Free Continental Drift by Russell Banks Page B

the gourd, and we began to ask the boy where he had found the ham, who had given it to him?
    He showed us a face that knows a secret, and for a while, despite our jokes and coaxing, would not tell us, for he was proud that he had brought this food home and wanted to enjoy our gratitude as long as he could. Finally, when we commanded him to tell us where he got the ham, he told us that he had taken it from a truck turned over in amud slide on the road to Port-de-Paix, and then, as he expected, we were not as happy with the gift as before.
    What truck was this?
    A truck. Just a van. A van upside down in the mud, with the doors wide open and the rain coming in.
    And where was the driver?
    Gone,
Maman
.
    Gone? He left his van and this American ham behind?
    There were many hams, he said. Other kinds of meat, too. All wrapped in paper and scattered all over the place, inside the van and falling out into the mud and rain.
    Where did the driver go? Did you see him?
    We saw him…. He was dead. He was inside the van on the floor in front, and his head was all bloody from where he’d hit the windshield when the van turned over from the mud. It must have been hit by the mud when the side of the hill above the road loosened and came rushing onto the road.
    Are you sure he was dead?
    Yes, the boy said quietly.
    Where is the rest of the meat, all the other hams and packages? And who owns them?
    Some are still there. We only took what we could carry. There’s nothing wrong. The driver was a stranger, he’s dead.
    But who owns this meat? we asked the boy, who was now afraid that we were angry with him. Whose van is it? What did it say on the sides? Whose sign is on it?
    The boy did not know whose van it was, and even if there had been a sign on it, he could not have read it anyhow. He just looked up at us, wide-eyed, and shrugged and said, It’s all right. It’s all right,
Maman
.
    But it was not all right. The ham belonged either to a rich man or to someone in the government or possibly to a hotel or restaurant in Port-de-Paix or Cap Haitien, and now we had eaten fully half of it.
    The white circle of bone that ran through the center of the meat stared from its pink nest like an accusing eye.
    Vanise said in a low voice, Aubin will find out. He’ll find out, and he’ll come here and take away your son to punish him and you. And he’ll take away my baby to punish me. She began to tremble and then to weep.
    The boy said, No, it’s all right. It’s all right! he insisted, but his eyes were wet with fear now, for he, like all of us, knew that such things happen easily. There was his friend, Georges Le Rouge, who had asked the American family he worked for one winter to intercede with the police so he could take his driver’s test for a chauffeur’s license without paying the bribe, and Georges had disappeared the week after the Americans left. Aubin said they had taken him to America with them, but we all knew the truth. And there was the sad affair of the family of Victor Bonneau, whose eldest son went to Port-au-Prince and got mixed up with the people who ran the newspaper that people were not supposed to read. And we all knew Adrienne Merant before her brothers ran off to Santo Domingo, knew her when she was pretty, and knew her afterwards, when the soldiers brought her back to Allanche from Port-au-Prince. People disappeared, or people were changed, and though sometimes it was clear that there were good reasons, it was also clear that sometimes it was only because they had made a mistake no greater than ours. And sometimes it was only because they happened to know or be related to someone who had made a mistake no greater than ours. The boy was wrong to insist that we had done nothing wrong, and he was right to be afraid, and Vanise was no doubt right to weep, and we, we were right to do what we did then.
    We had not noticed it, but the storm had gone silent. The wind and rain had stopped, and the only sound was the drip of the