A Touch of Voodoo

By Dean Buchmeyer and Peter Gardner

The story is set in the days before the revolution that deposed Baby Doc , and makes several swings between Haiti under the corrupt and repressive military rule, and the small Texas town of Longbottom. A U.S medical team comprising four physicians, a black dentist, Dr. Bailey, and two nurses, Zulla, also black, and Pam fly to Haiti under the leadership of Dr. Bone to conduct free clinics as a start of a help the poor program. During the stopover in Port-au-Prince, they witness a rada(mild) voodoo ceremony, meet shady Minister of Health de Villeneueve, co-sponser of the program, and discover that half their seperately medical supplies are missing.

The team travels by minivan though the bleak countryside and over the mountains to the northern city of Cap Haitian, their base for the clinics, driven by the 20-year-old live wire Marcel, who has an important part to play in the story. Bone has a hard time maintaining harmony among his temperamental fellow physicians, one of whom, a married man falls for Pam. The team is put up at the once prosperous hotel owned by a German expatriot Hans Boch. The first and third clinics are conducted in the church of Reverend Purdy, something of a stufed shirt, who has a severly depressed wife, and in the course of his stay Bone befriends Judy Cawthorn. who is doing research on voodoo, and Father Morissot,a Catholic priest who enlists Bone's aide in saving the life of a certain Henri who has been place under a death curse by the powerful and slightly crazed houngan, or head voodoo priest, Chauvelin. During the second clinic, held in a small outlying school/church, Bone receives a threat from a Chauvelin henchman, and on his way back to Cap Haitian glimpses a zombie. Untoward events occur: Bone is nearly struck by a speeding car (careless driving? a warning?), and one morning comes upon signs of a voodoo curse ouside his door. Bailey, his interest piqued by voodoo, visits the home of Mambo Leboux, a local voodoo priestess, and finds evidence of the missing medical supplies.

Back in Longbottom, bone's friend Hal, owner of a furniture store, as well as a Justice-of-the-Peace and the towns undertaker, learns that Zulla's husband Jake has seemingly disappeared. Jake, spied on by town gossip Aunt Povey, has been having a fling with a beautician, Gladys, who has drug connections, as Jake once had. Hal and his wife have a wayward adopted son who later features in the plot.

In Cap Haitian, de Villeneuve goes to Leboux's house to meet Chavelin and receive from him half the money from the black market sale of the stolen medical supplies.

Chauvelin, who has put a death curse on a woman who offended him, kidnaps Bailey and arranges to release Bailey if Bone will not undertake to interfere with the curse. Bone is dramacically relieved of his dilemma by Marcel, and boch rescuses Bailey. while a captive, Bailey had found a phial of zombie powder and takes it out of curosity.

Home in Longbottom and reconciled with Jake, Zulla persuades members of her Ebony social club to participate in a trial "rada" voodoo ceremony with largely comic results. Morissot calls Bone to say Henri has been poisoned by Chauvelin, and Bone flies back to Cap Haitian to try and protect the priest, now under threats himself, and see that Chauvelin in brought to justice. In a remote village Chauvelin is about to perform a petro(sinister) voodoo ceremony at which he will sacrifice a baby. Bone goes there with Marcel and Leboux's marksman son Claude. The baby is saved, but Chauvelin escapes (later to be shot by Claude, Bone learns).

Bailey has become obsessed with the beautiful Zulla and tries to seduce her, but is repulsed. Though a successful dentist, Bailey has deep psychological scars from hi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 2, 2000
• ISBN: 9781469109909

Dean Buchmeyer

Dean Buchmeyer is a family physician who has practiced for many years in Wortham, Texas. The background for the novel comes from his experiences in Haiti where he conducted medical clinics for the Methodist Church in the countryside around Cap Haitian.Peter Gardner came to the USA in 1968 to work as an Associate Editor with the Book-of-the Month club. He has written six fiction and non-fiction books with a broad background as editor, reviewer, writer and collaborated on Reader's Digest Bicentenial book, The Story of America.

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Copyright © 2000 by Dean Buchmeyer and Peter Gardner.

