Hard Red Spring (48 page)

“
Rápido
,” Cruzita repeated, launching one hand off the other, nodding.

“I was lucky, though. I ended up with Dan. I know I'm supposed to regret the fact that I didn't wait, but it was the most romantic night of my life.” She snapped another pink roller shut with satisfaction. “On my seventeenth birthday, Dan picks me up from school and takes me out to this lake. He's got a picnic packed and I'm starving. We're sitting in the car, overlooking the water, and I open up my sandwich and I see it's not a sandwich at all, but a silk scarf I had wanted from Sears. And then all the other things in the basket end up being presents, too. He must have spent fifty dollars on me. He'd never even spent that much on himself. Now, it's funny, because for a while I'm kind of disappointed, since I'm still hungry and I thought there'd be all this food. He didn't think to bring actual dinner. But then the sunset kicks in, and the colors just start melting on the water like an ice cube. Dan tells me that he loves me, that we're meant to be together. We start kissing and he starts touching me, like, and, well, I had no idea what to do. But Dan knew what to do. He just kept on going, you know, not letting me be embarrassed or anything. He would just do things like it was perfectly natural. He knew we'd end up together. He knew it was meant to be.” Lenore made the
conscious effort to still her fingers, which had been twisting Cruzita's hair into knots. “He knew we'd end up together and he just kept saying that, and before I knew it my skirt was up and I was holding my knees together like a vise. He told me that he'd spent a whole week's paycheck on me and that he was in love with me. And he was, I knew he was. And he was so heavy and I just remember how heavy he was and how I couldn't move—and, well, he was right. We ended up together.”

She had run out of curlers and, inexplicably, began looking around the church, as if more would appear. All around, young girls twirled and patted their hair. “Well, I guess the lesson there is that mistakes can turn out for the best. But I was very lucky. It could have turned out badly in so many ways.” Lenore began fanning Cruzita's damp hair with a piece of paper. “So with how it all turned out, I don't regret it. Dan does, though. He told me much later, after he was saved, that he wished I had resisted him. I was a Christian at the time, he wasn't.”

—

Mincho arrived in the church with a bouquet of lilies and a message that the General had decided on another prize for the winner—a week's travel pass to leave the village. Behind him, soldiers unloaded a piano from a military truck. Another gift from the General, for the pageant. Shipped all the way from Xela.

These gifts, not even asked for or expected, made Lenore feel horrible. She had accused the General of mass murder. She'd believed Emelda when, clearly, Emelda had been planning to thwart her all along. After the pageant, she decided, she would apologize and tell Dan everything.

The women huddled around the flowers. Lenore tested a few keys on the piano and considered the travel pass for the winner. She imagined Cruzita going back to her village, the tearful reunions as she planned for a new life. Feeling renewed, she pulled the girl back into her seat to finish her hair. Lenore used the hair dryer and it screamed hot air all around Cruzita's head. When she found a curler gone loose, she pulled it tight. Cruzita whimpered as Lenore twisted and pinned it back to her scalp.

—

The ceremony fell together that evening, with the road crew and the Civil Patrol returned from their duties, and the women in from harvesting the wheat. Everyone pledged to the Guatemalan flag. Immediately following, Lenore began the first verse of “On Bended Knee.” The piano was out of tune
from its long journey over rough jungle roads. She played, trying to find Emelda and the other defectors in the crowd, but they apparently, boldly, had chosen to skip this mandatory event.

Everyone stretched on tiptoe to see the girls file onto the simple stage constructed in front of the church. About thirty soldiers from the base had shown up, too. She had never seen them so animated. The boy soldiers brought to life. They joked, blowing elaborate smoke shapes into the air. Snakes and O's, and a series of puffs like a train.

There wasn't much to the program. With no real charms to display, the girls paraded in groups and individually, in a way that seemed vaguely military. They formed a line, from which each girl walked diagonally by herself. In this way, the group slowly transferred its shy huddle from different corners of the stage. All barefoot, of course.

