Hard Red Spring (21 page)

Dorie watched Jim very closely. “But the commies are building up, too,” he said, with a ready smile. “You can't compete with the Chinese on that front. We need builders
and
demolition men.”

Thankfully, Jenks agreed, ending that conversation. Another tequila arrived, which he, now mannerly, allowed to be set down. “Thanks, Eduardo.”

“A pleasure, Consul.”

Dorie counted five seconds until Cortez turned to Jim. “You know, it's lovely up in the highlands now. You and Dorie really should take advantage and stay at my villa in Quetzaltenango. It's all yours whenever you want it! Just say the date!”

“Thanks, Christopher, we'll keep that in mind.”

“It's just lovely up there,” he said to Dorie.

“Sounds lovely,” she remarked, wondering how Cortez would ever think they'd go to a dirty Indian town for vacation. But this, she knew, was all he had to offer.

Hospitality did not prompt Cortez to open his villa to them, but rather his desire for an official title. Jim had named Jenks an honorary consul a few months ago for nothing more than the privilege of driving his car. The 1954 Nash Ambassador, with air-conditioning, was much more comfortable than the embassy's 1952 model. The diplomatic plates Jim gave Jenks made drives an easy pleasure, without interference from police checkpoints. Though Jenks did not really need the plates for influence. His family owned Guatemala Radio.

Ever since Jenks became an honorary consul, Cortez came to believe that he, too, could acquire such a title by lending his luxuries to the ambassador. Diplomatic plates might help him with his troubles in the highlands with the Communists.

“Hello!” Marcella and Tomás materialized at the table. Tomás maintained a tight hold of Marcella's waist, possibly to hurt Dorie. His eyes flashed happily everywhere but in her direction as Jim pumped his hand in welcome.

They took seats on the other side of Jenks. Tomás's secretary, whom Dorie had never heard speak (though he could read and write), pulled up a chair behind Tomás. His name was José Efraín Ríos Montt, a graduate of the Latin American Training Center. Baby-faced, he had a crew cut and large ears that betrayed him by turning red with any emotion that overtook him.

“Tomás,” Jim said, ready for the fun to begin. “I brought my secretary to meet your secretary. José, this is Gilberto.”

“You've a secretary now! Splendid!”

Gilberto and José regarded each other warily. Though they each had the same military haircut, much more than the table separated them.

“Let the king order first,” Jenks insisted, as Eduardo bent to take Dorie's order. “Kings first, then ladies.”

Everyone laughed as Eduardo straightened, wondering if he meant Tomás or Jim. Obviously, Tomás wouldn't be in his current position in Fruit without the early influence of Jim's family. Everyone knew this. And everyone knew that Jim held the distinction of representing the most powerful nation in the world. But, more and more, and certainly recently, Jim appeared to be taking his directives not from Washington, but from Fruit. More specifically, from Tomás. While Tomás was away in Xela, Dorie had overheard Jim put off a few calls with Washington, saying he was awaiting instructions from Tomás. Their weekly status meetings, Jim had told her, could not be interrupted for anything. Who held more power now? She thought of Jim, aiming his gun. She remembered Tomás pulling on his pants the other afternoon, talking about kindergartners.

Eduardo took Jim's order first.

“Tomás, I was just telling Jim about my villa,” Cortez said halfheartedly from his corner. “You and Marcella are also invited to stay anytime.”

“Is that so? I may take you up on that,” Tomás said.

Cortez perked up, as if he'd been watered. “Splendid!”

“I just found out I'll be traveling there again in a few days, actually. The great land grab continues.”

“Fuckers.” Jenks played with his silverware. The secretaries eyed each other while the other wasn't looking.

“It's a mess, these land disputes. We've had this piece near Quetzaltenango for over twenty years, and it's involved us in some drama that goes back to the Spanish. If you look at the title, it's like a grocery list, I'm not kidding!”

Marcella, bored with politics, sighed loudly and turned to Jenks. “Has it even occurred to you to offer me your seat so Dorie and I can chat about girl things?”

Jenks grunted and stood to switch seats.

