Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Introduction

Power is constitutive of the story … . Power does not enter the story once and for all, but at different times and from different angles.
—Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past[1]

Climbing the lookout high above Portobelo, Panama to experience the scope of the town the first time is to witness a community of colorful cinderblock houses growing amid the ruins of two Spanish colonial forts—a contemporary Afro-Latin community cupped around a lapis-blue bay with sea-weary yachts and house boats bobbing like toys in the shallow water. It is to witness a stout, white colonial church with a 500-year-old Jesus as brown or browner than most of the townspeople and an elderly Custom’s House watched over like a distant relative by men who more resemble the enslaved Africans that built it than the colonial forces that occupied it. To walk through the city is to experience the collision of old and new more sensually. It is balancing on age-slick cobble-stone streets interrupted by an asphalt highway, kicking at soccer balls nestled in high grass beside rusted cannons, and eyeing satellite dishes growing out of tin roofs with buzzards drying their wings in the early morning sun. It is smelling fried fish with red beans with coconut rice wafting up amid the sounds of salsa, merengue, reggaeton, and hip-hop. It is moving among brown bodies that own water taxis, restaurants, and rental property; that ride pre-dawn buses to work on the Canal arguing Kobe versus Lebron and Messi versus Ronaldo. It is mothers chiding daughters in blue and white uniforms to hurry as they walk home from school instead of practicing the latest music video dance moves between forward steps. And, it is fathers chiding young sons to sit still so electric clippers in skilled hands can edge up their fresh cuts just so. More than sedimented in monuments or frozen as folklore, Blackness in Portobelo is a dynamic presence that is as constitutive of the town’s presence as it was of its past.

Founded on March 20, 1597, Portobelo, Panama is one of a few small, rural towns located on the Caribbean coast of the Republic of Panama with sustained global engagement for trade and/or tourism. Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus made it his initial point of disembarkation for his fourth voyage to the “New World” in 1498; El Nazareno (“The Black Christ”) has attracted pilgrims since the 16th century; the Portobelo Fairs made the town the nexus of trade in the Spanish colonial world in the 17th and well into the 18th century; the Panama Canal construction project brought workers to the area in the early 20th century; and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the town a World Heritage site in 1980. During the dry season, January through early May, small cruise ships carrying fifty to sixty passengers enter the Portobelo Bay twice a week for one-hour tours of the area. Larger vessels, such as those from Princess Cruise Line, Carnival, and Sun Cruises, dock in Colón, the northern port city of the Panama Canal, and host bus tours to the town. Like the descriptions provided by international guides, local tour groups as well as governmental agencies such as the National Institute of Art and Culture and the Panamanian Institute of Tourism market Portobelo’s Black cultural heritage. Tourists, therefore, come to the town to experience the rain forest, the colonial forts, the “Black” Christ, and an Afro-Latin carnival tradition called “Congo”—all unique markers of Black resistance culture in the region.

Congo carnival traditions in Panama use music, dance, and narrative performance to tell the story of cimarronaje—of self-liberated Africans’ triumph over enslavement, parody of the Spanish Crown and Catholic Church, values of communalism and selfdetermination, and hard won victories toward national inclusion and belonging. Enacted on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the beginning of Lent, the primary drama of the Congo tradition stages a mythic battle between good and evil that pits Congos (self-liberated free Blacks) against Devils (brutal enslavers). Like most Carnival traditions throughout the Americas, Congo traditions in Panama rely on a hierarchy of characters. The primary characters include: Merced (the Queen),[2] Juan de Dioso (the King), Pajarito (the Prince whose name means “little bird”), Minina (the Princess), Diablo Mayor (the Major Devil), Diablo Segundo (the Secondary Devil), a host of minor Devils, a Priest, one Angel and six souls, a Cantalante or revellín (primary singer), a female chorus, three male drummers, and a multitude of male and female Congo dancers. The Congo drama, also referred to locally as “the Congo game,” does not end until the main Devil, El Diablo Mayor, is de-masked, de-whipped, baptized, and symbolically sold. The ethos of Black rebellion, resistance, and re-appropriation enacted through the tradition stems from the cultural context of playing with the devil and winning.

For the past 16 years, my critical and creative projects have focused on 20th-century Congo carnival traditions in Portobelo, Panama. I first encountered the town in 1998 through a lecture and slide presentation by Panamanian-born artist and arts historian Arturo Lindsay. Lindsay’s sophisticated presentation ignited my critical curiosity about the town and the complexities of hemispheric Blackness it holds in tension. When I picked up two popular travel guides to Panama years later, I was shocked by the exoticized, flippant prose that I encountered, especially related to Congo carnival. Panama: The Bradt Travel Guide and Lonely Planet Panama, for example, included narratives that render the Congos as quaint, primitive, and foolish. The Bradt Travel Guide (Woods 2005) referred to the tradition as “an expressive tribal dance ritual” with practitioners “feigning lunacy through movement and screams” (288). As you will read below, Lonely Planet Panama was much more egregious.

