The Dew Breaker

This story features Dany, whom readers should recall from Part 2 as one of Eric’s roommates. The setting is Haiti, where Dany has returned without alerting any of the people he plans to visit. He is hiking along a mountain, on his way to find his father’s sister, Estina, who is now quite old. Dany has not seen her since leaving Haiti for New York 10 years ago.

Dany, who has never made this journey without his mother, gets lost on the mountain, but he persists and eventually encounters a remote village. He speaks Creole to the inhabitants when he arrives. An old man (we later learn Old Zo is his name) in the village informs him that he knows Dany’s aunt (as no one in these mountains is a stranger) and takes him to her village. The old man mentions that he knows Dany’s story: Dany survived a fire that killed his father and mother, and nearly Estina as well.

Estina’s home is a single-room dwelling bordered by a banana grove and next door to a family mausoleum. She is not home, but Dany encounters many old acquaintances while he waits for her. He is slightly disconcerted that many of these old acquaintances still remember idle promises he made when he left, to send them gifts and money from America. When Estina finally arrives, she is guided by two helpers due the fact that she is blind, having lost her sight in the fire. Estina also has scars on her hands. She is happy to have Dany there but curious as to his reason for coming.

Estina informs Dany that she is still working alongside midwives in the nearby villages. At night, most of the village visits Dany. He sleeps on a pad near Estina in the single room, where she sleeps on a cot. In keeping with the title of the story, during the night Estina sits upright and speaks in her sleep. Dany finds that interesting because he has the same habit (those who do so are called palannits in Creole).

Estina introduces Dany to Claude, an American born in Haiti who has returned and come to live in the village despite an inability to speak Creole. He has spent time in prison in Port-au-Prince and enjoys the welcoming attitude of the villagers, but he also feels isolated.

In a dream, Dany tells Estina that in America he had a chance encounter with the man who set the fire that killed his parents. Significantly, this man, the landlord of the basement where he lived, is a barber. It turns out that his parents were killed by Ka’s father and that the landlords of the house where Eric and Dany live are Ka’s parents. Dany crept upstairs one night and stood over the barber, intending to kill him only to realize that he could not do so.

The next morning when Dany awakes, Estina is dead. Old Zo and the village women prepare her for burial. She is buried in a previously unworn dress that Dany once sent her from America. The women make cuts in the dress to mark it. People tell stories about Estina, many of them about how she delivered them as babies.

Later, Claude tells Dany the story of how he killed his father. It happened when Claude was 14, when his father got in the way of Claude’s drug habit and provoked his violent anger. However, Claude feels grateful that he has the opportunity to have a mission in life, to make up for his crime.