Hard Red Spring (23 page)

Dorie tried to smile. Had he bought a whole box of those to pass out to girls? She stood up to pour the coffee, thinking too late that it was Emelda's job. “And what do you think of Jim?”

“He's nice.”

“But not
very
nice?” Dorie teased.

Emelda panicked, a seed of fear showing. “No, he's very, very nice, too.”

“It's okay,” Dorie reassured her with a light touch on the shoulder. She often forgot that she shouldn't joke with Emelda. When she had explained the problem with the toilet brush, she tried to laugh it off, but Emelda did not find the incident in the least bit funny. Mortified and convinced her career as a maid was over, she cried for almost an hour. Then she became distressed that she'd inconvenienced Dorie, and further doomed herself with her tears. The only thing that made her feel better was an armload of dirty sheets.

“Are you nervous about your trip?” Dorie asked.

“No. I feel
good
,” Emelda said, confirming this new emotion by straightening her posture. Chairs had been difficult for her at first, but she seemed almost comfortable in this one today.

“Are you happy to be going to Miami? It won't be easy, any of it.” What was she going to do, try to talk her out of it? Jim would kill her. “When I was your age, I made decisions that I regretted later. Decisions that I thought would make my life easy, but everything turned out harder. I hope you've thought this through.”

“I think it will be easy. Much easier than working on a banana plantation.”

“You've worked on a banana plantation?”

“When I was a little girl, all Indians had to work on plantations to pay taxes.”

“Was it very hard work? Did they use whips?” She suspected Tomás had whip scars. One of the reasons he moved so carefully over her. Hiding his back, which felt ridged under her fingers. He never lingered naked. His shirt always the last to come off, the first to put on.

“Yes, they whipped my grandmother for being slow. She was old. Then one day they called us out of the fields, but she did not come because of her bad hearing. My mother yelled for her.
Ixna! Ixna!
She was still working and the airplane came and dropped chemicals on her. It was terrible how she died. It took days. Her insides turned to liquid.”

“I'm sorry, Emelda,” she managed. The coffee's bitterness took hold of her throat.

“It's okay, but now you see going to Miami isn't so bad. I think it will be fun!”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Dorie felt a little better now about the situation, but that story skewed her sense of injustice. She thought again of Tomás, his first job with Fruit, under Ubico's term. His insights given to Jim's father had probably trapped Emelda and her grandmother into that fate. Too ignorant, too afraid to walk past some constructed omen, to freedom.

Dorie finished her coffee, the sweet sludge on the bottom cold on her tongue. She hoped, more than anything, that this old banana baron was kind.

On Emelda's way out the door, Dorie gave her one of her more stylish hats to cover her hair and a note to deliver to Tomás at his office. The hat framed the girl's face perfectly, with small, fake berries suspended on short wires, quivering as she teetered to the door in her heels.

—

That afternoon, Tomás arrived like someone with legitimate business at hand, breezing in while straightening, not loosening, his tie. “How's
The Role of the West
coming?” he asked as a greeting.

“You've been back for days.” She crossed her arms. “You've been here and you haven't come up to see me.”

“I haven't had the time, Dorie, it's been crazy here.” He reached out, but before he touched her she collapsed on the sofa. “All these new suits walking around, these eternal dinners and luncheons and briefings. And Gilberto.” He sighed.

“I know! Gilberto is a problem. More of a problem that anything else. Do you feel like he's watching you, too?”

“I'm not sure, I don't think so. But either way, we can't go on like this. I'll deal with him, I'll figure something out.”

“You could send him to Harvard,” she joked miserably. “He'd go.”

“Yes, that's a cruel joke, isn't it?” he observed. “He thinks college is like the army. He thinks he can just move up through dedication and obedience. He made it to corporal at one point, it seems. And Jim . . .” he paused, remembering more important things. “You haven't told him.”

“No, I haven't. I've barely seen Jim, for all these meetings. How was your trip to Xela?” She reached up for his tie and began to loosen the silk knot between her fingers

“I brought you a present.”

