Hard Red Spring (31 page)

Beyond that, Marcella's story was too much to believe. It disturbed her that she could see Tomás participating in a plot like that, but never Jim. Sweet, teasing Jim.

Out of the highlands, they drove directly into the morning sun. Dorie closed her eyes for relief, but the effort did not produce darkness, only red. Simón must be a revolutionary, she decided. But a revolutionary for Arbenz? Or, she realized, those fighting Arbenz were considered revolutionaries, too. She was in a country where absolutely everyone was a revolutionary.

And what of Emelda? With all this, Dorie had nearly forgotten what Marcella had said about her. Could it be true? She hadn't been whoring her up for an old banana baron, but for Tomás. Tomás found her during his investigation in Xela, and wanted her in his vacation house in Miami. He was the old banana baron. By the age of fifty-seven, Tomás had acquired an Indian bride, a Hispanic bride, and a white bride for himself.

Dorie refused to believe any of it until she saw Jim herself and, looking at him, could imagine him plotting such a thing—just handing her over to be used like that. For what? For pride. To save face the next time Jenks talked about his children. She would look him in the eyes in a few hours and know. She watched the landscape—everything so green, so brilliantly green with the rains. They passed a verdant cliff, with its red clay exposed to the road, ragged and unhealing, as if inflicted by a swift, immense claw.

—

They entered the capital on a small road Dorie did not recognize. Simón stopped the truck, turned it off, to track the sound of an engine drawing near above them. They both looked up and watched a fighter plane pass.

“
Rebelde
,” Simón said as machine-gun fire started up in the distance.

“The rebels are here already? How'd they get fighter planes? How”—her voice rising uncontrollably—“did a bunch of peasant rebels get fighter planes!”

But Simón didn't understand or care. Whoever he had come to help fight needed him. “
¿Dónde?
” he asked, starting the engine again. “
¿Dónde?
”

“Where are we? I don't know, Simón. I can't see anything.”

He inched the truck out of the side street, onto a larger, empty thoroughfare. At first she didn't recognize anything. As they crossed the main road, however, Dorie glimpsed a familiar building.

“Stop,” she said, closing her eyes to compose a map. “Go right here, on this street.” She pointed, and Simón obeyed. They sped the wrong way down one of the recently reversed streets. As they accelerated, another plane, or maybe the same one, swept into view. It bore down on them, dipping low and coming head-on. Simón braked hard in the middle of the street and Dorie caught herself on the dashboard before his arm reached over, grabbed her hair, and forced her down onto the floor. Machine-gun fire cracked as the plane passed overhead, shooting for what seemed like an eternity.

After deciding she had not been hit, Dorie remained on the floor, even as she heard Simón pull himself up, apparently unharmed. She had wet herself and she did not want Simón to see. She felt the warmth spreading under her dress during the assault, but now in the aftermath it began to cool, shameful.

“Okay? Okay?” Simón leaned over, putting his hands out for her. “Okay?”

She bunched her skirt behind her and out of sight as she slid back up to her seat.

“Okay.”

Dorie surveyed the truck: no broken glass, not a bullet hole in the stucco buildings around them. Had they been shooting at someone else?

Simón wrestled the truck back into gear. “
¿Dónde?
” he asked just like before, refusing to be amazed by their luck. They continued straight. She looked back out the truck window, and saw nothing but coffee, spilled all over the road like shell casings. Dorie began to cry.

They saw no troops, no Indian rebels, nothing on the remaining blocks to the embassy. When Simón pulled up to the guard station, Dorie jumped out, still holding the back of her dress. “Thank you, Simón.” She turned to go, but he did not pull away.

“Quetzales!”

“Oh God, yes.” She dropped the money onto the passenger seat through the window. The seat smeared with blood. Simón saw this at the same time she did.

“Okay?” he asked.

But Dorie ran toward the embassy, bent and cradling her stomach as if she'd been sliced open and had to hold herself in. She ran past the gate, where José stood, holding a tray of coffee and snacks, trying to enter.

“José Efraín Ríos Montt,” he repeated, twice, for the guard, who checked his name on a list.

Dorie's sobbing arrival through the front door caused a number of people to stop, midstep, to stare.

“Where is Jim!” she screamed at these suits. No answer. They stared, as if Dorie were insane, as if there weren't planes bombing the city. She ran past them, to Jim's office, empty, and collided with Gilberto as she turned to run through the main hall.

“You're supposed to be in Quetzaltenango!” he yelled, gripping his notebook.

She grabbed him by his suit. “I almost died getting here!” But these words didn't seem to convey the message. He merely watched as Dorie stood there shaking and sobbing.

“Where is Jim?” she moaned.

Gilberto grabbed her upper arm, pulled her back into the office.

“Where the fuck is he!”

