Hard Red Spring (36 page)

A girl was loitering in the square when Lenore stepped out of the church. Lenore recognized her from the clothing distribution. No more than fifteen, she had surprised Lenore with her dark beauty. It took this second encounter to place her as the girl from that horrible scene earlier in the week, holding her grandmother on the ground. Lenore knew right away what dress to give
her. An elegant white linen dress that she had deemed impractical until that moment. When she held it up, the girl had smiled.

“
¿
Sí?
” Lenore had asked.

“
Bueno
,” the girl said in Spanish. “
Gracias
.” She patted the fabric.

And just like that, Lenore had spoken to her first Mayan refugee.

But now the girl still wore her tattered costume, the white dress she had admired forgotten. Lenore approached and promptly offered salvation to the girl.

“
Sí
,” she replied to this offer. “
Gracias
.” She smiled the same smile as before.

“
¿Cómo say llama?
” Lenore tried, with her rudimentary, conference Spanish.

“Cruzita Sola Durante,” the girl replied, raking a line in the dirt between them with her naked toe.

“Cru-zita,” Lenore repeated, writing in her notebook. She couldn't believe how easy this was, saving an Indian. Mayan.

“Your dress,” Lenore tried. “Where is the dress I gave you?” She ran her hands down her own body, then put her hands up, asking where.

The girl just smiled and smiled, staring down at her doodling foot.

No one rejected her offer of salvation. All the women gave their names, then the names of their children for baptism, then became afraid when Lenore wrote them down. The calls to the sheds all began to run together in her head. She nearly finished one group when she realized she'd gotten them hours earlier. But they'd answered the question, given her their names, panicked at her pen, again.

Some of the clothing appeared on the shed floors as bedding, others hung as privacy screens or were ripped into cloth for washing at the pump. Near the end of the afternoon, Lenore entered a shed with a belted red dress hung in the doorway, filtering the sunlight. A voice greeted her.

“Hello.”

A woman's voice. Lenore drew the dress aside to allow more light. A woman sitting in the dark.

Well, Lenore said to herself. That's a step. No one had tried English with her. But the woman did not move from her place on the floor.

“You know there's electricity here,” Lenore said.

She moved her hand toward the switch, but the woman said, “I like it dark.”

Lenore's vision adjusted, allowing her to see the blue-eyed woman from that first day, sobbing on the ground, then laughing at the fate of Lot's wife.

Surveying the shed, Lenore spied a small tower of stones and a bundle of pine needles on the hot plate. In a corner, ants swarmed a ruptured corn mix bag. Lenore traced their route back to the door. But this woman was neater than the rest. She hoarded the newspapers the soldiers delivered every day, but did not use them for bedding. Instead, she stacked them neatly. And on the wall, she'd pasted carefully torn-out out articles with spit. Right at her elbow, Lenore read a headline: “
La resurrección de Evie Crowder
.” A story accompanied by a blurred photo of a little girl. So blurred that her nose and mouth were pixelated and lost.

—

“Everyone in the village is now signed up for baptism,” Lenore announced the moment Dan returned, dusted gray from a day of marching. Her success had cheered her completely from her guilt about the TV. To repent for the telanovela, she had also moved the junk food box below several others to make it inaccessible.

“Really? Is that why you were running around all day? You got everyone?”

It was basically true, except for the woman who spoke English. Lenore didn't even ask her. She had been so shocked that she had just left without taking her name. Now she wished she had, because after an afternoon of contemplation, she decided that this woman had violated camp rules.

“Dan,” she tried, “I saw in one of the sheds today, someone had what looked like a stone altar, and some pine needles burning.”

“Who? Which shed?”

She proceeded with caution. “I can't remember, there was no one inside, but there aren't pine trees here. There aren't stones.”

“The road crew. The road crew must be bringing it in.”

“Should we confiscate it?” Lenore asked. “Aren't we supposed to?” It seemed so pathetic, so petty. Desperate people smuggling stones and leaves into the barren village. Like people who just missed the forest.

“I can't imagine taking anything from these people,” Dan admitted, wiping his hand on his pants. “Can you?”

“I guess it'll mean more if he decides to get rid of it himself.” Using the masculine pronoun had been automatic. Why was she hiding this woman from Dan?

“Well, one step forward, two steps back,” Dan said cheerfully.

“Two?”

“The clothes. I thought the clothes would be the easiest part. Who would want to wear those filthy rags?”

“I know, Dan. I know.”

“At least the men are wearing them,” he offered lamely. Of course, he knew that the point of the clothing had been the women. It was almost entirely a village of women and children. And the men mostly wore regular clothes already. “Maybe now that you've got everyone signed up for baptism, you can spend your time convincing the women about the clothes.”

Lenore nodded. How could she convince women this traumatized of anything? What could she do, strip them down and force them into the clothes? And Dan had his own problems. “I found out today that a lot of the Indians don't speak Quiché.” He sighed, massaging his eyes.

“What do you mean? That's the Indian language, isn't it?”

“Turns out there are several Indian languages. Quiché's only one.”

Lenore's pride leaked from her, silently. Never had she saved so many souls, but possibly half didn't understand her. She searched for the phrase book, which was lost already in their cluttered room.

“Mincho was trying to teach the men how to secure a building. But some of the guys had no idea what he was instructing.” Dan shook his head, lost himself. “And then the guys who did understand became confused when they saw the others. So half of them fled their positions, and the other half just stood there.”

“What's the use of that?” It had been convincing when she saw the setup. She remembered panic flooding her chest for just a moment, seeing the patrol surround the education building full of women and children.

“It's training, that's all. But how can we train a police force when we don't even speak their language?”

“How did you not know before? It must have been obvious the past few days that they didn't speak Quiché.”