What follows is an excerpt from a novel titled She Looks Like Us. This work of fiction rehearses the potential discursive and physical violence of rendering sophisticated Black cultural spaces, traditions, and bodies as ludic, laughable, and dangerous. Drawing on my ethnographic field research in Portobelo as well as my roots in the U.S. south, She Looks Like Us engages with the thresholds between variegated hemispheric Blackness. The excerpt I have chosen responds to this issue’s theme of African diasporic tourisms by contrasting Portobelo’s Black cultural traditions and sociospatial realities as I have engaged them through my ethnographic research and oral histories with perspectives of the town garnered, at least in part, by representations in national and international travel guides. Titled “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” the expert introduces us to three generations of Congo practitioners in the midst of Carnival season preparations and a U.S. African American missionary student who witnesses them through a fractured lens of expectations steeped in fear. How do we engage with tourism of contemporary African diasporic towns in ways that allow us to witness them as complex, cotemporaneous spaces that exist in a historical present just as they mark a historical past? How do we replace Blackness as effigy with layered Black sociocultural realities? And, how do we resist reenacting the discursive violence of racism that renders Black culture, history, and people peripheral to the stories of these towns rather than central? Blackness is the story—it is not merely the context of a story about Whiteness.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Congos, a festivity in which black people assume the role of escaped slaves and run around taking “captives,” is held in Portobelo and sometimes elsewhere in the province during Carnival. [ … ] The celebrants are generally dressed in outlandish outfits that include tattered clothes and hats that resemble crowns. [ … ] All are so animated that they look like they’ve just come from an insane asylum. [ … ] Sound bizarre? It is. If you ever find yourself an innocent “victim” of this tradition, try not to freak out and kill someone. They are just harmless Congos. —Scott Doggett Lonely Planet Panama 2001

Two Álveros paddled across the Portobelo bay as a third watched anxiously from the pier. The eldest, Don Álvero, sat at the head of a small green cayuco with his jaws set hard and his lips sucked tight. He had forbidden his grandson from spying on him, which, he knew, was the best way to make sure the boy would do it. Still, he had to keep up appearances.

The youngest Álvero, the one called “Diablito,” saw his grandfather see him and bolted behind a young coconut tree. “Payaso” his grandfather murmured as he paddled closer, “Clown.” Diablito poked out his head, giggled, caught his grandfather’s eye, and snapped back behind the tree. At five, the boy’s stocky frame bulged out from both sides of it.

Diablito had been doing such a good job at hiding until he heard a dog challenge a crab and got distracted. The dog growled and jumped, but the crab clicked its claws and stood its ground until it reached its hole. Diablito was stunned. He could not believe that something so small could beat something so big. It was just like David in the bible stories his mother read him. It was just like that. When Don Álvero and Hueso reached the shore, Diablito remembered himself and tried to scramble for some good reason to be where he was told not to. “If you can’t tell the truth,” his grandma Lola once said in jest, “at least make the lie entertaining.” So, Diablito was preparing a good one, when his grandfather walked by without looking at him and said, “Go to your mother.”

Diablito was devastated. Today was the day he had been waiting for all year. Today was the day he would dress up in the devil costume his mother had spent weeks making for him and go out with his father and grandfather to play with the Congos. Today was the last time his abuelito would play devil and Diablito’s first time to try. He had asked all week to dress with the men. The Major Devil, the most important one, the one his grandfather was, never dressed in front of the women. Only Diablito’s father and uncles could see. He had friends whose mothers had made them devil costumes too, of course, but theirs were just regular costumes not magic like his. Milagro had told him almost anything to keep the boy from messing up his outfit before Ash Wednesday. The “entertaining lie” that worked was that the there was magic in it—that the suit for the grandson of the most powerful devil in Portobelo was made from the exact same material as the Major Devil’s and therefore had super powers. But (and this was the important part), if Diablito so much as touched it before Ash Wednesday, all the powers would fade away. It worked! But, as in the case with most things slightly untrue, there were unintended consequences. Diablito decided that since his costume was just like his grandfather’s, he would dress with him too. He would be there with the men for any magic words. He would stand beside his father and uncles and help his grandfather get ready because that’s what real devils do.

“Out of the question,” Don Álvero said without bothering to move any of the muscles on his face above his mouth. It didn’t warrant the extra effort.

“But Papá,” Milagro protested, “he wants to be there with you. He doesn’t want his mom to dress him. He’s convinced that that’s not what real devils do.” “He’s too young.”

“But this is your last time. Don’t you want him to remember every part of your last time?”

“No. He has his father for that. There are things that Hueso and I must do alone. When his time comes. He will go across the bay with his father, like I did with mine, and Hueso will teach him.”

“But Papá…”

“It’s men’s business, Milagro. He’s too young. Besides, he’ll use what he sees to impress his friends. No.”

“Well,” Milagro said, feeling her son’s impending deflation. “You’ll have to tell him.”

Don Álvero had a better idea. It was unkind but efficient. All week, he had allowed Diablito to jump around humming tunes and singing made-up songs about how he was going to dress as a devil with his grandfather. All week he had allowed the boy to go to sleep content in the knowledge that it was true. On Ash Wednesday, after all of the festivities of Shrove Tuesday ended, after six a.m. mass, and fasting all day except for a special raw egg and milk mixture to help give him energy, he told his young grandson, “Whatever you do, you must not watch your father and me come back from our secret business across the bay.”

“Magic business?” the boy asked, his eyes shiny black rhinestones.

