Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

  As she turned to walk home, Luz rummaged in her purse for the ring of keys; it could double as a weapon if necessary. Her footsteps sounded like gunshots on the pavement. The man must’ve been wearing sneakers—his feet were quiet, like the mountain lion, not giving away his location until he pounced.

  Mountain lion. Mountain? What if this was the contact she’d been waiting for?

  They shouldn’t come for me like this. Everything’s in my apartment.

  With a second backward glance, Luz broke into a run. Now, the man jogged faster, his shoes slapping the pavement. From a long-ago fragment of her father’s wisdom, she understood he could have overtaken her. He was cruising, keeping pace.

  Luz had almost reached her gate. In a few seconds, she’d put on a burst of speed, gain enough distance to lock him outside. Then she’d run in and grab it. Ready. Set.

  Now. Luz streaked for the finish line.

  A dark van, invisible in the shadows of overhanging branches, flashed its lights directly ahead of her. Luz tripped. The man caught up to her and pinned her arms behind her back.

  “No, no! I need to get something inside first. Let me go. I’ll be right back.” She jabbed a key into his midsection and twisted it. He screamed and loosened his grip. She lunged for the gate.

  The van glided forward. Its lights grew brighter, bathing them in a harsh glow. The man with the machete scar pulled her away. She grabbed a wrought-iron bar on the gate with her free hand and wrestled the key into the lock with the other.

  Luz sensed movement from both sides. Large dark figures entered her peripheral vision. One smashed his fist on her outstretched arm. Stunned, she lost her hold on the iron bar. The other man tackled her. They both landed on the sidewalk, Luz on the bottom. Uneven concrete dug into her back when she tried to kick the man off.

  “Wait,” Luz cried. “I’m supposed to bring something.”

  A cloth jammed into her mouth choked her as she sobbed. They fitted a hood over her head, none too gently, tied her hands and feet, and tossed her into the back of the van. Luz landed on a lumpy pile of sacks between rows of boxes.

  The driver reversed away from her gate, and the van lurched as they bumped off the sidewalk. Seconds became minutes. Time measured by stopping and turning. The man she’d gouged gave an exaggerated account of his injuries—unless, thought Luz, she’d struck a much luckier blow than she supposed.

  Lying alone in the dark, Luz took stock. They hadn’t stolen her keys to ransack her apartment. Not a robbery. Probably not a rape, either. And Juana had asked if Luz would be at the market as usual. Not to give Luz a message, though. She’d bet anything Juana had pointed her out, and the men had followed her all day. Damn. She’d never imagined they’d handle it like this.

  Luz had little trouble spitting out the rag the men had stuffed in her mouth, a foul greasy thing like you’d use to wipe a dipstick. But her calls to turn around were met with laughter, so finally she wiggled and twisted until she created a relatively smooth cubbyhole among the boxes.

  She was stuck. She’d have to do some fast talking when she arrived.

  Minutes became hours. The air became cooler. They must be heading into the mountains. Then a quick series of turns, level land, a slower pace, and a half-dozen brief pauses; they were in a small town. The roads deteriorated after that. There were times Luz imagined they weren’t on a road at all, but a rutted cart track.

  The van whined and groaned. The driver cursed and downshifted. They climbed sharply, braked even more sharply. The driver smoked in the cab while he directed his sleepy underlings to reposition makeshift roadblocks. The men left her alone and were careful not to disclose anything about their location. From that, Luz took heart. It was a fuck-up, but she could survive.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Luz drifted off into troubled sleep. She woke to a heated discussion among her captors. Turn left or right? There were two votes for izquierda, but the driver pulled rank and turned right instead. The van jolted onward, inch by inch. The subordinates’ irritated grumblings intensified to profanity when the path apparently petered out into an impassible track. Reversing the van required something like a thirty-two-point turn, an eternity of increasingly testy course corrections.

