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Bones Become Flowers is a story about Tracy Carter, a 33-year-old African-American woman who comes to Haiti to
"save" children... or maybe to save herself. It's a story about Voodu, responsibllty and love. It's also about the subjugation
and exploitation of "lesser nations and races" by the more powerful. But ultimately it's a story about hope.
Bones Become Flowers may be ordered through your local book store, directly from WINDSTORM CREATIVE, or from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc.
INTERVIEW:
Q: After your international success with novels like "Way Past Cool", "Six Out Seven", and "Babylon Boyz" about black inner
city children, plus a feature-length film on the same theme, why did you choose to write about adult characters in a drastically
different setting like Haiti?
When I first began writing it was never my intention to set all my stories in U.S. inner cities and write only about 'guns,
gangs, drugs and violence' among poor black youth. I wanted to write MANY different kinds of black books, adventure tales,
ghost stories, maybe even a little sci-fi. These were the kinds of books I grew up reading, and I could never understand why
there were few, if any, black heroes and heroines in them.
Q: Why would you want to write these other kinds of books when you have many published books and stories set in the inner
city?
Because that is a major problem in black fiction: there are almost no books that have black characters -- especially black
male characters -- in settings and situations other than the "ghetto", or perhaps in sports. There are virtually no books
with black heroes or heroines who travel the world and have adventures: no black ship captains or airplane pilots. This also
carries over into film.
Q: Why do you feel this is significant, or needs to be corrected?
Because there are virtually no contemporary role-models for black youth in fiction or film -- ESPECIALLY for young black males
-- except gangsters, rappers or sports figures. Many black youth don't even imagine they COULD become ship captains or airplane
pilots, or that they could travel the world if they wanted to. This certainly limits their dreams and life goals.
Q:You mentioned black heroines: why did you choose to write from a woman's viewpoint in BONES BECOME FLOWERS? Aside from
taking a chance on a black adventure novel, why choose a female point of view and risk critisim on that point alone?
I think that's a foolish question. It's the same foolishness that draws criticism upon authors who "dare" write from almost
any point of view except that of their own social status and upbringing, but especially from the viewpoint of a different
race. The question usually concerns one's "qualifications" to write from another viewpoint. It reminds me of a mystery novel
by a white author about a black detective: this author was often questioned (and sometimes attacked) in regard to his qualifications
to write from a black man's viewpoint. Yet, no one EVER questioned his qualifications to write from the viewpoint of a serial-killer!
To me, and as Shakespeare once said: "The play is the thing." A writer has only one obligation, and that is to tell a good
story, whether it be about Voodu in Haiti, as in BONES BECOME FLOWERS, or ghosts, or time travel, or child soldiers in Africa...
a novel I'm working on now. If one doesn't know, one shouldn't guess, which means that one always needs to get his or her
facts right; do all the necessary research to tell a good tale and make it believable. However, there is only one "race" on
this planet -- the human race -- and being human, plus having a heart and compassion, gives one all the qualifications they
need to write about other human beings. As far as the woman's viewpoint, I write stories from whatever viewpoint seems to
work best in telling the tale.
Q: It seems as if you are still taking many risks with these kinds of black books.
Indeed I am, and it would have been far more profitable to give my former publishers what they wanted from me. Like most black
writers, artists and filmmakers, I quickly learned once one has been cast in a role by the "mainstream", he or she is expected
to stay in their place and be grateful to have one. For example, although I consider BONES BECOME FLOWERS to be some of the
best writing I've done, most mainstream publishers said in various ways that, "Jess Mowry's audience would not be interested
in this type of book." In other words, that all my audience wanted from me were "guns, gangs, drugs and violence", and/or
that, "black people don't read this kind of adventure novel." In the case of young black males, mainstream U.S. society still
expects them to be gangsters, rappers, or basketball players. This is tragic in so many ways, not the least of which is that
it proves, yet again, that despite all the lip-service about "equal rights" and the supposed progress toward a "level playing
field", too many people still want to see the same old stereotypes. Perhaps this reassures those "on top" that they are still
on top?
DESCRIPTION:
Tracy Carter seems to be living the African-American Dream, her forty acres a beautiful home in the "white" Oakland, California
foothills, her mule a 50K Land Rover. She has a very eclectic but practical education, the means to indulge her taste for
travel and art; and at age thirty-three she owns a successful boat-building business, as well as being heir to her family
fortune.
So why do we find her in Haiti, the poorest and "blackest" nation in the Western Hemisphere, battling alone through savage
mountains and forbidding forests in a rusty old car with no spare tire? Is she on a mission to "save" Haiti's children? Is
she searching for her own ancestral roots? ...Or, could she be on an unconscious quest for something much deeper, something
long-buried in vine-tangled graveyards and shrouded in the moonlit shadows of Voodu? The meaning of life? Or the secrets within
her own soul?
