After the Rains (37 page)

To Natalie’s delight, her father secured a small hut for her less than a hundred yards from his. Apparently real estate in Timoné was not precious. Natalie was amazed to learn that Nate had traded some good lumber, a flashlight, and a coffee thermos with one of his neighbors, Polo del Juarique, for the hut.

When Natalie expressed her astonishment at how seemingly easy it had been to acquire the hut, her father told her modestly, “Well, there is the small matter of my saving the life of Polo’s eldest daughter after she nearly drowned a few years ago. That may have sweetened the deal.” He winked.

Natalie spent a happy morning moving into her new residence. Though only one room and less than half the size of the hut that housed the mission offices, her new quarters boasted a covered porch that was large enough for a picnic-sized table and rustic benches—which Dad had also bartered for—and the hammock Betsy had found when they were cleaning out the clinic.

Now, as the sun grew hot and the air became a sauna, she sought the shade in the sumptuous embrace of the hammock—and the obligatory mosquito netting—and laughed to herself. She had realized the American dream—a home of her own. The house itself might not be much, but her “garden” rivaled any she’d ever seen featured on the pages of
House & Garden
. Just outside her veranda grew foliage in every shade of green and generously dotted with lush orchids, pink and orange hibiscus blossoms the size of platters, and other tropical flora that she could not yet call by name. Tiny hummingbirds flitted among the flowers, sipping nectar, while brightly colored parrots punctuated the more melodious birdsong with their squawking.

Natalie allowed herself half an hour to savor her surroundings before she set off to the mission office. She wanted to get it cleaned before David returned from San José. Dad expected him back today, although Natalie was learning that Timoné operated on a much different time schedule than the world to which she was accustomed.

She filled a small bucket with water from the stream, and with cleaning tools in hand, she entered the office that had served as her bedroom for more than a week. She knew David would be relieved to have his work space back.

She swept the floor and walls and brushed the day’s spider webs from overhead. She moved the furniture—which had been pushed against the wall to accommodate their sleeping mats—back into place and dusted it with a damp rag.

She tidied the few items on her father’s desk. Then she looked at David Chambers’s desk and sighed heavily. He might be nice, but the man was a slob. That was all there was to it. His desk was littered with books and papers, pencils minus their lead, and stained coffee cups. There was even a molding banana peel poked into one of the mugs.

She set the dirty dishes on the stoop ready to take back to her hut. She would wash them with the lunch things and bring them back this afternoon. Entering the office again, she gazed at the two men’s desks. The contrast was stark. How could anyone work amid such chaos? she wondered. She closed the covers of two worn dictionaries and plugged them into empty spots on the bookshelf above the desk. Another stack of books lay on a stool beside the desk. A dozen brightly colored sticky notes protruded from each volume. Natalie left the markers in place, but lined the books up on the crowded bookshelf beside the dictionaries. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the way the books were arranged, and feeling
suddenly inspired, she began to reorganize them, shelving them alphabetically by title. It took some time, but it was a small favor she could offer in exchange for David’s sharing his office so generously with Betsy and her. She couldn’t help thinking how pleased he would be to find his office so well organized and tidy. She wondered how long it would stay that way.

The papers and computer printouts spread across his desk looked important, and she didn’t want to disturb them. She did gather them into one neat stack so she could dust the top of the desk. She sharpened his pencils and cleaned half an inch of lint and dirt from the jar that held pens and scissors and other office supplies. She resisted the temptation to open his desk drawers and organize them as well. She didn’t want to violate his privacy, but perhaps when he saw what she’d done with the rest of the office, he’d give her permission to do just that.

Giving the desk one last swipe of the dust rag, she stepped back and viewed the room with satisfaction. She emptied the pail of water over the edge of the stoop, loaded it with the dirty dishes and the rest of her cleaning supplies, and started back to her own hut. It felt good to be able to contribute.

David Chambers pulled a dingy handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped the sweat from his brow. He shaded his eyes with one hand and tried to gauge how long it would be before the boat docked. After making this trip on the water almost a dozen times, he was beginning to recognize the landmarks along the river.

He hadn’t liked the feel of things in San José one bit. It wasn’t just the paramilitary hanging around the airport. That wasn’t all that unusual. But something was afoot. He could sense it. And he wasn’t the only one. All his contacts in San José had seemed to be on edge.

Though the man hadn’t said anything, there seemed to be caution in the way Pedro Alejandro, the spice vendor at the market, talked, his eyes shifting as if he were searching for something. And Lucretia at the library had been downright frightened. For some odd reason, she had been ready to deny him access to the computers until he reminded her kindly that she
owed him a favor for translating an American Web site into Spanish for her the last time he’d been in San José.

David was anxious to talk to Nate about his impressions. And yet he hesitated to say anything. Of all the rotten times for things to turn shaky—with Nate’s young daughter visiting. Or staying, it appeared. The girl was obviously not cut out for the rough life Timoné offered. And yet she was still here. He would have bet his beard that she’d have been on the first boat back to the States with Nate’s sister. Now she was stuck here for who knew how long.

Still, even when the rest of the country was volatile, their village remained fairly safe. The Timoné had no interest in politics, and except for a few isolated incidents, they had not become involved in the drug trade that seemed to be at the heart of so much of the violence.

