Diego, Run!

by Deborah Ellis

  He looked at it for a long minute, and it began to make sense.

  ‘Do you have paper and pen?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, right next to our computer,’ Rock snarled.

  Another man took a small notebook and a pen out of his pocket and handed them to Diego.

  It’s a puzzle, Diego thought. He connected the pen to his mind and got to work.

  ‘This is what you need,’ he said, handing the notebook back with the completed sum.

  ‘Let me see!’ Rock grabbed the paper, frowned at it like he was redoing the calculations in his head and said, ‘Yes, this looks right.’

  The other boys, wide awake again, giggled, but Diego kept a straight face. Stupid people could be dangerous.

  ‘Could we have something to eat?’ he asked politely. ‘The lamb stew you bought us was great, but it was a long time ago.’

  ‘We’ll give you something better than food,’ the man said. ‘You’d better appreciate this. You’d never be able to afford it in your regular lousy lives.’

  The boys crowded around while he rolled them cigarettes with loose tobacco and a gum-like substance mixed together. Even Mando was excited.

  ‘I’d rather have rice and beans,’ Diego said.

  ‘Then you should have bargained for that before you did your little calculations,’ the man said. ‘Smoke it or don’t, but you need to do a lot of work before morning, and we’re not wasting food on a slacker.’

  The other kids were inhaling the smoke, coughing and weaving a bit, but they were still standing.

  ‘Come on, Diego, I’ve heard about this. It will give you the strength of ten men.’

  Diego looked at the cigarette in his hand. ‘Smoking isn’t good for you,’ he said.

  ‘He’s afraid his Mamá will find out,’ Mando said, and Diego felt as if he had been cut with a knife.

  Telling himself he was not doing it because of what Mando said, Diego leaned into the lantern to light his smoke.

  The first breath made his lungs and throat burn, and he wanted to punch the men who had given him this horrible thing. Then he started to feel strangely fine—or was it finely strange? He took another puff, then another.

  His hunger became a distant memory, and then it was not even a memory. His body started to burn, but with energy, not pain, and his mind moved fast with glorious thoughts. The notebook in his head flipped its pages. Diego could see they were all full of calculations, and he could understand them all!

  ‘Here you go, boys, into the pit.’

  Diego’s shoes were pulled off, and his pant legs were rolled up as high as they would go. Strong hands helped him climb over the edge of the pit. He laughed at the squishiness of his toes in the mixture of coca leaves and chemicals.

  ‘Don’t fall over,’ someone said, as Diego bumped into a boy who may have been Mando, or it may have been Domingo.

  ‘Let’s see how well you dance.’

  Music came from somewhere—hard-pounding music like the kind Diego would hear from the video game arcades in Cochabamba. The music entered his body and made his feet move up and down, stirring up the leaves and the chemicals, filling his head with smells and sensations.

  Time disappeared. One song blended seamlessly into another. Diego’s legs kept moving with no effort. He watched his legs being pulled up and down by an invisible puppet master, and he laughed and laughed.

  Another cigarette was put to his lips, and a new rush of energy and brilliance zoomed through his body. There was no past and no future. There was only the squish of the coca leaves under his feet.

  And then it was morning.

  ‘It’s getting light,’ someone said.

  ‘We’re well covered here. And the longer they stomp, the better the stuff. Keep going.’

  Diego’s legs lost their lightness. His head was thick and his whole body ached.

  ‘Give us more smokes?’ one of the boys asked.

  ‘You’ll be smoking up all the profits. Dance.’ Diego kept marching in the pit because to do anything else would have taken too much energy. A cup of water was passed around. He took a drink, then went back to marching.

  Finally, they could get out. The bigger men helped them. ‘We don’t want you tripping and spilling this stuff.’

  Diego joined the other boys on the ground.

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Rock said. ‘They all do.’

  The men peered into the pit for awhile, discussing something among themselves. Diego leaned against a tree stump and closed his eyes. His stomach was queasy. Nothing felt good.