Tracy's journey is like the voyage of a weary old ship, fighting her way through a raging storm, beaten and pounded by roaring
waves, whipped and battered by howling winds, and slashed by rain that cuts like knives. Like that ship, she must abandon
all her cargo to stay afloat, throw everything overboard into the sea, every possession of earthly value, in hope of reaching
home.
Bones Become Flowers
©1999 Jess Mowry
SAMPLE CHAPTERS:
CHAPTER ONE
Shipwreck!
That was Tracy's first thought as she rounded a curve,
caught sight of the ocean, and saw the ship lying aground just
offshore.
Save the children!
Was her next when she saw their small shapes leaping
into the sea. She floored the gas to get out of the jungle and down
to the beach. The battered old Subaru, missing on one cylinder
since spewing steam on the last mountain upgrade, billowed
blue smoke and responded like a slug. Fortunately, the rutted
dirt road sloped steeply downhill, and in seconds she had slewed
the car sideways between two palm trees and skidded to a stop
at the brink of a cliff overlooking the small cove below. A cloud
of brown dust swirled around her as she flung the door open and
scrambled out. The car's front bumper was buried in ferns, and
she shoved them aside to see better while batting at colorful
butterflies. How could she help? Lifejackets! Rope! Of course she
had none. The spare tire could have been used as a float - had
the old rental car been provided with one - and though Tracy
had otherwise planned for this trip, she had never foreseen a sea
rescue.
Indiana Jones would have known what to do, could have
cobbled together a life raft from logs, but Tracy Carter could only
stand trembling in impotent anguish at the edge of the cliff and
curse herself for not being prepared. The white-sanded beach
was hardly more than twenty feet below, but the drop was sheer,
and her frantic glances left and right revealed no way to reach it.
The last village she'd seen had been ten miles back in the
mountains, and the town of Jeremie was at least that far ahead
down the dusty goat trail that passed for a Haitian highway.
Her stomach cramped, her sight went blurry, and she
almost doubled over with nausea. Dizziness made her sway on
her feet, and sweat broke out on her face. She hadn't felt well for
most of that morning. For a while she'd tried to deny the
disorder, but had finally admitted it was probably due to her
stubborn insistence on eating indigenous food with the poor
instead of dining among tourists in high-priced cafes.
But it was an even sicker sensation to have to stand
helplessly by and watch children drown!
Her vision cleared, her sickness subsided, and the scene
before her seemed primal and savage, as vividly colored and
stark as a dream. The cloudless sky was a brilliant blue above the
green mountains flanking the cove. The sand of the beach was
dazzling white, and the midday sun was a blazing brass ball over
water like sparkling turquoise. The foundering ship was garishly
painted in rust-streaked primary colors, red and black, and
yellow and green, and the children were sinuous ebony shapes
as they leaped overboard, abandoning her.
There was no breath of breeze in the sweltering air, and
the jungle smells which had yesterday seemed so sweet and
exotic now reeked in her nostrils like something decayed. The sea
was like liquid crystal, shimmering off to an empty horizon and
lapping at sugary sand, but the glare hurt her eyes, and the
world wasn't pretty when you were sick and children were
dying.
The ship lay tilted on her starboard side a hundred yards
from the beach. It might, Tracy's mind abstractly corrected, be
properly called a big boat. Yet it looked more shiplike in overall
detail, a half-size version of an ancient tramp steamer with
riveted seams and classically practical sea-kindly lines. It was a
traditional three-island design, with high bow and stern, and
cabin, pilot-house, and funnel amidships. T'all masts fore and aft
were rigged like a schooner, but the sails of tan canvas were
furled. The vessel's faded but colorful paint showed her to be
almost certainly Haitian, and the name on her bow, Enfant
Vagabond, was boldly lettered in a childish way.
Tracy wasn't a novice when it came to boats: building
them was her family business, and she'd sailed since babyhood
aboard her grandfather's forty-foot ketch. She saw that the
grounded ship, for the moment at least, wasn't likely to sink. The
angle of her list didn't look dangerous, even though much of her
barnacled hull lay exposed on the port side, while rusty red
decks and heavy plank hatch covers showed on the starboard.
Tracy noted an old wooden lifeboat beside the funnel, and two
figures, one a child, but the other - thank God! - a man, were
swinging it out into lowering position.
Some of her panic now flashed into anger: why wasn't
somebody sending up flares as those children leaped shrieking
into the sea? Even on this remote coast there were surely some
shacks or maybe a village hidden among the green-shrouded
mountains. And a fishing boat or a cargo schooner could have
been easily just out of sight beyond the rocky-toothed jaws of the
cove. Then, to her relief, she saw another man come out of a
doorway and down the tilted deck to where the kids were
scrambling over the rail. The sight of him, an adult taking charge,
calmed her churning stomach a little. But an instant later she felt
a strange shock when she realized that his panther-toned body
was as naked as the kids'. Her mouth dropped open when he,
too, abandoned the vessel by joining the bobbing and bushy-
maned children. There were at least six of them now in the water,
and two more followed the man overboard.
