TO MOST HAITIANS, Saut d'Eau is a place where the waters have miraculous healing properties. The story goes that on July 16, 1884, the Virgin Mary appeared before a woman who was standing in the stream, washing her clothes. The vision then transmogrified into a white dove that flew off into the waterfall, forever imbuing the cascade with the powers of the Holy Spirit. Since then Saut d'Eau has attracted thousands of visitors every year, pilgrims who came to stand under the blessed waters and pray out loud for cures to illnesses, relief from debts, good crops, a new car, and quick solutions to U.S. visa problems. The anniversary of the Virgin's appearance is also celebrated with a famous festival around the waterfall, which lasts all day and all night.
When he first set eyes on the place, Max almost fell for the legend himself. The last thing he expected to find after hours of driving through the arid wilderness was a small piece of tropical paradise, but that was exactly what it was-a proverbial oasis, a mirage made real, or a sanctuary-a reminder of the way the island had once been, and all it had lost.
To reach the waterfall, Max and Chantale had to walk along the banks of a wide stream that cut through a forest of densely packed trees, overflowing foliage, thick, dangling vines, and riots of sweet-scented, brightly colored flowers. They weren't alone. As they'd drawn closer to their destination, more and more people had joined them on the road-most on foot, but some riding donkeys and tired-looking horses-all of them pilgrims heading for a cure. Once they'd reached the stream, they'd waded into the water and walked solemnly and humbly toward the hundred-foot-tall cascade. Despite the great roar of the crashing torrent up ahead, there was a deep quiet within the forest, as if the essence of silence itself was locked into the soil and the bountiful vegetation. The people seemed to sense this, because none of them spoke, nor made much noise in the water.
Max saw that some of the trees along the way were studded with candles and covered with photographs of people, Christian saints, cars, houses, postcards-most of them of Miami and New York-as well as pictures cut or torn out of magazines and newspapers. These trees, with their enormous thick trunks and thin, spindly branches, some heavy with cucumber-shaped fruit, Chantale explained, were called mapou in Haiti. They were sacred in voodoo, trees whose roots were said to be a conduit for the loas-the gods-from this world into the next, and whose presence was meant to signify the nearness of flowing water. The tree was inextricably linked to Haiti's history: the slave rebellion that brought Haiti independence was rumored to have started under a mapou tree in the town of Gonaives, when a stolen white child was sacrificed to the devil in exchange for his help in defeating the French armies. Haitian independence was declared under the very same tree in 1804.
When they reached the waterfalls, they stopped at the bank, near a mapou. Max put down the hamper he'd been carrying. Chantale opened it and took out a small drawstring bag of purple velvet. She removed four metal candleholders, which she stuck into the tree in four equidistant points, like those of the compass. Moving counterclockwise, she spiked four candles into the holders-one white, one gray, one red, and one lavender. Then she took a picture out of her wallet, kissed it with her eyes closed, and tacked it in the middle of the candle arrangement. She sprinkled water on her hands from a small, clear, glass bottle, and then rubbed what smelled like sandalwood lotion into her hands and arms. Whispering quietly, she lit each candle with a match and then, tilting her head back, she looked up into the sky and stretched out her arms, palms up.
Max moved a little away, out of her immediate range, to give her some privacy. He looked at the waterfall. Off to the left there was a break in the trees, where the sun streamed through and made a gigantic rainbow in the mist rolling off the torrent. People were standing on the rocks directly under the falls, water pounding on their bodies. Others stood apart, off to the sides, where the cascade was not as forceful. They chanted and held their hands up to the sky, in much the same way Chantale was doing; some shook instruments like maracas, others clapped their hands and danced. They were all naked. Once they got close to the rocks near the falls, they shed their clothes in the stream and let them float off with the current. In the stream itself, the pilgrims stood waist-deep, washing themselves with herbs and bars of yellow soap they bought from boys selling baskets of the things on the banks. Max noticed several of them were in trances, standing stock-still in crucifixion poses; others were possessed, bodies shaking, heads snapping back and forth, eyes wide and rolling, tongues darting in and out of perpetually moving mouths.
Chantale walked over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
"That was for my mother," she explained. "It's a thing we do for the sick."
"How come they get rid of their clothes?" Max asked, nodding at the worshippers.
"It's part of the ritual. First they shed the burden of their past bad luck-symbolized by the clothes-then they wash themselves clean in the waterfall. Like a kind of baptism. Only they're making a great sacrifice getting rid of their clothes, because all of these people you see here have very little."
Chantale started walking down the bank toward the water, an empty bottle in her hand.
"You going in?" Max asked incredulously.
"Aren't you?" she replied, smiling, her eyes full of suggestion.
Max was tempted as hell, but he held back.
"Maybe next time," he said.
She bought a bar of soap and a handful of leaves from the boys with the baskets and then she waded in and began to cross the stream toward the dark rocks and the brilliant white deluge pummeling them.
Before she reached the falls, she took off her shirt and dropped it in the water. She soaped her face and her bare torso and then pulled herself up on the rocks. She stripped down to a black thong and tossed away her jeans after her shoes.
