Blood Lake (14 page)

There's a stop in Hacha, then a few hot, wet miles more to La Trampa. Two riverfront towns called Hatchet and The Trap. Kind of makes you wonder what things were like around here back in the old days.

Our bloody history is revealed in the names we have given to the places where the landscape has been scored by a ferocious river of human brutality. The invading Incas named the Cuenca basin
Tumibamba
, Knife Valley, which tells you something about how they dealt with the Cañaris they found living there. Then they headed north to fight the Caranguis in the shadow of Mount Cotocachi, and slaughtered so many
in the deep marshes around its base that the place became known as
Yawarcocha
. Blood Lake.

Then the
conquistadores
came along and showed everyone how to
really
get the job done, wading deeper into Blood Lake.

And now we're up to our asses in it.

In the gathering darkness outside my dirty window, the thick, moist foliage begins to dissolve into unknowable and fantastically shifting shades and shapes. The heat draws damp worms of perspiration on my skimpy outfit, but my fingertips are morbidly coolish with trepidation. I'll admit to some fear, since I don't even know the players in the game I'm leaping into.

This is not
Colonel Mostaza
did it in the
biblioteca
with the
cuchillo
. There is not a limited set of suspects, and besides, every Ecuadorian knows that the person who actually may have pulled the trigger was just doing what someone else wanted done. And the Someone Elses in my life experience may be untouchable, but their influence is threaded through the countryside in ways that can be quite visible and also more approachable, if you're wearing the right hat. And the right hat for me is the wide sun-worshipping hat of the horizontal tourist.

I need to prep myself for what's likely to come.

The forest yawns wide, opening up to a relatively well-lit square of single-story cinder-block houses whose owners have clearly opted to put their money into electricity instead of running water. The eerie glow of big screen televisions flickers in and out through the open windows, but all they've got in back is a plastic bucket of filthy water and a hole in the ground.

I am drawn to the bright lights of a general store run by a woman in black who's sitting behind a metal railing designed to keep everything out of reach. She's crocheting what looks like a shroud for a geranium pot. She measures me with a well-trained eye and figures I'm good for one lousy diet soda, so when I start stuffing myself with her homemade bread and cheese she changes her mind and decides to take an interest.

“Not much to do around here after dark,” she says, scanning me from the ground up.

“Really? That's not what I heard.”

“People hear all kinds of things. Depends on who's doing the talking.”

I'm busy licking up cheese crumbs from my cupped hands.

“You want the other side of town, don't you?” she says.

“Maybe.”

“Then you're on your own, honey.”

“Why? What's to see there?”

“The end of the world,
chica
. No laws, no friends, no future.”

“So vote for a new future.”

“Don't joke with me. Politicians are all the same. They come and fill their pockets, then they turn their butts around and take off, and nothing ever really changes.”

I notice that the top of the metal railing has been stripped of paint by the coins of a thousand customers.

“What do I owe you?”

“Five thousand sucres and an explanation.”

I leave her with plenty of cash and the feeling of having been short-changed.

I'm strolling past the barred windows of ordinary people working on minor domestic crises, which seem to ripple out and interfere with the concentric rings of the ever larger crises in which I am entangled, and suddenly I find myself on a dark street where two men in army fatigues are passing broken TVs and plastic serving trays through the window of a gutted house with bullet holes in the cinder blocks.

Crap crap crap cr—

I turn and find a shadow to soak up my silhouette, then I backtrack, pacing evenly and steadily to the corner and trot up the block to the next dirt street, passing darkened windows and a silence I can feel deep in my reptilian brain. I finally arrive in what was once the center of town, and their territory is plainly marked. The square is glowing with the
lights from several bars and whorehouses where I'm sure you can find a few revelers at almost any time. I hope all that bread and cheese helps. I'm going to have to stomach several strong drinks with these maniacs. It's the only way, the latest variation on a very old grift.