Don Álvero didn’t believe in lies, but omission was its own thing, and people misinterpreted one’s intentions all the time.

“Magic business?” the boy asked again in a whisper so bubbly it almost burst out of him.

Don Álvero lowered his head slightly and closed his eyes. One might falsely read this as a nod, especially if one was 5 years old and impetuous, but it most definitely was not a nod. Don Álvero was simply letting the questions settle on him. And then, deciding not to answer, he rose and walked to meet the boy’s father.

Diablito’s mouth froze in a perfect, exuberant “O.”

Don Álvero looked back again at his grandson. “Remember, whatever you do, you must not stand here, on this bay, and watch. Or, you will have to be dressed by the women.”

Diablito nodded vigorously and ran home to look-but-not-touch his costume. Time passed. He lay on his bed to keep himself good. Time passed. He played fútbol in the front yard with his older cousin and lost (again), but he didn’t care. He ate leftover red beans and coconut rice for lunch with a small piece of corvina. Still, he waited without setting foot on the dock. More time passed. Where were they anyway? He looked at the dock from every window of the house. He stood on a little mound of construction debris down the street and craned his neck, but he couldn’t see them anywhere. What if they needed him? What if they were in trouble and he was the only one who could help? What if they were stranded on the other side and some big monster got them, like the one that chased him in his dreams. He had to look closer. He got on his belly and low-crawled across the cement patio and into the grass. He ducked when he thought he saw something, but it was just a seagull. He inched himself near the pier, but not on it. Then it started to rain, even though the sun was shining, and Diablito saw a big toad staring at him from under a fallen leaf and leapt up. The excitement of the toad made him forget himself and his promise for a moment. It was huge! Then, he saw something out of the corner of his eye and spun around—the little green cayuco and his grandfather. There they were! He was excited. There they were. He was afraid. He ran to hide and peeked to see what was happening. It was thrilling and scary all at the same time. He giggled in spite of himself. Then, the dog barked and the crab snapped. It was thrilling. And now, it had all gone bad.

“Go to your mother.”

“Abuelito,” He whined at his grandfather’s back, but the damage had been done. The decision had been made. He stood on the dock in his little jean shorts and muddy white tee shirt whimpering in the rain. “Lo siento.”

His father docked the little green boat and walked toward his son. He felt sorry for him, but he had already planned for this. He bent down and scooped the boy into his arms. Diablito cried freely. “I didn’t mean to…,” he sobbed into his father’s neck and tried to explain through snotty cries. Hueso was in the street walking them both home. He kissed his son on the forehead.

“No llores.”

Diablito sniffed and hiccupped, but crying was a hard thing to control.

“No llores. ¿Me oíste?” Hueso stopped walking and held his son so that he could see his face. The boy’s eyes were shiny black river rocks flooding his sandy brown cheeks. “I will dress you.” The boy blinked away his tears. “This year, I will play Major Devil with Abuelito, and I will dress you.”

Diablito cracked a sheepish smile and stared at his father in wonder. “You know the magic?”

Hueso shook his head and chuckled. This was Milagro’s doing. He hugged his son tight. “Yes, I know it.”

* * * * *

Abigail Hinton sat on a blue and white striped beach towel near the lip of the Caribbean Sea hugging her knees to the small green triangles that covered her nearly flat chest. Her braids hung heavy on her back like two thick wet ropes and water beaded on her honey-colored skin. “It’s like a miracle,” she thought as she looked toward the mist that made a halo around the mountain. The sun sank behind it and blushed the sky pink then purple like Lent. But that was all backdrop. What inspired Abby’s awe was a six-foot-four terracotta-colored boy walking out into the sea on a path of coral. From where she sat, the effect was like watching someone walk on water. “Like Jesus,” she thought as she squinted against the light dancing all around him. The terracotta boy looked up, raised his hand to greet her, and walked back toward the shore.

It was a perfect day. True, it started with a lie but only a little one really, and they had come up with their own way to make it true. Luis lived near the church in Panama City where Abby’s parents did missionary work. Abby had seen him one Sunday in jeans and a guayabera joking with a group of his friends. Hair like licorice, skin like clay, teeth shiny white Chiclets. Abby’s pulse quickened. The next day, she finished her work as fast as she could and got dressed in her favorite yellow halter dress with the modest “V” that made her father cringe. She painted her toenails pink and put on strappy sandals. Red, her mother warned, was for prostitutes and whores, which Abby always thought was redundant until her best friend explained that one was for money and the other for free. “If you ask me,” her friend concluded, “prostitutes are smarter.”

Abby slipped on her earrings and bracelets, grabbed her sketchpad, and hurried out the door. She had to look like she was doing something. She found a stoop where she had seen the boys standing and began to sketch a pile of mangos on a vendor’s table near-by. When the terracotta boy and his friends came close enough, she said, “Permisso” in her most sugary accent and motioned them to step out of her line of view. They turned, noticed her, and began jostling each other and talking in strained whispers. She smiled politely and looked back down at her drawing. She looked up again at the mangoes, cut her eyes toward the terracotta boy and let them linger there. He blushed. She smirked and noticed the other boys elbowing him in his ribs. She looked back down and pressed her lips together to keep a smile from blooming. Luis was as taken with Abby and she was with him. How could he not be? Abby was a striking girl, the kind born pretty but who become awkward, lanky teens with wobbly heads, sharp elbows, and big feet before being reborn into even more beautiful women. She was right at the cusp of that last transition, and she knew it. She had curious brown marble eyes and a small mouth.

