Hard Red Spring (33 page)

“Your first sermon is tomorrow at eight o'clock. I'll be here to translate. It will be good practice. I never told you,” he confided as if he had known them for years, “that I would like to be a preacher when the war is over.”

“That's wonderful, Mincho.”

“But I am worried about education. Do I need to go to school to be a preacher? I'm not good at school.”

“No, no.” Dan waved his arms in small, strict lines like a referee. “Christianity isn't an exclusive club. Not like the Catholics. If you have the Call in your heart, the only book you need is the Bible. No college needed, no degrees, no fancy connections.”

“And no Latin?”

“Nope. No Latin or expensive clothes, no wine or gold jewelry.”

“No wine?” Mincho, for the first time, looked worried.

“No wine,” Dan repeated, very seriously. “Alcohol clouds your thinking. How can you help others who are confused if your head isn't clear?”

Mincho considered this. As he walked the stage, his boots squeaked, sounding tight and uncomfortable. Finally, he stopped, “But I can have women, right?”

“Well,” Dan was able to reply, “you can get married, yes. Getting married is not a sin, although—”

“Ah!” Mincho seemed satisfied. “Priests have wine and no women, but preachers have women and no wine. I think the preacher wins. Ha ha.”

—

An ill-fitting door, cut from the metal wall, then bolted back with three tight hinges, separated the church from their apartment. It opened with a shrill scream and they found a single room with a double mattress, a table, two chairs, and a hot plate. A single bare bulb of too-high wattage threatened to explode from the ceiling. Their luggage had already been delivered and
filled the room, making it impossible to step inside. Mincho left them there trying to negotiate their entrance.

“Goodbye, Beasties!” He said he would be back, but did not specify when.

“Where are we going to put everything?” Lenore asked Dan. Their bags were all unzipped. She imagined the boy soldiers sniffing her underwear, stretching the waistbands, frowning at their width. “We don't even have drawers to put our clothes in.”

“If there's no place to put our stuff, maybe we shouldn't have brought so much. It's materialism that's the great appeal of communism,” Dan said. “We should be setting an example, showing them that the spiritual world is what really matters.”

Lenore had never heard Dan use the word materialism before, but it had been a main point at the conference. And in order to show that they were here to combat it, they immediately, and with a strange joy, sifted through their luggage, doing away with everything but the essentials. They even tossed the battery-operated hair dryer Lenore had gone all the way to Lexington to buy. Out it went, along with the twenty C batteries brought along to power it.

—

Though their room was windowless, the thin metal walls picked up every noise of the village, amplified it, like a large ear. A slow shuffle of feet, the gurgle and hack of the water pump. The model village came alive again in their absence. They had yet to see a single refugee, though a hundred already lived in the village. Lenore sat on the bed and listened. She put a hand to the cold wall, wanting to feel the vibrations of them right on the other side. This was the larger picture, she told herself. If she went to look, surely everyone would be gone.

Dan stacked their newly condensed luggage against the walls, two high and all around, like sandbags. “Mincho seems trustworthy,” he concluded. Lenore still had her hand on the wall, waiting for something, when she felt the military truck. She felt it a few seconds before Dan heard it.

Outside, as Lenore suspected, everyone disappeared again. The truck idled under the flagpole, with its back end undone to unload its human cargo. Lenore and Dan hung back near the church entrance, watching, holding hands.

Twenty-three Indians reluctantly lowered themselves onto the ground and lined up where the soldiers pointed, too close to the truck. Lenore
watched the exhaust gas around them, but no one noticed or cared. She counted sixteen women, five children, and two men. Scarecrows had more substance, more dignity, Lenore thought, than these Indians. No, Maya. They stood, filthy and exhausted, wavering slightly, like dead trees in the wind.

“God,” she thought she heard Dan say. She could not remember the last time he'd taken the Lord's name in vain.