  Something itched on his leg. He put his hand down to scratch it, then let out a scream. Crawling up his leg was the biggest bug he had ever seen. He jumped up and shook his leg, screaming.

  The men laughed. Mando was the one who reached out and took the creature off Diego’s leg.

  ‘Saved your life again,’ he said, as they watched the bug crawl away into the underbrush.

  ‘Almost turned you into a girl,’ Rock taunted.

  ‘I was just surprised,’ Diego said. ‘I’ve never seen one before, not a real one.’ He was starting to calm down, now that he realised what it was. ‘It’s a rhinoceros beetle. It’s harmless. I remember it from science class.’ He looked in the leaves, found the beetle and picked it up, holding it by the thorax. It was the size of his hand. Its huge black legs and mandibles waved in the air. It really was beautiful.

  Rock slapped the beetle out of Diego’s hand. It landed on its back, legs going like mad. Rock took aim with his gun, and the loud rat-tat-tat of the machine gun made Diego feel like his body was jumping out of his skin.

  ‘You are the strangest boy in Bolivia,’ Rock said. ‘Back to work. We need those leaves fished out. Squeeze all the liquid out of them before you toss them on the pile. Move.’

  Back into the pit they all went, after washing the dirt from their feet. Instead of marching they bent down, scooped up the mashed coca leaves and tossed them in a pile outside the pit. When all the leaves were out, the men poured more chemicals in, and the boys mixed everything together with their hands and feet. The liquid stung in a new way, and Diego’s back began to hurt from bending over.

  Finally, that job was done. Diego and the others were allowed to rest while the men ran a sieve through the liquid, gathering up the gummy resin that had formed in clumps in the pit.

  ‘I hope at least some of you are paying attention,’ Rock said. ‘This will be your job tomorrow. We have enough to do without doing your work as well.’

  The gummy stuff was wrapped in a small piece of foil and placed on a table. The package was the size of a small brick. Diego recognised it. It was the same sort of package the police had found taped under his parents’ seat in the minibus.

  He helped the men lift some of the stakes holding up the rim of the plastic and watched the chemical soup drain out of the pit and into a nearby stream.

  ‘It’s not very much,’ Rock said, holding up the foil packet. ‘All those leaves. Are you sure they’re stomping it right?’

  ‘It takes two hundred kilos of leaves to produce just one kilo of paste,’ someone said, ‘and we need two and a half kilos of paste to make just one kilo of cocaine. That’s . . . kid, how many coca leaves is that?’

  ‘Five hundred kilos,’ Diego responded, almost without thinking.

  ‘Five hundred kilos of leaves. You think these little city worms you brought us can carry that much through the jungle?’

  ‘They will if we tell them to,’ Rock said.

  ‘Look at them! Skin and bones! Yell at them all you want, beat them if it makes you happy, but you can’t make an ant carry a beetle.’

  Diego was about to pipe up that ants can carry many times their own weight, but he thought better of it, and kept his mouth shut.

  NINE

  After they had hiked back to the village, the old woman who ran the tienda had bowls of chupe for the boys, and a place under a tarp where they could sleep protected from the sun. The chupe was goo
d, but the glue boys threw theirs up soon after eating it. Roberto, especially, looked ill, and his hands trembled like leaves in the wind.

  ‘Useless worms you’ve brought us,’ one of the men said to Rock, kicking at the glue boys as he walked by with a box of chicha.

  The old woman put mugs of coca leaf tea in the glue boys’ hands.

  ‘Poor little swallows,’ she said.

  Diego ate his soup, almost too tired to finish it. He stretched out under the tarp, expecting to fall asleep instantly, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. His legs kept twitching, and he had the feeling that he was falling from a long, long way up.

  He finally sank into sleep, only to be kicked awake by Rock.

  ‘Time to get up, smart boy. Wake the others. You think we’re paying you to sleep?’

  At least it’s not a buzzer, Diego thought. At least there’s no head count.