“In another life,” Luis told her after conversation became easy, “I bet you were a cat.”

“And you, what were you in another life?” she asked raising her eyebrow and flicking her hair from her shoulder.

“Same as now,” he said, a smile rising in his eyes. “Un tigre.” They laughed.

Come to find out, they were both seventeen (that is to say, he was twenty-one, but decided to round down and she was barely fifteen but thought it better to round up and over). Both were also artists. Abby loved to sketch with charcoals and pastels.

“Maybe you’ll be an architect,” her father told her. “Maybe I’ll be an artist,” she responded annoyed.

“Yea, well, architects make enough to support all kinds of hobbies.”

Luis’s father, on the other hand, was teaching him everything he needed to know about how to carve almost anything. By their third day together, he had made her a small wooden cross on a leather string, a little frog made of a big brown seed called tagua, and butterfly earrings made of coconut shells. Abby’s father was pleased with Luis’s knack for crafts.

“I like to see young men like him honing a skill,” he said, “learning a trade or craft … He can use that to make a little money, open a stand … it comes in handy here.” Abby crinkled the edges of her mouth and made the borders of her eyes pinch in her best semblance of a smile. Her attempt wasn’t very good, but it didn’t matter. Demetrius Hinton rarely looked up from his morning paper anyway. So, Abby didn’t bother to tell him that Luis’s father was a doctor at Hospital Santa Fe or that his mother was a drama professor at the University. She saw little point in mentioning that Luis spoke Spanish, English and Portuguese and was training to be a translator. “Invite him to sit in on our art classes,” Mr. Hinton suggested between loud sips of coffee and crunches of toasted bread. “He might learn something useful. We want to give these people as much as we can for as long as we’re here.”

* * * * * * * * *

Diablito stared in the mirror impressed with himself. He wore firecracker red Keds to match his chili pepper jumpsuit and danced on the balls of his feet to make the thick layers of bells tied above his ankles jangle. He swung the little whip his father helped him make out of a twig and some string, snarled at the mirror, and giggled. When Diablito growled and bared his baby teeth, his reflection looked almost as tall and fierce as his father’s. At least, that’s how he saw it. He hoped everyone else would see it that way too. He clenched and unclenched his red cotton mittens with his arms held high in the air. Then, he stopped cold. Something was missing—his mask! Diablito threw down the whip and ran to the hollowed out half-calabash laying on the bed. It was just like his abuelito’s. It had holes drilled for the eyes, nose and three for the mouth. Diablito had glued extra string on his for a mustache and emptied almost a whole tub of red glitter to make it glow. He jingle-jangled himself back and forth until he bumped the nightstand and made the lamp fall. His mother swung open the bedroom door in a flash and shook her finger in his face.

¡Siéntese allí y no toque nada!

Diablito scooted himself onto the edge of the bed and tucked his face into the collar of his jumpsuit. Thirty minutes earlier, his mother had laid him down for a nap in his grandparent’s room. He had fallen asleep after the excitement of getting dressed and the long wait at Don Álvero’s. His mother was grateful for even the smallest break from his energy and questions. There was so much to do. Doña Lola had sent her to buy more fish for the fufú and pineapples for the chicha. They had planned for fifty, but by the looks of things, there would be more. Milagro and the other wives worked alongside Doña Lola to double and redouble the stew. It would be enough. It would have to be. Milagro had barely gotten back through the door when she heard jingles and a big boom. Doña Lola spun on her heels, but Milagro flew to the door before her mother-in-law could utter a word. Thank God the thing didn’t break.

“Diablito! What did I tell you? Sit down and don’t touch a thing!”

He folded his head with its calabash mask and red glitter deep into his chest. Thunder in the other room made Diablito’s head pop up and his body race to his mother’s side. He clung to her left leg as they made their way to the den. Don Álvero stood in the middle of the room dressed in a larger version of Diablito’s costume, except his was mainly black. He made a loud rumbling sound at the back of his throat and jumped in the air crisscrossing his feet. The room responded back with the same guttural sound. It was then that Diablito saw them. Red and black devils all over the room. Big masks and small masks and whips much bigger than he was.

“GRRR haaaAA!” his Grandfather said again and leapt up.

“GRRR AAA AAA AAA!” said the room in powerful waves. The mask made it hard for Diablito to see clearly. The room was one big blur of red and black pulsating from the force of their growls and grunts. He hooked his arm around his mother’s leg and started to cry. Milagro lifted him to her waist.

“Look at the baby devil,” Diablito heard one of the children say from the front yard, but that only made him cry harder. All the elder devils had come to Don Álvero’s house as a show of respect on his last day. Hector, the cock-eyed carpenter; Javi, the one-armed bus painter; Fat Gustavo, the watchman; they were all there. Don Álvero’s arthritis pained him deeply. His left hip was on fire with it, but he stretched his back straight and held his hands high.

“GRRR haaaAA!”

“GRRR AAA AAA AAA!”