“Coffee?” Cortez asked.

“Yes, coffee at some point,” Jim answered for Tomás. “But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Get this: The local Indians have a title issued in 17-something by the Spanish Crown, saying it's communal land. But then I guess they changed their minds, and there's another title that gave it to the Church a century later.” He paused, sipped his drink.

Tomás picked up the thread, no doubt summarizing their meeting from the other day. “So for a long time, priests farmed it with Indian labor, but after some reforms they rented plots of land out to the Indians so they could
grow food. But then that system eventually became so exploitative that the Indians grew the food and were still somehow starving. So in 1860, a few decades after independence, the priest was expelled by the President and the land was given back to the Indians by the conservative regime.”

“A few years pass,” Jim added, “and suddenly we're in the coffee boom, and the liberal government deems all titles from the Spanish Crown void. So they take the land from the Indians again and sell it for commercial planting, to some coffee farmer, who doesn't even get his trees going before the coffee bust.”

“God, this is boring,” Marcella declared, settling in close to Dorie. She placed a cigarette between her dry purple lips, then glanced up to see both Tomás and Jim holding out tiny flames for her. She looked from one lighter to the other, sighed, and tossed the cigarette back into her purse.

“Communal land?” Dorie asked Tomás, playing dumb, hoping for eye contact. “What's communal land?”

“Property that can be used by everyone,” Tomás said, glancing at her briefly. “So anyone can plant or graze or sleep there. So this coffee farmer tries growing cochineal instead, but the Indians are hostile. He abandons the property, so then the Indians apply for another title, pay for it again. But the government in power denies them on some technicality and sells it to some wheat farmer from New York. Now, this is where it gets interesting.”

Marcella cupped Dorie's elbow to get her attention. “What do you think that little Indian girl is doing right now?”

Dorie imagined the lost maid with a black eye, hiding in a dark alley.

“I bet she's thrown those new shoes in the ditch. They were so pathetically cheap, they must be painful. She'd be better off without shoes. And without English. You know, she told me her grandmother worked for an American. That's how she learned.”

“Oh, you mean Emelda?” She listened to Marcella, though she tried to listen to Tomás, too.

“This wheat farmer and his family are there a few years, then one morning they're all hacked to pieces. Even a little girl.”

The men looked down in collective shock and shame. Cortez's excitement at having a houseguest had vanished.

“A missing little girl,” Marcella confided to Dorie. “There's nothing more horrific than that. A girl went missing near here just last week. Fifteen years old . . .” She kept on, and Dorie nodded, trying to hear the rest of the story.

“Was it the Indians?” Cortez croaked in horror.

“Yes, graphic stuff, according to the confessions. Parents gutted, the little girl raped—”

“Now, now, Tomás,” Jim interrupted. “There are ladies present.”

Marcella rolled her eyes.

“Well, anyway, no one was surprised by any of it. Their own workers killed them, to finally be able to get the title for their people, which they did. After the murders, no one wanted the land. Investors were pulling out anyway for Brazil.” Tomás's eyes grazed Dorie's as he said this.

Cortez raised his hand for a real drink. “Anything,” he told Eduardo.

“So the Indians paid for it and got it,” Jim said.

“So much trouble a girl can get into, roaming the streets alone.” Marcella sipped her golden drink, took a single, purified ice cube in her mouth, and sucked on it.

“So enter Fruit in the thirties,” Tomás continued. “Under President Ubico, a judge rules that the Indians had acquired the title through devious means. The Indians argued there was no proof the executed criminals were working for anyone, but the title was revoked anyway, and we got the land along with a good number of acres surrounding it.”

“The good old days,” Marcella sang around the ice cube in her mouth. “Tomás misses Ubico, don't you? Your job was much easier then. Everything, walking down the street, was easier then, because you carried a whip. Didn't you, honey?”

“What does Fruit want with the highlands anyway?” Dorie cut in. “It's too cold up there for bananas.” There, pretend we haven't had this conversation before, tell it all to me again. But he didn't bite. He frowned at them both, troublemakers.

