The Farming of Bones

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat Read Free Book Online
Authors: Edwidge Danticat
Tags: Ebook
away from the boulder as soon as it leaves their hands.
    The water rises above my father’s head. My mother releases his neck, the current carrying her beyond his reach. Separated, they are less of an obstacle for the cresting river.
    I scream until I can taste blood in my throat, until I can no longer hear my own voice. Yet I still hold Moy’s gleaming pots in my hands.
    I walk down to the sands to throw the pots into the water and then myself. The current reaches up and licks my feet. I toss the pots in and watch them bob along the swell of the water, disappearing into the braided line that is the river at a distance.
    Two of the river boys grab me and drag me by my armpits away from the river. Their faces seem blurred and faraway through the falling rain. They pin me down to the ground until I become still.
    “Unless you want to die,” one of them says, “you will never see those people again.”

 
    10
    When Sebastien returned from the compound that night, he was wearing a clean shirt and had washed most of the grass from his beard and face. He sat and leaned back against the wall, watching a lizard dash across the ceiling. I made room for him to lie down on the mat next to me.
    “Señor Pico’s at home now,” I said. “You have to be careful coming and going.”
    “At this moment, what I want more than anything is for Señor Pico to try and strike me,” he said, in an angry tone that I was not used to. Perhaps it was all becoming more familiar to him now. His friend had died. He could have died. We were in the house of the man who had done it. Sebastien could go in and kill him if he really wanted to.
    “Señor Pico has rifles,” I reminded him, “and we are on his property.”
    “Is the air we breathe his property?” he asked.
    “How was Kongo?”
    “No one can find him,” he said.
    “Where did he go?”
    “After we brought the body to him—”
    “What condition was the body in?” I asked, regretting the words as soon as they left my mouth.
    “He fell from a great height into the ravine,” he said.
    “What did Kongo do with the body?”
    “He let a few people see,” he said calmly. “Then Yves and I helped him take Joel down to the stream. We washed him and cleaned off all the blood and brought him back to Kongo’s room. Kongo said he wanted to stay alone with the body, then while I was waiting here to enter your room, he took it away.”
    It was hard to imagine Kongo hauling Joel very far on his back. Joel was much taller and larger-boned, the kind of man who was called upon to pull an oxcart full of cane when the oxen were too fatigued to do the job.
    “They say a son’s never too big to be carried or beaten by his father,” Sebastien said, rubbing a balled fist against his swollen eye. “If Kongo carried off Joel by himself then there’s more truth to that than I thought.”
    “Maybe Kongo wished to say his farewell alone,” I said, raising his fist from his eye.
    “The others have been out looking for him,” he said. “I think he took Joel’s body away because he wants us to let him be. I’m going to respect his wishes. He’ll come back when he wants.”
    He ran both his hands up and down my back. He had been this way the whole year we’d been together. His favorite way of forgetting something sad was to grab and hold on to somebody even sadder.
    “You’re sweating,” he said, letting his fingers slide along my spine.
    “I had my dream of my parents in the river,” I said.
    “I don’t want you to have this dream again,” he said.
    “I always see it precisely the way it took place.”
    “We’ll have to change this thing, starting now.” He blew out the lamp. The room was pitch black. I squeezed my eyes shut and listened for his voice.
    “I don’t want you to dream of that river again,” he said. “Give yourself a pleasant dream. Remember not only the end, but the middle, and the beginning, the things they did when they were breathing. Let us say that the

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