The Taste of Many Mountains

by Bruce Wydick

  “Are they traitors to the Republic?” asked the lieutenant.

  Adolfo replied, “Never once have they indicated an interest in joining the civil patrol, despite my strong encouragement. I think you could say that . . . yes.”

  The subordinate calmly took down more notes and directions. This was the kind of information that was helpful to the soldiers. They shook hands with Adolfo and left the house.

  Slightly before dawn, thirteen-year-old Fernando lay awake. Some of the farm animals were making unusual noises for this time of night, making it difficult to return to sleep. They sounded jittery. Perhaps a cat had crept in from the high jungle? A stray dog? He walked to the door of his house and opened it a crack. Across the rugged pasture in the dim light, he witnessed a group of six soldiers dragging his grandfather Basilio out of their house by his whitish-gray hair. His grandfather’s face was almost completely covered with blood. His grandmother, Marta, was trying to scream, but her mouth was covered by one of the soldiers who jammed a pistol into her temple.

  Panic and grief shot like twin shocks through his young body. He began to shake, his breath now coming in gasps. Somehow he found the strength to run and wake his father, Emilio, who bolted to a window. Watching the scene unfold, his father stood, biting down on one of his fingers, tears silently streaming down his cheeks. Fernando watched his father forced to decide in an instant if he was to die trying to save his own father’s life. He seemed to understand that this would be suicide, and his attention swung to the survival of the rest of his family, now asleep in their beds. Emilio shook Fernando’s mother, Gloria, as she lay in bed, his voice a sobbing whisper, barely under control. “Mi amor, we must leave the house quietly through the back door. They are here, Gloria. The soldiers—they have come to kill. Apurate!” Following his lead, Fernando ran to wake his younger siblings snuggled side by side in their shared bed.

  Villagers in Huehuetenango lived in fear of the army and the civil patrols. Because of this, his father had prepared. Understanding that the soldiers often hunted down those who fled into the jungle, he had constructed an elevated platform in the densest part of the coffee field adjacent to their house, held up by wooden supports pounded into the ground next to the trunks of coffee plants. It was about seventy-five yards from the house. The platform itself was about four feet off the ground, surrounded by thick coffee plants. Fernando had helped build it with his father. It was virtually invisible, even in the daytime, unless someone happened to be standing right next to it. It was a well-camouflaged refuge. They even hid a few canteens of water there in case they needed to remain for days. An antiquated large-caliber Guatemalan army pistol that used to belong to Basilio’s father hung inconspicuously from a nail on the bottom of the platform, protected from the rain.

  Fernando helped his family grab what food and provisions they could, some tortillas wrapped in a cloth and a few pieces of fruit. They crept out the back as silently as possible, then fled into the coffee field. They arrived at the refuge. Huddling close together, the younger children whimpered quietly as volleys of shots and screams echoed intermittently from the village. They heard their grandmother sobbing hysterically, Emilio begging them in tears not to go to her.

  Minutes passed as they remained breathlessly still, hearing the soldiers’ profanity-laced tirade over the discovery of the escaped family. Then they heard their restless farm animals fall silent as the soldiers shot each of them methodically.

  Hours passed. They saw smoke rising near the Iglesia Pentecostes on the west side of the village. They heard faint, muffled screams from the direction of the church. Smoke began to rise over several other parts of the village. There were more sounds of yelling and chaos. Smoke was now drifting into the coffee field. They smelled a pungent order that reminded Fernando of the time a neighbor’s feed barn had caught on fire when it was full of mice. He pulled his T-shirt over his nose to quell the stench. More hours passed.