Restraining her with a force that shocked her into silence, he barked, “Where the hell is Cortez?” He pinned her against the plaster wall. Trying to get away, Dorie wiped red handprints down the front of his shirt. His nostrils flared, the smell of blood rising. “Be quiet,” he hissed. “Jim's . . .” He hesitated.

“Oh God,” she wailed, feeling her body melt, but he held her firmly in place. “Let me go!” Her left hand flailed at her side, found something heavy on Jim's desk. She swung and hit Gilberto across the mouth with it.

The secretary fell to his knees, as did his composition notebook. He touched his split lip gently as it dripped coins of blood on the floor, onto the open pages, where he'd written his name a hundred times. Dorie looked at the telephone still in her hand. The receiver hanging, droning, spinning in circles at her feet.

“Jesus.” Gilberto laughed, making no move to get up. “He's not dead. He's on the roof. He's on the goddamned roof.”

The roof? She took off down the hall and Gilberto did not chase her. She passed José coming through the door. Suits stepped out of offices to watch as she ran, feeling her own blood slipping down her legs. Ascending the stairs, she ran past the apartment and turned up the third flight. Wires lined the stairs, dozens of them, going all the way up and through the small half-sized door to the roof. She heard gunfire again, closer than before. She stumbled over the wires as she neared the top and fell into the door, which slammed open into blinding brightness.

The first thing Dorie saw was Jim, standing on the roof in full sunlight, waving his arms maniacally at an airplane flying low and headed right for him.

“Jim!” she screamed, but he did not hear over the engine and bullets.

Dorie sank to her knees, knowing this would be her last sight of him, knowing she'd have to watch him take three hundred bullets in the chest and fall down. Her eyes remained wide open, watching in fixed horror as the plane bore down, firing. But there was no smoke, no sparks. Jim waved his arms to the right and the plane then turned that way, turned away. Jim remained standing, his arms now on his hips, as the gunfire started again. And it was then that she noticed the equipment: a large radio antenna and speakers, dozens of speakers cluttering the roof, their wires tangled in a mass. These speakers blared the sound of gunfire.

“Jim!” And this time he heard her. He turned around. He was smiling.

T
he military plane shuddered through the steamy mountain air with a violence suggesting the hand of God. He had taken a notion to either hold them up or dash them on the bright, jagged mountains below, Lenore thought. But as soon as it had come, the turbulence settled. God again, telling her not to worry.

But it was difficult not to, in this plane, without proper chairs or even the calm faces of other passengers to reassure her. Neither she nor Dan had ever flown before last week, when they boarded their first plane together, from Louisville to Houston. Then from Houston to Guatemala City. The flights had been difficult for Lenore, although at least in a real airplane she could order a Pepsi to comfort herself. Now, in the military plane, with the bolted metal twitching and long rigid benches reinforcing the sides, there were only two places to look. She could either turn completely around to look out the window, or stare straight ahead at the soldiers.

Lenore didn't know if you could call teenagers with guns soldiers, but there they were, lined up on the opposite side, facing her. Down the length of the bench, their faces all set in an expression that Lenore could only call blank.

Despite the cramp in her back, her fear of planes, mountains, war, heights, and plane crashes, she chose to look out the window. The mountains of Guatemala looked like moss-covered rocks from this height. As they neared the base, a pale road snaked along their route, then gave out. Like the end of the world. Then there was no road at all, just green. She squinted down, searching for anything: a finger of smoke, a glint of metal, anything that could be a guerrilla camp. Her breath kept fogging the glass, which she wiped clear with her sleeve. If she saw anything, she would tell the pilot immediately. There was more than one way of doing God's work.

Dan, next to her, preferred to look nowhere. Instead, he pretended to read a conference pamphlet. For the past half hour, he'd been on the same page, titled “The Mayan Heart Is Ripe for Harvest.” His leg rested on one of the food aid bags, which had ruptured and spilled yellow dust—cornmeal—
around everyone's feet. Other than the two of them and the soldiers, the belly of the plane had been filled with these bags (
IN THE NAME OF THE LO
RD
stenciled on each) and diapers. The same blue-eyed baby repeated on the plastic packaging, confronting Lenore with a strange middle-aged knowingness.

Lenore spied a break in the canopy, a figure running from the plane's shadow. The Indian costume so bright, like a target itself, then gone. Lenore bit her lip, glanced at the boy soldiers, then ahead to the pilot flipping switches behind the fortification of food aid. She should say something. She had no idea if this plane was armed, but she imagined the pilot dipping down at her suggestion, to fire at the canopy. The figure running, then falling facedown before her eyes.

She turned from the window and said nothing, asking God's patience as she adjusted to her sudden role in this war.