She raised her eyes to the pair of figures belatedly
lowering the lifeboat. The child, a boy between twelve and
thirteen, was also naked, but the man was clad in khaki swim
trunks, or very dirty boxers. He was satiny black like the boy, but
fat - at least by Haitian standards - with a wobbly belly
overhanging his shorts. Both man and boy seemed practiced at
their task, though neither - goddamn them! - appeared to be
in any great hurry to get that blessed boat in the water and save
the shrieking children.
Then her mouth fell open again as the man in the sea
rolled leisurely onto his back and began to kick calmly toward
shore. All of the children stopped what had seemed like panicky
floundering, and the whole group struck out in a wedge-shaped
formation behind the man toward the beach. In spite of her fears,
Tracy thought of an outing of otters, all shiny as rain-slicked
obsidian and carelessly confident in the crystalline water. Then a
new realization dawned in her mind; the shrieks she'd been
hearing were laughter!
Her nausea was soothed by a surge of relief: apparently
there had been no wreck, and the ship must have been purposely
beached, which was common Caribbean practice. She noted now
that the tide was out, and the ship would float free on incoming
water in about six hours or so. But to hell with that rusty old tub,
thank God the children were safe!
Her legs went weak as the adrenaline rush of the last few
minutes began to seep from her system. She felt dizzy again, and
actually shivered in spite of the sweltering sun. She stepped back
from the edge of the cliff and sank down on the Subaru's hot,
dusty hood, reminding herself that sharing a truck driver's
breakfast of spiced pork and rice by the side of the road hadn't
been one of her smarter moves. Back home in Oakland,
California, she would have nonchalantly shrugged this off as
something she'd eaten that didn't agree, downed a big glass of
Alka-Seltzer, and gone on with her day, if a bit bitchily. But there
was something dark and deeply disturbing about being sick
among strangers in a primitive land. No matter how mild the
complaint - or in this case how stupid - it still made you
realize how the slightest of breezes could blow out the candle of
life. She told herself for the twentieth time that it was her own
damn fault: she'd tried to go native like some culturally-rabid
college girl on a summertme tour of Africa - the kind of
romantic, uninformed fool who believes that racial ancestry can
protect a body brought up from babyhood in a psychotically-
sterilized, paranoically-preserved, and neurotically sealed-in-
plastic society.
Then a new flash of anger overrode her malaise - fun
and games may have been fine, but it was still a hundred yards
to the beach, and not one of those kids had anything to rely on
except themselves, each other, and one careless man. The
lifeboat, a red and black relic, had just kissed the sea with its
splintery keel, and the kids were already halfway to shore. The
boy on the ship slid down the boat falls and unhooked the
tackles. He moved like a mongoose, agile and sure, but was
uncommonly chubby by Haitian standards, and, if he hadn't
been buck-ass naked, Tracy would have thought him a pubescent
girl beginning to bud. The man descended two sets of stairs to
reach the rusty foredeck. He might have been in his fifties, and
moved with that slow and elegant grace often possessed by
middle-aged men with heavy and low-hanging paunches. He
caught the line tossed up by the boy, made it fast to a cleat, and
then disappeared through a doorway while the boy sat down in
the boat.
Tracy rose from the hood, shooed away butterflies, and
parted the ferns to watch the children, who had almost, thank
God, reached the shore. She was still feeling cramps in her
middle, as well as twinges of anger about seeing young lives so
casually treated. She told herself to get on the real, that she
wasn't in "Kansas" - metaphorically speaking - and a week in
this land of bare wires and bones should have prepared her for
something like this. Curiosity crept in to replace her outrage: she
wondered what kind of island scenario involved a beached ship
full of kids. It was common practice to ferry in cargo in lieu of a
harbor or wharf, but how could that lifeboat be loaded if all of
the crew were ashore? There were no trucks on the road to
receive any cargo, no village near this cove she could see, and the
cliffs rising sheer from the beach would have made the work
difficult anyhow. Smuggling was a possible motive; many
Haitians were forced into smuggling drugs as a last alternative to
starving to death, although more of this kind of illicit activity
involved things as prosaic as sacks of cement, sheets of old
plywood, car and truck parts, second-hand clothes, and used
household items like dishes and cookware. Still, even this rather
pathetic sort of smuggling could put Haitians in prison for many
long years, and she realized that being an observer - even if that
ship carried nothing more deadly than a ton of TVs - might
prove to be an unpleasant faux pas.