Running through the three songs she knew, Lenore began again with “On Bended Knee,” watching the audience for their reactions to the ceremony. Some swayed, others jumped to see the stage. They're into it, Lenore told herself, they really are. Even Dan looked happy, clapping a rhythm, rushing Lenore's song.

Since the Maya were illiterate, Lenore had decided that the crowd should vote by applause. So Mincho called each girl's name, the girl stepped forward, and the crowd applauded to the appropriate level. When Cruzita's turn came, the crowd absolutely erupted. Even Dan yelled and clanged his machete on the fence, while encouraging the Civil Patrol to do the same. They cheered so loudly that Lenore turned to see if the soldiers would try to impose order, but they'd started clanging, too.

And so, in the village's first democratic decision, Cruzita was crowned the queen. Lenore grabbed the lilies and rushed onstage. Cruzita met Lenore with wide, astonished eyes, her mouth open in a small
o
of disbelief. And instead of taking the flowers, Cruzita hugged her.

That small moment was enough. Yes, just as Pastor May had said, all her troubles seemed so small in retrospect, with her goal accomplished. With the joy evident on Cruzita's face, the smiling deference of the other women onstage, her uncertainty vanished. The crowd, Lenore realized, appeared to be clapping for her. The village suddenly seemed to appreciate all her hard work, to see the point of what she had done. Turning to face them, her doubts faded. She turned and it felt like turning a corner.

Lenore lingered with Cruzita onstage, wanting to make the moment last as long as possible. She felt her happiness leak away just slightly as Mincho
mounted the stage to explain that Cruzita would have to go to the base to apply for her travel pass. She seemed reluctant, shy to have all this attention on her, but Lenore encouraged her to go. “It won't take long,” Lenore reassured her, through Mincho. “It only took me fifteen minutes to apply for mine. You'll be back before church is over.”

Mincho escorted Cruzita to the gate, where one of the armed guards took over and offered a gentlemanly arm. Lenore watched them make their way up the road, like a courting couple. She basked in the image, of a girl being cherished by a young man. As they ascended the hill, up toward the base, Lenore could hear Dan welcoming the Indians to the church service. “Good evening, my brothers and sisters in Christ. And to those who have not yet come to see the glory of Christ.”

—

The night turned windy and in their room, Lenore and Dan could hear the constructed stage shifting and groaning where its nailed joints rubbed. Over the course of several hours, Lenore's happiness had soured with their continuing fight. In a day, her whole situation had been reversed, with the village a success and her marriage in ruins.

“The pageant was nice,” Dan offered from the table. He was talking to her again, though he'd not yet brought up the hidden letters.

“I think so.” The words trickled out to alleviate the temptation to confess, but they only made the desire worse. Her joints ached, her skin burned. She was so tired, yet she could not nap, for all the Folgers powder she'd consumed. She wiped a line of ants off the wall. “It was very nice of the General to send us the piano and the lilies,” she said. She turned to look at the bottom of her paper towel, covered in dying, flailing ants. But there were always more.

“He's very thoughtful when he's not killing people left and right.”

“All right, Dan. You know that's not what I meant.”

“What, then, did you mean?” He laid his pencil down with a patient click. His handwriting, she noticed, had grown bigger to accommodate the dull lead point. And his sermons shorter, for he measured them by the page.

“I don't know what I meant. I'm not well.” She could no longer hold back the revelation, the excuse for everything. “I need better food. I'm malnourished, Dan. It's made me weak and has affected my judgment.”

“Malnourished? How do you know?”

“I found out in Quetzaltenango. The doctor did tests.”

It was as simple as that to win her husband back and to cast off the guilt of her deceptions and doubts. Suddenly Dan was touching her, brushing her hair back. And with his affections returned, a solvent to all her stubbornness, she became unglued. She cried and admitted that she hadn't wanted him to worry about her, that she thought she could work through the fatigue.

“We can fix this,” Dan reassured her. “All I have to do is write the General and I can get you some food within the hour. I've been eating up there a few times a week.”

“You have? When?”

