In Darkness Chapter 8 Summary

Then

  • Giddy up, because Toussaint and his men are riding their horses through the town.
  • They've been freeing enslaved people at every turn, and it feels good.
  • A couple of times, Toussaint has dealt with some overzealous slaves, though. Most of them are just after revenge, and he's making them take a step back and think of bigger picture.
  • What will happen if they burn everything just to teach the slave owners a lesson?
  • Luckily, Toussaint thinks about the future more than how good it might feel to get back at the slave owners.
  • While they're riding, Toussaint sees a body nailed to a tree up ahead.
  • It's Boukman. They nailed his feet, slashed his throat, and shot him. Yikes.
  • Toussaint gets close to the body and takes Boukman's pwen out of his pocket.
  • One of the other men named Jean-Christophe remarks that the stone mustn't work then.
  • Toussaint replies that it depends. If you think about it, the pwen probably protected Boukman from dying right away—any one of those wounds could kill a man.
  • As they chat, Toussaint remembers when he first met Boukman. The guy was playing cards, and talking about—what else?—politics.
  • Boukman told them that white power in Haiti was like a house of cards: It could fall over at any point.
  • He built up a stack of cards to illustrate his point.
  • Then he blew on them. Naturally, the cards all fell down and scattered across the room.
  • Toussaint remembers Boukman saying that they are the wind, ready to destroy the house of cards at any moment.