A sharp pain shot through him. “Dios!” he begged looking up at the ceiling. “Please! Just one last time!” Doña Lola stood at the door of the kitchen clasping her hands tightly and begging God in her heart. The pain twisted Don Álvero’s face and bent him crooked. Hueso, dressed in black and red like his father, approached him by jumping and making crosses with his feet. He growled just like his father had, tapped the man lightly on the shin with his whip and snuck his arm underneath the old man’s elbow to help him move forward.

“GRRR haaaAA!” Don Álvero wailed half in passion, half in pain.

Diablito nuzzled himself closer to his mother’s bosom. Everyone knew about Don Álvero’s battle with arthritis. Everyone wanted the day to end well for him. The priest had prayed over the hip after Ash Wednesday mass. Armando, the healer, had made a little salve for it. Doña Lola had given him the pills the pharmacist suggested … nothing to do now, but push through.

Children, more than six rows deep lined the streets to see Don Álvero exit his house as El Diablo Mayor one final time. The lucky ones flooded the porch and pressed their faces hard against windows and screens. “Aw … look at the baby devil.” Diablito scowled.

“GRRR haaaAA!” Don Álvero grunted again and raised his whip high. Sweat dripped down his temples as lighting flashed in his hip. “Please God, please,” he begged under his breath. The room erupted with jingles and grunts. Outside, a hive of eager children stirred. As soon as the first devil raced for the door, the hive buzzed with screams and laugher and scattered down the street. Each devil burst through the door and dance-walked toward the widening crowd.

Don Álvero tapped his son lightly with his whip to let him know he wanted to exit on his own. Cameras clicked and the remaining children dispersed as Don Álvero leapt from his porch. His thigh ached, but God saw him through. He dance-walked forward. The newspaper people clicked their cameras and flashed their smiles. Don Álvero struck a pose that made Doña Lola clap her hands together like when she was a young bride. Hueso dance-walked behind his father and snuck his hand under his elbow to steady him whenever the old man winced. Milagro walked behind them both trying to coax Diablito from her arms. When she finally got him down, his father dance-walked over to him and lightly tapped his whip against the boy’s leg. Diablito pressed himself into his mother.

“Go on,” Milagro urged, “It’s OK.”

Hueso tapped his son lightly again and winked.

Diablito released his mother and took a tentative step forward. His father grunted at him gently. He grunted back then smiled, before scrabbling up into his mother’s arms. Don Álvero stopped, motioned his family forward, and stood in a T-position with his arms stretched wide. Diablito sucked his thumb in wonderment as light sparked all around them.

* * * * * * * * *

Asking Luis to join the missionary’s art classes was like asking a chef to bake a box cake. Abby didn’t mean to re-tell the story to Luis, but she was angry. She wasn’t like her parents. She was sure of it. She wanted Luis to be sure of it too. He watched her big brown eyes narrow and expand as her hands danced the story like hummingbirds mating. Sometimes he tried not to listen to what her mouth said to see how much he could figure out by watching her hands. They flew up over her small bosom one final time then landed hard on the table.

“Can you believe it?” “What time is the class?”

“What?” “The class. What time is it?” “Haven’t you heard anything I said?” “I heard better than you.”

“Huh?”

“You leave next week.” “So?”

“You help with that class. Your father, of all people, invited the boy you’re screwing to spend more time with his daughter.” Abby’s hand flew to her mouth in shock on the word “screw.” “What part did I miss? Hell, tell him God wants you to tutor me too.”

Abby rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth. “Private lessons, late at night, in your room…”

“Shut up!” she said in a loud whisper and popped his arm playfully. “Nude, with this leg here…”

“Stop it!” Abby giggled looking around to make sure they were alone. “and this one over here…”

Ten days, that was all the time she would have in Panama until the summer— 10 days, from the Thursday spring break began to the Saturday before classes. The beach day, the perfect one, was lucky number seven. Just as they planned, Luis had sent his sister, Consuela, to ask if Abby could join them at a church in Isla Grande for Ash Wednesday service. It was almost true. Abby and Luis had gone to Isla Grande and it most certainly had been spiritual.

Their beach adventure felt perfect. Almost. “It’s just.”

“What?” Luis asked. “You’ll think it’s silly.” “Try me.”

“It’s just … the first time I remember not getting ashes,” Abby lamented as they learned against a beached piece of wood and let the waves lick at their feet and suck them into the wet sand.

“Humph,” Luis said. He and his family used to go to Ash Wednesday service back before his grandmother died, when Sunday meant mass. He missed her. He missed the meal they shared together after, but he didn’t necessarily miss the mass itself. “What do you miss about it?”

“I don’t know.” Abby took back her feet from the stingy sand and pulled her legs into her chest. “It’s just something I’m used to, I guess.”

