Brian D'Amato

by In the Courts of the Sun

  I relaxed a bit. Having him around took some of the wind out of my paranoia. The thing was, I hadn’t known any of these people for very long, except for Taro, of course, and I still wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting into, and I really wanted at least one person around who was on my side, who wasn’t connected to Warren.

  “It’s okay,” he said. He stretched his arms up to the vinyl roof and pushed against it like he was testing how solid it was. I asked him how things were going at the CPRs. He said there hadn’t been any sign of Tío Xac and by now everyone assumed he was dead.

  “I saw Sylvana last year,” he said. “In Tenosique.”

  “Oh. Mmm. How is she?”

  “Casada.”

  “żNo con el pisado del ONU?” I asked. “Not to that UN dweeb?”

  “Simon.”

  “Mierda!”

  “Me das lástima, mano …”

  “I can’t think about it,” I said. “Si comienzo a pensar de él, me hago lata.” “If I start thinking about it I’ll make myself a can. I guess the idiom doesn’t really translate.” I started asking him about his contingency plans but he pointed to the ceiling, meaning we’d talk about it later. I guess he was right; for all we knew these people had nanomicrophones hidden in the rat turds.

  “Pues, vos, me voy a dormir,” he said, and started up this kind of muffled snoring. He had that soldier’s ability to fall asleep anywhere in a few seconds. Anyway, for him a covered cap in an air-conditioned pickup probably felt like the Tallyrand Suite at the Crillon. I looked over at Marena but couldn’t see much. I half inflated a nylon pillow and leaned back on it. I kept wondering whether I should try to sort of cuddle over against her, or pretend to fall asleep on her shoulder, or maybe just ask her if it was okay if I did. No, don’t do anything. Maybe she’ll do something.

  She didn’t.

  We slowed. A sign came up, lit with a single bulb. CAMPAMENTO MILITAR ALTA VERAPAZ, it said, with a painting of a rabid-looking commando and a shield with a black skull and crossbones over the words GUARDIA DE HONOR. Just before we passed it, we turned left onto a graveled road and bent back 130 degrees, toward the yellow direction, the southwest, the direction of the recent past.

  [22]

  We piled out of the truck a mile up the road from San Cristóbal Verapaz. It was just after sundown. You could hear a marimba band playing corridos, competing with loudspeakers blasting the old Ricardo Arjona version of “Time in a Bottle.” The car turned around and left. We split into two groups to attract less attention, with me, Marena, No Way, Lisuarte, and Ana Vergara in one, and the others in the other. We walked.

  I had some bad memories about the place. The hospital there was where I was when I learned about the massacre at T’ozal. But there was a little fiesta going on for San Anselmo, and the idea was that we’d take advantage of the crowd and go through town on foot. Like I said, four ES people were supposedly already there, and as we walked through, they’d look out for anyone following us, or eyeballing us, or whatever.

  Our appearance was worrying me a little. Lisuarte had a big schlumpy hat and looked okay. Marena was going as a new-agey student, and she had it totally down, with strings of cheap turquoise beads around her throat and a beat-up North Face backpack with a FREE TIBET sticker. Grgur didn’t fit in, though. Well, maybe he’d pass for a Turkish heroin dealer. Whatever. We passed some loose dogs and then pigs and then groups of Indians in twos and fours. Everybody said hello. Strangers got noticed around here, although also welcomed. Usually. I saw some faces I thought I knew, so I took my hat off. It felt very wrong. But nobody would recognize me with the bald head. They’d have to be my own mother. Damn it. I wondered about No Way, but I guessed he had his own ways of getting around without being spotted. Anyway, he’d said he hadn’t been here in at least fifteen years. A thin old guy smiled at us with a mouthful of mainly silver teeth, the signature face of Central American dentistry. The mosquitoes were bad. Kids clustered around us, trying to sell us rockets.

