Godhead

by Hansen, Jalex; Alexander, Writing as Jordan

  The fine edge of the words leveled me. I had become simply a commodity, no one cared for me as a soul, an individual, I was either the product or by product of their fears.

  “But you do padre.” Dante rose and got the coffee pot; he poured more in each of the three cups, his hand steady. “The company has business in many countries. If we do not come to an arrangement then Isabel and I will leave, go somewhere else and start over. Maybe that would be better for all concerned eh? We can leave and let the jungle claim this place.”

  I felt a terrific crushing terror at the idea of being taken away by Dante, of never seeing Julián again. “Please,” I whimpered. It was all I could manage.

  Julián contemplated his coffee, a gray helplessness clouding his face. “I will talk to them,” he said at last. “It is all I can do.”

  Dante said, “I have faith in your powers of persuasion Father.”

  Julián rose and stretched out his hand to me “See me out Isabei,” he said. His voice was gentle. I did not look to Dante for permission, but took Julián’s warm hand and followed him into the sun and down the steps to his bicycle.

  I could not feel Dante watching us so I leaned over and whispered, “Don’t trust him, please.”

  “He is your husband,” he whispered back.

  “There are so many things you don’t understand.” I almost told him everything right there, the weight of my secrets was pressing me into the earth, threatening to bury me.

  He smiled. “That is definitely true enough.” His face grew serious again, the skin stretched tight over his bones. “He is not the problem Isabei. Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s you.” He tried to say it softly so that it wouldn’t hurt. “The people think you brought him here, that you started all of this. They think the devil has a hold of you.”

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t argue. They were right. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No.” His answer was too swift; he frowned at himself, turned away from me. “But you have to do something to fix this, to prove to them that you are not winding them in evil.”

  “What then?”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday. I will come for you in the morning.”

  “He watches me all the time, scrutinizes everything I do, even the simplest things.” I had said too much.

  “I will come for you in the morning,” he repeated. “Only God has the answers.”

  “Even God does not want me anymore,” I said. “He’s not answering me.”

  “Sometimes it is very, very hard to hear him,” he said. He leaned over and kissed my cheek chastely, sensing how much I craved human contact, a kind touch, but his lips grazed the swollen places from the night before and he pulled back. His fingers stroked my face, feeling the planes and angles he had sculpted more than once, recognizing the anomaly. Revulsion crimped his eyes and drew his lips into a thin white line. “He did this.”

  “It was my fault,” I said automatically. “Everything here is my fault.”

  He started to say something, but Dante appeared above us on the veranda, a brewing storm. Julián stepped away from me, his body heavy with helplessness. “I will see you in the morning,” he promised. I retreated up the stairs, stood by Dante watching Julián leave.

  “Goodnight again Father,” Dante called. “Sweet dreams.” He reached over and patted my hand. “You played your part very well,” he said. “Just excellent.”

  Above us the clouds were gathering, ragged puzzle pieces fitting together in the sky.

  Over the receding squeak of Julián’s bicycle I could hear the godhead.

  It was humming again.

  Early in the morning he was back, his collar starched, his expression sturdy and defiant.

  I was dressed in my bedroom, hiding. I peeked around the corner when he arrived.

  “Padre.” Dante sounded surprised. “I didn’t expect you so quickly. They must be eager.”

  “I have not spoken to the Maya yet. I have come to take your wife to church.” He made the word wife sound like a slur, a sickness. Perhaps in this case it was.

  Dante’s voice was steady and low, the warning growl of an angry dog. “I ‘m sure she does not want to go.”

  I stepped out from the doorway made bold by Julián’s presence, as if he carried avenging angels on his back loaded for bear. “I’m ready,” I called, though it came out reed thin and unsure.

  Dante’s eyes were on my face, but I did not meet them. “You usually don’t make decisions without me,” he admonished. Meaning I had made one despite him.

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “I thought perhaps Isabel’s presence in church would be good for your reputation,” Julián said evenly, “All things considered.”

  Dante laughed that ugly bark I hated and clapped him on the back making him wince. “I said you were a shrewd man didn’t I Father? Well go on then. Persuade the natives we mean no harm Isabel, improve our image.” His egotism made it impossible for him to imagine that we might not see as he did.

  As I edged by him to follow Julián, he gave me a short rough poke in the back and a warning glance. I nodded, pretending to conspire in whatever strange scheme he was imagining and hurried past, but it was Julián who felt , my accomplice as we wheeled in quiet reflection to the meeting hall. The lifting feeling of peace lasted only until we walked into the doors together and the congregation made an involuntary collective gasp.

  I started to sit in the back unoccupied row, but Julián pushed me forward to the front and placed me on the end next to a large woman in white, her face scrunched in disapproval, an angry snowball.

  I did not hear the sermon that day, I only listened to the vibration of hostility and fear and distrust that slammed me spiritually, waves of deadly radar pinging me senseless. I remembered that I had loved these people once, that they had loved me.

  As soon as the final prayer was offered I bolted out the door and threw up in a clump of lilies not far from the church. Julián came out and offered me a wet cloth to wipe my face and mouth.