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Contents

PORT-AU-PRINCE

LONGBOTTOM

CAP HAITIEN

VOODOO

JAKE WARD

THE HOUNGAN

OREVWA

LONGBOTTOM

PETRO

ZOMBIE

AFTER THE STORM

EPILOGUE

PORT-AU-PRINCE

1

It began with the insistent toc-toc-toc of a small cowhidecovered drum being beaten by long thin sticks. This drum was the cata. Moments later, a larger drum, the seconde, joined in with its deeper, more vibrant say. Then the largest drum, the maman, came in like a rumble of thunder. Abruptly the rhythm speeded up, but stayed on beat, creating a dizzying, almost hypnotic effect. This was rada voodoo.

In the middle of the ceremonial ground was a crude peristyle, its corrugated-tin roof supported by a post at each corner and a centerpost . . . poteau-mitan along whose axis any involked spirit deities, or loas, would rise. Only a few feet from the poteau-mitan blazed a wood fire sunk in a shallow pit. Its leaping flames made the dusk seem darker than it was and illumined the glistening torsos of the near-naked drummers, attached to their instruments by thin sisal ropes slung around their backs, as well as sending a flickering glow over the celebrants and onlookers, perhaps three hundred strong. A ten-foot-high board fence running north to south a good thirty yards effectively shielded the proceedings from the road. Around the peristyle was a dirt-packed arena some sixty feet across, merging into scrub and coarse grass. On the arena’s north rim stood a cement-block building with a thatch roof, its entryway concealed by sacking. This contained the sacred altar. The building, the peristyle and the members, hounsis, of this voodoo society together constituted the temple, or hounfour.

The departing sun lent the sea to the east a shimmering magenta hue before slipping behind the rugged mountains to the west.

The crowd, a mingling of hounsis, hounsih-bossales, or neophytes and onlookers wandered about in the grass and scrub, laughing and drinking, stopping only to gape suspiciously at the white faces. The onlookers might become participants too if the spirit seized them, perhaps literally. Horace A. Bone,

M.D. gave a tug at his trim Vandyke beard and asked himself not for the first time what he was really doing in Haiti. Ostensibly he had come here as head of a seven-member medical team whose purpose was to conduct medical clinics for some of the country’s poor, but he had grave doubts as to the long-term efficacy of the mission, and wasn’t certain he could ensure the safety of the team members. What if one of them were kidnaped and held for ransom? His suggestion of police protection had drawn a condescending smile from the minister of health.

The idea was Bone’s brainchild. He had visited Haiti four times, twice as a tourist, once to conduct a few clinics in Cap Haitien and the last time to explore the feasibility of the kind of mission he was now conducting. It was Bone’s hope that having established a medical bridgehead in this desperately poor country, he could arrange for a trickle of medical supplies to be shipped in on a regular basis. The idea was both practical and quixotic, but then so was Bone himself: he had never been able to witness suffering without trying to do something to alleviate it. Haiti’s minister of health, Pierre-Baptiste deVilleneuve, with the apparent support of the president, had given Bone and his project the warmest of welcomes. But now the president was in exile.

Most of the funding for this first mission—Bone hoped it would pave the way for not just a second one tentatively scheduled for next year but for a regular series of them—had come from the male members of the team. It was cosponsored by the Holy Missionary Church, based in California, which had provided $5,000; and its senior representative in the northern part of Haiti, the Reverend Willard T. Purdey, had agreed that two of its churches there, the one in Cap Haitien of which he was the pastor and another in the countryside, should be put at the team’s disposal.The drums stopped. The tall head priest, clad in a white suit, emerged from the building. Stalking majestically to the fire, he shook his sacred gourd, the asson, with its eight colored stones and several serpent vertebrae, a signal for the high priestess or mambo to brandish ku-bhasah, the ritual sword, and begin the ceremony proper.

The mambo, dressed in white and with white paint adorning her face, led her chorus of twenty wide-eyed acolytes into the arena and then in a rapid circle around the poteau-mitan, swinging the sword around her head. Legba! she screeched, and her followers broke into a spine-chilling chant that filled the air.

Dr. Bone shuddered. Trying to alleviate suffering was one thing, but what on earth was a country doctor from Longbottom, Texas doing at a voodoo ceremony?