  It was dusk when they heard the sound of someone running toward them. Through the coffee plants, they could make out a young woman holding a baby fleeing into the coffee field. Fernando recognized the woman; it was Mariela, one of his father’s second cousins in the village. Her baby girl had been born three months ago, and the family had attended the ceremony in which Father Dias had baptized the child only weeks before. They carefully watched Mariela. They were wary of calling her attention, unsure of who might be following and how close he might be. She was attempting to run, but unevenly, limping. The baby was crying. She stopped suddenly and as she turned to scan the field for a place to hide, they could see the gunshot wound in the left side of her abdomen. One side of her huipil was stained red, blood running over the carefully embroidered flowers. She was losing strength, trying to clutch both her wound and the baby.

  Emilio put his hand over Gloria’s mouth to keep her from calling out, and motioned sternly to Fernando and the other children with a tense index finger across his lips.

  Before Emilio could restrain him, Fernando leapt off the platform suddenly, moving as noiselessly as possible through the coffee plants toward the young woman. He grabbed her hand and quickly led her back to the refuge. Her breathing was frenetic and had a wheezing, gurgling sound. She was shaking. Her face looked pale, her skin leathery and taut.

  Emilio quickly embraced his son, took the baby and handed it to Gloria, and carefully pulled Mariela up on the platform, followed by Fernando. “Dios les bendig . . . Dios les bendiga . . .” She thanked them with a weakened voice in a whispered mantra. The baby began to cry louder, and Gloria tried to pass the baby back to her mother, but now that she had reached the platform, her mother suddenly appeared to lack the strength to take her. She began to lose consciousness. Dark red blood flowing from her abdomen began to puddle on the platform and drip off the side onto the soil. Gloria tried to bury the baby’s head in her sweater between her arm and her chest to muffle the crying. Chaos and screams continued to echo from the village.

  Who was following the woman? Fernando understood that if the baby continued to cry, they would soon know.

  The baby was silent momentarily and looked at young Fernando, who somehow found the composure to smile back at her. Gloria began to help Emilio attend to Mariela, and she passed the baby hastily to Fernando. He held her in his arms. The baby began to smile quietly at him while he rocked her in his young arms as he had done so many times before with his younger brother and sisters.

  The relative calm of the moment was interrupted by the crackling sound of another set of carefully placed footsteps. The group was hushed, the baby precariously awake but silent. Through the brush, Fernando could barely make out a beige lieutenant’s uniform about fifty feet away, approaching through the coffee plants. Silently, he pointed at the figure to his father. As one hand of the uniform brushed coffee branches away, the other maintained a rigid grip on an automatic rifle. The uniform had a face: the scarred unshaven face of a lieutenant, emotionless as a pit bull. The uniform stalked deliberately, coldly, meticulously as its dead eye stared inertly ahead.

  He appeared to be talking to himself under his breath, but then it became clear he was not talking to himself, but calling to his prey as he stalked her through the brush. He had wounded her as she had fled, and was following her drops of blood as a hunter tracks a wounded deer. “Venga aca mi amor . . .” Although young, Fernando understood what was happening, for he had heard stories from bigger boys in other villages. This soldier would use the woman for his pleasure before executing his task and returning to his unit.

  Emilio gently pushed the heads of the family down as low as possible on the platform. He motioned to Fernando, who was closest to being able to reach for the pistol. He quietly handed the baby back to his mother. Fernando’s arm slowly reached down under the platform for the old pistol hanging below it. His finger reached the handle, but he was having difficulty because the trigger guard was caught on the nail head. He fumbled with it, causing the handle to knock against the wood. Wincing and c
lenching his teeth at the noise, he twisted his shoulder even farther to release the pistol from its crude clasp. He could not adjust his body any farther without making noise or pushing somebody else off the platform. He could now hear the soldier’s movement through the coffee branches even with his head down as he grappled for the pistol. He extended his arm one last time to reach another inch underneath him. The roughly hewn edges of the plywood cut into his bicep. The pain in his arm was becoming unbearable, but in this last attempt, he was able to free the trigger guard from the nail. Finally the pistol was free. He grasped it with his hand and slowly passed it to his father.