David shifted on the uncomfortable seat and checked to be sure his duffel was safely beneath the bench. He smiled to himself as he thought of the thick sheaf of e-mail letters bundled inside. Half of them were for the girl. He wondered if the letters would make her regret her decision to stay. A fair number of the posts were from someone named Evan. He hadn’t actually read the notes, of course, but he’d been young and in love once himself, and as the pages rolled out of the printer, he couldn’t help but notice a few phrases that seemed to go beyond friendly hellos. But maybe things were different nowadays. Heaven knew that whenever he went back to the States, he felt the English he heard on television and on the streets was a completely different language than he had spoken growing up in Ohio. Still, he doubted the language of love had changed all that much since he was a starry-eyed young man. If he tried, he could remember what it was like, and a part of him felt envious of what these pages of Natalie’s e-mail represented.

After what had happened with Lily, he tried not to remember those emotions. He’d long ago put aside any notion of ever having those feelings again. It was too painful.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead again, he glanced at his watch. They’d been on the water for almost four hours. It wouldn’t be long now till the dock at Timoné came into view. It would be a welcome sight.

Thirty–One

W
hen the afternoon rains ended, Natalie and her father trekked down to the dock, thinking they might meet David’s boat. Natalie heard the commotion at the landing before she saw the boat. Though this dock, which served a tributary of the Guaviare, was almost half an hour’s walk from the village, it was a popular place for the adolescent boys of Timoné to play. They swam and fished and watched for the occasional motorboat that docked there.

Sure enough, the boat David was on was just mooring as they rounded the bend in the pathway. The boys hung off the pier and dog-paddled in the water, greeting David and the pilot of the boat with whoops and cheers.

When her eyes met David’s, Natalie waved a greeting, but she hung back while her father exchanged welcoming handshakes and pats on the back with him. They began to unload the supplies, and when Natalie saw that there were many boxes and crates to carry, she went to lend a hand.

When they were each loaded down with all they could carry and there were still supplies on the boat, David motioned to two of the younger boys who stood apart from the others watching them work.
“Ceju na,”
he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled pack of chewing gum, saying something in Timoné that caused the boys’ eyes to light up. They loaded the lads down with boxes, and the five of them hiked back to the village.

Darkness was encroaching under the forest canopy when Dad set his cartons on the stoop and unlatched the door to the mission office. Natalie went in first and put her load on the small table. Hot and sticky and out of breath, she wiped the sweat from her face with her shirttail and watched David, anxious to see his response to the pristine office.

He put down the boxes he was carrying, relieved the native boys of their burden, rewarded them with the gum, and dismissed them. He
glanced around the room, then took the laptop in its padded case over to his desk. His eyes widened, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, but he said nothing.

While they sorted through the supplies, repacking boxes that belonged in the medical clinic and those that went to each of their individual huts, Dad and David talked nonstop—though Natalie couldn’t understand a word, since they spoke only in Timoné.

She tried to pay close attention to pick up the gist of what they were saying, but not one syllable sounded like anything she had ever heard. Their exchange seemed to be friendly banter, and Natalie guessed that David was asking how things had gone while he was away.

At one point she interrupted, holding up a box of supplies. “Whose pile do these go in?”

“Ni,”
David said, shaking his head with a condescending smile.
“Timoné.”

She groaned, then yielded. Smiling sweetly she raised her brows in a question mark, and pointed to the box.
“Que?”
she asked simply. There was more than one way to skin a cat, and sign language was the same in any dialect.

The two men laughed.

“Mi utta,”
David answered, amusement in his eyes. But he did proffer the benefit of sign language back to her, pointing in the direction of his hut. Of course.
Mi utta
. My hut. She added the box to the stack near David’s desk.

He and Nate went back to their conversation, leaving Natalie out of the loop. Soon their voices changed, and she thought she detected the tenor of anxiety in David Chambers’s tone. She watched her father’s face carefully. Once she caught his glance as though they might be talking about her, but when their eyes met his expression gave nothing away. She felt the blood pump a little faster through her impatient veins.

They finished their sorting, and Natalie picked up two boxes of supplies intended for the clinic. She’d been helping her father in the clinic long enough that she knew where things belonged. It would be a good excuse
to get out of here. She cleared her throat to get their attention. Both men looked up at her, but they didn’t break stride in their conversation.

She lifted her chin smugly, indicated the boxes, and turning on her heel said, “Dr. Nate’s.” Well, after all, that
was
his name in Timoné, too.

Still rattling off something to her father and all but ignoring her, David Chambers opened the door for her.

“Égracita,”
she said curtly. Then, pointedly, she told her father,
“Mi utta.”

She huffed down the path toward the clinic. The further she walked the more furious she became. She began to mutter to herself—in defiant English. “I’d like to know what makes him think he can decree what language I speak? By George, I’ll speak English if I feel like speaking English. And not so much as a ‘thank you’ for cleaning off his pigsty of a desk.”

The boxes were heavy, and by the time she reached the clinic she was sticky with perspiration and indignation. She worked the combination on the padlock that secured the door and went in to put away the supplies. Then she went to her own hut.

It was too early to retire for the night, and she was anxious to see if David had brought any e-mail for her, but she decided that she would go to bed anyway. She had no desire to see David Chambers again tonight—or anyone, for that matter. She was relieved that she had her own place to sleep and that it was a good distance from there to a certain hut on the other side of the stream.