—

General Ahumada Lobos met them on the airstrip after a landing that made Lenore cry. But no one noticed. She had put on her sunglasses. From behind their dark lenses, the General's face looked yellow and puckered, like dried fruit, his eyes two black pits. Unlike the boy soldiers, his uniform was starched, neatly creased, showing no hint of the man inside. The sight of such a formidable figure reassured Lenore. Yes, someone was in charge around here.

Lenore disappointedly fingered her hair. She'd spent a half hour that morning carefully curling the ends under, but it hadn't even taken five minutes for it to reverse itself into an unflattering flip. Dan, she noticed, appeared doughy and shapeless in the unrelenting sunshine. Too pale, too big, too delicate for the tropical climate. Like a grub accidentally turned with the soil, into the light. He smiled down at her.

The General assured them with rough handshakes that he was glad for their help with the Project. He spoke English without much of an accent.

“This airstrip,” he said, “is the Project's first success. Indian work crews finished it in a month. And now we can fly in supplies”—he paused, glowing—“and you! We could make another model village. Good work makes more good work possible.”

“Praise the Lord!” Dan said.

“Yes,” the General agreed, slapping something off the back of his neck. “Praise the Lord.”

“When does the amnesty begin?”

“Yesterday. We've already had many, many Indians surrender. Some are already cooperating and telling us where the guerrilla camps are.”

“Are they
all
guerrillas?” Lenore asked, gazing past the General to the mountains, which were softened into pleasant pastels with fog and smoke and distance. They were surrounded by the enemy, without even a road connecting them to the world they knew.

“Mostly,” the General said. “Why else would they be surrendering?”

“How can you tell the innocent Indians from the guerrillas?” Dan asked.

The General frowned at the question. “We don't call them Indians. We call them Maya now.”

Dan nodded. They had a brochure on that. His rimless glasses floated over his face, making him look so serious. On the sides, only two tiny golden claws showed where the lenses attached to the frames.

“We have ways of knowing,” the General went on, scratching fiercely now where he had slapped before.

“Are you afraid of guerrillas making it into the village, General?”

“Yes, we are always on the lookout for that. That's why we'll have the Civil Patrol. Every town in Guatemala has a Civil Patrol. Not just model villages.”

“And what's the next job?” Dan was eager to get to work. They'd spent months training at their church, and four days shuffling between seminars and collecting brochures at the conference in Guatemala City.

“Roads,” said the General, thrusting a firm hand out to the horizon. “We build roads to break up the guerrilla territory.”

Lenore watched him through the rosy tint at the bottom of her glasses. He was handsome this way. Handsome and in charge. When he smiled, she noticed a stubborn line where his lower lip had once been split.

“I know roads.” Dan's eyes lit up. “I've worked construction my whole life. I quit a job as foreman to come here,” he lied, slightly. He'd been demoted, began drinking again out of despair, then was eventually fired for drinking on the job. Yet he clearly did not consider this a lie. “God must have sent me here to help you.” He shook his head, amazed. “Every day He reveals a little more of His plan to me.”

While Dan and the General talked roads, Lenore glanced down at her feet. On the dusty orange runway, she noticed a small lizard near the General's right foot. This lizard moved in a very peculiar way. Lenore tilted her sunglasses up to see the ground covered with thousands of ants, hauling it in swarming shifts.

“The model villages are very important work,” the General continued. “We're introducing Indians to society. If they surrender under the amnesty,
we will take them in, teach them the value of democracy and hard work, of citizenship, and they will learn to love Guatemala. But they have to learn a new way of life—no more politics or superstitions. To pave the way for that,” he said, thrusting his arm out again at his imaginary roads, “you must change their hearts and spirits.”

“Born again,” Dan assured him. “To start anew, we must all be born again.”

Lenore watched the ants. She lifted one foot, then the other, marching in place and trying to keep them off her.

A military helicopter approached from the west, pulverizing the fog with its propeller. The still morning air became a storm of dust and activity. Soldiers running in every direction.

“This is the larger picture if I ever saw it,” Dan said to Lenore, shielding his eyes.

—

Inside the base, the General led them through scrubbed linoleum halls that gleamed faintly green, reminding Lenore of a school standing empty for summer break. She breathed in the chemical clean, thinking of home. Already she was thinking of home.

“The war,” the General explained with his hands locked behind him, walking, “has been too long. Over twenty years, and now no one knows the sides anymore.” Room after room stood empty, but he pointed to each, giving the tour. “The Communists have stolen military uniforms and killed thousands while wearing them. So even the innocent hate us, which means they don't stay innocent for long. They take up the fight with the Communists out of revenge. That's how the guerrillas recruit, they kill Indians, wearing our uniforms, then convince the survivors to join them for revenge. They don't even know who's killing them anymore.” He sighed, weary with the explanation he no doubt gave every day to soldiers, missionaries, journalists.

“General—”

“Please.” When the General smiled, his lips went white and bloodless on either side of his purple scar. “Call me Gilberto.”

“Gilberto.” Dan nodded.