  Fewer and fewer coffee branches obscured the view between the walking uniform and the refuge. The group was harder to see in the murky dusk, but still visible if someone were close enough. The uniform turned and headed directly toward them. Perhaps he had heard the noise? Fernando watched his father gradually raise the ancient weapon through the coffee branches, his shaking hand lining up the bead of its hefty barrel between the menacing eyebrows that stalked them in the dusk.

  The lieutenant saw the family when he was less than fifteen feet away from the hideout. The sight of the huddled group of villagers took the lieutenant by surprise; he was expecting just the woman. It also could have been that the limited world which he viewed through the solitary eye may have hindered his perception and encumbered his response. But in the extra split second it took for him to raise his automatic weapon, Emilio pulled the trigger. The ancient pistol fired, resounding like an antiquated cannon, as gray-white smoke erupting from the weapon enveloped the platform. Its fat bullet struck just above the lieutenant’s eyebrow just above the dead eye, removing his officer’s hat along with the top part of his head.

  Fernando hoped that the platoon back in the village would confuse the shot with the myriad others that were coming from the arms of those chasing down villagers in the forest. But this was an officer. They would come looking for him.

  Emilio motioned to his son. “Come, Fernando, we must bury the body.”

  Fernando, still shaking intensely, jumped off the platform, helped drag the body away from the area near the platform. Emilio and Fernando quickly dug a large hole with sticks to bury the lieutenant’s body between the base of some coffee plants, throwing trash over the top to disguise the freshly dug dirt. They kept the officer’s automatic rifle. If a group of soldiers discovered them now, they would pay with heavy casualties.

  Fernando returned to the shelter and held the baby girl once again in his arms. Crying loudly after the solitary gunshot, she was quiet and at peace now. Thin black hair curled around the bottom of her tiny ears with their petite gold earrings. She wore a pink dress and white socks with little yellow ducks on them, and tiny white shoes. A delicate collar adorned with flowers encircled her neck, and her blouse was buttoned up to the top button. She was an endearing little baby, oblivious to hate and violence around her, an island of grace. Fernando brought her up to his face and rubbed noses with her, making her smile.

  He gazed down at her, noticing the birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon running from her eye down to her chin, the only blemish on a cherubic face. Remembering her name from the baptism, he cooed to her in a quiet whisper, “Angela, Angela, nuestra pequeña angelita. Está bien Angela . . . nada mas te va a lastimar . . .”

  Gloria cradled Angela’s mother in her lap as Emilio worked in vain to stem the flow of blood from the wound in her side. Fernando prayed as his parents tried to save her life. A doctor may have been able to save her, but it was beyond the knowledge of a peasant couple from the campo. Mariela, young woman of the coffee plantation, appeared to know that she was not going to live to raise this child. “Que cuiden la nena por favor . . .” She wished them to care for the baby. And then, in stuttered whispers, she told the family her secrets as they bent down to listen. She seemed to want someone to know so that perhaps her baby might one day know. Mariela lapsed in and out of consciousness a few more times over the next hour. Finally, Angela’s mother lay motionless, her lifeless eyes staring up at the coffee branches hanging overhead and the clouds behind them.

  Angela sat in her wooden chair and looked at Fernando, stunned and speechless. Tears flooded down her cheeks. By this time a sizable crowd had gathered on the floor around Fernando to listen. The others in the room were equally astounded.

  “My . . . mother?” asked Angela, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  Fernando nodded slowly.

  She looked at Juana, and around at the little adobe house in which they were sitting, and at the colorized portrait on the adobe wall of Basilio and Marta in middle age, proud, wise, and content, gazing down on them through the picture’s timeworn wooden frame.

  “You knew it was me from the beginning.”

  “Sí,” said Fernando. “Yes. I believed it to be true when we met. Now I am certain.”

  It was obvious how he had known, and the irony of it was not lost on Angela. “But why didn’t—”

  “Pues, only if I knew you would love your past would I tell you that it was yours.”