  He brought me right home and dropped me off. “I will see you next Sunday,” he said.

  I shook my head but of course he couldn’t see me.

  When I came in, Dante looked up from his paper long enough to assess my stricken pale face. “Good service?” he asked.

  He ruffled the paper into my lack of response, and went back to pretending I did not exist.

  For the rest of the week he said nothing, giving me too much of the silence I had wanted. He grew more restless and irritable as the days passed and he did not hear from Julián. Once, he went out into the fields and studied the bananas more than ready for harvest and about to die on the plants. He kicked one and snapped its fragile trunk; it tilted over and hung its broken neck. I started to worry that if an answer didn’t come soon there would be hell to pay for me.

  At night I pressed my pillow over my ears so that I could not hear the godhead.

  Sunday Julián arrived earlier than before, anticipating that I would not be ready. He was right. He knocked on my door pulling me from under the blankets, his voice quiet and demanding. “Get up and get ready now,” he said through the door. “This is necessary.”

  I took my time letting him know how reluctant I was.

  In the living room Dante was a bit frenzied and petulant. “We can’t wait much longer, we’ll have to leave soon, it‘ll be too late to save the harvest.”

  “You will have to bide your time señor, to get the answers you want. Rome as you know, was not built in a day,” Julián replied.

  “It was sacked in not much more than that Father. I cannot stand idly by and watch my empire die.”

  “Be patient.”

  Patience was not something that had ever been asked of Dante.

  The church was more than half empty. The remaining attendees were mostly Indian. Julián spoke of abundance, and fruit, and vine, and growth, and strength. The Indians nodded in a
greement. The Monkey River people were not impressed, they were hungry, and poor, and ill, and were there only to bleed the coffers dry.

  The following week Dante went to town, and while he was gone the red tide receded and the fish began to return. The townspeople recovered from their illnesses. The frog population stabilized again.

  The Maya convened to discuss Dante’s offer and decided their terms. The following Sunday Julián came early, accompanied by one of the villagers, Petayo, the most prosperous elder. He was often consulted in financial decisions.

  Dante watched them come up the drive. “Look. He’s brought the village banker,” he said to me. I did not know how he knew any of the villagers.

  I brought the men coffee and resisted the urge to leave the room. I reminded myself that this was my plantation. I had bought it with my blood. I sat beside Dante, feeling the two inches between us closing in.

  Petayo could understand English, but he spoke only Mayan. He was a purist and a patriot and wore the traditional woven cloth of his people, a gasoline spill of color around his skinny legs. He sat erect and did not look at me.

  “They will take your offer of land use rights, but they require a contract,” Julián said, “And they want one hundred acres not fifty.”

  The small vein on Dante’s temples turned a bit at this, an earthworm burrowed under his skin. He began to shake his head. “That is not practical. What would they do with that much land, how many beans do they need?”

  “Petayo says that you are not using it yourself at the moment, and he believes you would be hard pressed to find enough employees to work all your acreage again anyhow.”

  “Eighty acres then,” Dante countered. His eyes were half closed taking aim at the Mayan.

  Petayo grunted and said something short and harsh to Julián. Julián nodded. “We didn’t come here to negotiate, only to answer your offer.”

  A small earthquake sent imperceptible tremors through Dante’s body. I felt them because I was so close. I was afraid. He twitched once and then clapped his hands together, making me jump. “Very well then, one hundred acres. Anything else?”

  Julián conferred in guttural whispers with Petayo. “They want the wages the company was paying your recent employees.” He tried to disguise a bitter smile, failing as always to keep emotion from his face. “He says they will provide their own food.”

  I was breathing as quietly as possible in the space between their words.

  “Seeing as how our commissary is temporarily out of order, I think it’s a good idea.” Dante was smiling now. In the twisted coral shelf of his mind somewhere he must have found a way to get an advantage out of this situation. “We can draw up a contract right now if you’d like.”

  A pact with the devil. Outside the godhead thrummed once and then subsided.

  “It’s early but where I come from a deal is sealed with a drink.”

  Julián rubbed his temples. “Not before church señor.” But Petayo was nodding.

  I went to the sideboard and poured two short neat whiskeys and the Indian and the Spaniard raised their glasses together.

  I did not mention that these deals had never worked out for the Indians before. Protest was a thing of my past.

  Dante brought out his ledger and his good gold pen, and began with Petayo’s agreement to draw up a personal contract between the plantation and the Maya. Petayo said that the village elders would all have to sign, and then Dante agreed to take it to town to be notarized. He turned to me and held out the pen.

  “You haven’t signed it. You’ve earned this,” he said without inflection. “It is your plantation.”

  Wary, I took the pen and scrawled a shaky signature underneath Petayo’s. Dante dated it, read it over to both parties satisfaction and then folded it into his pocket to take to town.

  “You had better go,” he said. “You don’t want to be late for church. God hates tardiness.”

  Outside the morning was static, the sky was a distant and unconcerned blue with a few white spits of cloud swirling overhead. Petayo shielded his eyes and looked upwards. He spoke two words of English and began his walk home by himself.