She moved back from the screen of foliage and ferns and
considered the situation. Something inside her rebelled at the
thought of running away before she knew what, if anything, she
was fleeing from. That concept reminded her way too much of
what she had left a week before: a rampantly xenophobic society
where internationally-ignorant people disparaged the places that
they'd never been or were ever likely to go, belittled other
human beings who they'd never met nor probably would, and,
worse, who passed on these delusional dreads to their children.
Added to these detestable traits was the same sort of sheep-like
self-preservation that made people flock to buy cars that
screamed when approached, stampede into gated security
condos, and bleat to build prisons faster than schools because
they now feared the kids they'd created.
No, she wasn't in Kansas anymore, and life in Haiti
couldn't by judged by traditional American values.
She looked around: the car's weathered green paint
blended well with the palm leaves, and what chrome it
possessed had long-ago rusted to subtle earth tones. The cloud of
dust she'd raised in stopping had swiftly settled in the breathless
air. She was clad in tan shorts and safari shirt, good camouflage,
assuming she needed it. Besides, there was that twenty-foot cliff,
and it seemed improbable that anyone could climb it, at least
before she could get the car started and bail her butt out of
Dodge. And, after all, she was here to help in some way if she
could, and she wanted to know what was up with that ship and
those happy sea-going children.
Did she have time for random curiosity? She glanced at
her wrist, but there was only a creamed-coffee strip on her dark-
chocolate skin where her Rolex would normally be. Old habits
die hard, and she'd thought it safer not to be seen on the Port-au-
Prince streets with a blatant temptation to jacking displayed,
even though she had heard that such crimes were rare in one of
the poorest nations on earth. The watch was locked in her nylon
backpack on the ragged front seat of the Subaru, but she
squinted up at the sun. Even allowing for the joke of a road,
there was plenty of daylight to make it to Jeremie.
Her gaze drifted back through the emerald-green ferns
to the bright turquoise-blue of the cove. Shouts and laughter
rippled the air as the swimming children neared the beach. Her
stomach felt better now. By closing her eyes she could almost
imagine summertime swimming pool sounds as a child. And
maybe because of those childhood memories, she recalled parts
of a poem by Lewis Carroll which seemed to describe the
surroundings. What was the title? The Walrus and The Carpenter.
Weren't there some lines that went -
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might
And then, a little later on -
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud because
No cloud was in the sky:
Those words had created an idyllic image when she'd
been a child herself, a place of peace to play in the sun. But years
later in college she'd wondered if they might have described
desolation, a desert of sea and an ocean of sand. Maybe isolation
was Carroll's intent, a primordial setting too new to have rules
where anything under the sun could happen. And this Haitian
beach was surely all that.
She opened her eyes when she realized that every one of
the voices were male. From her first distant glimpses she hadn't
been able to tell that all of the children were boys. Even now,
from what she could see through the leaves - bushy hair
sparkling with salt-water sapphires as ebony shapes splashed for
the shore - she could only estimate their ages as ranging from
five to maybe fifteen. Images played in her mind, and she
pictured the man's body as he'd come down the deck. He'd
looked to be in his early thirties, about the same age as herself.
Her eyes narrowed slightly in new speculation, and who was she
kidding, she wanted to peep him.
She could have had anthropological motives; she had
come to Haiti to try and save children, and here were some
children who might need her help. But the buck-naked brother
was a definite bonus: he probably didn't need any help, but
watching him did her a whole lot of good. There he was
emerging from the water and gleaming like someone had
polished a midnight.
She swatted butterflies aside and crouched a little as she
peered through the ferns. Her dizziness was all but forgotten,
and the incoming mood was pleasantly naughty. She
remembered being a girl of thirteen, up on the roof of her
grandfather's house in the silver-blue moonlight of newly-born
spring. With a bottle of beer and binoculars, she had treated
herself to a big-screen view of Troy Trenton's room in his house
down the hill. Troy had been into body-building ever since the
previous fall, swearing that he would look like a god before
reaching the age of sixteen. He'd religiously buffed on his weight
bench each night in nothing but tiger-striped briefs, and she
could still picture him flat on his back with his silky blond hair
spilling down like spun gold, while his pert young muscles
beneath snowy skin had performed for her own private pleasure.
She had already seen him naked of course - innumerable
times - but there was a wonderful difference in watching when
he didn't know that she was. He also had bouts of air-guitar
playing, pounding it down to The Blue Oyster Cult, but best of
all were those exquisite sessions when he'd make frenzied love to
the girl of his fist and she'd always known it was her.