“I have no idea what Mincho says to them. I think he knew, but he thought he was still getting through to them. But, obviously, only enough to march in time and fold a flag. Anything more complicated is impossible.”

“Do you think the General knows?”

“I have no idea. They never mentioned at the conference any language but Quiché. Maybe he doesn't know.”

Dan began rewriting that night's sermon, making it relevant to the
problem with the patrol. He read aloud, remembering their agreement: “
There is a story in the Bible about a place like here. In this place the people wanted to build a tower to reach God. But God punished them. The tower crumpled and everyone was cursed to speak different languages. Hundreds of languages, and no one could understand his neighbor. This is what has happened here. By fighting your government, by trying to impose an unnatural system on your country, you have tried to play God. And you have been punished. You have been brought here, in a confusion of languages, to repent and be reborn.
”

“That's good.” Lenore nodded. “There's a Bible story for everything, isn't there?”

“
God punishes, but He also forgives. He is merciful. He's given you a common language to learn. You can rebuild your nation and finally become Guatemalans under the one true God, one language and one blessed government. All you need is an open heart and patience.
” Lenore smiled, feeling uplifted. The day did not seem like such a failure anymore. Yes, God was merciful, patient. And she needed patience, too. Dan went on, “
The government is providing you with Spanish instruction for free. We are offering you God, for free. All you have to do is accept and be made clean.
” He paused, unsure. “What do you think? I know only half will even understand, but it's better than nothing.”

“It's good, it's good,” Lenore repeated, stirring their dinner on the hot plate. Then she remembered.

“What?” Dan asked, seeing her hesitation. “What's wrong with it?”

“I think it's good, really I do. It's just, I just remembered. The Tower of Babel. That's the Old Testament, too. I thought we weren't going to do the Old Testament anymore.”

Dan tossed his pen aside. “Well, we can't completely ignore the Old Testament. It has valuable lessons, too.”

~~~~~

Whenever a truck arrived at camp to deliver airlifted supplies, no one knew what it carried until soldiers unloaded it. Sometimes supplies for the education building, sometimes newspapers from the capital, or more of the corn mix bags. Everyone gathered to watch. With the first food bag that appeared, the women swarmed the truck. If the door opened to reveal more surrendered Maya, the others would walk away or linger, trying to see a relative.

When new Indians arrived, Lenore signed them up for baptism right
away. Once they disappeared into the crowd, she knew she wouldn't be able to identify them again. She found it difficult, approaching them in this degraded state, asking, before offering even food or water, if they'd like salvation. And who knew what language they understood? But they always said yes, giving their names up so easily that Lenore wondered if they were afraid to refuse. She banished the doubt quickly, however. The Devil, she reminded herself, is an agent of doubt. And only the Devil could twist the idea of salvation in her mind to make it suspect.

Despite her falling into a routine, too much coffee powder put Lenore on edge. The constant explosions in the distance made her jump, the soldiers marching made her clench her teeth. It had been nearly three weeks since she'd signed everyone up for baptism and she'd still had no success with the children or the clothes. More refugees arrived in trucks now, along with some baked rolls—a recent addition to their diet, one per refugee per day. Lenore took the new arrivals' names with shaky handwriting. When she finished, she turned and almost plowed into someone standing directly behind her.

The Indian stood so close that Lenore detected several smells coming off her body—sweat, excrement, smoke, and mud. She'd never been so close to an Indian. The woman kept her head down, extracted a flaking, raw finger from her right fist, and pointed at the list in Lenore's hand. “Emelda Tuq.”

“You'd like to sign up for a baptism?” Lenore studied her, but her head remained lowered. She was sure she had signed everyone up already.

The woman nodded, averting her face. And that was when Lenore knew. Something compelled her, made her unafraid. She touched the woman's chin, directing her face up. A face rugged as bark, with two bright eyes set deep like jewels.

“
You
want to be baptized?”

She pretended not to understand the question.

No one's willingness to have their name on the baptism list surprised Lenore but this woman's. Emelda. She pretended she didn't speak English now. Lenore wondered if she should inform the General of her presence. He said they should report anyone who stood out. This woman certainly did. She'd found something to laugh at in each of Dan's sermons. That disturbed Lenore, more than her bizarre looks, more than her English skills. What did this woman find so funny about all this?

Was Lenore in a position to reject someone's salvation? Yes, probably. Especially if that person had built a pagan altar in her shed. But if she
refused her baptism, the General would be informed. Lenore didn't have the courage to make such a major decision yet. The woman, seeing her name recorded, smiled grimly, showing a mouth full of teeth that looked burned.

—

“Dan, I think I've come up with a good way to minister to the women here.”

Dan did not react right away, but merely nodded at the watery corn mix Lenore presented to him, as if nothing were wrong.

“It's just that I've been working so much with the children.” The past three weeks had been terrible, nothing but a catalogue of failures. She feared that her creeping despair had weakened her mind, allowing the Devil to plant that first seed of doubt. She needed to start fresh, she needed to get away from those dead-eyed children, she needed to get away from the TV. “And you've been working with the men. I feel like we're neglecting the women. And if convincing them to change their clothes is a big part of the Project, well, then I think I may have figured out a way.”

“How's that?”

“I think I'd like to teach the women to sew their own clothes. Their own regular clothes. I think that if they knew how cheap and simple our kind of clothes can be to make, how much more comfortable, then they may be more willing to wear them.”

He spooned the corn mix, letting it drop back into the bowl. “But they already have the donation clothes. Aren't there plenty of donation clothes? Shouldn't we just convince them to wear those?”

“You have to admit, Dan, no one would be excited to wear those donation clothes. They're someone else's cast-offs. If we're going to convince them to change their traditions, we need to at least present them with clothes that fit them properly, that were made for them.”