Next to me, Yolanda stood upright and still. I could hear her breathing.
“I can’t go up there,” she said.
Erik had already begun climbing into the truck’s hold—but he, too, had gone quiet and tight-mouthed. He turned around and reached his hand out to me. Two of the other soldiers also extended their hands to help lift us up.
“Come on, Yolanda,”he said, in a calm and unhappy voice.”We have to get out of here.”
She stayed rooted, staring up at the men. About thirty seconds passed like this. Then thirty more. A minute. Two.
“We have to leave,” Erik said.
“What’s the hold-up?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Oh, they’re just scared,” another voice said from the back of the truck, where we couldn’t see.
“Scared of what?”
“Go get my right hand, Rivas,” the voice said. “Tell him to come over here.”
One of the soldiers came leaping out of the truck, and splashed back toward the rest of the caravan.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Rivas said.
We made way for him, then I put my arm around Yolanda’s.
“We have to go,” I said. “Erik’s right.”
“These people are assassins,” she murmured to me. “My father used to tell me that the world would be better if they were all dead.”
“Come on, girls,” said one of the soldiers; he was small and dark, with a bilevel haircut.
In the same low voice, she said, “I’d rather ride with the devil.”
I just stood there and let her think it through.
“Plus there’s also the fact that if these boys knew who I am, they might not seem so friendly,” she continued. “Which wouldn’t be the safest thing for you, either.”
Erik still had his arm outstretched, and he opened his eyes just about as far as his eyelids would allow. “Lola? What’s going on?”
“What’s wrong with that woman?” asked the soldier with the bilevel. “The one with the hat.”
“Many things,” Erik said. “Many, many things.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“My friend is trying a joke,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. “He’s being funny.” Then, to her: “You have to make up your mind now, Yolanda. And I’ll stick with you, whatever you decide.”
She looked over her shoulder at the flooded town and the creeping, moving river. “Not much of a choice, I can see that,” she said.
“Five seconds, Lola,” Erik said. “No more. Then I’m going to have to insist. Besides, I don’t think our friends here are as patient as I am when it comes around to waiting for ladies.”
Ahead of us, we could hear the trucks starting; some of them began to slowly drive through the water and toward a sound part of the highway.
“Give the order, son,” said the officer we couldn’t see.
“Saddle up!” the soldier with the bilevel yelled. “Heading out!”
Yolanda looked at me. She pulled hard on the brim of her hat.
“All right,” she said. “So much for principles. But they’d better not touch me.”
She took Erik’s hand and hurled herself over the side of the truck. I climbed up after her, still holding onto my mother’s bag. Two men grabbed onto my pants and my elbows to help boost me. I looked around and saw that we were surrounded by soldiers.
The truck shook about in the mud and, with more grinding and slow heaving, began to move. Erik and Yolanda sat on either side of me on the small bench in the truck’s cab. We pressed up next to the men, who had crushed together to make room for us.
Then the soldier named Rivas came running back, gripped onto the truck’s backside, and hauled himself on board, too.
“Well?” came that voice from the back. “Where is he?”
“He’s with Villaseñor’s crew. Says he’s busy.”
“Busy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ll have to talk to him about that on our next stop.”
The soldier with the bilevel looked toward the back of the truck, then turned to Rivas.
“Pull the tarp all the way back, Private. Too dark in here.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Rivas began to yank at the green canvas so more light seeped into the truck.
It was at that instant we recognized the person giving orders.
His face was half in shadow, and he looked smaller than I remembered him. But there was no mistaking the soldier with the mustache and delicate hands and the suspicions about Yolanda, whom we had met a few days back at The Pedro Lopez saloon in Guatemala City.
CHAPTER 31
Inside the truck, it was humid and silent and filled with a ghastly pearl-colored light.
“Are you sick?” the soldier with the bilevel asked Yolanda. Yolanda’s right cheek flickered. Erik wrapped his hand around my arm.