The team stood huddled together close to a high wooden wall on the western side of the ceremonial ground. It was some twenty yards long, and in the center was a thirty-foot-wide mural featuring boldly-colored paintings, known as veves, mostly of the Christian saints, who also did service as voodoo gods. The one that first caught Bone’s eye, because it was the largest, depicted a cross around which a snake was coiled. Above the cross and arching downward was a shining rainbow. Inscribed in Creole in crude black letters beneath each saint-cum-god was the figure’s voodoo name. Under the snake was written Danballah-Wedo, under the rainbow Ayida-Wedo. At the bottom left of the mural was an oversize human heart, dripping blood; at bottom right, a small painted coffin.

Pamela Shelley, a petite blonde nurse from Longbottom’s hospital, shivered and moved closer to Bone who was standing in the front row along with his clinic nurse, Zulla Mae, and Dr. Bailey, the sole dentist in the group. Dr. Cohen, standing directly behind Bone, removed his thick wire-framed lenses and wiped them carefully with his handkerchief. Beside him Dr. Warburton stood with his arms crossed, a sardonic smile playing about his lips as he watched Dr. Peters to his right running his comb repeatedly through his dark brown hair.

A well-lit brick villa surrounded by a high wire fence stood on a hilltop above the ceremonial ground, and to the south, in the distance, twinkled the lights of Port-au-Prince. Bone figured the villa could only belong to an important government official.

This open-air ceremony, the medical group had been told, was to invoke the loa zaka, god of agriculture, who would soon inhabit the soul and body of the mambo.

The medical team had been invited to the ceremony by the minister of health himself. Bone had hesitated before accepting but he didn’t wish to give offense. Dr. Bailey and Zulla had actually said they wanted to see something of voodoo, while the rest of the team decided to tag along, caught between curiosity and apprehension. The lead Vodoun priest—houngan, as the priests preferred to be called—had recently allowed tourists to attend some selected ceremonies. Money was hard to come by in Haiti in the years following the revolution that deposed Baby Doc Duvalier in 1986. On this occasion, however, there were no tourists.

Now a hundred or so wide-eyed, hounsih bossales, surged forward, crowding to the very edge of the sacred arena and trapping the Americans in a sea of swaying flesh. The houn’torguiers thumped their drums more thunderously.

Bone was suddenly glad that he had not brought his expensive Nikon F2 camera, a birthday present from his wife Terri three years ago, and had suggested to Pam that she not bring the little Canon she liked to tote around in her purse. A Health Ministry staffer had informed him that it was inadvisable for a foreigner to bring a camera to a voodoo ceremony.

Four men among the hounsih bossales began swigging from their rum bottles and casually tossing them aside; then, separating themselves from the rest of the crowd, and in a state of evident trance, they strolled barefoot through the fire pit, picking up pieces of burning wood. Merging with the procession again, they bit off pieces of glowing embers, spewing red sparks through their teeth. The drums beat faster. One hounsih blew rum through his torch, sending blue flares into the night.

Fred Warburton, middle-aged professor from the medical school in Galveston, leaned close to Pamela Shelley. Why don’t you join them? he joshed. Pamela shot him a shocked glance.

The June night air was muggy. Dr. Bailey wiped his head repeatedly to keep the sweat from his eyes. Sure wish I was dressed like those guys, he quipped, pointing to a couple of frenzied, near-naked hounsihs.

Now the excited crowd was pushing Bone’s group close to the arena itself. Zulla Mae gripped Dr. Bailey’s arm. The black dentist seemed engrossed in the strange ritual being enacted just a few yards from his eyes.

Cohen elbowed Warburton in the ribs and grunted, Are we back in the jungle or what?

Warburton put his finger to his lips. Shush, these folks could be dangerous when they get worked up like this.

Dr. Peters was combing his hair again. He stopped long enough to announce loudly, I’m ready to go. He swatted a blood-filled mosquito on his arm.

Easier said than done, Warburton snapped. And kindly lower your voice.

The drums had just stopped, but now they began again, this time to the wild pulsating rhythm of the conga. Twenty women in long white dresses joined the celebrants, chanting to the beat, hips swaying lasciviously as they flung their bodies about, hands waving above their heads, bare feet stomping the ground. Intermittently, they plaintively beseeched the loa to ensure their fertility and that of their husbands.