Abby looked out toward the horizon and sighed. Luis could see the clouds reflect off the water and drift across the glassy surface of her eyes. She had been so animated since they met, he had no literacy for this stillness. He opened his mouth to ask her more questions, but decided against it. That made some girls cross. Better to leave her to her silence. Abby closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. She missed having the minister put a sooty finger to her forehead and letting the crude gray cross stay there until evening. She missed the way penitence hung heavy on the air like morning dew as congregants ached to be made new—to do without M&Ms or pulled pork or movie theater popcorn for 40 days and nights “just like Jes-us,” as her Aunt Bes would say. It was a communal, public deprivation that made Easter feel, in some small way, earned. And, for Abby, it all started with a little dirty cross on her forehead. She looked over at Luis unsure of how long she had been silent. The intensity of his gaze made her self-conscious. He gave her a tender smile, stood up, and walked away. “Shoot!” she thought. “I’ve made things weird.” She curled into herself and hugged her knees tighter. Minutes later, she felt Luis’s presence before he crossed his feet and sat back down. He held a dead palm leaf in one hand and a cigarette lighter in the other.

“What are you doing?”

He lit the leaf and watched the dust from it settle on Abby’s notebook.

When the flame was low enough, he smothered it in the sand, rubbed his index finger in the grey black dust and gently pressed it onto Abby’s forehead.

“There’s your smudge.”

Abby’s eyes smiled and her lips followed. Luis touched his finger to the tip of her nose. “There’s another to grow on.” She was up in a blink chasing him down the beach.

* * * * *

Don Álvero had four sons named Álvero, but the first one left as soon as he came. That made Don Álvero indignant. Everyone said it would be bad luck to repeat the name, but Don Álvero refused to listen. He must have used up all the name’s power for himself, they said, but the man was a boulder when it came to such things. God promised him a namesake. He had seen it in a dream, and God would not deny him. All the same, he named every child God gave him after himself. When he closed his eyes on his final day, there would be another left to carry him forward. He got his way, but the town won too. He was the only one they called Álvero. The others they renamed to suit them. The oldest, they simply called “Tonito.” He was a squat, nutmeg man who looked eerily like Doña Lola’s high school sweetheart, Antonio. Don Álvero waged war against the insinuation, but when a name sticks, what can you do? Once the boy was old enough to know himself, it was the only name he responded to. The second, they called Bayano after a Cimarron king. He was smart as a whip, that one—could figure his way out of the grave and come up without a speck of earth on him. He was tree tall and red-brown like his father, but he drank early and hard. It made leather of his skin and dirtied the whites of his eyes. Drunk or sober, he had a warrior spirit and fought with the patient precision of a jaguar, especially for his brothers. People respected Bayano, what’s more, they liked him. Hueso, the third Álvero whose nickname meant “bone,” was a stick-drawing of his middle brother. He was a quiet Álvero with less to prove than Tonito and less to lose than Bayano. His temperament was like water. Everyone said so. You could see it in his liquid hazel eyes. But, no matter how calm he seemed, he was seawater not pond. No one who crossed him had any doubt about that.

Hueso, Bayano and Don Álvero were a near perfect set of Matryoshka dolls—three wooden men chiseled from the same basic mold. At eighty-four, Don Álvero was now the smallest and the baldest (but small in the Calderon family still meant nearly six feet tall), then 48-year-old Bayano whose hair had receded to almost the summit of his head, and 44-year-old Hueso whose hairline formed a shore above his temples. He still had his widow’s peak though. Each had dimples so deep and perfect they looked like someone carved them. And all had long thin faces that made them seem solemn even when they were not.

After decades of trying, Hueso was the only one of his brothers with an Álvero all his own. A square one, like his brother Tonito. A sturdy, compact Álvero who gave Tonito someone local to look like other than the one they called “his real father who does not love him.” They did not say this to be cruel. They just had no patience for subtlety:

“Who you mean, skinny Bianca or Bianca the gimp?”

“No. Not Lazy-eyed Jorge, Fat Jorge who works in the Zona Libra.”

“Which Álvero? The drunk one or the one whose real father does not love him.” In truth, little Diablito and his uncle took after Doña Lola’s people who were from the interior. Diablito, Don Álvero argued, helped confirm the pattern. Still, the mean-spirited had their own take on things. They raised their eyebrows and puckered their lips at the possibility that Tonito had diddled with Hueso’s wife the way they said Doña Lola diddled around to make him. No malice intended, really. Just something for women to wonder during long rainy seasons gathered together on broad stoops or something for men to pass around like cold sweaty bottles of Balboa.

It storied away the time.

Diablito sat on his mother’s lap slurping a raspado while all around him red and black devils cracked whips in the town plaza. He popped his lips. The syrupy ice tasted good especially in the hot summer sun. Don Álvero had officially passed on the Diablo Mayor titled to his son and retired. He sat on a folding chair under a shade tree with Doña Lola, a reporter, and a few of their friends. He had changed out of his costume and given it to Álvera to prepare for a special exhibition later that month. He flicked a mosquito from the crease of his slacks and pulled a cough drop from the pocket of his crisp white guayabera.

Don Álvero had been Diablo Mayor in Portobelo for more than 60 years. He was the oldest living Major Devil and the only one most people in the town ever knew. Now, Hueso would take his place. He puffed out his chest doubly proud. “Mi copa corre más,” he said with his hands on his lap and his spine arrow straight, “My cup runneth over.” He grunted and nodded as a final punctuation.

The game had been going on for nearly 2 hours now. Finally, there were only three devils left.

“I am the one who brought back the tradition of blessing the devil,” Don Álvero told the reporter.

“Blessing the devil?”

