Saving the World (33 page)

“But they must have said something about why they've taken over the center?” Alma looks over at Emerson for help. “Didn't you say the kidnappers were asking for their own clinic for the community? No more AIDS vaccine testing?” Emerson looks over at Starr and Bienvenido, who nod in agreement. Emerson nods back. What is this? Alma thinks angrily—a convention of nodding people?

“Ah … You are referring to
those
matters.” The general seems to be drawing out his answers as if to remind Alma that she must speak with more calm and consideration herself. “Yesterday they say they want a termination to testing. They say they want a clinic for the community. That was yesterday. Then they saw the cable TV. They heard the radio. All the publicity. Today they add more things.”

“Like what?” Alma gasps. She feels like the dog in that Goya painting, its head poking out of a sloping mass of—is it quicksand?—that will shortly swallow him up.
Dog Drowning,
it was called. Alma feels like she is drowning, like she can't get enough air in her lungs.

“Señora, it is not clear to me what these individuals want.” The general says with showy regret. He doesn't want to talk to her, Alma can tell. She is being a nuisance.
Get out of the way.
Dad's last words keep running through her head. “We will review this matter with the troops on-site.”

Troops. That doesn't sound good.

“But you must understand,” he continues, addressing his remarks now to Emerson. “Our government's policy is like yours, we do not negotiate with terrorists. We are trying to reason with them. What will they gain if the center is bombarded?”

Alma's mouth drops. She looks over at Starr and Emerson, shocked when they don't immediately protest. They both understand Spanish, so it can't be that. And Jim has been sent down as Swan's rep, so one
would hope he knows the language. Don't they realize what this guy is suggesting? “What do you mean bombard the place?” Alma challenges when no one else does. “My husband is in that center.”

“Señora,” the general reminds her, “there are forty-six patients and personnel in there, along with your husband, and three women who clean and cook and their children who help them. All these lives are very valuable to us.”

Alma feels rebuked. Of course, all these lives are valuable. But she doesn't like hearing
him
say so. This is the kind of platitude that will allow him to give the signal to bomb the center because none of those fifty or so lives are the one life he cannot bear to destroy, his own beloved child, his beautiful mistress, his old mother whose hand he kisses when he visits her for Sunday dinner.

The room is frigid—the air conditioner must be cranked up to top dollar—and unnerving with its heavy drapes and fluorescent lighting, a place where a shady deal is being brokered. She can't stand to listen to this guy talk. Any moment she is going to lose control, reach over and yank off his medals, call him corporal, tell him he can't go bombing innocent people.

Take a deep breath, she coaches herself. Make believe you're Isabel. (This is slowly becoming her mantra.) You've brought the vaccine across an ocean without a single casualty. You saved the day in Puerto Rico. Surprisingly, she does feel calmer.

“Emerson, can I talk to you a second,” Alma says, standing. The group falls silent. Emerson follows her to the far side of the room, where there is a bar with stools. A waiter in a tuxedo is preparing a tray of cafecitos. He looks up; Alma shakes her head. No, there is nothing he can get for her. Behind her, the men continue their discussion.

“Emerson, do you realize they're talking about
bombing
the place,” Alma explains, just in case he didn't understand. “You're not going to let them do that!” It's not a question. She hopes he knows it's not a question.

“Nothing like that is going to happen,” he assures her. But he doesn't flash her his customary smile that seals his words with confidence.
“These guys have to talk a hard line. They're not going to do something stupid.”

Alma is not so sure. Everything is taking too much time! “So when are we going up there?”

Emerson gives her one of his long, assessing looks. No doubt he can see right to the heart of her terror. “I'm going up now with Jim. And Starr knows these people, the ones in the village, and maybe even some of the guys involved. But Alma, it might be best for you to stay until we assess the situation. Don't you have relatives in the capital?”

“I'm going!” she cries out angrily. The room again falls silent. The men sitting in their circle of chairs and couches look over at her. She doesn't care what they think of her. They're not going to usher her away to her old aunts with a sedative and a pat on the head, while they go wreak their havoc. She is going up there! If need be, she is going to stand guard in front of the clinic and let cable TV catch the footage of how her country treats the lives of innocent people! “Why do you think I came all this way? Richard is up there.”