The mambo called out to the hounsah ventailleur, keeper of the sacrificial animals, whereupon he joined the procession carrying a rooster under his arm, at times raising it to his lips to blow rum in its beak.

After an hour of watching the celebrants drink rum and dance around the circle, Bone became aware that the drums had assumed a frenzied rhythm. It was giving him a headache.

Soon the chanting grew frenzied too. The mambo swung ku-bha-sah toward the east, then the west, thus cutting away the material world. After more swaggering, her eyes glowed. She reeled about the ragged ring of celebrants, hair flying, arms flailing, every so often spinning on one foot. The loa zaka now possessed her.

Suddenly she rushed from the arena toward the white faces in the crowd, stopping only five feet from Bone. She gazed deeply into his eyes, then pointed the engraved sword at his face while mumbling something in solemn Creole. The hairs on Bone’s neck rose, and despite the heat an icy chill went through his body. His companions held their breath.

Was the mambo about to run him through? Lop off his head? Instinctively he pressed himself back against Dr. Cohen. His heart pounded wildly, his mouth was dry. He wondered whimsically if the priestess could smell his fear. Haitians had always struck him as a surprisingly gentle people; but he had never witnessed a voodoo ceremony before. Who knew what a possessed priestess . . . especially one brandishing a sword?

Not only the celebrants but the entire crowd had now reached a state of dangerous excitation.

Perspiring profusely, as were the other members of his party, Bone looked for a way out, but the wall to their rear seemed too high to climb. The odors of sweating bodies mingled with those of incense and rum. Bone breathed more easily as the mambo turned away but his palms stayed wet. He was far from calm even after she had rejoined the circle again.

To a faster and faster tempo, the celebrants swung their bodies about, chanting and prancing in a ragged circle. Their cries of Legba! and Damballah-Wedo! grew louder. Seemingly intoxicated by the rum and the throbbing drums, a young girl weaved about glassy-eyed before falling to the ground and crying out hysterically. Another woman fainted in front of Zulla, but as Zulla bent to assist her, Bailey pulled her back and shook his head. Such a gesture might be taken as a provocation by a crowd that acted as though they were on angel dust.

The hounsih placed the rooster on the ground with a string tied to one of its legs. Dr. Peters laughed as the chicken staggered about much like the celebrants. Look, he said softly to Warburton, even the roosters around here get high.

You would too if you had all that rum blown in your face for an hour, Warburton snorted.

The mambo disappeared among the shadows then returned to her followers with a large snake around her neck. Sê Bô-Dié, {It’s the good Lord} she yelled, holding the snake up. Her legions called out reverently, Damballah, Damballah! then, Erzulie!

Bone shifted from one leg to the other. His back now ached along with his head. For crying out loud, he fumed inwardly, this thing has been going on nearly two hours and now we have to watch a snake—evidently a boa constrictor—do its thing. But the snake had no further role to play. The rum-intoxicated rooster was sacrificed to the loa. His neck was neatly chomped through by the hounsah ventailleur who grinned at the strangers with blood-stained teeth, while sprinkling the rooster’s spouting blood on the ground.

Pamela let out an involuntary scream as the celebrant, swinging the decapitated cockerel by its feet, showered blood over her blouse. She gripped Bone’s arm with both hands, muttering angrily, He did that deliberately.

Take it easy, Bone said quietly. We’re the only complete outsiders here. Let’s not lose our heads.

The crowd began drifting into the night. Bone thought it prudent for him and his party to wait a while and leave with the stragglers. Soon all was quiet, though the sickly odor of rum, sweat and incense still lingered in the air.

Peters did a little skip to catch up with Dr. Bone. Hey, Horace, what’s with the Damballah? What’s it mean?

De Villeneuve told me it’s the chief god, represented by the boa. He’s the father of all the voodoo gods.

And Erzulie?

She’s the spirit of love, said to have appeared as the Virgin Mary at least twice in the past.

Across the arena, his face highlighted by the dying fire, a small man wearing a Panama hat and with charcoal rings around his eyes was watching Bone intently.