Lenore noticed a woman among the group in shredded Mayan clothes, which she must have been wearing in the mountains for years, to whom all five children seemed to belong. They never strayed an inch from her, all holding what was left of her rough skirt. Lenore wondered if those little fists had fired guns, if they had killed people. If she imagined the worst, she would never be caught off guard—advice the General gave them.

A soldier walked the line, holding a combat helmet from which he prompted the Maya to draw numbers.

Not knowing how to insinuate themselves, Dan and Lenore stepped backward, back into the cold cavelike air of the church. One of the new Indians raised her head to register their slow, guilty retreat. An older woman, with a gaze so startling, so pale and empty, that Lenore thought the woman must be blind. But no, after a moment Lenore could see that the woman was not blind. Her eyes were just blue. Bright blue, sky-blue, and seeing everything.

Their room, which had seemed so bleak a few moments ago, became welcoming, if only for the fact that it had a door they could close.

“We'll give them some time to settle,” Dan confirmed, as if he'd been asked. “Then tomorrow we'll get to more important things.”

Lenore began to search the supply boxes the church had sent ahead of time. “I think I'm going to organize the children tomorrow. They're so”—she tried to find the word—“serious. I mean, do they even know they're children?” She opened another box. “Those kids need crayons. Where are the crayons?”

—

“It's awfully quiet, for a war going on,” Lenore remarked, after she had found her crayons. “For some reason, I thought there'd be a lot of explosions and screaming.”

“Guerrilla warfare,” Dan said, “isn't like that. It's ninety percent quiet, then before you know it, you're in the middle of a savage, bloody massacre that lasts five minutes. They use fear and paranoia to break down their enemies. Silence is their weapon.”

They both listened to the silence all night, like children trying to scare themselves. A village of a hundred Maya, and no sound. Lenore recalled the pictures at the conference, the ones she had not been quick enough to close her eyes to. Bodies dumped in busy park plazas. Their throats cut open, their tongues pulled through to hang like neckties. A fate reserved for capitalists.

~~~~~

“You've been active in Church activities since you were a little girl, Lenore. Am I right?” Pastor May had asked in the emergency counseling session, the first time she had seen him since the dunk tank. The king of the festival, sitting on his throne while young girls brought him pie and iced tea. Lenore had wanted nothing more than to drown him that day, to see if he could drown.

For the first few minutes, Dan held Lenore's hand. But by the time the questioning began, he let go to fold and refold a healthy-marriage checklist he'd picked up at the foyer information table.

“Yes,” she said. “I was saved when I was eight. Since then, I've been in so many Christian clubs and organizations, I can't count.”

“Have you ever had a crisis of faith? Other than now?”

“No,” she said. “Never.” She looked over at Dan, as he folded with purpose, trying to make something.

“Lenore,” Pastor May said, leaning back with the simplicity of what he had to say. Incredible, she thought to herself. Months of chaos and tears, and already Pastor May had figured it out. She immediately wished Dan had brought her sooner. “Your situation, actually, is very common,” he continued. “Many people, many women, come to me with these same feelings. And do you know what I tell them?” He did not wait for her to say no. “I tell them that their faith is still stuck in childhood. That their faith must grow to fit their adulthood. Do you know what I mean?” This time, he allowed her to answer.

“No.”

“You've been a good Christian since you were eight. It's a great thing, Lenore, but your roots are misplaced.” He paused in a gesture of frankness. “When children take on their parents' faith, they do it for childish reasons. To please, to obey, for approval and praise. Being so young, you could not fully understand the choice you made. And you've never questioned it. Your faith has existed, thus far, in the small picture.”

Lenore nodded, though she did not like where this was going. She needed a larger perspective, sure, but to call her childish was too much.

“But now your experiences have caught up with you. These old roots aren't strong enough to anchor your faith as an adult. Before, you served your church for selfish reasons. For recognition and reward, like”—he lowered his voice discreetly—“at the blackberry festival.”

Lenore felt her face turn hot at the thought of it, pitching baseballs at Pastor May's head. Dan's hand reached across their chairs and found hers, squeezed.

“And when you didn't get recognition for your hard work, you felt as if your faith had no reward. You began to question why you were doing it in the first place. You were working very hard physically, Lenore, but your faith was lazy. You were not glorifying God, you were glorifying yourself. This is acceptable for children, but not for an adult. And now, in order to realign your faith, you must see the larger picture and how you fit into God's plan. Do you understand?”

She said yes, although she wasn't sure. Nothing she did seemed to be for herself. In the Ladies of Vision, she'd cooked for homeless people, visited shut-ins, handed out Christmas toys, and churned blackberry ice cream until her arms went numb.

For two weeks and five more meetings, Lenore pondered this explanation, but Pastor May's insistence that all adults have to go through some sort of crisis, to hit rock bottom, for them to be able to grow in their faith seemed too bleak to her. Why couldn't someone love God purely, instead of needing Him to pull themselves out of despair? Wasn't that a selfish reason in itself? She was too sensible a person to hit rock bottom, to let things get that out of control. But she did not dare say this to either of them, knowing their own personal histories.

Dan had always been bothered by the fact that he was a relatively new Christian, whereas she had known the way her whole life. She had not drank and fought and stolen the first twenty years of her life, like Dan had. She had never been to jail for assault, then for assaulting an arresting officer, for shoplifting and destruction of private property. That had to count for something. Three times, he'd been in jail. The last time, she had bailed him out only after he promised to start attending church with her. But now he had saved her, instead of the other way around. This was not a dynamic Lenore was willing to accept. Saving Dan had been her life's proudest accomplishment.

This stormed in Lenore's mind for weeks, making her resistant to change, unable to sleep. On one of those wide-awake nights, she flipped on
The 700
Club
, and there on the TV screen appeared the new President of Guatemala, José Efraín Ríos Montt.