  His whole body ached, including his head, as he got himself moving and woke the others. The glue boys didn’t want to get up. Diego did what he could, but in the end it was Rock’s kicks that got them to their feet.

  They started collecting the coca leaves earlier and got to the pits earlier. Some of the farmers carried sacks of leaves partway down the trail with them, but they were not allowed to go the whole way to the clearing. The boys had to double back to pick up the extra sacks.

  Then it was back into the pit. Diego was going to pass on the smoking, because he’d felt so sick when he woke up, but he remembered how much easier it had made the work. He breathed deeply. The smoke brought him back to life, and he started to move.

  When the cigarettes came around again,

  Diego took in as much as his lungs would hold. ‘Mamá’s boy is growing up,’ Mando said, and Diego laughed.

  He was still buzzing when the sun came up, and he made himself useful straining the clumps of putty out of the chemical solution.

  ‘That’s a bit better,’ Rock said, holding up the slightly larger package of paste. ‘You may be worth feeding after all.’

  ‘Feeding and paying,’ Diego said.

  His sleep that day was even more difficult than the day before. He could not get his brain or his body to rest, so he got up off his mat and went for a walk around the village.

  It felt a little funny not to be doing taxi jobs, or rushing to get back to the prison before the doors closed. There was no traffic to dodge, no street gangs to avoid—just green and trees and quiet.

  ‘I can’t see this in prison,’ he said. He’d been too tired and too busy so far to enjoy his freedom. From now on, he’d pay attention to everything. It would give him something to remember when he was back behind the high stone walls.

  He walked around the little village, peeked into the one-room school where a lesson was being taught without books, and chatted with some women who were pounding laundry on the rocks of a stream. He ended up back at the tienda.

  ‘You can’t sleep?’ the old woman asked him in Spanish. She’d realised that Diego’s Aymara vocabulary was limited.

  ‘It’s that stuff they give me to smoke.’

  The old woman nodded. She had a bag of coca leaves in her shop. She pulled one out of the bag.

  ‘This leaf is a gift to my ancestors, the Aymara, and to your ancestors, the Inca, from Pachamama, the mother of our earth. To us it is sacred. It is something we respect and that nurtures us.’

  She handed the leaf to Diego. He took it gently.

  ‘My parents used to grow coca.’

  ‘They have stopped?’

  Diego leaned in close to her. ‘They’re in prison,’ he whispered.

  The old woman nodded. ‘Many of the boys who are brought here to work in the jungle have parents in prison, or not around for some other reason. It’s good you know about coca. We have grown and chewed this leaf for centuries. It feeds our bodies, and it is medicine—good for us when we go up into the high mountains where the gringos cannot breathe.’ She poured hot water from a pot into a mug and added a handful of coca leaves. ‘You drink this,’ she said. ‘It will calm you and help you sleep.’

  Diego blew on the hot tea to cool it. Mamá made him coca tea in prison when he didn’t feel well. Even the scent was familiar and comforting. He took sips while he listened to the old woman talk. She told him tales of the old days, when the world was quieter and people talked directly to the gods.

  Maybe it was the tea, maybe it was her voice. Diego fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake up until it was time to rise for work.

  Life went on like that for the next few days. The work was hard and unpleasant, but the drug they were given to smoke made the hours pass quickly. Being busy and tired made it easy to push aside his worries about his family. Things were going well, and he would be back soon, with money.

  The best part of each day was being in the village every morning. Mando and the other boys collapsed after eating, but Diego bought an orange soda and sat and talked with the woman who ran the shop, or played football with the little village kids. One day one of the stilt-house families even let him do a few simple chores for them, fetching water and feeding the chickens. It helped him feel normal, and he could go to sleep happy.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, prison boy?’ Rock asked, towering over him one morning as he was returning to the space under the tarp after a game of tag with the village kids.

  ‘Going to sleep.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be sleeping now, not running around the village.’

  ‘Just making friends,’ Diego said.

  Rock grabbed his arm. ‘Giving away our secrets? You’re trying to steal our money and our paste, and you’re trying to get the locals to help you.’

