Krik? Krak!: A Wall of Fire Rising

The boy dropped his composition notebook as he leaped to his father, nearly stepping into the corn mush and herring that his mother had set out in a trio of half gourds on the clay floor.

The boy had such tiny corkscrew curls that no amount of brushing could ever make them all look like a single entity.

“Bouk-man,” Guy struggled with the letters of the slave revolutionary’s name as he looked over his son’s shoulders.

“A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones of my people. Not only those people whose dark hollow faces I see daily in the fields, but all those souls who have gone ahead to haunt my dreams. At night I relive once more, the last caresses from the hand of a loving father, a valiant love, a beloved friend.”

As their applause thundered in the small space of their shack that night, they felt as though for a moment they had been given the rare pleasure of hearing the voice of one of the forefathers of Haitian independence in the forced baritone of their only child.

It was supposed to suppress gas and kill the vermin in the stomach that made poor children hungry.

That and a pinch of salt under the tongue could usually quench hunger until Guy found a day’s work or Lili could manage to buy spices on credit and then peddle them for a profit at the marketplace.

Lili and Guy passed the group, clinging to their son so that in his childhood naivete he wouldn’t accidentally glance at the wrong person and be called an insolent child.

Lili and Guy passed the group, clinging to their son so that in his childhood naivete he wouldn’t accidentally glance at the wrong person and be called an insolent child.

They didn’t like the ambiance of the nightly news watch.

They spared themselves trouble by going instead to the sugar mill, where in the past year they had discovered their own wonder.

Everyone knew that the family who owned the sugar mill were eccentric “Arabs,” Haitians of Lebanese or Palestinian descent whose family had been in the country for generations.

“I wager you I can make this thing fly,” Guy said.

The boy’s face contorted with agony as Guy made him kneel in the deep grass in punishment.

Lili let her blouse drop to the floor as she smoothed the lemon over her ashen legs.

She groped for her husband’s chest in the dark and laid her head on it.

“You won’t put the boy on any lists, will you?” she implored.

After the day he’d had at the factory, he wanted to sit under a tree and have a leisurely smoke, but he did not want to set a bad example for his son by indulging his very small pleasures.

After the day he’d had at the factory, he wanted to sit under a tree and have a leisurely smoke, but he did not want to set a bad example for his son by indulging his very small pleasures.

“Your new lines are wonderful, son. They’re every bit as affecting as the old.”

“What does that mean, Lili? Don’t talk to me in parables. Talk to me honestly.”

A rainbow-colored balloon was floating aimlessly above their heads.

Young Assad was perplexed.

Within seconds, Guy was in the air hurtling down towards the crowd, Lili held her breath as she watched him fall.

There was little left of that countenance that she had loved so much.