And with that, the candle gutters out, leaving us in the dark. This time, though, the darkness doesn’t feel as awful as it did before.
We sit like that for a while, a friendly silence filling the space between us. Then I hear Victor shift, his shirt scraping down the wall. His legs pull away from mine and I realize that he’s lying down to go to sleep. I consider the bare concrete floor beneath us. It won’t be comfortable, but I’ve slept on worse.
Gingerly, I lower myself to the ground, keeping the wall behind me. I fold an arm under my head and stare into the blackness, wishing it held the answers we both so desperately need.
14
For the first time since Santiago pulled me from the cave, the devil is waiting for me in my dreams.
I’m walking back and forth in front of the entrance to El Rosario in my dream, the moon high above me, unreachable, the rock lot empty. The whole scene has the flavor of deep night and, other than my footsteps, nothing disturbs the quiet but the sighing of wind over the holes in the rock.
I’m startled to realize I’m wearing a helmet but not my miner’s suit. I can’t figure out why I’m at the mine in the middle of the night. I scan the empty lot in front of me, the barren crags surrounding me. Nothing. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a danger I’m not seeing.
Then, finally, I turn and see an unmistakable glow coming from inside the mine. Just like the night I went looking for Daniel, someone is in there when they’re not supposed to be.
And then, in the way of dreams, I’m deep inside the mine, in the choking heat of zone seven, and I come around a corner and find Daniel, wearing his miner’s suit, sitting cross-legged in front of the devil. The glow I had seen was the reflection of his gas flame in the bloodshot light-bulb eyes of the Tío. I run over and shake my brother, but he doesn’t respond. He sits there, staring glassily, not moving.
The devil looks from my brother to me.
“What have you brought me, that I should spare his life?” he asks.
I think frantically, but nothing occurs to me. Like the last time I faced the devil, I haven’t brought anything to offer him. I grab a stick of dynamite from Daniel’s belt and hold it out to him.
“Here,” I say. “Take this.”
The devil doesn’t take it. I see the coca leaves sifting over him, see the burning cigarettes and streams of alcohol dripping out of his mouth. See my own pale face reflected in his painted light-bulb eyes.
“Not good enough,” he snarls. And wetting his fingers with the tobacco-alcohol drool slavering his jaws, he reaches his damp fingers toward my brother. Before I can move, he closes them over the flame on Daniel’s helmet and it goes out. From the light of my own helmet, I see the darkness overtake him. My brother’s body hits the floor.
When I scream, it brings the devil’s attention to me.
He grins.
“And what have you brought me, that I should spare yours?” he asks, reaching his still-dripping fingers toward my head.
Without thinking, I touch the fuse to the flame on my helmet. I hold the stick firmly between us and I have the satisfaction of seeing the devil’s eyes widen slightly in surprise before the dynamite explodes in my hand.
I wake up with a gasp, and a sound stops abruptly.
I lie there in the dark, trying to figure out what the sound was. I focus on it with all my energy, trying to push the nightmare from my head; trying not to imagine the devil hunkering in the darkness, leaning toward me.
Stiff from lying on the concrete, I shift around a little until I find places on my hip and shoulder that aren’t sore yet, and then I lie still. In the pitch blackness, I count my heartbeats and the snores of the boys in the room around me, each an island in a stale black sea. I try to think about happy things. Slowly, my panicked breathing settles and my muscles unclench. But still I can’t figure out what the sound was that woke me.
In the end, it’s not the sound but the smell that gives him away. As he leans over to push the bottle back into the pile of dirty clothes in the corner, I hear no sound of sloshing liquid; no sound of glass clinking against concrete. But my best friend’s breath washes over me, heavy with alcohol, just like the breath of the devil.
Victor’s drinking! I think. And between that and the horrible dream where I watch the devil of the mines kill Daniel, it’s good that growing up with Papi taught me how to cry without making a single sound. It allows me to weep silently without disturbing the boys around me until I fall asleep.
* * *
The next time I wake, I can tell it’s no longer night because the light leaking into our windowless room from the hallway allows me to see the space around me. I uncurl stiffly. Some of the boys have already left; some are still asleep. I have no idea what time it is. The ones who are awake are looking at me again with those slightly hungry eyes. I hurry to straighten my clothes and sit up. Victor is passed out beside me, arms thrown out to the side, boneless as a fish in a stall at the market.
I stare at him. When did my caring, sweet friend start trying to lose himself in a bottle? I had always assumed that the Mountain That Eats Men was named for the men who died in its mines. Now I see Victor and realize that the mountain is eating him too, as surely as if he had been killed in the rubble along with the other victims of the cave-in.
To distract myself from my thoughts, I take Daniel’s little clay angel out of my pocket and turn it over in my hands. It hasn’t held up very well to being carted around for so many days on end: its face is worn smooth where it’s been rubbing against the fabric, and its remaining wing is half chipped off. It occurs to me that if the wings crumble off entirely, then it will only be a little clay man, not a little clay angel, and for some reason this makes me sad all over again.
“Hey, Victor’s friend.”