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Or what? Think your new friends will come to your rescue? They’ve seen dozens of boys like you. They know who their real friends are. Who buys their coca? Who built their school? Our money keeps them quiet.’

  He let Diego go with a shove. Diego landed in the dirt, almost on top of a sleeping Julio.

  ‘Wake up the other dogs,’ Rock ordered. ‘We’re heading back to camp.’

  Diego had to drag the others back from the far, far away place their exhaustion had taken them. Too tired to grumble, they were soon burdened down with sacks of coca, trudging along the jungle trail. The heat and insects formed clouds around them. Little Julio stumbled and had to be pulled up by the others. Rock’s mood grew meaner with every step.

  By the time they got back to camp, Diego was ready to drop. The glue boys did drop, right beside the sacks of coca. Diego sat down on the ground beside them. He realised that their smell no longer bothered him. After a week of sweat and no showers and no clean clothes, he assumed he smelled just as bad.

  ‘Prison boy—clean up this camp.’

  Diego knew exactly who Rock was talking to. His body felt like lead as he struggled back to his feet.

  ‘Why me? Why do you always ask me? Why don’t you get one of the others . . .’ Diego looked around him as he spoke. The three glue boys were sprawled on the ground. Mando was sitting beside Rock, pouring them both a drink of chicha.

  Diego stopped complaining. What was the point? He grabbed a trash bag and started picking up the chicha boxes and banana skins the men had scattered around.

  The camp consisted of a tent where the men who came and went slept when they had to stay for awhile. Another tent held chemicals and supplies. Folding tables and chairs made up the kitchen and dining area. The little foil bricks of coca paste were stacked neatly on a table in the middle of it all.

  Diego swept carefully around the table with a palm leaf. He wondered why the paste, the most valuable thing in the camp, wasn’t hidden away. Then he understood. None of the men trusted any of the others. If the coca paste was always in sight, no one would have the opportunity to steal it.

  Diego tucked this bit of information away. In prison, the more you knew about the guards, the better off you were. Which guards were mad at each other, which ones were ma
d at the boss, which ones were homesick, which ones were plain bone mean—all of that knowledge helped the prisoners to know who to avoid and who to flatter.

  Diego resolved to keep his eyes open, and he wondered what else he would learn.

  Sweat dripped off his forehead, stinging his eyes. He wiped at them with his shirt sleeve, which helped for a moment, but the salt and pressure stung the insect bites on his arm.

  His forearm seemed to be swollen. He rolled up his shirt sleeve to get a better look, and let out a cry of horror.

  Something was moving inside his arm.

  ‘Get it out! Get it out!’ he yelled, not even knowing what it was.

  The men looked up from their beer and laughed. Mando jumped to Diego’s side, but didn’t know how to help.

  ‘Something’s in my arm! Get it out!’

  ‘Don’t worry, smart boy,’ Rock laughed. ‘It will crawl up the inside of your arm, chew up your small brain, then crawl out your eyeballs.’

  ‘It won’t hurt much!’ Paolo laughed.

  Diego waved his arm, trying to shake out whatever was living under his skin. The men’s laughter grew as he flung himself against the table, sending the foil packets of coca flying around the camp.

  Then he knocked against something very big and very solid—something that took hold of his arm with one big, white hand and held it tightly while he made a small, quick cut with a knife. This mountain of a man then took his big hands and squeezed them tight on each side of the writhing lump on Diego’s arm. Out of the cut came blood, water and worms, crawling and twisting.

  After that, everything went black, as Diego passed out.

  He came to a few minutes later, propped up against a table leg while the giant, bald gringo bandaged his arm.

  ‘You were bitten by a sort of a fly,’ the gringo said in Spanish. His smile was kind, reassuring. The moustache under his nose moved when he talked. ‘It laid its eggs under your skin, the eggs hatched, and eventually the new flies would have broken through your skin to freedom. But better to have them out now, right?’

  Diego nodded. His bandages looked so clean against the filth of his skin. ‘Thank you.’