“No—I’m fine,” she said, looking over the side of the van. There was nowhere for us to jump down except into the rushing water.
“She’s just scared, as I was saying before,” said the man—evidently a colonel—whom we knew from The Pedro Lopez. He sounded cool, and weirdly easygoing. “These people and I met a few days ago. We had something of a disagreement, over a bar tab, I believe it was. I’m afraid I was drunk and can’t quite recall. But it was my sidekick who made such a fuss. Had too much to drink and became belligerent.”
“You mean, Estrada started a fight?” one soldier asked.
“Precisely.”
“He can do that sometimes,” another soldier said. He had a shaved head and a round face. “He give you that?” He pointed to the bruise under Erik’s eye.
“Yes, he did,”Erik said.
“Gave me one once, too,” the other replied.
“Yeah, well, we’re all learning how to live with the changes,” the soldier with the bilevel said, presumably about the Peace Accords. He looked up warily at the colonel and cleared his throat. “Estrada’s had more trouble than most. Especially lately.”
The colonel began stretching his fingers like a violinist warming up for a concerto. “Exactly, my boy. We must teach him to behave himself. Sometimes he needs—correction. That’s all. It could happen to anyone.”
“I would like to get off this truck now,” Yolanda said. She pressed her hands on her thighs, very deliberately, to keep them still.
“Sounds good,” Erik said.
“There is no need for such dramatics,” the colonel said. “I assure you, we aren’t quite the gargoyles you might think, miss. And sir. No one’s going to bother you. Things just aren’t done that way anymore. There are checks on such behaviors.”
Some of the soldiers shifted about in their seats, as if they weren’t so sure.
“And besides—what’s a little bar fight?” the colonel went on. “Nothing. Completely forgotten. We’re all here on a humanitarian mission. As you are, we understand.”
“We’re here to find my mother,” I said, as controlled as I could. I don’t think they could see I was shaking.
“Exactly. You’re here to find your mother. We’re here to convey supplies. Nothing more. So just sit back down. Or get off. What do I care?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yes. What do you think this is?”
The three of us continued staring at him, uncertain what to do.
“What’s your name?” Rivas now asked Yolanda, in a friendly way.
“Suzanna Muñoz,” she said.
“Doesn’t ring any bells—but you look familiar. We met before?”
“That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw her,”the colonel said.
“I think I have seen you somewhere.”
“She has one of those faces,” the colonel said. “Just reminds you of something.”
I squeezed Yolanda’s wrist.
“I swear I’ve seen this girl, sir.”
Yolanda sat there with a frozen face and her arms tensed, as if she were pre
paring to flee or possibly even attack Rivas. But then she relaxed with a sudden jerk of the shoulders and took on an altogether different pose. In one moment her eyes looked haggard and dull; in the next she broke out into a bright, not too obviously false smile, and I saw her transform herself into a charming and slightly ditzy character who talked with her hands and smiled a great deal.
“I sell things on the street,” she said. “You must have seen me around the City.”
“What do you sell, food?” Rivas asked.
“Or—flowers?” the colonel said. “Roses, perhaps.”
But nothing alarming showed on his face when he said this.
“Toys,” she said. “Children’s toys. Games.”
“And you’re friends with these North Americans?”
Erik’s eyes bulged out slightly.
“Mexican-American,” I muttered reflexively. “I am, that is.”
“What?” Rivas asked, wincing.
“Don’t pay attention to her,” Yolanda said. “They are so very gringo I can’t even tell you. But yes, we’re friends”—she pointed at me—”I’ve known this one since I was a kid—she sells books—and the other one’s her boyfriend. He’s”—here she gave him a look that was almost tender, and then winked at him—”he’s an … idiot.”
The men in the truck laughed at this. Erik and I just sat there, strained and watchful.
“Anyway,” Yolanda went on, “I just came along with her to help.”
“That explains everything,”the colonel said.”All enigmas solved, all conundrums unraveled.”