Dorie, imagining another quetzal feather, squared her eyes at him. “What?”

“It's not a thing,” Tomás teased. “It's a bit of hope.”

“Hope?” She laughed, feeling fondness between them returning.

“About that land in Xela. My investigation is turning up some interesting facts.”

She pulled his tie free.

“It turns out the little girl may not have died. She may have survived the murders.”

Outside, a cloud slipped from the sun, brightening the room.

“How do you know? Did you find her?”

“No, but I thought I remembered seeing her in town once, after the murders, but I was so young. I thought it must be a mistake. But when I was in Xela this time, I found witnesses still alive. Witnesses saying they saw the little girl in town right after the murders, too. That she didn't disappear until later. And there's an older white lady living in Totonicapán. No one knows
how she got there. She's a bit nuts, she thinks she's an Indian. Wears Indian clothes and speaks Quiché.”

“I heard the Indian heir claims to be related to the wheat farmer,” Dorie said, searching Tomás's face for a reaction. “Does he have a good case?”

Tomás frowned. “Who told you?”

“Marcella.”

“She shouldn't have.” His hands curled in his empty pockets. “She should not have. It's hard enough keeping her quiet when she snoops around my desk, now I have to worry about who you tell.”

“Who would I tell? I don't care about the Indian. I care about us. What does it mean that people saw the little girl after? Does it help your case or hurt it?”

“Well, it would hurt Fruit's case, definitely. But it would hurt the Communists' case, too. As a legitimate child, the white daughter's claim would trump everyone's and the judge would throw the whole dispute out.”

“And we could leave.”

“Ideally. But these Communists need proof for everything. Technically, no one can
prove
there were murders in the first place. That the family didn't just abandon the property, to flee creditors. They were plenty in debt. That would revoke the daughter's claim. The court might demand someone drag the parents' corpses into court as evidence.”

“Is that a possibility? That they were never murdered?” She was trapped in the apartment, getting fatter, more obvious by the day, while he ran around in the highlands playing the detective hero.

“This time, instead of claiming the murderers weren't working for the community, like they claimed in the thirties case, the Indians are claiming we can't prove murders even occurred without bodies. Which is true, but from the confessions it sounds like there wouldn't be much left to recover.”

“So they got confessions, but no bodies?”

“Dorie, do you even understand what I'm telling you? I'm saying I'm trying to find this little girl. If Fruit knew what I was doing, I'd be fired for sabotaging their claim. I'm sorry I've been out of touch, but I don't even have time to change clothes anymore. If I can find the daughter and convince her to claim the land, we can be free in a week. But I have to be careful, Dorie. No one can know. I've kept that much from Marcella, at least.”

“But where does that leave me? Should I tell Jim I'm pregnant or not?”

“Tell Jim, it'll buy us time. The longer you wait, the more suspicious it'll be. Trust me. You have to trust me. You've nearly ruined us already,
drunkenly accosting me in hallways, sending letters through Emelda. You have to stop sending letters, Dorie.”

“Why? Are you afraid of Jim?”

“Don't talk nonsense.” He sat heavily next to her on the couch.

“Have you found my book on Brazil?” she asked.

“Not yet, Dorie. You know English books are impossible down here.” When she'd wanted to learn about Guatemala ten years ago, Tomás could only find one book in English,
Popol Vuh
, the native creation myth. A myth! Now, of course, Americans wrote books about Guatemala all the time, books like
The Role of the West.
Her understanding of Guatemala remained stranded between myth and conjecture. Brazil, however, would be different.

“Are there universities in Brazil? Do they take women, like they do here?”

“There hasn't been a revolution in Brazil. To take classes there, you may have to join a nunnery.”

Dorie stood up. “Don't make fun of me. I'm serious.”

“I'm sorry. I'll look into it.” He took her hand and made a knot with his own. “What would you like to study?” If he remembered this was the first conversation they ever had, he did not show it. “Last week you told me Spanish.”

