'Does he now?' asked Guy.
'We've been at it all afternoon,' Lili said. 'Why don't you go on and recite that speech for your father?'
The boy tipped his head towards the rusting tin on the roof as he prepared to recite his lines.
Lili wiped her hands on an old apron tied around her waist and stopped to listen.
'Remember what you are,' Lili said, 'a great rebel leader. Remember, it is the revolution.'
'Do we want him to be all of that?' Guy asked.
'He is Boukman,' Lili said. 'What is the only thing on your mind now, Boukman?'
'Supper,' Guy whispered, enviously eyeing the food cooling off in the middle of the room. He and the boy looked at each other and began to snicker.
'Tell us the other thing that is on your mind,' Lili said, joining in their laughter.
'Freedom!' shouted the boy, as he quickly slipped into his role.
'Louder!' urged Lili.
'Freedom is on my mind!' yelled the boy.
'Why don't you start, son?' said Guy. 'If you don't, we'll never get to that other thing that we have on our minds.'
The boy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At first, his lips parted but nothing came out. Lili pushed her head forward as though she were holding her breath. Then like the last burst of lightning out of clearing sky, the boy began.
It was obvious that this was a speech written by a European man, who gave to the slave revolutionary Boukman the kind of European phrasing that might have sent the real Boukman turning in his grave. How- ever, the speech made Lili and Guy stand on the tips of their toes from great pride. 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 plea-sure of hearing the voice of one of the forefathers of Haitian independence in the forced baritone of their only child. The experience left them both with a strange feeling that they could not explain. It left the hair on the back of their necks standing on end. It left them feeling much more love than they ever knew that they could add to their feeling for their son.
'Bravo,' Lili cheered, pressing her son into the folds of her apron. 'Long live Boukman and long live my boy.'
'Long live our supper,' Guy said, quickly batting his eyelashes to keep tears from rolling down his face.
The boy kept his eyes on his book as they ate their sup-per that night. Usually Guy and Lili would not have allowed that, but this was a special occasion. They watched proudly as the boy muttered his lines between swallows of cornmeal.
The boy was still mumbling the same words as the three of them used the last of the rainwater trapped in old gasoline containers and sugarcane pulp from the nearby sugarcane mill to scrub the gourds that they had eaten from.
When things were really bad for the family, they boiled clean sugarcane pulp to make what Lili called her special sweet water tea. 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.
That night, anyway, things were good. Everyone had eaten enough to put all their hunger vermin to sleep.
The boy was sitting in front of the shack on an old plastic bucket turned upside down, straining his eyes to find the words on the page. Sometimes when there was no kerosene for the lamp, the boy would have to go sit by the side of the road and study under the street lamps with the rest of the neighborhood children. Tonight, at least, they had a bit of their own light.
Guy bent down by a small clump of old mushrooms near the boy's feet, trying to get a better look at the plant. He emptied the last drops of rainwater from a gasoline container on the mushroom, wetting the bulging toes sticking out of his sons' sandals, which were already coming apart around his endlessly growing feet.
Guy tried to pluck some of the mushrooms, which were being pushed into the dust as though they wanted to grow beneath the ground as roots. He took one of the mushrooms in his hand, running his smallest finger over the round bulb. He clipped the stem and buried the top in a thick strand of his wife's hair.
The mushroom looked like a dried insect in Lili's hair.
'It sure makes you look special,' Guy said, teasing her.
'Thank you so much,' Lili said, tapping her husband's arm. 'It's nice to know that I deserve these much more than roses.'
Taking his wife's hand, Guy said, 'Let's go to the sugar mill.'
'Can I study my lines there?' the boy asked.
'You know them well enough already,' Guy said.
'I need many repetitions,' the boy said.
Their feet sounded as though they were playing a wet wind instrument as they slipped in and out of the puddles between the shacks in the shantytown. Near the sugar mill was a large television screen in a iron grill cage that the government had installed so that the shantytown dwellers could watch the state-sponsored news at eight o'clock every night. After the news, a gendarme would come and turn off the television set, taking home the key. On most nights, the people stayed at the site long after this gendarme had gone and told stories to one another beneath the big blank screen. They made bonfires with dried sticks, corn husks, and paper, cursing the authorities under their breath.
There was a crowd already gathering for the nightly news event. The sugar mill workers sat in the front row in chairs or on old buckets.
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 dis-covered 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. The Assad family had a son who, it seems, was into all manner of odd things, the most recent of which was a hot-air balloon, which he had brought to Haiti from America and occasionally flew over the shantytown skies.
As they approached the fence surrounding the field where the large wicker basket and deflated balloon rested on the ground, Guy let go of the hands of both his wife and the boy.
Lili walked on slowly with her son. For the last few weeks, she had been feeling as though Guy was lost to her each time he reached this point, twelve feet away from the balloon. As Guy pushed his hand through the barbed wire, she could tell from the look on his face that he was thinking of sitting inside the square basket while the smooth rainbow surface of the balloon itself float-ed above his head. During the day, when the field was open, Guy would walk up to the basket, staring at it with the same kind of longing that most men display when they admire very pretty girls.
Lili and the boy stood watching from a distance as Guy tried to push his hand deeper, beyond the chain link fence that separated him from the balloon. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife, sharpening the edges on the metal surface of the fence. When his wife and child moved closer, he put the knife back in his pocket, letting his fingers slide across his son's tightly coiled curls.
'I wager you I can make this thing fly,' Guy said.
'Why do you think you can do that?' Lili asked.
'I know it,' Guy replied.
He followed her as she circled the sugar mill, leading to their favorite spot under a watch light. Little Guy lagged faithfully behind them. From this distance, the hot-air balloon looked like an odd spaceship.
Lili stretched her body out in the knee-high grass in the field. Guy reached over and tried to touch her between