“Yes, see those seven men dressed in white?” “Si.” The woman was a young foreigner. Don Álvero noticed that she said “si” a lot even when he was fairly certain she did not completely understand. She was working on some book or article or something. There were often people like her coming to talk with him. This one was a young girl from somewhere called “Michigan.” She had been interviewing him about this thing or that for days. Don Álvero pointed to make sure the woman understood.

“Yes,” she said finally looking in the right direction. “Those there. What do they mean?”

“They are the animas … and that one in the lead is the Archangel. They must round up each devil one by one, baptize him, and take away his whip. ”

“Oooh si,” the woman said, but her eyes said she didn’t.

Diablito slurped on his icy watching his Abuelito talking to the gringa under the tree. A snap of a nearby whip brought him back to the action in front of him. His Tío Tonito stood just meters away daring a strange dragon-headed devil to strike him.

Unlike his father and grandfather, Tonito and Bayano played “Congos”—the blacks the enslavers chased and whipped.

“It is a game we have played here for hundreds of years,” Don Álvero told the reporter. “It is a play with our history. It is our play.”

The dragon-headed devil Diablito did not recognize snapped his whip harder at Tonito. He jumped over it. The people cheered. The devil flicked his whip harder and Tonito jumped again.

“Now, there are those that don’t get the metaphor. You understand?” Don Álvero said.

“Si?”

“They take it too far. I have heard of devils from other places who put Gillettes in their whips.”

“Gillettes?” “Razors.”

The reporter gasped.

“It’s a parody, a game. It isn’t at all about causing pain. The power of the devil isn’t in his whip. It’s in his presence, his dance.” Don Álvero placed both palms on his thighs and sat straight-backed. “In colonial times, white enslavers would tell innocent blacks, ‘If you rebel or run away, the Devil will get you.’ Some even dressed up in all red and went into the rainforest to frighten runaways into returning.” The reporter wrote and flipped yellow pages feverishly. “Now, in our play, it is the Blacks who capture and baptize the devils. It is a parody. The young people—sometimes they don’t understand that.” Don Álvero shook his head at the thought. The reporter wrote one pencil nearly flat and pulled out another.

There were only two devils left. Hueso would be the last to be de-whipped and demasked. He danced over to Diablito and took a slurp of the boy’s icy.

“Papá!” the boy sang and bounced up from his mother’s lap.

Tonito’s agile play with the dragon-headed devil had the people cheering. He stood his ground and dared the devil to strike. He flicked his whip with vengeance and struck Tonito in the leg. Still, Tonito stood his ground. The people roared. Tonito smiled and jogged about. Earlier that morning he had taped layers of cardboard to his calves and put on three pairs of jeans.

Diablito tensed. He didn’t like to see this strange man hitting his uncle. He looked over at his Abuelito talking to the reporter and a spark fired in his eyes. His suit was made out of the same stuff as his grandfather’s. He looked at the strange devil with the big mask. Tonito jumped back in front of the devil, beat at his chest, and opened his arms. The dragon-headed devil reared back his right arm to strike. Diablito pursed his lips and ran. He wasn’t a baby. He was the grandson of the oldest living Diablo Mayor in Portobelo and the son of the new one. His costume wasn’t made of fake stuff like his friends. His was made of the same magic as his grandfather’s. It was just like the crab and the dog, just like David. Just like …

It happened so fast. The strange devil caught the boy out of the side of his eye, but couldn’t make the string change course. If only Tonito hadn’t dared him again. If only Diablito hadn’t taken off his mask to eat the red and orange icy. If only the Archangel had chosen to go after the dragon-headed devil this last time instead of the pig-faced one. If only this strange devil had left a knot at the end of his string instead of tying a Gillette there. If only Milagro had told the truth instead of an “exciting lie”

… Hueso saw it all in slow motion: the whip circled the devil’s head and raced toward Tonito’s calf. The little red suit darted in front of him between eye blinks. The devil pulled himself back, which helped, thank God, but it was not enough. The Gillette slashed Diablito’s cheek and the boy set the afternoon air ablaze with his screaming. Hueso dove to catch his son before the boy hit the ground. Milagro’s scream was worse than the boy’s. Don Álvero moved faster than anyone had seen him move in years. He used to be able to jump from roof-to-roof, people said. He moved so fast you thought he flew, the young ones once swore. It was like that the day Don Álvero watched harm come to his youngest namesake, the day he saw harm come to the tradition he loved, the day he witnessed for himself how true the rumors about the razors were. He would rather have died than see that day.

A crowd formed around Milagro and the Álveros. Someone passed water. Milagro wet the end of her blouse and gently dabbed her son’s face as Hueso held him tight in his arms. The blood made it look worse than it was, thank God. It cut him long, but not deep, thank God. Hueso kissed his son above the tear and rocked him. “Gracias a Dios,” Milagro said through hiccupping tears, “Thank God.” She reached for the boy and a net of hands passed him to her—Hueso’s, Tonito’s, and Don Alvero’s. They had the same jaw line, the Álveros, especially as worry shifted to anger. Their lips pursed to nearly invisible. Their nostrils flared and their muscles tensed. Two Álveros bolted after the dragon-headed devil. It took three grown men to hold the third back.