  “And your family took me to the orphanage?” she asked, just wanting a few of the details.

  “Yes, your mother’s husband, Domingo, and many of the other men in the village were killed with my uncle Eduardo in the forest. They were found in a mass grave. Some people told my parents of an orphanage in Guatemala City that was making adoptions to the United States for orphans who were victims of the war. My father believed this would be best for you—to leave this place. So he and my mother brought you there. It was difficult. The army wanted to kill them, and they had to be very careful.”

  “Your mother and father were brave and kind.”

  “Indeed, they were, as were my grandmother and grandfather, who were both killed that same day, my grandfather, who was a faithful colono to coffee plantation owners for so many years.” Fernando paused. “Angela, that day seventy-five people were killed in our village. Father Dias from Spain, who had spent twenty-nine years in the village working and living among us, was killed. He and all of his priests were killed, and their bodies were dragged into the center of the village as an exhibit for a lecture by the lieutenant about the consequences of friendship with the guerrillas. Thirty people burned inside the Iglesia Pentecostes.”

  Juana hugged Angela, who cried on Juana’s shoulder.

  “Your father a guerrilla fighter. I am finding myself exceptionally jealous,” said Alex.

  Angela laughed and smiled at him through her tears. “You never give up, do you, you crazy idiot,” she said as the two of them embraced.

  “Angela, there is something I would like to do—when you are ready,” said Fernando.

  “What is that?” She wiped more tears off her face, then nodded. Fernando took her hand and led her to a short, middle-aged Mayan couple across the room, a decade or so older than himself. The woman was plump and slightly stooped, with eyes that had wrinkles on the sides developed from a lifetime of warm smiles. She wore a faded but intricately colored Mayan corte and huipil and her hair was adorned by beautiful blue and white cloths that intertwined with her graying braids. Her husband donned a thin weathered mustache and slim straw cowboy hat. They smiled at Angela.

  “This is my father’s second cousin, Belinda, and her husband, Octavio. Belinda is your mother’s sister. They are your aunt and uncle.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Rich

  RICH’S INTERNSHIP AT THE WORLD BANK CAME TO AN END. It was time for him, too, to return to California. He finally landed at San Francisco International Airport via a plane route that had to be redirected through Miami and Indianapolis. From the airport he took the commuter train, the BART, across the Bay to Berkeley. He slogged up the two flights of stairs to his apartment on University Avenue. It was only five in the evening, but he was exhausted. Why did his flights always get redirected two thousand miles out of his way? A little jolt of caffeine would keep him going until bedtime. His apartment was only a few doors do
wn from his favorite café, Au Coquelet.

  A friendly barista strode up to him.

  “Hola, amigo Juan,” he said to the barista.

  “Hey, Rich, you been gone forever, man!” Juan smiled, glad to see him.

  “Gimme the strongest espresso shot in the house,” he said. “The one that cures jet lag.”

  “How many time zones?” asked Juan, measuring the proper dosage at the machine.

  “Well, just two actually,” admitted Rich.

  “That’s nothing, man,” Juan chided him.

  “Hey, y’all want some spare change in your little tip jar or not? Been traveling so much last two days, back end’s sorer than a dummy’s butt on report card day.”

  Juan grinned. “Rich, you always got a million of them, man.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . How’s that espresso coming?”

  Rich stood at the counter and his eyes wandered to the menu he had gazed over on many previous visits. For the first time, he noticed the price difference between the standard coffee and what they charged for fair trade: $1.75 for regular coffee and $2.00 for fair trade. $3.15 for a regular latte and $3.65 for fair trade. Whoa, he thought to himself, remembering Angela’s survey.

  “Hey, Juan, how many cups of coffee do you get out of a pound of beans?” Rich yelled across the cafe to Juan, who was working on the espresso.

  “About forty,” he yelled over the loud gurgling sound of the machine. “You think our coffee’s too weak?”

  “No, it’s fine, forget it.”