  “Heads up, A Team, proceed with caution,” Ana’s voice said in our ears. I could feel all of us tensing a little and then trying to walk as inconspicuously as possible. Headlights came up out of the valley at us and we stood aside and nodded to four blue-uniformed troops in a covered jeep. They roorshed past without acknowledging us. Yay. Just as I thought. It was hard for me to look at them and not imagine their heads blowing up in the crosshairs of a telescopic sight, though. Calm down. They’re fresh conscripts, they weren’t even around then. Breathe.

  Tonto, I thought. Jeez. What the bleeding fizzuck had I meant by that? Tonto did what? Something bad, probably. Ay gevaltarisco. Maybe I’d been just sick and delirious back there. Maybe I just meant, “Rosabelle, believe—after all, Tonto did”? Did I mean I was Tonto? I hadn’t been called that since I was ten, and even then it was just a popular slur, it wasn’t like my nickname or anything. Did I mean “Befriend the White Man, Tonto Did?” Also, tonto is Spanish slang for “stupid.” Stupid did what? What, what, what?

  The road turned into the main east-west street. There were strings of dim little red and white Christmas lights hanging across along with the ropes of colored crepe paper, but the big lamp hanging above the crossroads was out, and since they were usually proud of those things around here I figured it meant the blackout was still officially in effect. Like, sure, the UK was about to launch a Falklands-strength air raid on a country that can’t afford paper towels. Don’t flatter yourselves. There were linked cinder-block house/stores on each side of the road, each house painted a different shade of turquoise, peach, lemon, or robin’s-egg blue, with hand-painted renditions of the logos for Orange Crush, Jupińa Gaseosa de Pińa, and Cerveza Gallo. The last one was an ice store now, but it used to be the United Fruit oficina del comisariato, that is, kind of the company store, and I got a burn of rage looking at it. Very B. Traven. Mate el Pulpo.

  Hometowns are weird. You think they can’t get any smaller or more squalorous, and then every time you go back they still seem more so. It’s the Incredible Shrinking Past. And this wasn’t even really my hometown. When I was little, coming here was like leaving your home in Far Rockaway and visiting Manhattan. Ay yi yi. The Sacred Heart Hospital was just two blocks south, if you could call them blocks. You could almost see it from here. I kept looking at a two-story building across the street. There was a green moldy water-stain on the pink wall under the eaves that was totally familiar. I realized it was the place where the soldiers had made me stand when they lined us up—

  Oh, mierditas. Flashback trouble.

  The G2—which is, or was, the Guate army’s “counterterrorism” squad—had come in that morning to put on what they called a “celebración.” They came in on big old U.S. Army trucks with big loudspeakers and assembled the whole available population, including me in my little white sack dress and all the other kids from the hospital who could more or less walk. They lined everyone up roughly according to height—I still don’t know why—and made us stand in the sun while the commanding officer made a rambling two-hour speech about how the town council of T’ozal, and also of two other towns, had deceived us and how they were all Communists on Castro’s personal payroll. He told us how lucky we were to have a free enterprise economy with all we could ever want if we weren’t lazy, how the country was going to be different, not like under García, how the current government had always kept its promise to treat the Indians fairly, and how the prisoners they’d taken would be tried in a proper court of law. They’d played “Guatemala Feliz” on the loudspeakers over and over. Sixty-eight times, in fact. After every few plays they’d made us all do a pledge of allegiance modeled on the U.S. one, and then they’d play it again, que tus aras no profane jamás el verdugo, et cetera, et cetera, and then there’d be another speech. Finally they read us the list of relocations. It included everyone from my town. It was one of four they’d burned down that week for sheltering “Cubans,” which was what they called anyone with even supposed sympathy for the rebels. They played the anthem again, and played recorded speeches, and played the anthem, and all
of this went on over and over until the CO’s own soldiers got so bored they started picking fights and then beating people up. Most of the three thousand or so Indians and Mestizos in the square didn’t run away but just stood there, not out of passive resistance, but because if they ran they might get shot. Sister Elena—I was seeing her wide face again in too-too hi-def, with all its little pores and the hint of black down on her upper lip—and the other nuns managed to get us kids back into the hospital; I understood what had gone on, a little, and I was just a thrashing little ball of terror. What had happened to my parents?