She experienced some of that same feeling now as the
dusky-skinned, muscular, island-man came wading out of the
turquoise water and strode onto sugar-white sand. His small
glistening army of night-colored warriors trailed at his back like
a children's crusade, storming the beach with laughter as
weapons and armored in only their ebony skin. Most Haitian
men were wiry and lean and massed a lot less than American
males, but his body was almost as starkly-sculpted as an artist's
anatomy model. His chest was a pair of river rock shapes, his
shoulders were wide and solidly squared, and his torso tapered
dramatically down to a slender and cheetah-like waist. His legs
were strong as if built for running, his buttocks and thighs were
sensuously muscled, and he certainly walked with the grace of a
cat. He was pretty dammed handsome, Tracy decided, although
in a somewhat careless way that she couldn't quite define. It may
have been his casual posture, as if he had never learned how to
pose or adopt a threatening stance. His hair was as bushy and
wild as the kids', and his movements mirrored their spontaneity,
action without any forethought. Because of his blackness and her
distant viewpoint she still couldn't see his face clearly, but she
noted a cheerful gleam of white teeth whenever he spoke to the
children. A slim silver chain encircled his neck, and a little
medallion hung between the jutting stones of his chest.
A familiar warmth began to spread through her. She felt
her throat tighten, and reminded herself that she wasn't thirteen
and up on her roof anymore. Most of those mysteries had been
solved long-ago, and sometimes to her disappointment. This was
only supposed to be fun with no complications involved - as
rare a thing in this suffering land as it had been in her own life
lately - and she really should have been moseying on. But
instead of leaving she studied the man. Was she searching for
flaws, she wondered, a way to define his carelessness, or just
making excuses to linger? She noted a little roll to his stomach, a
slight suggestion of chubbiness, but carried so low that she
pictured a fast-cat who knocked back a six-pack whenever he
downed a gazelle. She watched him sit on the sand, and the roll
became roundly pronounced. She imagined his navel would look
like a child's, flattened into a soft little slit. Somehow that made
him all the more handsome, especially combined with his unruly
hair. Perfection, she'd learned, is less than beauty, and beautiful
people are less than perfect.
She counted the kids as they waded ashore through the
transparent wavelets. There were ten, and all wore the same
silver chains and little medallions as the man. Maybe they were
Catholic and on some sort of outing? But a naked priest among
bare altar boys would have been a more likely event in cloistered
America than here in the wilds of Haiti. Haitians liked to flirt and
touch, and often acted horny as hell, yet their sexuality could
almost seem prim when compared to the sick and sublimated
lust flaunted beneath the G-string and pasties that passed for a
lot of American morality.
And the small silver ornaments didn't suggest that they
carried the Vatican's seal of approval; in fact, on those naked
kids in this primitive setting, they looked almost sinfully pagan.
One boy, the eldest and maybe fifteen, also wore delicate gold
bracelets around both wrists, while two younger boys, who
looked about eight and were obviously twins, had one bracelet
each for adornment. Well, Voodoo - or, more accurately,
Voodu - was a practiced and respected religion in Haiti, and
from what Tracy had learned in her own sketchy studies there
seemed to be scant similarity between the real and rather
benevolent thing and the stereotyped Hollywood horrors of
calling up zombies, poking pins into dolls, or sacrificing children
to dark deities.
In another respect, the silver charms - if that's what
they were - seemed chintzv and cheap, like party favors, or free
souvenirs handed out on a tour. I'hey appeared to be identical, as
if coming from a box of a thousand or so stamped out in some
Singapore sweat-shop, but in this case one size didn't fit all, and
the younger boys' charms dangled down to their waists. There
was something else about these kids that seemed identical but
odd, and she wasn't sure what it was. Not their color: even
though darker than an average group of black American kids,
their shading and skintones were varied. The same held true for
their hair, naturally bushy but individually different. And,
except for the twins, they didn't appear related by blood.
From what she could hear they seemed to speak only
lower-class Creole, although once she distinctly heard the word
'shit." They acted neither outrageously wild nor remarkably
well-behaved; there was joking, jostling, and randy horseplay. It
was obvious that they were longtime companions, and they
seemed more fond of the man than respectful. Their generalized
joking and messing around included him, too, and the smallest
crept up and attacked him from behind. The others looked on
and laughed as man and boy wrestled in the sand like a panther
with cub, but most began to sit down in a sort of loose circle.
The scene now recalled the most famous line from
Carroll's poem:
'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things.'
Everyone knew the verses that followed, about shoes
and ships and so on. These kids probably didn't possess any
shoes, but they obviously had a ship. Then she realized what was
different about them, and it was her own kind of cultural
complacency that had kept her from seeing it as soon as they'd
all left the water. Except for their untamed hair, their prominent-
tummied and sway-backed builds, and even their darker
skintones, they all looked like well-fed American kids instead of
the thin and too-often cadaverous children she'd seen for the past
seven days. Their small-boned frames were sturdily filled, and
the fifteen-year-old had an almost impossibly beautiful body that
might have been chiseled from onyx. All the boys' stomachs
were healthily round, except the eldest's rippled with muscle,
and the twins' like inflated beachballs. Tracv studied the pair for
a moment: their tummies were hugely disproportionate to their
possibly eight-year-old frames, which made their movements
clumsy and slow, and their stances ungainly and awkward.