The next moment the man was gone.

Thank God it’s over, Bone murmured a few minutes later as his group, more exhausted than exalted by the experience, began to file along the path from the arena to the parking area.

Warburton took his elbow. That mambo had you going for a minute there, eh? Bone ignored him. He was watching Peters place his arm around Pamela’s shoulders as if to comfort her. He frowned.

Walking bunched together, the group headed for the Volkswagen minivan where its driver, twenty-year-old Marcel Lanvin, waited patiently, his elbows on the steering wheel. The van belonged to the Hotel Boch in the northern city of Cap Haitien, and it was there that the team would be headquartered during their mission. The proprietor, Hans Boch, had sent the van to pick them up at the airport and ferry them up to his hotel the next day.

Marcel had refused to go to the ceremony, nonchalantly informing Bone that voodoo was not his thing. He would stay and guard the VW with his machete.

On their way to the vehicle only Zulla Mae still seemed exhilarated. Suddenly flinging out her arms, she went into an exaggerated strut, swaying her hips seductively and shaking her head in a rapid circular motion so that her silky black hair, long subjected to the iron, flew about in a sinuous dance of its own. She seemed oblivious of the onlookers.

Cohen scowled at the suggestive display while Warburton chuckled and applauded crisply. Dr. Bailey’s eyes positively twinkled as he watched Zulla’s long black legs. Her slim figure, flawless complexion and sparkling black eyes gave her an aura of primordial sensuality. Bone looked at her as if for the first time, fascinated—yet somehow uneasy.

He took her arm as they reached the car and guided her into the back seat. No one was in the mood for conversation. On the bumpy ride to the Hotel Christopher, Bone thought of his wife Terri back home in Longbottom. He missed her. The ceremony had left him depressed and he couldn’t help but reflect that even though he was bringing thousands of dollars’ worth of medicines into the country, it would be no more than a drop in the bucket.

By one-thirty in the morning they had reached a main road in town. The streets were filled with hundreds of people roaming aimlessly about. Cohen turned to Bone who was sitting beside him and asked, Why are all these folks walking around at this time of night?

Bone glanced out the window and answered sleepily, The streets are always full of walkers—no place for them to lie down. They’re not as noticeable in the day.

No place for them to sleep, huh?

There’s often two or three families sharing a five-by-five hut and since there’s no way that all of them can lie down there at the same time, they sleep in shifts, always some of them walking the streets.

Bone sniffed the air. There was that smell again. Through the middle of town ran an open thirty-yard-wide concrete sewer that took garbage and human waste out to sea when it rained.

June in Haiti was the dry season, however, and the stench was . . . unforgettable.

Just before two A.M. they arrived at the Hotel Christopher and made their way wooden-limbed to their rooms. Bone found his door, fumbled with the key and went in. He set his travel alarm, undressed and fell into bed with his shorts on. Dammit, he exclaimed. The pillow was not only too big and hard as a rock but it smelled of mold. In fact everything in the room smelled mouldy.

The air conditioner hummed but that was about all it did. Bone lay on his back, wide-eyed, thinking of this mission for which he had been not only the inspiration but the principal organizer. On his previous trips he had found the country people to have pitiful medical care. The doctors were concentrated in the few cities and people traveled for miles to seek medical help. Even if they got to see a doctor, most of them couldn’t afford the medicines they needed. A patient coming to one of the three clinics Bone had planned for the Cap Haitien area in the north part of the country would be given the needed medicines free. Then some kind of follow-up program would be put in place with the cooperation of Mr. Purdey. He ran an orphanage whose nurse would be able to dispense medicines. Bone also hoped that as his Medical Aid for Haiti program back in the States gathered momentum, the very poorest Haitian patients would continue to get free medicines. A great deal depended on the country’s political situation, currently showing signs of impending explosion.

Conditions in this, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere had grown even worse since the embargo, or so Bone had learned from American newspapers, as well as from reading between the lines of the cautious letters that the Reverend Purdey had sent him.