Emerson puts a calming hand on her shoulder. “I know this is difficult, Alma. We're not going to leave you out of anything. I promise. Okay?” He gives her a kindly
Ah, come on now, give us a little smile
look. She hates herself for letting go of her anger, for nodding meekly yes. But she better run with the pack. Who else is there to trust? Everybody seems suspect, including herself. This is what it means to live in a fallen world, she thinks. If only she'd been paying closer attention when she read to Helen from
Paradise Lost
.

That, too, seems laughable here. The idea that literature would have made her live her life any differently than she has. And besides, she doesn't have the luxury right now of being an individual. Setting herself apart. The same broad brush is painting over everyone. She feels the invisible bristles moving over her skin. She shivers as if to shake it off.

“Can you believe how cold it is in here?” Starr has left the group of men just as Emerson is returning to them. Was there an invisible nod between them, Alma wonders.
Your turn to try some female mollification
.
Starr is holding on to her bare arms, which are covered with goose bumps. Alma has to bite her tongue to keep from saying something mean. Why take it out on these people just because they've been spared instead of Richard?

“You smoke?” Starr asks, digging around in her purse, a little leather knapsack with nifty brass fittings. “You mind?” She lights up, when Alma shakes her head. “One thing I love about this country,” she begins, and then, as if recalling the situation, she gives Alma an
Oops, sorry about that
smile, before adding, “You can smoke anywhere you want here.”

“So do you know what else these terrorists are now asking for?” Alma returns to the point everybody seems to be avoiding. All this verbal red tape is making her even more afraid.

“
Terrorists?
Oh please, Alma. Like he said, they're kids. They're probably starting to have second thoughts and want to be sure they get amnesty when it's all over.” Starr twists her head to exhale her smoke away from Alma. “I know all those guys, Moncho and Rubio and Tomás and Salvador. They want attention. And just remember, the last thing anyone wants is a … tragedy.”

Alma can tell Starr considered and discarded a word or two before landing on the literary and elegant-sounding
tragedy
. She probably knows Alma is a writer with a big imagination. Better not use a word that calls up blasted bodies, severed limbs, bloodied faces, the casualties that come when you bomb a place. “You
know
the guys who are doing this?”

Starr needs a drag before answering. She pulls on her cigarette; smoke pours from her nostrils, her mouth. It is an ugly habit, Alma thinks. And Starr is not just pretty, but beautiful. The classic features, the good cheekbones. Plus she is tall and big eyed and pouty-mouthed. Maybe the kidnappers all want to sleep with her. Alma remembers a Southern woman at a party recounting how Savannah was saved from burning during the Civil War. The place was surrounded by Union troops, and the city fathers, trying to ward off the impending tragedy, sent out twenty volunteer beauties to give the soldiers whatever they
wanted in exchange for sparing Savannah. It worked. It's even been done in the Bible. Negotiate for salvation with a beautiful woman. Alma would offer herself if she could. But she's fifty years old. And face it, even when she was Starr's age, she didn't have the goods.

“I'm not sure who all is in on this,” Starr explains. “But I can take a good guess.” She leans in closer for a confidence, holding the hand with the cigarette as far as possible from Alma and waving the smoke away with her other hand. “One thing I can tell you is these guys are not the ones in charge.” She indicates the men behind her, who are, unbelievably, laughing at something. “They're like the welcome wagon.”

Alma feels like a lucky ten-year-old befriended by a cool teenager. She listens, impressed, and vaguely hopeful. Starr will get Richard out. She'll drive up with her pickup full of goodies and a negligee in her purse. “So who
is
in charge?”

“Of the guys inside, probably Salvador. And outside, I'd say the United States of America.” She laughs at Alma's surprised look. “Seriously, nobody here's going to do something unless Jim tells them to.”

“Isn't Jim with Swan?”