Bellies that big were an obvious burden, and Tracy wondered if
they might have some sort of development disorder.
The oldest boy remained on his feet like a masterful
statue of jet. His delicate jewelry gleamed in the sun, and his
stance showed authority, legs slightly spread, hands curled on
slim hips, with the small silver charm imprisoned between the
solid stone shapes of his chest. He seemed to be watching the
man for a sign. Tracy scanned the group, and another few lines
from Carroll's poem, no doubt jumbled, popped into her mind -
something about walking with oysters:
'But wait a bit,' the Oysters cried,
'Before we have our chat:
For some of us are out of breath,
and all of us are fat!'
Well, she wouldn't have called the kids fat: even the
mammothly tumescent twins could be going through some kind
of awkward growth phase, and the chubby boy in the lifeboat
looked cherubic and cute. And none of them seemed out of
breath from their swim. Come to think of it though, the fat man
aboard ship would have made a good Walrus. Did that make the
man on the beach The Carpenter?
If he'd made a sign Tracy didn't see it, but the
ornamented godlet seemed to issue instructions. Everyone,
including the man, got back on his feet and moved off in
different directions. The twins came waddling toward the base of
the cliff, and Tracy sank lower behind the ferns amid the
hovering butterflies. She saw that the boys were gathering
driftwood, probably for a fire. Was this after all just a picnic? She
turned her attention back to the ship - and froze. Her stomach
twisted in agonized knots, and shivers ran down her spine in the
heat.
The fat man and the chubby boy had been busy loading
the lifeboat. From what Tracy could see, there were two big
Styrofoam picnic coolers, some sort of keg-shaped object -
evidently heavy and wrapped in tan sailcloth - and a shovel.
But what made her stare in shock was the sight of yet another
naked boy, perhaps newly thirteen and in most respects - well-
fed and wearing a charm - just like the others on the beach.
Except he was in chains.
The black iron manacles locked on his wrists, and the
two feet of stud-links connecting them, were so huge and
medieval-looking that she might have thought them papier-
mache if they hadn't been so obviously heavy. Their weight
would have dragged the boy instantly under had he fallen
overboard from the tilted deck, and neither the fat man nor his
chubby accomplice seemed to care in the least as the chained boy
climbed awkwardly into the boat. In fact, the chubby kid seemed
to be cursing the chained one because of his slowness.
Tracy's first thought was, thank God the sea is calm! But
then that part of her mind - the part raised from infancy in a
safe and sanitized world - ran shrieking away to some distant
corner of her skull as the fat man tossed a whip to the chubby
kid, who savagely lashed the chained boy with it!
She sank to her knees, almost cowering behind the
foliage. Somewhere inside, a seemingly long-forgotten voice was
screaming at her to run. It was as if for an instant she'd been
hurtled backward through time. The nausea and dizziness that
had plagued her all morning crashed down again like a club. Yet,
despite her spinning head and cramping stomach, she almost did
run - not to the car, not down the road, but straight into the
forest behind her. That impulse passed, and she fought back her
sickness, terrified that if she gave in and vomited she'd be heard
by the twins, who were still near the base of the cliff and
clumsily picking up wood. Her shock transformed into horror as
she saw the captive boy struggle in his massive shackles to the
middle of the boat and take up a pair of big oars. The chubby
boy, who had once seemed so cute, was now a cherubic demon
from hell, lashing the captive with leather and curses. Tracy's
eyes flew wide as a thin bloody stripe appeared on the chained
boy's back. The fat man climbed aboard without comment and
sat down in the stern as if nothing at all was wrong with this
picture. The chubby kid cast off the line, and then stood in the
bow facing forward, curling the whip as the boy in chains
laboriously began to row.
Tracy had rowed big boats like that - in fact, now that
she saw it afloat, she realized it might have possibly been one of
hers. But even a strong and experienced rower would have
thought twice before trying to move it alone. just as her body
battled its sickness, the civilized part of her mind tried to combat
this abuse of a boy by counter-attacking with logic. It tried to
convince her this couldn't be real, that this thing was some sort
of stylized ritual, and that crimson stripe on the chained boy's
back was just an illusion or trick. It even tried to tell her how
ridiculous that chubby boy looked with his blubbery stomach
and babyish breasts, but trying to act so cruel, turning
occasionally to torture his captive with curses again.