He had arranged to conduct two clinics in Purdey’s church in Cap Haitien, the country’s second largest city, and one in La Tannerie, little more than a village way out in the countryside, but a hub upon which villagers from a wide surrounding area could fairly easily converge. Most Haitians couldn’t read, but Bone learned on his last trip that there was scarcely one who didn’t carry a small portable radio. The clinics had been well advertised by the Haitian media over the past several weeks, and evidently generated a good deal of excitement. Poor attendance was the one fear Bone did not have. For the mission next year, or possibly the year after, he had it in mind to conduct further clinics in the south part of the country, at least one in Port-au-Prince, the capital, and if resources allowed, several in villages along the country’s protracted lower jaw. He had also tentatively arranged for a team of American ophthalmologists to arrive in a month’s time, but their arrival was to a large extent contingent upon the success of the present mission and the continued support, though it had actually been promised, of the health minister. Purdey’s church had already laid aside $2,000 for the project.

At the back of Bone’s mind was the thought that even though the medical impact of the clinics themselves would be paltry, the national and international press coverage they’d receive might spur the Haitian government to do something on its own about the country’s deplorable health-care situation.

The doctors of the team, in addition to paying their own way here, shelling out for Pam and Zulla’s fare, and contributing to a general kitty, had scrounged an impressive amount of supplies such as bandages, antibiotics, antihypertensives and vitamins, shipping them by plane. Each doctor had brought his own bag with the personal equipment he needed, as well as extra batteries for their personal otoscopes and ophthalmoscopes. Purdey had informed Bone that power and light service in La Tannerie was far from reliable. It had taken him six months to put together a team with the kind of balance he considered desirable. Some of the doctors he had contacted claimed they were too busy, one or two hummed-and-hawed and finally cried off, because, Bone suspected, there would be no financial rewards and one had simply responded, Haiti? No way.

Bone lay in bed sweating, still unable to sleep. His thoughts turned to the team members. Dr. Frank Cohen, chunky, bespectacled epidemiologist who worked in Beaumont, Texas, was the ostensible intellectual of the group and as far as Bone could tell, utterly humorless. Cohen grew up in New York City but had got this tempting job offer in Beaumont. He tried his best to cultivate a Texas air with the aid of fancy boots and cowboy shirts, but without much success. He had even purchased an expensive rifle, because he felt it was the Texan thing to do, and had it attached to the wall above the fireplace in his living room, where it had remained ever since. He was touchy and often tactless, and managed to offend many with whom he came in contact, including Bone, who hoped he remembered enough about general medicine to be of use at the clinics. The slums and boondocks of Haiti were a far cry from the shiny air-conditioned labs Cohen was used to.

He had worked for the Texas State Health Department for years and seemed curious about the diseases he might find in Haiti. Bone suspected he hoped to find a new one and attach his name to it.

He didn’t think much of Dr. Jethro Peters, an internist from Boston and the youngest doctor of the group. He seemed to be the playboy type, also something of a complainer, and appeared more interested in women than in doing the work of a physician, but he had contributed two thousand dollars to the mission. Still, Bone figured he had better keep an eye on him. He had watched him snuggle up to Pamela on the ride back to the hotel and he didn’t want any complications of that sort.

The last member to join the group was Dr. Fred Warburton, another academic type who was Professor of Family Medicine at the medical school in Galveston. His special interest was parasitology. He liked to keep it a secret but was around 60, silver-headed and distinguished looking, with a dry sense of humor that could have a cutting edge, especially when directed at Peters, whom it was obvious he cordially detested. Their squabbles had begun on the plane over a magazine article of all things. Bone figured he would have to do a delicate balancing act to keep them from bickering throughout the mission. Warburton seemed to be chiefly interested in finding a new human parasite and he had carted his precious microscope along.

The handsome black dentist Ron Bailey, who lived and practiced in Fairview, a smallish town twelve miles from Longbottom, had volunteered his services the moment he heard about the trip. Bone knew little about him except that his practice was highly successful. At five eleven, with an amiable disposition and the build of a linebacker, he seemed an unlikely bachelor. Of course Bone didn’t have to worry where Zulla Mae was concerned; she only had eyes for her husband Jake.

Pamela Shelley was twenty-four, an attractive blonde and single. She was greatly respected for her cheerfulness and dedication by the other members of Longbottom’s hospital staff. Bone remembered promising her mother that he would look out for her. He thought of Peters again and sighed.