  So, unlike some of the kids in the ’hood, I didn’t see our house get torched, and I didn’t see my mother and sisters get raped and my father get interrogated and executed. I was away from home. I guess I didn’t even imagine it until a long time after it had happened. In those days I couldn’t imagine my mother being afraid of anything. Now I have this image of her with terror in her eyes and blood in her hair, and a big red can of gasoline in front of her, and I know it’s correct. Todo por mi culpa, todo—

  “Más despacio, vos,” No Way said in my ear. “Let’s slow down a little bit.” He didn’t want us to look too purposeful.

  We oozed into the square. It looked like about five hundred people had gotten up and out for the procesion. A loose herd of kids in parochial-school sailor suits, looking all Coca-Colonized with Bluetooth earbuds and Hello Kitty barrettes, milled around a squad of soccer players in blue jerseys who were strutting around looking all young, hung, and full of spung. We passed through a gauntlet of vendors with stalls of roscos and buńuelos. I got Marena a bag of empanadas de achiote and got two for myself. Four soldiers were playing dominoes on a folding table under a plastic ramada. They just glanced up at us, looking pimply and untrained with their gummy old L85A1s tented together. The clicking tiles triggered this flash of my father and uncles when I was tiny, sitting around a little table, stirring the mysterious spotted teeth as I fell asleep. We passed a few gringos hanging back at the periphery, one group of what I guessed were German tourists, and another group of three that I was pretty sure were evangelical missionaries. I didn’t make out any of the ES spotters, but of course one wasn’t supposed to—

  Oops. Sorry. Out of nowhere a brace of Mormon missionaries had nearly bumped into us. I was afraid they might recognize Lisuarte, but they didn’t seem to. They’re probably not from the Belize Stake anyway. There’s a whole army of those huevos bicycling all over Latin America, cutting weak-willed individuals out of the herd for further intellecticide. Somebody—

  Oh, sorry. Huevos. Maybe I should explain the expression. Huevos are eggs or, figuratively, testicles. Around the Petén we call Mormons huevos because they’re white, like eggs, and there are always two of them, like testicles. Of course, it sounds funnier when you’ve been picking coffee for fourteen hours.

  Somebody killed the tapa cuarenta and the little band started up “O Salutaris.” We followed the crowd’s gaze up the north-south street, which sloped up into the hills. Thirteen cofradores, charge holders, old men in bright striped suits and big hats, were coming down from one of the high north shrines. Nine of them carried big green foliated crosses and the last four carried a palanquin with an old corn-paste statue of Anselmo. He had a bishop’s miter, doleful eyes, and a green bifurcated beard.

  I shifted from foot to foot. I looked ahead at No Way. He looked back. We watched the procession for another half-minute and then No Way eased his way out of the little crowd and moved on to the west. I followed. Marena, Lisuarte, and Ana followed me. At the third residential street we crossed, a group of four Quiché women—the Quiché are a Mayan language group that lives west of here—passed in front of us. They were carrying candles, bougainvillea flowers, and unopened packs of Marlboros, so I had a pretty good guess about whom they were going to visit. I hadn’t seen him before in this town, but he’d be around. Hmm. I asked Marena whether she still had any of those Cohiba Pyramides. She said she had fifteen left and dug the box out of her backpack. I took six.

  “Just give me a second,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I turned to follow the four women.

  “Pen-Pen, what are you doing?” Ana’s voice said in my ear. “Come in.”

  “I just need to do one thing,” I mumbled.

  “Not understood,” she said. “Stay on the route.”

  “Just hang on for a second,” I said. I thought she was going to run up and get in front of me, but No Way sort of happened to get between her and me, and by the time she got around him we were already at the open front of the cinder-block house. The four women were inside, kneeling and adding candles to the hundred or so that were already lit on the floor. The cuandero was sitting outside at a folding table. He looked familiar, but I didn’t know his name and he definitely didn’t recognize me. I nodded my bald head to him. He looked a little askance at it but nodded back, like, go ahead.

  I turned to Marena. “This may strike you as silly,” I said.