“The point is, with this land reform, that stretch is fallow. The Indians have applied again to the government. But
more
interestingly,” he said, cutting his eyes dramatically to Jenks, “there's another player now. Someone who claims to be an heir to that land, which trumps everything. An Indian.”

“How the hell does an Indian inherit that land?” Cortez pounded the table.

“Under this government, an Indian could inherit Fruit.” Tomás took his second sip of scotch.

“So what are you going to do?” Cortez asked. “Are you going to appeal if they decide for this Indian?”

“We'll strangle that puppy when we get to it,” Tomás said. A phrase he
and Jim often used, which Dorie didn't like. She had no idea where it came from, but it pleased them to be able to use it. Another one of their private jokes. No, Dorie thought, watching them together, telling this story, Jim would never shoot Tomás. He'd be more likely to shoot her. Dorie excused herself and went to the restroom, where she vomited quietly into the corroded sink.

—

Dorie lingered in the bathroom longer than she needed. She had had two drinks by now, meaning that the entire bar, the entire world, revolved around Tomás. When he leaned over and spoke to Marcella in Spanish, it was like a knife turning in her belly.

They nearly collided in the small, dark hall.

“Dorie.”

“I want to learn Spanish,” she said, inexplicably. “Marcella's always refused to teach me, and I know why!” Not, I'm sorry or I was prevented from our meeting. She intended to say that right away, but his moist eyes, his uncharacteristic wilted expression of hurt uplifted her. He loved her, she was sure of it now.

“Dorie. What?”

“I mean, we need to talk.”

“I know,” Tomás mumbled. “We were supposed to talk yesterday, over lunch.” They stood closely. “Then I called, but you hung up on me.”

“I'm sorry, Tomás. I couldn't come. Jim insists that Gilberto follow me everywhere now. He's paranoid I'll be kidnapped by Communists, or raped by Indians in the street. And the embassy's bugged, I couldn't take your call. Jim broke the phone. It rings and rings. If I pick it up, I can hear you but you can't hear me.”

“I thought you had changed your mind,” he said, his voice trembling. “I thought you decided you wanted to get rid of it.”

“God, Tomás!” she gasped. “Never, I would never! How could you think—”

“You were acting so peculiar at the apartment. You kept talking about Jim, and how guilty you feel, and hinting that Jim might take you back to the States. You were picking a fight. Then when I called later you hung up on me.”

“I was just scared.” They had been gone too long now. But maybe everyone was too drunk to notice. “We have to talk about what we're going to do. Jim's going to find out soon.”

“That's why I needed to talk to you. I just found out, Dorie. I'm going to
be working this land dispute.” He took her hand. If someone came down the hall, nothing could make this meeting seem innocent.

“The one with the murdered family?”

“Yes, Fruit has decided to pursue it. That's why I have to go back to Xela again. And again, and again. They've set a court date six months from now.”

“Six months! Tomás! We don't have six months!”

“I know, I know, Dorie. But we're going to have to make it work.”

“Why, Tomás? Why do we have to make it work? I don't understand.”

“Fruit needs me here now. This is a crisis, and if I left, they wouldn't just give me a cushy job in Brazil. If I left now, I would be fired for abandoning them.”

“Six months is impossible. Is there any way to move the court date up?”

“We already moved it up from a year. The system's absolutely clogged with disputes. There are Indians in the highlands taking land by force.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“For now . . .” he tried, then started over. “For now, you'll have to tell him.”

“Tell him I'm having your baby?” She shook loose of him, appalled.

“No, just tell him you're pregnant.”

“I can't do that to Jim. I can't lie like that!”

“You don't have to lie, Dorie. Just tell him you're pregnant, you don't have to say whose child it is. And we both know he's not going to ask. We have nine months, don't we? Jacobo Arbenz is stepping on a lot of toes, he might not even last that long.”

“Seven months. And the people love Arbenz, he's not going anywhere. I can't lie, Tomás. It's cruel to Jim. I don't like him very much, but I do love him still, in a way. He's been good to me, he doesn't deserve this.”