Bone had been acquainted with the parents of his nurse, Zulla Mae, before she was born, and knew something of her early history. Her father, the minister of a tiny Pentocostal church, was much loved by his small flock, as well as being widely respected in the town, but when Zulla was only nine he was killed one evening by a presumably drunk hit-and-run driver as he was about to cross the road beside his church. The culprit was never caught. There were few black students in Zulla’s elementary school, and in the interests of conformity she had been at great pains to straighten her curly hair by every means available. It finally became long and silky. When she was twelve her mother died of cancer and she was taken in by her grandmother. It was in her first year of middle school in the mid-seventies that she became interested in the Civil Rights movement. Along with that interest came a developing pride in her African heritage. When Bone had asked her why she didn’t cultivate an Afro, she just told him smilingly that Jake liked her hair the way it was.

Zulla Mae had finished high school, gone to college on a scholarship and then nursing school before coming back home to a job in Bone’s clinic.

Two years ago, at the age of twenty-six, she had married Jake Ward who had moved to Longbottom, so he said, to escape the rat race of New Orleans, The Big Easy, he had called it. Jake looked like a young Belafonte and seemed a perfect match for Zulla. Rumor had it that he had come to Longbottom by bus one night without a dime or a place to stay. Jake was tight-lipped about his former life in New Orleans but he had settled down quickly and taken a job at Gooch’s meat-packing plant. He quickly earned the reputation of a consummate womanizer but Zulla was well able to straighten him out, or so Bone figured at the time of the wedding.

Bone wondered how the meeting with the minister of health would go in the morning. There was something about the man that struck him as sinister but he was too tired to worry about that now. He was on the point of drifting off when he sat bolt upright in bed. He had forgotten to warn his new partner, Dr. Jonathan Early, who was fresh out of residency, about the Longbottom gossip mill. Why, those old biddies would probably have him run out of town in less than a week. He must remind Terri to tell him to be careful. He’d call her in the morning.

2

Bone woke before the alarm went off. He shaved and dressed, then hurried to the dining room for coffee.

The Christopher Hotel had been a fashionable resort at one time, catering both to the elite and the military but mostly to foreign visitors. The manager, who was new to the job, had received Bone and his party with effusive courtesy, but after showing them to their rooms had quickly made himself scarce, perhaps because he barely had five words of English to rub together.

Even though the hotel appeared seedy now, only Dr. Peters had thought to complain about the accommodations. Bone looked around at the scratched mahogany furniture, the dusty oil paintings and the once-plush red carpets, now threadbare and turning brown. His gaze wandered out the dirty windows to the swimming pool overlooked by palms and surrounded by scattered guava and banana trees.

Bone hoped that Marcel, who was being given free board for two nights in the servants’ quarters, would drive less recklessly than he had the previous day on roads that often seemed more pothole than asphalt. He would have a word with him. It was certainly kind of Hans Boch to lend the team Marcel’s services, but if he drove them down a ravine . . .

Zulla Mae bounced into the dining room and sat down by Bone. One by one the others followed. Breakfast, much to Bone’s delight, was croissants with strong French roasted coffee, followed by eggs and sausage.

Peters wore an expensive tennis sweater with a racquet logo above his heart. He took one swallow of the rich brew, made a face and told the waiter to bring him tea. What time is the health minister supposed to be here? he enquired, looking at his watch. I was about to ask Pam if she’d care to join me for a dip in the pool, if I can get that skinny chap—what’s-his-name? Ah, yes, Marcel—to get his ass in gear and skim the beetles off. Must keep the old body in shape, you know.

Bone frowned. What did Peters think they were on—a Caribbean cruise? Our appointment with the minister is for 9:30, he said dryly. And I might remind you that Marcel is a driver not a yardman, and he doesn’t belong to this hotel. As for the pool, I’d leave that to the beetles if I were you.

Or let the health minister try it out a few times first, Pam giggled.

After we’ve exchanged our how-de-do’s with de Villeneuve, Bone went on, refusing to subscribe to this inappropriate note of levity, "I’ll go to the airport and make sure our supplies have arrived. Tomorrow we meet the Reverend Purdey.