~~~~~

A scream rattled their small, tinny room, waking them early the next morning. Lenore pulled the scratchy Indian blanket over her head, the terror of her dreams amplified by such a violent awakening. She tried to hide, but Dan was already up and running. She had no choice but to follow, her pajamas flapping, her eyes struggling to see in the raw, early light. The sun had yet to hit the valley, but the military base glinted above them like another sun.

A crowd of Indians had gathered around one of the living sheds. They stood like zombies—filthy and swaying, many with wounds, though none fatal. Through their loose formation Lenore could see a woman collapsed on the ground, wailing like a siren. No one tried to console her. Lenore found Mincho holding Huela on a rope, while pushing and clapping at the congregated Indians.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“This is not good,” he replied. “The General does not like idleness.”

“No, I mean with her. The woman crying.” Moving for a better view, Lenore found a girl on the ground, too, completely enveloped by the sobbing woman. They held each other in a mess of tears, dust, and long black hair.

“And who is that girl?”

“Oh, that's her granddaughter. They just found each other,” Mincho said.

“So then why are they crying?” The woman began clawing at the dirt, while the girl held her waist. Held her to keep her in place.

Mincho pointed to a man standing in the doorway of his shed just next door. “The grandmother picked her house number from the hat, but she says she can't live here next to Leandro.” Huela pulled on the leash, gasping for breath. “Sit,” he commanded. “I mean,
siéntate
.”

“Why?”

“She says he's a Communist and killed her son. The girl says he came into her house dressed like a soldier, chopped up her father with a machete, and stole their land. I think the old lady just found out her son is dead.”

Lenore and Dan surveyed the man in question. A small, bony replica of a man, unimpressed by the women's tears. Everyone, in fact, seemed unmoved. The strangeness of the scene paralyzed Lenore, and she found herself watching, standing just like the others. The old woman moaned and hit
herself, her face, her chest. Through this shocking performance, Lenore spied a flash of her blue eyes.

Forgiveness and national healing aside, Lenore and Dan figured it wouldn't hurt to give this woman some peace and move her to another shed, maybe with her granddaughter. But Mincho shook his head, claiming no exceptions to the rules.