Do They Know I'm Running? (16 page)

—
I was a mechanic, changing tires, this little shop not far from Chinameca, where I grew up. I knew nothing of Marx, Lenin, that was all lofty nonsense as far as I was concerned. I just wanted a better job. I wanted my girlfriend to be a little less sad, you know? I wanted a country where I wasn’t scared all the time, where I didn’t have to go to work and listen to one of my buddies whisper, “Hey, Faustino, somebody heard you moping and groaning the other day and a couple guys came asking for you this morning.”

Roque followed his uncle’s gaze across the lake.—
What was it you said that pissed them off?

—
Roque, I could have complained about the weather, okay? If some government snitch wanted to make points with the local
jefe,
he’d say I was bad-mouthing the army or the regime or some colonel’s homely wife. Though, I admit, in this one case I’d shot off my mouth stupidly
.

There was this dentist named Regalado in Santiago de María, had connections with some colonels. Tight as turds in a frog’s ass, these people. He started what everyone thought was a boy scout troop, but these guys didn’t go hiking in the hills, learning knots and birdcalls. They killed people—teachers, union members, anybody Regalado considered a Communist. Bodies showed up at the edge of town, maybe just a severed head in a ditch. One time two hands were nailed to the door of a church where the priests were sympathetic to the
campesinos.

Celestina was a teacher in Las Marías, doing Bible-study groups, teaching people their poverty wasn’t a punishment from God, they had dignity. Regalado’s scouts came looking for her one day. She got word just in time, slipped out a window in the schoolhouse, one shoe in each hand, running barefoot through the coffee groves
.

I heard about it that night, no idea where she was, crazy with worry. At work the next day I was fuming, I wanted to butcher the little creeps who’d come to get her. There was a guy in the shop getting a flat fixed, some phone-company minion from Santiago. He heard me going on. We called them
orejas,
guys like that. Ears. They were everywhere, government informants, a hundred thousand of them, all across the country. Next day, it’s my turn for a visit. And like Celestina, I was lucky—never forget that, Roque. Call it what you want: the hand of God, the Virgin Mother, your guardian angel or just dumb luck. All of us who survived the war, we know some unseen force got us out. The ones who didn’t make it out, well, they weren’t so lucky
.

He reached suddenly for his glass of beer and, aiming badly, knocked it over. He cursed, his voice catching in his throat.

—
Maybe it’s time for bed, Tío
.

—
Don’t treat me like an old fool. I haven’t finished my story
.

—
I’m sorry, I
—

—
Be patient, Roque. Listen. I’m telling you this for a reason. A

few weeks later, I met up with Celestina again at the stronghold on

Volcán Guazapa. The
comandantes
discouraged men and women
getting together. Marry yourself to the struggle, they said. Trust me, people were screwing right and left. Not that we were atheist sex fiends, having orgies and black masses, all that government propaganda crap. There was a very brotherly, sisterly feeling among us. The
compas
would bathe in the river wearing just their scanties, the men too, and nothing would happen. But we paired up when we could, if only for comfort. Nothing makes you feel more alone than knowing how easily you can die. And so Pablito came along right before the government launched its huge offensive to get us off the mountain
.

We’d been staging raids from there against the army for a couple years by then. And we had radio broadcasts on Radio Venceremos telling people about the massacres, the atrocities in El Mozote, Copapayo, Mirandilla, Zacamil. The army officers, they hated that radio, hated anyone who dared tell the truth. Finally they started bombing us with white phosphorus to burn away the trees, because we hid in the forests up the side of the volcano
.

There was this American, a doctor who came to help us, his name was Charlie Christian. We called him Camilo. He’d been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, then became a doctor just to help people like us. Celestina worked with him as a nurse. That’s what most of the
compas
did, they worked medical, or food, or explosives. No joke, the women were very good at making and planting land mines, they had smaller hands, better control
.

Celestina saw a boy who was burned all over his body being treated by Camilo and that was when she said we had to get out. The boy had been burned in a bombing raid. There was this kind of plane we called a push-and-pull, it circled once, saw a campfire, and came back, lower this time, so we knew it was on a bombing run. Everyone ran to their shelters—we called them
tatús—
but this boy’s mother didn’t get the door closed in time. The bomb was a direct hit. The explosion cut her in two, she was burned to cinders. The boy, he was maybe two years old, his skin hissed and steamed as they pulled him out. But he was still alive. His mother, shielding him with her body, saved him
.

They took him to Camilo and he did what he could. When Celestina saw that little boy caked in mud and clay to cool his skin, only his eyes and nostrils visible … She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Pablo like that. She began secretly making plans to desert. But it was too late. The
cuilios,
the government troops, they were coming up the mountain. They sent their three toughest battalions—Atlacatl, Belloso, Bracamonte—plus the First Brigade. Ten thousand men. Only way out was to go by way of Copapayo to Chalatenango, cross the Río Lempa up there. We called it a
guinda,
a forced retreat, and even the villagers were coming with us, because they knew the troops would kill them regardless. That was just how it was
.

He fell quiet for a moment, staring off as though at a ghost, or the hope of one. Roque brought him back with:—
You had to leave the mountain …

—
Right. We were struggling through the forest, dragging our mules, carrying the wounded on our backs or in hammocks strung up to a pole so two men could carry them. Nothing to eat but tortillas and sugarloaf. Some of the children died of malnutrition. I saw one boy vomit up worms from his mouth, his nose, right before he died. His mother carried his corpse with her because there was no time to bury him
.