* * * * *

A little after dusk, Abby and Luis bounced down the road back toward the city in the turquoise and white 1964 VW bus Luis’s uncle lent him. The road leading away from Isla Grande was a chewed up gnarly thing that tussled them mercilessly, but neither seemed to mind. Luis knew the character of the road and its moods. He knew when to race and when to crawl. Abby watched him bob along, tapping the window frame to the salsa rhythm blaring through the radio. She took it all in greedily, let herself be drunk with it. In 3 days, it would all be gone. Luis was the favorite thing God wanted her to give up for Lent, and she would, in 3 days. It wasn’t just that she had to go home. No. Leaving would be her choice, her penance. Yes, she would think of it like that.

Abby slid across the seat closer to Luis, lifted his arm, leaned into him, and stuck her bare feet out of the window. Luis grabbed the steering wheel with his left hand, draped the right one over her, and kissed the space between her two braids. Abby let herself drift off to sleep amidst the warmth of his body, the sound of the music, and the feeling she had of being truly satiated.

The drums reached into her subconscious and pulled her back. They were muffled and distorted at first as if she was deep under water. She felt something pinch her toe and flinched in her sleep. Luis felt her stir and squeezed her tighter. She fought to the surface of her consciousness. She felt the pinch again. Abby woke up with a gasp. The car wasn’t moving. She saw a black man in blackface with a cone-shaped feathered hat and screamed. He squeezed her big toe in his fisherman’s hand. She retracted her feet and spun herself around. Luis tried to steady her. The men laughed. There was a shorter painted one on Luis’s side of the car with a glittery, feathered hat and a painted stick. Abby’s eyes were still blurry with sleep and rum. Her mind was slow, but her heart nearly raced out of her chest.

“Calmate mami! Todo esta cool,” the smaller one said with both hands up in a position of surrender. Abby looked like a deer in headlights. The painted men and Luis were all talking at her. She heard everything they said but couldn’t make out any of it. Whenever she got emotional, her Spanish short-circuited and her nerves went raw. Luis rubbed her arm gently to soothe her. He and the painted men were laughing. In the distance, Abby heard music. Female voices wove around a complicated conversation of drumbeats and clapping. Her breathing started to regulate and the horse in her chest shifted from gallop to trot.

“It’s OK, Baby,” Luis said. “it’s just…”

A piercing scream stopped Luis short. Then there was another. All three snapped their heads toward the sound of an angry mass racing toward them. Abby pushed herself harder into Luis. Two figures burst through an alley like a shot, the second close on the heels of the first. The first was a red dragon-headed man with teeth as long as Abby’s fingers and layers of bells around his feet. The one giving him chase was black all over with streaks of red crisscrossing his jackal head. He cracked a whip toward the dragon-man that snapped him in the side and made him howl. Not two seconds later a mass of other devils and painted men flooded through the alley and spilled out the sides of the houses. Tonito, never a strong runner, had gotten left behind in the surge. Abby’s chest ached from the force of a scream that hollowed her belly like a bowl. She kicked at Luis’s leg, stomped on the accelerator, and grabbed the steering wheel. Luis snatched it back and tried to dislodge her foot.

Bayano and two friends had been sitting under a tree drinking Seco and squirt on the far side of town when the commotion started. All he could make sense of in his own fuzzy haze was that his bother and some devil he didn’t recognize were running straight toward the main road and that a VW bus was jerking its way toward them. He legs started running.

“AAAAAAAAA!” He raced as fast as he could to head off the car and stopped in front of it with his hands extended. All he saw inside was a flurry of braids and a tangle of arms. His brother and the dragon-man sprinted behind Bayano unharmed.

Abby saw a crowd of angry devils steaming toward her and a painted man ready to pounce.

“Oh my God!”

She closed her eyes, snapped the wheel and tossed her weight heavy against Luis. “Abby no!”

The car sliced to the right and sped up. The first devil jumped out of way and dislocated his shoulder when he landed hard against the pavement. The second met the grill of the bus and then its windshield. His jackal mask flew straight up in the air on impact, bounced off the roof and came to rest beside him. The crowed billowed and settled like fruit flies around an over-ripe plantain. Women wailed.

Bayano stood stunned. Alvero “Hueso” Calderon lay motionless on the ground with his eyes and mouth open in pain. His legs were splayed in a rough letter four and his arms stretched empty beside him.

Bayano pushed the crowd aside, lifted his brother’s shoulders and cradled his head. He pulled his hand back wet with blood. A steady pool grew beneath it and colored the sharp grey piece of rock that stabbed his brother a muddy red. Hueso looked at Bayano’s hand. When they were little, Hueso lost his first fight to some bully who bloodied his nose. Bayano took him in the alley, made him take off his shirt, cleaned him up with it, and then switched with him so that Hueso could go home in the clean one. “They expect better from you.” He had told his little brother and mashed his head. “Me. I fight all the time. So, it’s no big deal.” But Bayano was wrong. He got beat that day. Their father beat him good and their mother cried like she was the one hurting. His mother’s crying hurt Bayano worse than the beating, but he never told. Hueso could see his brother’s lips moving but could no longer make out sound. He was sinking down, down into a hole. “Do you know the magic Daddy?” He saw Diablito’s perfect face. “Yes. I know it.” Down, down. Up, up. Dark, dark … Away.