Max couldn't take his eyes off her. She looked completely different from the way he'd imagined her without her clothes on. He'd assumed she'd have a typical white-collar body, going to pieces with inattention and a sedentary life, no time or energy to look after herself; hips running away at the sides, ass and thighs mottled with cellulite, middle going soft. But Chantale had a firm, athletic build. Her legs were long and strong, her shoulders and arms toned, her breasts small and firm: a sprinter's body. Maybe she'd run track in college. She looked like she still worked out.
She saw him looking at her and she smiled and waved. He waved back, automatically, inanely, suddenly back down to earth, embarrassed that she'd caught him looking at her.
Chantale stepped back and forced herself into the middle of the torrent, right under the innermost edge of the rainbow, where the water fell hardest and heaviest. Max lost sight of her completely, confusing her again and again with a variety of other bathers and their shadows, outlines blurred or invented by mist and motion. At times there seemed to be many people there with her, cleansing themselves, and then, suddenly, the waterfalls would appear completely empty, as if the pilgrims had been dissolved like so much dirt and washed into the stream with the banks of discarded clothes.
As he was looking for Chantale, he felt his attention being pulled away from his search and off to his left, where he sensed someone observing him. He wasn't being watched out of curiosity or wonder, the way some of the people on their way to the stream had looked at him; he was being assessed and evaluated by a trained eye. He knew the feeling, because he'd been taught to recognize it as a cop. Most criminals were paranoid as hell and had a naturally heightened sense of suspicion, same as the blind with their better-developed senses of smell and sound. They'd know if they were being watched; they'd actually feel the person's presence, dogging their every breath, tracking their every thought. This was why cops were taught the "Sun Rule of Observation": never look directly at a target but focus on the space five degrees to its left or right, keeping the main attraction well within sight.
The person who was watching him hadn't learned this. He also hadn't learned the other important rule-always stay out of sight; if you're going to see, don't be seen.
He was standing on the rocks, away from the crashing water, part obscured in the mist; a tall, thin man in ragged blue trousers and a long-sleeved Rolling Stones T-shirt that was torn and frayed around the hem. He was looking right at Max without a trace of an expression on the little that could be seen of his face under the thick mop of shoulder-length dreadlocks hanging from his scalp like the legs of a dead mutant tarantula.
Chantale reappeared on the rocks, shaking the loose water out of her ears and slicking her hair back with her fingers. She stepped down into the stream and started walking back toward Max.
At the same time, Dreadlocks stepped into the water and also began to head his way. There was something in his hands, something he didn't want to get wet, because he was holding it high up above the stream. The worshippers who weren't in some other mental space got out of his way, exchanging worried looks, some hurrying for the bank. A possessed woman made a wild grab at what he was holding. He smashed his elbow into her face, sending her flying back into the water. The spirits fled her body as she splashed back to land, blood running down her face.
As Dreadlocks drew closer, Max motioned to Chantale to go back to the rocks. He was near the bank now. Max thought of pulling his gun on him and getting him to stop, but if the guy was a nutcase that wouldn't do anything. Some people just wanted you to shoot them because they didn't have the guts to put themselves out of their misery.
Dreadlocks slowed down and stopped right opposite Max, up to his ankles in water. He held out what he had in his hands-a battered, rusted tin box with some of its original design-a large, blue rose-clinging to it.
Max was about to walk toward him when a large rock flew out and hit Dreadlocks on the side of the head.
"Iwa! Iwa!"
Children's frightened yells, right behind Max.
Suddenly Dreadlocks was hit from all sides by a crossfire of rocks and large stones, thrown with surprising accuracy, all striking some part of his body.
Max ducked and moved back up the bank, where the stone throwers were gathered-a small group of children, the eldest being maybe twelve.
"Iwa! Iwa!"
This emboldened the worshippers who, up until that moment, had stood stock-still, watching. They began to pelt Dreadlocks with stones, but they didn't have the children's accuracy and their shots went wide, hitting the frozen human crosses and sending them toppling into the water, or striking the possessed and either completely exorcising them or driving them into even more demonic spasms.
Then Dreadlocks's hands took a direct hit. He dropped the box, which fell into the stream, disappeared below the surface, and then bobbed back up a few feet away.
Dreadlocks went after it, running as fast as he could, pushing through the water, pursued by volleys of stones and a few of the bolder pilgrims who, thinking he was fleeing them, made after him with sticks, but were in no hurry to catch up with him.
Dreadlocks vanished down the stream.
When it was clear he wasn't coming back, natural order returned to Saut d'Eau. The spirits repossessed the bodies they'd abandoned, worshippers returned to the stream water to soap themselves and climbed up the rocks to the falls, and the children on the bank resumed tending to their baskets.
Chantale came back. Max handed her a towel and a new set of clothes from the hamper.
"What's 'e-wah' mean?" Max asked as he watched her dry her hair.
"Iwa? Means devil's helper. People who work with bokors," she said. "Although I don't think that guy was one. He's probably just a local freak. Plenty of them around. Especially here. They come here normal, they get possessed, they never leave."
"What did he want with me?"
"Maybe he thought you were a loa-a god," she said, pulling on a sports bra.
"That would make a change," Max laughed, but as he replayed the incident he didn't find it so easy to dismiss. He was sure Dreadlocks had known either who he was or what he was doing there, whom he was looking for. It was in the way he'd first stared at him, deliberately, making sure he got his attention. Only then had he made his move. And what was in the box?