The villagers were lagging behind because they had so many children. Celestina gave me Pablo, told me to go ahead, she would stay behind and round up the others, get them to pick up the pace. I argued, but there was something in her eye, something that scared me. I felt like I could see all the way down into her soul. And there was nothing there. She was already gone. How do you explain things like that? Anyway, it was the last time I ever saw her alive
.

Roque reached out for his shoulder, thinking:
Sin ti
. Without you.—
You don’t need to tell me any more, Tío
.

—
Please, Roque, let me finish
. He smeared the heels of his hands across his face.—
The government caught up with them near Tenango. The soldiers used guns and machetes. Twenty-eight people, mostly women and kids, butchered. By the time I made it back there
,
vultures were picking the flesh from the dead. Dogs were carrying bones away. Some of the women had been sliced open like iguanas when you harvest the eggs. You saw shoes, clothes, schoolbooks scattered all around, some of it charred black, because the cowards tried to hide the evidence by burning it. A few mules were still alive, torn up by gunfire or shrapnel, some with their guts hanging out. The braying, it was hideous. We shot them just for the silence. I found Celestina facedown in a clump of
chichipince.
You’re not a boy anymore, I don’t need to spell out what they did to her
.

Roque felt paralyzed.—
Tío
—

—
I was such a loser compared to her. I fell apart, became worthless as a soldier, a father, a man. I knew that if I didn’t get Pablo out of the country, he might get captured when I did, then he’d get sold to some family abroad. There was quite a racket in that back then. My superiors knew that too, finally they just told me to go, leave, head for the States, I was no good to the
frente
anymore. I was no good to anyone
.

There was a group of people, a few nurses, a professor, a couple reporters, all marked for death and they were heading north, with plans to end up in Los Angeles. I went with them, bringing Pablo. But I couldn’t stay, too many people around MacArthur Park just reminded me of what had happened. I had a friend working in the Napa vineyards, he said I should come stay with him, his wife could help with Pablo. And so I ended up in Rio Mirada. A few years later I met Lucha—and you, your brother
.

Roque wished for something to say, anything to ease his uncle’s heart, if only for a moment. But all he could come up with was:—
I’m sorry
.

Tío Faustino looked up, eyes glassy and vacant.—
No, Roque. I didn’t tell you all that to make you feel guilty
.

—
I meant
—

—
You were kind to listen
.

—
Tío
—

—
I’m a silly, sad old man
. He hefted himself from his chair.—

The moonlight, it makes me morose. And with that, yes, we should head off to bed
. He turned to go in but then stopped, gazing one last time across the glimmering lake.—
“We are the artificers of our own history,” they said
. A morbid chuckle.—
Whatever the hell that means
. He wiped his face again, then gripped Roque’s arm, squeezed.—
I am so proud of you, you know? So gifted. So thoughtful. Everyone says so
.

ROQUE STAYED UP LATE THAT NIGHT, UNABLE TO GET HIS UNCLE’S
story out of his head, wondering how people survive such things. He sat beneath the mango trees, strumming gently as Carmela’s exotic flowers filled the warm night air with their fruitlike scents: Arrayn Silvestre smelling like limes,
sapuyulo
like oranges. The full moon had waned, the yard was dark.

About midnight he heard a car slow and stop at the bottom of the hill, the motor died, a door opened and closed. He listened for footsteps, heard none, went back to playing. Then he sensed it, someone nearby, before hearing the twig snap. Turning toward the sound, he watched as Sisco ventured slowly forward, hands plunged into the pockets of his baggy pants.

“Hola, chero.”
The kid rocked on his heels, a kind of mocking uneasiness.

Roque thought he smelled drink, but something else too, vaguely chemical, like ether or ammonia. “Why did you park down the hill?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Is something wrong?”

“Fuck yes something’s wrong,
puto
. It’s been, like, almost three weeks.”

Roque put the guitar down, for fear Sisco might try to grab it from him, smash it against a tree, just to make some senseless point. “I don’t have anything to do with that.”

“Fuck you don’t.”

“My cousin won’t even talk to me about it. The money, it’s in his hands.”

Sisco pivoted a little in place, like he was trying to find something to kick. He began to cough, couldn’t stop himself for several seconds, his chest rattling with phlegm.

Roque wondered at Sisco’s life here. He’d heard stories about other DPs—deportees from the States—thinking in American slang, living in Spanish, the culture a fading reactionary echo of some fictive golden past, with a chafing revolutionary undertone. The DPs were the hip outsiders, the hopelessly lost but strangely successful:
reggaetón
deejays, concert promoters, hair stylists, tattoo impresarios in a country that put you in prison for flashing your ink. The DPs had cache, if no real rank. They were, hey, Americans. Roque couldn’t imagine Sisco in such company. What was his gift? Sulking, back talk, hanging around. He’d soon be on the way back north to some street corner. Or else get shot dead right here.

The kid finally collected himself, got control of his cough, and the words uncoiled from within him as though off a spool. “Okay, fuck me, what I’m saying—hear me out,
chero
—what I’m saying? Next time, it won’t be me standing here. Am I getting through? It’s gonna be Lonely. And he don’t like you. He thinks you wanted to snag his bitch. Look, look, just listen, a’ight? Lupe? She’s fine and all but she ain’t like his
chorba
or nothin’—not even, not close. But you put pussy in the room, the smell gets on everybody, know what I’m saying? So he’s got this thing for you now, he don’t like you. He don’t respect you. You’re fool material. So get this shit together. It’s finance, man. Plans been made, the money’s supposed to be, like, in hand, in place, what-the-fuck-ever, we ain’t seen shit, and it’s a fucking problem. Get it done. Make a call. Or you can kiss that sorry old man you call your
tío
goodbye, ’cuz he ain’t goin’ no place.”