Frings and Carla stood with Eunice in the shade of a tin shack on the edge of the Square. They ate fried plantains a friend of Eunice’s had prepared. Only the clothes had arrived for distribution. Nothing else had made it.
The Community seemed to be leaking away before their eyes. The commotion was still intense, the shanty alleys still crowded, but not as crowded.
The square was clear, except for a half dozen men setting up stools next to brightly decorated drums of various heights and shapes. Another man, lean and tall, wearing a white suit and white, flat-brimmed hat, paced around the drummers, keeping up a conversation. Occasionally one of the men would idly slap his drum three or four times, making a hollow sound.
People peered through the thresholds where shanty alleys emptied onto the Square, some stepping in to watch for a moment or two; most disappeared back into the warren.
People walked past them talking in their Caribbean patois, Frings struggling to pick out a piece here and there with little success. He felt somehow rooted to this spot, transfixed by the preparations for the ceremony.
Two strikingly beautiful young women arrived, wearing long, colorful dresses that wrapped tightly down the women’s slender bodies. Their hair was wrapped as well, coning back.
“Those are the priest’s assistants,” Eunice said. The women were talking to the man in white, while a couple of drummers played a beat and others chatted. The man in white walked to the center of the Square with a piece of chalk and carefully drew an X in the dirt.
Frings looked to Eunice.
“The crossroads. Where the spirit world meets our world. That man is the assistant priest. He’s making preparations for the ceremony.”
The man continued to draw, now tracing a circle with the center of the X as its midpoint.
“Who’s the priest?” Frings asked.
Eunice looked at him in surprise. “Well, Father Womé, of course.”