I don't know which way this whirligig is going to spin, so I'll have to listen closely and get them to talk and talk, and maybe something will slip out. It usually does. I'm certainly not going to go in there and ask them, “Gee, mister, are you paramilitary guys systematically murdering members of the leftist opposition?” But something a bit more subtle might work. This unit is small enough that a randomly selected corporal or sergeant might actually know something useful, and the right amount of lightnin' oughta get their tongues a-flappin' like a catfish in a tub of bacon grease, yee-haw.

I pick one of the noisier places, so my entrance doesn't exactly stop the beat in its tracks, but within ninety seconds a couple of guys with stripes on their arms have elbowed the grunts away from the barstools on either side of me and have occupied them with such authority you'd think they've been there since the first cornerstone was laid twenty years ago.

“Buy you a drink?” says the sergeant to my right. Not very original, but you've got to start somewhere. His name tag says Musgoso.

“Sure.” Order something weak, with lots of ice. “I'll have a mimosa.”

“A what?”

“Orange juice and Champagne on the rocks.”

The bartender shrugs like he's never heard of either ingredient, and walks away.

“Who's the severe-looking guy on the thousand-sucre note?” I ask, defacing my Spanish with a slightly nasal American accent.

“That's Rumiñahui,” answers Sergeant Musgoso, tapping a few liquor-dampened bills.

“Good old Stone-face,” says Corporal Polillo, the one to my left.

“He was the last of our Inca warriors. He burned Quito to the ground rather than surrender it to the Spanish invaders,” Musgoso tells me proudly.

“Wow, that is so-o-o cool. American money is so boring, you know? You have to look at the numbers to tell the bills apart.”

Sergeant Musgoso swigs the last of his beer and wipes his wiry black mustache with the back of his hand.

“The
quiteños
say that Rumiñahui took off and headed into the mountains east of the ruined capital with the last of the empire's gold.” He pauses to make sure that I'm listening. “Then the
conquistadores
hunted him down and tortured him like a runaway slave, like a captured animal. They ended up killing him, but he never revealed where the treasure was hidden, and no trace of it has ever been found.”

I whistle at the possibilities. “Any gold buried around here?”

“Sure, honey, I know where there's gold,” says Corporal Polillo, but the sergeant brushes him back.

The bartender slops a drink in front of me that tastes like bad whiskey and orange soda. I tell him, “I'm going to need more ice.”

He looks at me like I've got a hell of a nerve asking him for such a hard-to-find item, but Sergeant Musgoso lays it out for him, “The lady said she needs more ice.”

Musgoso continues: “No, they sunk the gold.”

“Damn mountain Indians—” says Corporal Polillo.

“And the crazy Spaniards spent years dredging those icy lagoons looking for the gold and silver that the Cañaris sacrificed to the watery depths by the bargeload. Never found a nickel. Pretty screwed-up story, huh?”

“I'll say.” And the Cañaris have been wearing black for five centuries in mourning for their lost freedom.

“So what are you doing around here?” asks the corporal. “I mean, there's not a lot of tourist attractions in the area.”

“No way. I worship the sun. Can't get enough of it after a winter in New York City.”

“New York City? You really live there?” asks the corporal.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Which part?”

“Corona.”

“No kidding! My cousin Terencio lives in Corona. You know him?”

“Maybe. What's his name?”

“I just said—Terencio.”

“She can't tell you without a last name,” says Sergeant Musgoso. “Corona's a little bigger than La Trampa, Corporal Polillo.”

“Still, there must be
somewhere
worth taking a girl around here,” I say.

“How about the steam baths?” suggests the sergeant, and the corporal smiles and nods in agreement.

“What's so special about a bunch of steam baths?” I ask, jaded and unimpressed.

“These are volcanic steam baths,” says the sergeant.

“They'll cure your rheumatism right up,” says the corporal, using this joke as an excuse to lay his rough hands on my knees. I hope I'm not certifying my own death warrant here.

“I'd love to go, but is it safe?” I say, staying in character.

“What do you mean, safe?” asks the corporal.

“Well, I heard the roads can be dangerous. Wasn't some couple killed around here just last week?” I'm an innocent, wide-eyed tourist.