“Yes and no,” Starr says, but before Alma can get an explanation, the plainclothesman comes in with their stamped papers and passports. The vans are waiting outside. Alma tries to stick close to Starr and Emerson and, God knows, Jim, but at the last minute, the divvying up lands her in a black sedan. Inside, she finds a woman journalist, who has gotten permission to cover this news item discreetly, so as not to encourage the situation; a plainclothesman who drives; and two of the military guys, including the one Alma thought of as the general in charge, who is calling his wife on his cell phone to say he won't be home for his daughter's quinceañera rehearsal. So much for Alma's native ability to read her culture.

One good thing about her car: nobody seems to be a smoker. They ride into the interior in sealed, air-conditioned comfort. The general lectures for a while on the continuing theme, his two cohorts chiming in: This situation is a rare occurrence. It all comes of this cable television. Alma says nothing. Globalization be blamed. Everybody wants
to wash their hands clean of what is wrong in their corner of the world. But they might be right, like those viral infections that Emerson mentioned, that start somewhere else but spread everywhere and end up bringing the suffering world together.

Alma tries without success to pump the occupants of her car for information. Who is this Jim Larsen fellow? Is anyone—okay, not
negotiating
, but talking to these boy terrorists? What are the new demands they are making? She feels weepy with unanswered questions.

“Señora,” the quieter military man finally speaks up. “We do not know any more than you do.” And she believes him. They were all pulled out of their lives abruptly to attend to this rare occurrence. They, too, were on their way somewhere else, not wanting this to happen. Only the journalist whose job it is to be prepared for the unexpected was ready. She holds up her little overnight case. “It goes with me everywhere.”

By the time they take the turnoff into the mountains, the general has turned genial. It seems he knows several of Alma's relatives. Has done business with her cousin. Once dated another cousin. Hard to believe this chesty, antique character is Alma's age, actually six years younger. He has a wife, a fifteen-year-old daughter, a son with leukemia. His eyes fill. He can't afford to take the boy to the United States, where surely the best doctors could save him.

No, Alma thinks, this guy is not a general.

I
T'S NOT UNTIL THEY'VE
started up the mountain that Alma thinks about calling the sheriff back in Vermont. A lot of good it will do now, late in the day. Still, maybe Alma can avoid a tragedy there. Was Mickey's deadly virus idea what Helen was refusing to go along with that day Alma walked in on their argument? Hard to believe Helen would keep this disturbing secret to herself. Maybe she knew Mickey and Hannah were just fantasizing. And no matter what, Mickey is her son, the boy on her refrigerator holding up his 4-H prize: head, hands, health, heart.

Poor Helen. Her hands weak, her heart ailing, her head muddled,
her health gone. Her boy in jail. Does she know about the scuffle in her bedroom, how Mickey hit the sheriff by mistake? Yesterday afternoon seems so long ago.

Alma asks the occupants of her car if they know where she can make a phone call. She has seen them all using cell phones, so she's hoping they'll oblige. But no one's cell phone seems to be working right now; the most promising, belonging to the attractive journalist, gets a signal but does not have an international plan. “Perhaps your American friends,” the general who is surely not a general suggests. He must think his neighbors to the north are godlike: they can cure leukemia; they can produce cell phones with interplanetary capacities.

The ride is endless. The caravan stops here and there so that the men can take a pit stop, right on the shoulder, their backs to the road. What need for modesty? The road is deserted at this late afternoon hour. Anybody who has to get up or down the mountain has done so. Starr and Alma and the journalist trek out a little farther afield, airing the usual female grievance about the ease with which men can urinate publicly. “The only penis envy I've ever had is when I need to take a leak,” Starr laughs. “So there, Mister Freud.” Her drawl makes a lot of what she says sound funnier than it is.

As for Alma's wanting to make a phone call, Starr's cell won't get a signal until they're on the mountaintop. Of course, her cell works up here, she replies when Alma voices surprise. Bienvenido doesn't know what he's talking about if he told Richard cell phones don't work at the Centro. And the general is right. Starr can call the United States on her plan. Her daddy would die if he didn't hear from her every day.
So there, Mister Freud
, Alma thinks.