But the logical part of her mind now seemed very small,
and had shrunk way back in the shadows. Her vision had gone
blurry again, but her eyes returned to the beach: the boys and tile
man had gathered a big pile of driftwood and now stood
together watching in silence as the boat slowly neared. Its pitiful
oarsman glistened with sweat that streaked the blood on his
back. The group on the beach were all facing the ocean; she
couldn't see their expressions. Again, the beautiful godlet took
charge: a word and the group divided in half, flanking the boat
as it-, bow finally grounded in inches of water. Crystal-clear
ripples caressed its scarred sides. More orders from the young
god: the twins took the coolers, a small boy the shovel, and the
other kids lifted the canvas-wrapped object. These things were
carried across the sand and set down near the pile of driftwood.
Then all of the boys returned to the shoreline and formed two
rows flanking the godlet.
The fat man got out of the boat to waddle ashore,
bearing what seemed to be garments of jet-black satin or silk. He
ceremoniously offered these things to the godlet, who stood with
his arms crossed over his chest like the Creator on Judgment
Day.
But the young god did nothing, only stood ferally
handsome and fiercely aloof. It was the other boys who came to
the fat man, took what he held, and gathered around the godlet
to robe him in what Tracy first thought was a cloak, but then saw
was really an ancient frock coat. A top hat was reverently placed
on his head by the twins. The last people in the world to
seriously wear such things had been undertakers. A few stage
magicians still affected them, pulling rabbits out of the hat, and
in some other setting Tracy might have howled with laughter at
such a sight: the naked boy - his coat was unbuttoned and
much too big so its tails spread out in the sand at his feet - with
his feminine jewelry, and the silly top hat, which was way too
large despite his abundance of hair. But there on that desolate
beach in the blazing sunlight, the boy's midnight shape sent
another finger of ice down her spine.
The faces of the rest of the group - the two men, the
boys - looked grim. They reformed their ranks like some sort of
sinister receiving line. The chubby boy had stayed in the boat
and done nothing except occasionally curse the captive, who, still
facing seaward, had shipped the oars and sat slumped-over,
panting. The sweat had thinned and spread the blood that welled
from the wounds on his back so that now he seemed to be bathed
in crimson. There was also blood on his wrists where the massive
old shackles had chafed. The chubby boy spat commands to the
captive, who got clumsily out, burdened by his chains and
exhausted from rowing, and stumbled to the bow. He lay face-
down in the shallow water as if forming a human bridge to the
beach. The chubby boy, bearing the whip, walked over his back
to reach dry land. Tracy winced, almost feeling the burn of salt in
his wounds.
But as soon as the chubby boy stepped ashore, the frock-
coated godlet knocked him down. Tracy recoiled in new shock:
that was no acting! The long coat had whirled around the boy's
naked body with the force of his swing, and she'd actually heard
the wet-meat thud of his fist slamming hard against flesh. The
chubby boy crashed to the sand and lay where he'd fallen,
perhaps actually unconscious. The wild young god stepped back,
crossed his arms, and waited.
The captive rose to his knees with white sand sticking to
his face and chest. Tracy couldn't read his expression through the
swirling murk of her vertigo - was he crying, or was that only
sweat on his cheeks? Darkness seemed to hover at the edges of
her vision, narrowing it down to a tunnel. Her clothes were
soaked with sweat of her own, yet her teeth were chattering, and
she shivered under the sun. The chained boy finally got up.
There was only silence from the others as he made his way
between their ranks and threw himself down at the feet of the
frock-coated figure. But the young god turned his back on the
boy and walked away, his long coattails dragging behind him, to
where the shovel stood ready for digging.
Digging what?
Like a midnight specter the young god pointed. The
chained boy rose and came to obey the silent command. Slowly,
painfully, dripping blood and sweat, he took up the shovel and
began to dig while the god and the others looked on. The chubby
boy still lay where he'd fallen, and no one seemed to care.
Tracy's eyes wouldn't focus anymore. The hovering
butterflies were only bright blurs, macabre colors like funeral
flowers, but the picnic coolers down on the beach suddenly
fascinated her. She wondered what they contained. Idiotically,
yet another verse from Carroll's poem crept into her head:
'A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,
'Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed...'
Those coolers seemed to add a grisly finality to the
shades of her sunlit horror. They convinced her beyond doubt
that what she was seeing was real. The remains of her logic
might still have persuaded her that she was hallucinating in a
fever brought on by eating bad meat...
Except for those Styrofoam coolers.
Except for those commonplace symbols of civilized
leisure and play. Just as a demon from hell wouldn't have
needed a submachine gun to further enhance its menace, neither
could her own subconscious have added picnic coolers to a
racial-memory nightmare.