The sergeant laughs. “Oh, you're safe with us. We control these roads. Nothing happens while we're on watch.”

Then who was on watch last Wednesday when Gustavo Paz and Sonia Segovia were ambushed and killed?

“Don't worry, you'll be completely safe with us,” the corporal reassures me, and they each toss down some soggy bills and grab a bottle for the road.

A second hapless corporal tries to climb into the idling jeep with us, but Polillo slams the door on him, saying, “
Atrasado, cuy asado
,” which means something like, You're late, you roast guinea pig.

“That guy's one ball short of being a bull,” says Musgoso, continuing the farm animal motif.

So now I'm wedged between two unshaven mercenaries taking a long ride through the dark nowhere of night.

“See? Perfectly safe,” says Musgoso, taking a swig and recapping his bottle.

“Yes, it's so safe,” I say. “Do you have to patrol all the roads at night?”

“It's not that hard.”

“Yeah, since there are only three roads,” says Polillo, twisting the cap off his bottle. He takes a big wet gulp using lots of tongue on the bottleneck, then he offers me some. I turn it down this time.

“But what if someone ambushed you like they did to that couple. Oh my God, wouldn't you be scared?”

“Scared?” scoffs Musgoso. “We are
men
.”

“Nobody ambushes
us
,” says Polillo. “We—” He stops himself.

“Well, I just feel so protected,” I coo. “What's the role of women in your group?”

“To lie there and be women,” says Polillo, clucking at the thought of women having a “role.”

Musgoso offers me a hit from his bottle. I guess I have to take a few of these at some point. I take a small sip and hand it back.

“So where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

That's not a reassuring answer. We're covering enough distance to be into the next province by now, which means their area of operations could be more extensive than I've read about in the papers. But after a tense stretch of time, we pass a decaying sign reading Baños: 5 km, and I breathe a little easier knowing that there really are volcanic steam baths in the area.

Yes indeed, nothing like a little geological instability to put your mind at ease. It's all relative.

Although you've got to ask yourself what led the Ecuadorians to build the gay little town of Quito on the
eastern slope of an active volcano, but there it is. During the early days, the royal capital was hit by a deadly plague of scarlet fever, then the towering Guagua Pichincha volcano began to shake the steep walls of the valley and rattle the rafters of the terrorized city. They thought it was the end of the world. But a tough broad named Santa Mariana de Jesús fasted and tormented her flesh and whipped herself until the crimson glistened on her cat-o'-nine-tails to save the city, and that holy martyr predicted that Ecuador would never collapse as a result of any natural disaster but would self-destruct from bad government.

And a hundred years later, when a European expedition came to survey the equator, they were astounded to see the
quiteños
merrily dancing on top of an active volcano. Sort of an encapsulation of my whole experience. I haven't stood on solid ground since I got here.

We pull in to a dark semicircle of cinder-block huts with shapes so undifferentiated they could still easily transform into a secret place of torture, and it's not until we climb out of the jeep and stagger inside, where we are greeted by a caretaker who gives us towels and fresh branches of eucalyptus, that I begin to allow myself to think that I might actually pull this off and get out of here in one piece.

Let the liquor flow, and the tongues loosen.

Steam rooms are commonly separated by sex, but the commandos dispense with that formality, eagerly stripping down to their boxer shorts and warming fresh-cut boughs of eucalyptus over the wooden grate where the volcanic steam billows up, and rubbing themselves with the oily leaves. No one's covering themselves with towels. I peel my top off, keep my bra on, and refuse hard alcohol until they get me a bottle of mineral water to replace the sweat my body's losing.

“
¡Portero, una Guïtig! ¡Rápido!
” shouts the sergeant, clearly used to giving orders.

In a moment, the hand of an unseen attendant dangles a bottle in the mist. It's warm, but it's liquid. Still, the tourist in me has to complain, “Don't you guys have a fridge
or something?” The battle-hardened veterans scoff at my spoiled feminine American ways, eating me with their eyes as I eagerly swallow the carbonated water. Then I have to take a shot of firewater to placate the boys. Then another. I better watch myself.