“The colonel knows a lot of words,” Rivas said.
“The colonel’s got a lot of tricks up his sleeve,” the soldier with the bilevel said. “Respectfully speaking, of course.”
“Of course.”
The soldier with the bilevel looked over at us, sharply, closely. “So there’s no problem, then, right, Colonel?”
“No problem at all,” the colonel said, smiling at us too before tucking his chin into his chest, as if getting ready to take a nap.
“See,” the soldier said. “So there’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“There’s nothing for us to worry about,” Yolanda repeated, in a cheerful voice. But when I placed my hand on top of hers, I felt it had gone completely cold.
“Everything’s just swell,” Erik said, looking out at the miles of flooding around us.
From a makeshift window created by a tied-up piece of tarp I could see the landscape descend and grow ever more swollen and wild with floodwater.
We were trapped. Or we were saved.
The wide water shattered past us; the wet air clung to our limbs; the men around us had illegible faces. There was nothing else to do but pretend to be calm.
Lurching in the unsteady truck and stealing nervous glances at each other, we steadied ourselves and entered with these new and troubling companions into the heart of the Motagua Valley.
CHAPTER 32
The line of army trucks dipped into the hollow of the valley. The great dark walls of the northern Sierra de las Minas and western Sierra del Espíritu Santo rose around us. We lowered into a basin flooded with fresh water that created hard driving for the trucks, but in some of the valley’s empty draining patches we could see that pale tall grass covered the depression, and the flora was ripped here and there by the rigors of the hurricane. Many trees had been stripped entirely of leaves, and their naked curving branches looked like lines of dark calligraphy against the pallid backdrop of the basin. Pieces of broken wood and heaps of torn bush floated in the road, but the trucks had less trouble passing over that than through the higher water, which could reach halfway up their sides.
Most of the soldiers slept upright, with their lips and nostrils quavering, though the colonel alternated between taking short naps and continuing to examine Yolanda. Erik leaned against me lightly and rested his chin on his chest just like the others. Yolanda nudged up against me after he did. She tried to keep awake, but her body grew heavier and looser. After a while, she fell asleep too.
We were all exhausted. But I couldn’t rest. It occurred to me that during the commotion, I hadn’t said anything to Erik about my mother making a connection between the Stelae and the Maze of Deceit. I planned on telling him later, and I wanted to tell Yolanda too, though I worried that she’d figure from that information that I’d lied about the map. Regardless, all decisions about disclosures could be put off for the time being. And I could read my mother’s disturbing book again, privately. After some delicate maneuvering to get hold of my mother’s journal, tucked in the bag that sat at my feet, I started to look through the diary while trying not to disturb my friends leaning on me.
In the cramped quarters of the truck, their touch was my only comfort.
October 18
My affair with Tomas began two months after the conference. This was in Antigua, in a beautiful hotel that once was the monastery of the Dominican monks.
There’s nothing like making love to a grim-faced man with large, slow hands. Afterward, we lay in bed, drinking brandy and talking.
He told me about his friends, Drs. Saenz and Rodriguez. Though they were conservatives, they’d helped hide him from the army after there were those rumors that he’d bombed that officer’s home (I did not ask him if those rumors were true). He talked of his wife. And of his interest in finding Beatriz de la Cueva’s Jade.
“But The Queen Jade’s just a child’s story,” I said.
“So’s the Bible, and so is Le Morte d’Artur, but we still do excavations for Christ’s body in Jerusalem, and for Arthur’s tomb in Glastonbury— ”
You’re looking for the Witch’s Stone.” I laughed. “That’s insane.”
“I’m looking for Guatemala,” he said. “Which is lost. Don’t you understand that?”
I was stunned into silence by the fever in his voice.
“What are you looking for?” he asked me then.
I stared at him, very intently, at his eyes and his mouth.
But I could not say out loud that I had been looking for him.
He left me, not a year later.