“Well, it's not just meals. We're conducting meetings, and there just so happens to be food.”

“What have you been meeting about? More roads?”

“And other things. Guerrilla intelligence he's intercepted. I didn't want to worry you, but there are agents here, we've confirmed, planning an attack from the inside.”

“Who?”

“We're just beginning to figure that out. A few of the Indians are on a hunger strike. They're even refusing the corn mix now, because it has wheat in it, or something crazy. They're organizing, definitely. But right now”—he picked up his pencil—“I'm going to write about getting you dinner.”

She fell asleep, and an hour later Dan woke her, with a plate of fried fish, bread, and green beans. Real bread, not made from the corn mix. She sat up and stared at the plate on her lap, knowing she should desire it, but she only felt nauseous from the fragrant steam.

“Here.” Dan placed a cloth napkin over her chest and put the fork in her hand. “Eat as much as you can. Start with the fish.”

She forced herself to eat half the fish, while Dan watched. “How does that feel?”

“I don't know.” She could not tell sick from well anymore. “If I eat too much, it'll just stretch my stomach and I'll be even hungrier tomorrow.”

“That you don't have to worry about. I went up to talk to the General myself, and you'll have all your meals delivered from the base from now on. No more corn mix for you. It was a bad rule. The Indians are used to eating just corn, but we're not. The General apologizes.”

She ate the second half of the fish and felt hunger returning. Then she began tearing at the bread with her teeth.

“The General's also interested in your experiences with that woman, the
one who you said speaks English and told you those stories about the military. He suspected the agent was a woman for quite a while, but he wasn't sure.”

“You mean Emelda?” The name fell out of her mouth with a few crumbs of bread. They landed on the napkin Dan had placed below her chin. She hadn't meant to, but it was done.

~~~~~

The next morning, Lenore remained in bed late, drifting in and out of a shallow, dreamless sleep. Returning from the Civil Patrol, Dan woke her at one point to say—though she wondered in retrospect if this had been a dream, if she had dreamed after all—that he'd be coordinating a counterinsurgency program within the village.

“What does that mean?” she had asked. No answer. He left the apartment bare-chested, with his shirt tucked into the back of his pants like a tail.

He had prepared coffee, but he'd left the Folgers jar open and the ants now carried away the freeze-dried crystals that looked very much like ants, too. There was nothing to do now but to let them take it all away. She sat in bed, watching their line waver over the floor like a crack developing in the foundation.

What else was there for her to do? She had played by the Project's rules and had been rewarded with success, and when she had tried to strike out on her own, had tried to deceive Dan and the General, she had failed. Now that she knew Emelda's intentions, she wondered what the woman had been translating all along. Lenore had given her the power to essentially run her class, and possibly Emelda had used her position to spread lies, to try to organize the women in a revolt. And Lenore had gone along with it, locking the door and allowing them to meet secretly to plot, while pretending to sew their dresses. But not all of them had been pretending. Cruzita and the pageant girls had clearly not accepted Emelda's rebellion.

To go out in the village now, Lenore would have to ally herself with someone. The choice between manipulative guerrilla women and the Civil Patrol did not inspire her either way. She was sick, she should be sleeping. Dan would bring her breakfast soon. Meals, now, were the only thing of certainty.

She slept some more, then woke at the sound of someone in the building. Lenore expected Dan with her breakfast, but Dan didn't come. Instead, she heard a commotion in the church. Pulling the blanket up, she listened to
several women arguing, throwing things. The women's revolt. Something struck the door, leaving a dent. Lenore ran to the door, naked but for her robe and sandals, and pulled the latch.

The sanctuary was completely overturned, with the wooden pews thrown over each other in a pile. Emelda kicked and dragged the long, heavy benches, wailing in a variety of languages that echoed against the metal walls, creating the effect of a mob. But it was only Emelda.

“What are you doing?” Lenore ran to her. “Stop it! Emelda!'

“She's gone!” Emelda cried with her black, furious mouth. “She's been gone all night and still she's not here!”