Her reason made one last try to save itself: she could
blow the car's horn, flash the lights! Even though she couldn't
physically stop whatever hideous thing she was seeing, at least
the participants would know they'd been seen! And, hearing her
speed away, they might stop it themselves for fear that someone
would tell.
Down on the beach no one spoke. The ebony god stood
proud and grim in his black frock coat and top hat. There was no
whisper of wind. Even the sea was silent. The only sound in the
world was the lonely iron rattle of the boy's massive chains as he
dug. It was a bone-chilling sound - somehow an old, old, sound.
Isolation. Desolation... Death.
Suddenly, Tracy remembered the last lines of the poem:
... But answer came there none -
And this was scarcely odd, because
THEY'D EATEN EVERY ONE!
She had never fainted before in her life. But, as her
grandfather had often said, there was a first time for everything.
Praise for Bones Become Flowers:
Jess Mowry's Bones Become Flowers is a novel that is so compelling and so sensuous, so visionary and authentic, that
the deeper you get into it the clearer you see how skillfully he balances its tenderness with its brutality, its compassion
with its obsession. Written in prose that is both flexible and controlled, it's a novel full of contrasting parts, ideas and
elements -- dignity and desperation, art and life, self-reliance and "fate", a ship of "wild" boys and a humanitarian American
woman, a seasoned novelist and a precocious, doomed, beautiful child-genius. Set in a magical place -- Jeremie, Haiti -- Mowry's
story is one of a strange sea voyage, of commonplace miracles, of shanties and disease, rape and Voodoo -- and the bright
colors of death. But in this moonlit wasteland the power of redemption is equal to the devastation.
Clarence Major: author of Dirty Bird Blues
___________________________
Jess Mowry's creativity shines brilliantly in Bones Become Flowers, his lyrical and richly descriptive new novel. Set
in modern-day Haiti, it invites us into an unsettling and disturbing world of forgotten children -- children who nonetheless
teach us that love and human connection offer a way of transcending despair and even death itself. A provocative and thoroughly
engaging read, Bones Become Flowers is a rejuvenating experience for the heart and spirit.
Robert L. Allen: co-editor of Brotherman and senior editor of The Black Scholar
___________________________
The starkness of Mowry's fiction is hypnotic. The characters in Bones Become Flowers are more than words on a page.
They are raw portraits revealing roughly hewn edges of reality, reminding us we are not living in a perfect world. Yet not
a world without hope. Mowry hits us with that reality square in the face on every page while weaving a tight plot set to a
rhythmic Voodoo beat.
William July II, author of Brothers, Lust and Love
___________________________
With his latest novel, Jess Mowry sweeps us away from his usual innercity setting and into one just as tragic -- modern-day
Haiti. In Bones Become Flowers, Mowry shows us a world of devastating povery, far more hopeless than any American child knows,
a setting in which children struggle to survive under horrific conditions unimaginable by this country's standards. But not
only is this a look into the lives of an oppressed people and a caring American woman, it is also a story of incredible magic.
mystifying fantasy, and the Voodu of love. Extremely vivid in its imagery, Bones Become Flowers is another masterpiece from
Mowry, who shows that he can evoke emotions and touch the heart no matter where his stories take place.
Apollo: author of Concrete Candy and The Fence
___________________________
In the four years I have worked at Pride & Imprints, I have reviewed literally thousands of manuscripts. None of these captured
me as completely as Bones Become Flowers. Mowry has made me a believer.
Natalie Brown, Ph.D.: managing editor of All the World Books
Reviews:
Ten Indispensable Books For May
Each month piles of books gather around my desk and threaten to push me from my office. In order to bring them under control,
it is necessary to read as many as possible and then rotate them to a proper shelf. Here are few that refuse to stay on the
shelf and which have been most resourceful in keeping my scholarship keen, and making sure my facts are accurate. Given the
increasing number of books under my nose and the pressing matter of time, here are some capsule reviews of several books for
April and May.
Bones Become Flowers
Near the beginning of this enchanting novel, Tracy, the protagonist, is having a conversation with Father Avery about recent
films and books which could be shown to the children at the school. "Have you seen The Color Purple?," she asks. "I have,"
the priest said, "but the content is too violent for viewing by our children." Tracy thinks for a moment and decides that
other films would not pass muster either, including one called Way Past Cool," which is the title of Mowry's previous book.
In part, it is a kind of inside joke, a personal conceit that the author dangles to tease his followers, and that number will
certainly be expanded after they finish this exciting tale that unravels in Haiti. Mowry's novel is practically cinematic;
he knows how to set up a scene, complete with awesome foliage and characters, and then how to photograph it, as though he
was behind a camera filming this voodoo-laced tale that bounces from the island nation to the enclaves of Oakland, California.
In Mowry's lively creativity it's hard to separate the mundane from the exotic, nor should one care to.
Herb Boyd, National Editor of The Black World Today
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