He went back to his wife and his daughter. And I went back to Manuel, who eventually did forgive what I’d done.
Fifteen years passed, and we still kept in touch, occasionally even working together. And he didn’t mind leaving his daughter with me when he’d go off on his jaunts, on account of the army’s too-keen interest in his family. I didn’t mind having the girl at our house, either, as I thought it was good for Lola to know her.
Meanwhile, Manuel and I resumed our romance on its old, idiosyncratic patterns, and seemed happy once more.
For his part, Tomas devoted himself to the rebels, even after they were nearly obliterated by the squads. But he abandoned the cause just as suddenly when he found that Drs. Saenz and Rodriguez had been killed by a guerrilla, probably for their rightist leanings, in that ancient cycle of revenge.
After that he changed. Without the war to consume him, his interest in the Jade became an obsession. And he grew distrustful of his foreign colleagues working in the jungle. He now took to calling them colonials and meddlers, even thieves.
I didn’t hear from him after he called Yolanda back home in the days following his wife’s death. I thought about that man every day, though I’d never lay eyes on him again.
Manuel did see him one more time, though. He had one last conversation with Tomas when he was chin-high in that quicksand pit.
Tomas fooled poor Manuel so that he almost died in the forest, and he has never been the same. I gave this as the reason why Lola should not write to Tomas’s daughter anymore.
But when I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I didn’t separate those girls because of Manuel.
I kept Yolanda and Lola apart because I have never been able to get over the hurt that Tomas did by leaving me.
I put my hand over my eyes.
A bad spasm went through me. Disbelief, an
d then, when I read that last line again, I had an awful, cold feeling. I kept Yolanda and Lola apart.
If I had been certain my mother were safe, I might have allowed myself to entertain some very dangerous thoughts about her just then. I think I would have frightened all of those tough soldiers with the words that filled my mouth.
But I didn’t know if my mother was safe. So it didn’t matter. I tried to tamp that feeling down; I wouldn’t so much as describe it to myself.
To this day, I still have difficulty talking about it.
CHAPTER 33
Lola,” Yolanda said. She had just woken up. I was still laboring to repress the shock at what I’d just read in my mother’s hand, and Erik remained leaning heavily against me. I pressed the book to my chest.
“What?”
“Did I fall asleep?” She rested her head on my neck and twined her right arm around mine.
“For a minute.”
She glanced over at the colonel, then at the soldier with the bilevel haircut. “Please don’t let me.”
“It’s all right. He’s not doing anything.”
“I’m just so tired.”
“Take a nap, you’ll be fine.”
“What are you doing?”
“Reading my mother’s journal.”
“The one with the map.”
“Yes.”
“Anything in there about me?”
I paused, and felt my chest clench. “In a way.”
She pinched my arm gently. “Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me about all that. I think I know how she felt about the de la Rosas.” She pointed at the scenery. “And why ruin an otherwise perfect day?”
My heart crumpled. To hide my face from Yolanda, I looked up toward the landscape. Through the gaps in the red tarp I spied the burgundy ridges of the northward Sierra de las Minas, and I couldn’t see the dark green pools that were the last stretches of the Motagua Valley anymore. To the south lay the red extensions of the Sierra del Espíritu Santo, which was stained with the afternoon sunlight slanting downward, onto the mounts and the dell. It turned everything from the combes to the coming river into shades of ocher and blood, scarlet and wine and rust. We’d passed the flooded ruins of Quiriguá and approached the Rio Dulce’s bridge, which had held despite the swollen waters that had consumed six different villages during the hurricane. The Dulce is a high silver river where Guatemala’s wealthy usually keep boats, but no schooners or yachts were to be found. Trash was scattered on the higher ground, along with crushed trees and planks from some of the houses that had been swept away. Up on the highest and driest areas stood more small settlements made from corrugated tin, and children ran in the muddy patches that might have served as front lawns. Several of the army trucks began to shear off from the line and toward these people, but we continued on our way to Flores.
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