  “Uh, no,” she said nonplussedly.

  The women finished and left. I picked my way in through the clusters of flowers and bottles and candles on the concrete floor. Marena followed. There was a little plastic stoup in there and I automatically dipped my hand in it and crossed myself and then got embarrassed about being still programmed after all these years. Marena glanced down into the water and for a terrible second I thought she was going to spit out her gum in it.

  Maximón sat smoking and watching, as he does, in a shrine area at the back of the room, next to his empty coffin. He wore sunglasses, a wide black felt hat, a black suit, a red shirt, and dozens of offering scarves and ties around his neck and shoulders. He was larger than usual. Most of the time he was pretty scrappily constructed, but this cuandero had used an old shop-window mannequin for his body, and the hand that held the silver tip of his staff was feminine, with nails painted in an odd light red, or I guess orange-red, lacquer. His face looked like it had been recently painted, and his black mustache was glossy. His legs were widely spread and there was a tray on his lap with a bowl of twisted quetzales and bottles of Squirt soda and aguadiente.

  I knelt and touched the ground.

  “Salud, Caballero Maximón,” I said. “Ahora bien, le encuentro bien.” I stood up. “Every moment, every hour, every year, I thank you,” I said in Spanish. “And I thank the saint of today, Saint Anselmo, and the cuandero of San Cristóbal, for bringing you here today. And I’ve brought you a few things, just to spoil you.”

  I knelt again and laid the cigars on an offering cloth. They’d been well-kept at high humidity, and even with all the smoke in here you could smell their tangy goodness that was filling the room. Maximón smirked as usual and, it almost seemed, nodded.

  I stood up. “I thank you, seńor,” I said. “God big, God small, God medium. There is one larger, and one smaller, one who takes care of the earth and our feet and our hands. Please bless my grandeza. You count with us the red seeds, the black seeds. You count the stones and skulls along with us. East, north, west, and south, you watch at the crossroads. You watch us when the earthquakes come. You give us the night and you give us the power. All the dead who are dead have taught us how to take care of you, and we will teach the newborn and the unborn. Well, that’s the way it is. We thank you, Sanita. Excuse me for turning my back. Salud, Don Maximón.”

  I turned, walked out, nodded again to the cuandero, put another five hundred quetzales—about sixty-five U.S. dollars—in a Gallo box near his table, “for the novenas,” and left. We walked back to the main street. Ana gave me an angry glare. Well, still, better safe than sorry, I thought.

  “Is that, like, a regular Catholic saint?” Marena asked.

  “Well, he’s kind of off the books,” I said. “He’s not really for good Catholics. He’s for slightly bad Catholics.”

  “Huh.”

  “He goes back a long way, though. Supposedly.”

  We walked west out of town with the brown moon bouncing ahead of us—wenn sie auf der Erde so wenig, wie auf dem Monde, I thought, pretentiously—and down into th
e valley, onto one strand of the network of footpaths under the Cordillera de los Cuchumatanes. A mile out of town the path branched south down alongside the river. I could hear its white noise just out of sight, and I could smell cut reeds and mud, and then mold and something like fresh ginger, and then something else under all those, as faint as the hint of ambergris that might still be evanescing from the dry residue at the bottom of an empty Guerlain Samsara flask that you might pick out of a dusty box at a flea market on a hot afternoon: the pheromone for home.

  [23]

  Sylvana’s eyelash fluttered against my shoulder, the way it used to when she was dreaming, but it wasn’t her, it was something else, scratch it. Thing! Live thing. Okay, got it, oops, now on the back of my hand, running up the arm, shake it off shakeoffoff. I spasmed with prelinguistic revulsion. The little brown lizard dropped casually off my wrist and padded away over the metalized-nylon groundcloth. Qué jodedera. Getting citified in my old age. Not used to critters and shit anymore. I looked at the time readout on my phone: 3:04 p.M. La gran puta. Late.

  Okay. Where the hell was I? The light was an odd purple-blue shade. I blinked up at the ceiling. It was high and corbel-arched.