“I could,” she considered. “I tried so hard to learn at first, but it's no use if no one will practice with you . . .” She stopped herself, avoiding the topic of Marcella. Things were going so well. “Tell me about Brazil. I know nothing. Is it on the coast?”

“It is, but we probably won't be.” He pulled her back down, rocked her, kissed her hair, and all her frustration dissipated. “We'll be in the hot, buggy interior,” he said.

“Is Brazil where they have that big ancient city up in the clouds?”

“That's Peru.”

“Oh.” She tried to recall other pictures she had seen that might be Brazil. “What about that giant waterfall?”

“Argentina.” Tomás smiled down at her.

“Will our baby speak Spanish?” Dorie asked.

“Oh yes, he'll speak Spanish. And Portuguese and English.”

“Portuguese? What's Portuguese?”

“That's the language of Brazil.”

“It is? I didn't even know Portuguese was a language.” Yet another language added to her life, which she would not understand.

“And there are several Indian languages. Many more than there are
here.” As he went on and on, Brazil began to sound just like Guatemala. A bigger, scarier Guatemala, with cannibals instead of Communists.

“What about our baby?” she asked, to change the subject back.

“He'll be beautiful, brilliant!” He outlined his plans for the baby, the Catholic education, the son following his father to the Fruit offices—for it never occurred to him this baby may be a girl.

“He'll have your eyes,” he said, laying a hand on her waist. His touch electric. The slightest brush against him at a party still jolted her.

“And your hair.” Dorie smiled. She could play this game, coloring in the outlines of this anonymous baby. “And let's hope he has my nose.” She turned to him, reaching up and tracing down the seam of broken bone, like one would follow a road on a map.

~~~~~

Three days later, Dorie went to Marcella's without Gilberto, practicing for maneuvers to come. She and Tomás had not set a date for their next meeting, but it would have to be after he came back from an investigation of the crazy white woman in Totonicapán. Having no idea what she was capable of until she tested Gilberto, she remembered Tomás's advice: deceive and wait for your moment.

Dorie slipped out the embassy gates—waving to Conroy as she did—went in one direction, rounded a corner, then reversed. She walked the entire way to Marcella's, walked an hour. She arrived to find Marcella reading human-interest stories in
Prensa La Verdad
. She translated aloud an interview with an Indian girl whose father had received land from the Communists. Before, he earned a steady wage with United Fruit. Good year or bad year, he could always rely on making the same wage. With their new land, he quit this job to plow and plant his own fields, but no rain came. They had borrowed money for farming equipment, now they had nothing to repay the loans. Her parents, in despair, started to drink away what little money they had. They couldn't sell the land, because everyone else knew they'd get land for free if they waited long enough. Drunk and desperate, her mother got onto the complicated plow, didn't know how to stop it, and accidentally ran over her father. Just plowed his body into the field. Then she killed herself.

“
Our land
,” she read, “
is only good for one thing, and that's burying my family
.” Marcella performed this translation with a hand on her breast. The fine line between sympathy and mockery perfectly toed.

The story chilled Dorie so that she turned to her coffee for warmth. “How could highlanders work for Fruit? It's too cold up there for bananas.”

“Highlanders migrate to the coasts to work,” Marcella replied, tossing the paper aside. “Tomás says about half their workers come from there. But still, that story's bullshit. There's nothing worth reading anymore, now that the censors are gone. It's all drivel. Anyone can write any nonsense they want. At least the censors were educated, they had a sense of story, of
structure
. Tomás—”

“Is he in the highlands again?” Dorie hadn't meant to bite the hook so abruptly.

“Of course.” Marcella sighed. “There's nothing our men won't do for a missing little girl. A little girl fifty years ago! If they do find her, they'll be disappointed she's an old lady.” Marcella wavered in her chair, drunk from spiked coffee. “It's too late for us, Dorie. We're too old for anyone to care if we went missing. Dorie Honeycutt. Such a nice young lady gone missing from Boston, never to be seen in civilization again.”