I turn to the young man who’s trying to get my attention. I may be wrong, but I think it might be the one who had the photo and the flashlight last night.
“Yes?”
“Do you have any money?”
I shake my head.
“Any food?”
“Not anymore.”
“Coca? Cigarettes?”
“I don’t have anything,” I tell him, and hear the truth in my own words.
“Oh.” He heaves himself into a sitting position. “Are you staying or leaving?”
My eyes flick to Victor.
I need to go home. I’ve already put it off long enough. Now that I haven’t found Daniel, I need to get home to Mami. But I hate to leave my best friend like this. In the murky un-dark of the room I can see older bruises beneath the fresh purpling from yesterday’s beating.
There has to be a better way, I think.
I hate to leave him here battering himself for money and drinking to drown his feelings. Guilt has hollowed him out like four and a half centuries of mining have hollowed out the Cerro Rico. And like the mountain, if I put pressure in the wrong place, I’m afraid he’ll collapse entirely. No, I need to be smart about this. If I’m going to help Victor, I need more than good intentions.
“Leaving,” I tell photo boy. “I’m going home now. Will you tell him, when he wakes up, that I had to go home, but I’ll come back and visit again when I can?”
“Sure,” says the boy with a shrug. He doesn’t seem to care much one way or the other now that it’s clear there’s nothing in it for him.
I pull myself to my feet as quietly as I can, though that’s silly: if the noise of half a dozen people leaving for the day didn’t wake Victor, it’s unlikely that my quiet rustle will. The knee I twisted in the mine still aches in the mornings when I wake up, although once it loosens up, I can mostly walk normally now.
I limp out the door, down the dark, filthy hallway, and onto the street. When I step into daylight, I’m shocked to see the sun straight above me. In the darkness of that cinder-block box, without dawn to cue me, I slept throu
gh half a day! Angry at myself for wasting more time when I should have been home already, I hurry the best I can through the dingier sections of town, toward the areas I know and feel safe in. When I reach the familiar streets of San Cristobal, the miners’ neighborhood, I turn under the big stone arch and cross the bridge by the miners’ health center.
For a moment, I stare at the hulking red mountain before me. I let the big, heavy thoughts pile up in me: that I didn’t find Daniel, that Victor is hurting, that Mami and Abuelita will either be frantic with worry if they think I’m alive, or completely filled by misery if they think I’m dead. That I have no plan for any of us.
My feelings swirl through me like ashes on the wind.
Staring at my feet instead of the horizon, I start walking.
* * *
The difficult work of walking uphill sucks away my energy, and instead of the usual three hours it takes to walk to my house from Potosí, with my wonky knee today it takes me more than five. By the time I’m turning the last cliff corner, the long shadows of late afternoon stretch over everything.
When I finally see our little house and the light spilling out the open front door, I feel relief surge inside me, a hot pressure against the backs of my eyes. I’m home. I hurry my limping steps as much as I can. But when I get to the open door, I see not just Mami and Abuelita inside, but also César. That alone wouldn’t have confused me so deeply—César had been coming by every evening to update us on the search for Daniel, after all—but he’s not sitting and drinking a cup of coca tea or talking. Instead, he’s helping Mami and Abuelita pack all of our things into a pushcart.
Abuelita is facing away from me, folding our clothes and tying them into bundles. Mami and César are breaking down the bed frame. Mami’s face is lined and drawn, and César is moving slowly, as though he were carrying a heavy load or a great sadness. The two of them move smoothly around the small space, and it strikes me that, for so little time having known each other, they work together easily. When Abuelita turns around to place a bundle in the pushcart, she is the first to see me.
She makes a strangled sound and drops the clothes, covering her mouth with her hands. Mami and César spin to see if she’s all right, then turn to see what made her cry out. For a split second they all stare at me, faces pale and stunned. And then Mami is throwing her arms around me, sobbing hysterically, while Abuelita strokes my face with her knobby fingers. César pats me awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Ana!” Mami sobs. “Mi hija! You’re alive! How are you alive? Oh, praise God!”
I hug her tightly, never wanting to leave this moment when I feel safe and loved and wanted.
Eventually the hugging ends.
“Here, sit here and tell us everything.” Mami makes me sit down on the tied bundle of folded clothes. “When you vanished the same day Daniel was found, it broke my heart.”
“Wait, what?” I’m glad I’m sitting down because suddenly it feels like the room is spinning around me. “You found Daniel? Where? Is he okay?” The questions tumble out, one after the other, so quickly I don’t even know what I’m asking.
“The night you disappeared, a tunnel collapsed at the mine,” César says, his rumbly voice cutting through my noise. “When we went to clear the rubble, we found Daniel behind it. He had run, the day of the disaster, away from the blast zone and deeper into the mine, trying to get clear once he realized that the explosions were wrong.”
“Why didn’t he come back up when the blasting settled?” I ask. “Where has he been all this time? Why did no one find him?”
César looks down at his hands.
“He didn’t come back because he fell down a shaft in the darkness and wasn’t able to climb out. We didn’t find him because of how far he’d run: he was in a section we weren’t working in anymore. There had been reports of bad air.”