  “Storm brewing,” he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  DELUGE

  “Get thee up, eat and drink for there is a sound of abundance of rain.”

  The earlier clouds had broken up and drifted away, as had most of the congregation since I returned, but the faithful were nailed to their pews, riveted by the palpable shift in the air around Julián, that desperation that is always a precursor to deep and driven submission to God. He had given up, made the job of lifting him that much easier. The sermon had been about breakthrough, how it must be preceded by breakdown, the crumbling of the dam.

  There were only eleven of us in church this morning, most were shunning it. The Maya were busy working on the plantation, burning piles of scrap wood, pushing away rubble, clearing their chosen hundred acres under Dante’s wrathful watch.

  Eleven of us were suspended in Julián’s surrender.

  He stood at the pulpit, his arms outstretched in his characteristic gesture of supplication, his head thrown back, his throat bare. “We have been hungry and thirsty, we have suffered and have lost our way. But we are ready to heal…ready to be clean again.” He stopped speaking, and tears coursed down his cheeks. He there a moment and then lifted his arms. “The heavens will open.” he said, and into the space after his pronouncement a throaty burst of thunder punched through the air and shook the church.

  We sat immobilized, impaled by the moment. “Oh Father,” Julián groaned “…Oh thank you Father God. Change is coming, you will send rain to wash away our sins and bring us Glory. An abundance of rain. Healing waters will pour forth.” Another burst of thunder, and then into the stillness the rain began to fall, not in gradual plinks and plonks, no, this was a sudden downpour, a washing of the sky, an air splitting cacophony of drops that rattled the tin roof and splashed in through the open windows. For a long span no one moved.

  Julián stood letting his tears run, and the rest of us sat stunned and awed, our own tears overflowing, the world sluiced and cleansed.

  Julián sank to his knees and pressed his face to the floor. His mouth was moving, but we could not hear over the din. We too knelt on the wood floor, and I bowed my head, my hands cupped in my lap filling with errant rain that felt like Christ’s tears. Oh it is so easy to believe when someone else creates a miracle! It is easy to believe that submission to God’s will offers protection. Break me. I begged the Lord in my damaged inner voice. Grind me under the wheels if you have to to save me...but save me…save me please. Not my will but thine.

  Someone was helping Julián to stand, taking him to a chair, offering him water to drink. Others were stumbling to their feet, shell shocked and dazed with glory, stuporous with belief. I did not linger, could not look at the man who was weakened with his absolute faith, the man I had agreed to ruin, even though I loved him.

  I walked home through the rain letting it course over me and fill my shoes. My hair hung in my face in tangled sheets, and I had to constantly wipe at my eyes to see the road in front of me.

  Dante was not in the house. I went to my bedroom and stripped off all of my wet clothes. Shivering and naked, I knelt on the floor and offered up my hands and begged again for mercy, for forgiveness, for strength.

  God exacts a price for his forgiveness, something novices are apt to forget.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Dante said when he found me a few minutes later. “You’re naked on your knees in front of a man again, as far as I can see.”

  I dropped my hands embarrassed in my unaccustomed belief. I pulled the sheet from my bed and wound it round myself.

  He no longer tried to sound congenial. He was cold and remote, disappointed with me. “I only wanted you to pretend to pray. I didn’t expect you to fall for it.”

  I was afraid to answer or not answer. I went to the closet and pulled
out something dry.

  “Better find something waterproof,” he said still not leaving the room. “Bad weather coming in tonight. The Indians have gone home for the day, but I need you to go the village and bring them back. The banana’s need to be tied down.”

  It wasn’t rainy season, this was bad news. Normally thin sisal rope was staked to the ground around the plants and their trunks, carefully tied to keep them from thrashing and breaking in a storm. “Why didn’t you have them do it before they left?” I spoke absently trying to find a blouse I wanted.

  “What?” The arsenic note in his voice alerted me to the threat of his disposition. It had not been a good two weeks for him and so far I had been spared. “Do you think you could have done any of this without me?”

  “I didn’t mean to question you,” I backtracked. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Of course you weren’t. I think for you. I ask nothing of you and I do everything in my power to keep this place afloat, and you never thank me, just walk around moping, feeling sorry for yourself.. I’ve told you what you need to do to get rid of me, and obviously you don’t want to, so you’re stuck. You might as well play along with a little more spirit.”

  This put-upon peevishness was a new tactic.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll go get the Maya.”

  “You think you could have done better without me don’t you?”

  “No,” I lied, thinking of what life could have been without him. He was too close for comfort now, within striking distance. I remembered that you always back slowly away from a snake, never turn and run. “I told you I’m sorry. I am.” I held out my hand. “May I have the keys?” He kept them in his pockets at all time, out of my reach.

  “No you may not, you little bitch. Walk. See if the fresh air helps you get your head on straight.”

  Outside the thunder rolled in waves and lightening left tracers behind my eyelids. I dragged myself through the rain, under a soil dark sky. I made very slow time getting to Julián’s cottage. He opened the door before I even knocked. “It’s me,” I told him my teeth chattering. The rain was warm, but I had been wet long enough to get chilled.