had dancing ripples before it, as if he were at the bottom of a deep lake, watching pebbles falling through the surface.

He barely made the boy out in the darkness, just a hint of silhouette against the orange neon.

"Yes?" Max said.

"Ban moins dollah!" the boy shouted.

"What?"

"Kob, ban moins ti kob!"

"Are you—hurt?" Max inquired, stumbling in and then out of cop mode.

The boy came right up to him. He had his hands out.

"Dollah! Ban moins dollaaarrrggh!" he screamed.

Max blocked his ears. The little fucker could scream.

"Dollah?" Money. He wanted money.

"No dinero," Max said, putting his hands up and showing the boy his empty palms. "No money."

"Ban moins dollah donc," the boy whined, breathing hotly all over Max's still-open palms.

"No dollar. No peso, no red fucking cent," Max said and carried on walking down.

The boy followed him from behind. Max stepped a little faster. The boy stayed on his heels, calling after him, louder.

"Blan! Blan!"

Max didn't turn around. He heard the sound of the child's feet scuttling after him, soft footfalls underscoring his cracking heels. The boy wasn't wearing any shoes.

He walked faster. The child stayed right on his tail.

He passed a road he thought looked familiar, and stopped abruptly. The boy thudded against the back of his legs and pushed him. Max bounced two steps down, losing his balance and his bearings. He took a couple of wild, desperate steps to steady himself but put his foot through a sudden empty space where there should have been road. His leg went down, down, down. And then his foot splashed into a puddle. By then he'd already tilted too far over. He fell straight down, landing hard on his front, bumping and grazing his chin. He heard something scrape away down the road.

He lay still for a few seconds and assessed the damage. His legs were OK. No real pain. His torso and chin didn't hurt much. He was conscious of something nasty, the notion of pain, waving at him behind opaque glass, but it was a crooked shadow in a still-beautiful, silky mist. In the days before general anesthetic, they must have given future amputees Barbancourt communion.

The boy cackled over his head.

"Blan sa sou! Blan sa sou!"