I stare at César, horror written on my face. In my mind I’m back in the dark and I can feel the cloud of poison dust wrap around me, making my voice tight. I swallow. “He was trapped there the whole time?”
César nods. “He had his lunch sack with him still, and your papi’s. The food and water in them kept him alive, but he was alone in the dark for over four days.” César’s face tightens when he says this, as if thinking about it physically pains him.
“Where is he now?”
“At the hospital,” Mami says when César doesn’t answer right away.
The hospital! We never go to the hospital if we can avoid it—it’s far too expensive, for one thing. Though our government’s socialism means that the bed and the doctor’s time is free, you still have to pay for all the medicine and supplies they use. By the time anyone we know finally has no choice but to go there, they usually die soon after. It’s not a happy place.
“Oh no . . .” I manage. “How . . . What . . .” I don’t even know what I need to ask, but César comes to my rescue.
“He had only sprained an ankle running from the first blast. Maybe a concussion too, but nothing too bad. But that second tunnel failure dumped rubble over him.” I can tell by the tight lines bracketing his mouth that César considers it a personal failure he didn’t find Daniel before this happened. “The rocks collapsed his rib cage. We just got him to the hospital in time for the doctors to save his life.”
Tears leak down my face. I know how frightening it is to be hurt and lost in those tunnels. But to be crushed . . . I shudder. Poor Daniel.
“Will he be okay?”
“Yes,” says Mami quickly, hugging me to her again. “The doctors have fixed him up. They’re releasing him tomorrow. That’s why we’re packing up here.”
I frown at the reminder of what’s been confusing me ever since I walked in the door.
“Yeah . . . why exactly are you doing that?”
I feel Mami freeze where she’s holding me.
“Well, just because you’ve been gone doesn’t mean that everyone else’s stories stopped.” Abuelita chuckles.
I pull away from Mami and stare at Abuelita. “What?”
Abuelita snickers again and pats my cheek.
“Ask your mother,” she says, and returns to her folding, smiling secretively to herself. I flick a glance over to César. Is he blushing? Now I’m really curious.
“Mami?”
Mami clears her throat, not meeting my eyes.
“Well,” she says, “César and I are married now.”
“César?” I ask, stunned. Then, in a show of deep insight, I add, “You?”
Mami smacks me gently on the side of the head.
“Yes, rocks for brains! Aren’t you listening?” She finally meets my eyes and takes my hand in hers. “After they found Daniel, César asked me to marry him. I’ve stayed at the hospital with Daniel for the past five days, but now that they’re releasing him, we’re moving our stuff out of this house and into César’s, over by El Rosario.”
I think my jaw may be hanging open. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I mean, I suppose I noticed how comfortable she was talking with César when he came to our house in the evenings to report on the search for Daniel. And Mami was beautiful in her youth, with shiny hair and thick-lashed eyes, a face wide and flat like the moon, and a round figure that showed she had grown up with enough to eat. Even now, thinner, and with silver in her hair and worry lines on her face, she’s beautiful. She even still has most of her teeth. But marriage? Again? It’s only been a week since Papi’s death.
I realize that there is a silence in the room and everyone is waiting for me to respond. I snap my mouth shut. What is there to say, really? What’s done is done. I don’t know if César drinks, but at least he’s kind when he’s sober.
“Congratulations,” I say, my voice stiff. “I hope you’ll be very happy together.”
I feel a little of the tension go out of Mami’s fingers.
“Thank yo
u,” she says. “Now, tell us about you. Where have you been? Are you okay?”
Mami and Abuelita settle themselves on the edge of the pushcart, close enough that they can both reach for me every few seconds, like they need to remind themselves that I’m still there and not a ghost who visits and then leaves. César leans against the wall, arms crossed in front of his wide chest as if he’s bracing to hear more things he can blame himself for.
Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I tell them everything. I tell them about deciding to go into the mine. I tell them about hearing mystery men and choosing a different route. César scowls at that information but doesn’t interrupt me. I tell them about climbing down into zone seven and finding Daniel’s angel. I realize, with a start, that I was close to Daniel when I found it. He had probably been the voice just around the corner that I heard before the tunnel collapsed. Had I kept walking, instead of turning around, I might have found him. Then again, I tell myself, if I had continued down the tunnel, the blast that crushed Daniel would have caught me too, and Mami would have two kids in the hospital instead of one.
I tell them about the explosion and wandering lost for two days. I tell them about Santiago and Yenni and my time in the posada. I tell them I went into the city instead of coming straight home because I thought Daniel was there. I tell them I found Victor instead, though I don’t tell them what he is doing.
César goes back to quietly packing in the background, as if he can’t stand for his hands to be idle.
“How could you?” Mami demands, her hands cupping my face gently, the opposite of the hard words. “To go down there all alone, without telling anyone . . . It’s a wonder you made it out alive!”
“I know,” I say. “I thought I was going to die. But I made it out. I’m sorry, Mami.”
She shakes her head.
“No more apologies,” she says firmly.
“You are both given back to us from the dead,” Abuelita agrees, pulling me into a bony hug. “This is a time for gratitude. A time of celebration.”
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