“How was the conference?” he asked. “I was supposed to teach there, but I could not leave. Too much going on.”

“Very informative,” Dan said. “We learned so much. Really gave us an idea of the larger picture.” Lenore crossed her arms, annoyed that Dan kept using that term, the larger picture. Pastor May's phrase, a phrase that peeved
her. And she had not enjoyed the Open Arms conference. It had been too much—too much information to keep focused on the mission. Politics and horrific pictures she had to close her eyes to.

“And the fun? Did you have fun, too?” The General spoke of fun like it was a foreign country he'd never visit. “Did you do the shark diving?”

“Oh no! That's a bit too adventurous for us. We just stayed at the hotel.”

“It was my idea, the shark diving. I see them when I fly over the water!” He laughed. “For you sharks are too adventurous, but you come to guerrilla country to live?”

Lenore found she did better if danger wasn't mentioned at all. She could go where God needed her, where there were people she could help, and that's how she saw it. Saving souls was the same, in Kentucky or in the middle of a guerrilla war.

“You speak English very well, General,” she said.

“I went to Harvard!” He beamed with his split smile. “I studied political science.”

“Oh my,” Lenore gasped, but then said nothing else, hoping she hadn't offended him by being surprised. Neither she nor Dan had been to college, and now the man she believed made perfect sense to her a minute before became utterly incomprehensible. She had no idea what political science even was.

At the end of the long hall, a figure appeared—an animal, running. Lenore could hear the padding of its paws on the linoleum. She froze, fearful. The fluorescent light burned sickly yellow, defying any attempt to understand. The thing seemed to be running faster, seeing them: a puppy, Lenore realized. A black-and-tan puppy loping up the empty hall at an angle, right up to them. Jumping up, it stretched just to Lenore's knee, licking desperately, whining and nuzzling her hands.

“Who are you?” she asked. Its ears, loose and long, felt like crushed velvet in her hands. She squeezed and pulled.

“Hue-la!”

Another figure, a man, came running from the same direction. A soldier, making a stark shape against the sanitary glow of the hallway.

“Huela!”

The puppy ignored him and the soldier stopped, openmouthed, seeing the General too late. It took him a moment to remember to salute.

The General sighed. “This is Mincho, your interpreter. And this is Mr. and Mrs. Beasley.”

The young soldier smiled, his boyish face breaking with old man teeth. “Hello, Beasties.” He turned to salute them, too.

“Beasleys,” Dan corrected him.

“Mincho is a new soldier, but he speaks Spanish, English, and Quiché. He'll be working directly with you in the model village, interpreting your sermons.”

“Fantastic!”

“
¡Abajo, Huela,
siéntate!
” But the puppy continued to ignore him. Flushing, Mincho scooped it up so it could whine and squirm in his arms. “She's very young,” he explained to Lenore.

“Mincho, get ready. You'll be giving them a tour of the village soon.”

The boy soldier ran back from where he'd come.

“Are the soldiers here allowed to have pets?” Lenore asked.

“Yes, the puppies are very important. Every new soldier gets a puppy. They train their puppy to help in the mountains. Making a good puppy is as hard as making a good soldier.” He nodded down the hall and Lenore saw the puppy padding away, Mincho following with his arms flailing. “And the boys,” the General conceded with a shrug, “get lonely. For many of them, this is the first time they leave their homes. So the puppies help with that, too.”

“That's very nice,” Lenore said. She liked this man: firmly in charge, yet compassionate. Just what Guatemala needed, just what she needed to get comfortable in this peculiar new world. “Teaching both love and discipline, they seem to balance each other out.”

The General's joyless laugh echoed down the hall. “Yes, usually, but not with Mincho. His puppy is terrible because he loves it too much.”

~~~~~

When Dan spoke of the larger picture, Lenore knew he was referring to problems they'd been having. More specifically, problems she'd been having. Just over a year ago, at the town's annual blackberry festival, she had, as Pastor May later told her, hit rock bottom.

As the main festival sponsor, the church enlisted the Ladies of Vision for the setup. They handled everything from food and pony rides to religious literature distribution to covering the greased pole with Crisco for the kids to climb. And Lenore, as the president of the Ladies of Vision church group, became responsible for those responsible.

The day had been hot, with the heat reflecting off the blacktop and
making things at any distance go wavy. Wherever she meant to walk next, no matter where, her destination looked distorted and strange, as if blocked by a wall of invisible flames. Lenore, red-eyed and weary, found herself trekking across impossible distances to yell at the tent salesman, the BBQ pit master, the blackberry juice man, the teenage volunteers, even Pastor May's wife for buying fifteen hundred plain paper plates, instead of the ones with compartments to keep your food from all running together. A headache bloomed behind her right eye. How could anyone forget ice on a day like this? Each dumb face she confronted was like a divine test of her faith.