  They crept back to the crossroads and, after more bickering, onward. Luz was now wide awake and anxious for their arrival. She also had to pee, the pressure in her bladder an agony, aggravated every time she squirmed to change position. With her hands bound behind her and legs lashed at the ankles, she couldn’t lie for long without pressing awkwardly on one limb or another, reducing the blood flow until she became numb. Then Luz would shift as best she could, and the slow burn of pins and needles intensified as circulation resumed.

  The debilitating sensations mimicked what had begun happening over the summer. When Richard, who’d visited regularly as her mother’s condition deteriorated, arrived for the funeral, Luz blamed her dizziness and awkwardness on the stress. Between then and two months later, when Richard came up with some papers for her to sign, her symptoms worsened to the point she had trouble standing in the mornings, and she’d missed so much work her supervisor at the day-care center had warned there was talk of letting her go.

  The second Richard saw her, he insisted she see a doctor. The doctor he found ran an impressive battery of tests—and, she suspected, sent Richard a large portion of the bill she could never have paid on her own. Process of elimination, the doctor said. And he’d eliminated one thing after another. Until her appointment shortly after Labor Day. When he called to arrange the consultation, Luz had even experienced a surge of hope that now she could get proper treatment and the weakness and trembling would go away. Luz knew it was bad news the minute she stepped into the office. The nurse’s bright chatter and unwillingness to meet her eyes told her almost all she needed to know. The doctor only added details.

  Afterward, she stood on the sidewalk. It was still Wednesday afternoon; the sun shone; a school bus passed, kids shouting. Luz walked across the street to the bus stop and thought about dying.

  Well, she would die soon enough, but not now. She still had things to do.

  The van slowed around a curve. The driver beeped the horn and hit the brakes hard.

  “Aquí estamos,” said one of the men. They had arrived.

  A high-pitched squeal announced the opening of the van’s back door. Air rushed in, immediately identifiable as cool early morning mountain air. The scent of wood fires mixed with mountain laurel. The dirt would be black, moist. Stick a piece of bark in and a tree would grow before morning, her father always said.

  Callused hands yanked her ankles and pulled her out, hiking her skirt around her waist.

  “No me chingas,” Luz yelled. If the men hadn’t brought her to the camp of the Frente Popular de Liberación, a little foul language was the least of her problems.

  A voice Luz might’ve recognized—although it had been so long ago—called out for them to undo her hands so she could settle her clothing. This they did.

  Taciturn men, ripe with body odor and cigarette smoke, pushed past her to remove supplies from the van. In a few minutes the men moved off, mission complete. Her head still shrouded, Luz stood alone next to the van. Footsteps approached, deliberate tread crunching on dry leaves. Luz strained to see through the hood’s rough weave.

  All at once—a hand at her throat. Reaching under her sweater. Rough, cool. Undid the top two buttons of her blouse and pulled the left sleeve down.

  “Satisfied?” asked Luz. She gagged as the rope pulled tight around her neck. Hands worked the knot. The man swore vividly a few times before releasing the rope. He yanked off the hood, and there stood Antonio Torres. He was a man now, bearded and muscular, not the wide-eyed, wiry boy who—seventeen years earlier—had saved Luz’s life. The black rifle looped across his shoulder seemed part of his body, like he’d grown an extra appendage.

  “The second I heard you swearing at my men like a bratty eleven-year-old, I knew.” His l
augh rumbled like a freight train. “But I checked for your chicken pox scars anyway. Aunt Juana might have been conned—it wouldn’t be the first time someone has tried to trick us.”

  “Toño,” she said, “I have to pee. Desperately.”

  The man had bent to sever the ropes around her feet. Now he stood and swatted her behind. “Over there,” he said.

  Luz gave her cousin a fleeting hug and ran behind the shed.

  “Why in the name of God did you ask to come here?” he said when Luz returned.

  “It’s awfully important, but your stupid, incompetent, overeager, macho …” Having run out of adjectives, Luz continued. “Those idiots abducted me on the street before I could get it. My mother, she—”

  At the change in her voice, the man she called Toño came forward and covered her hands with his. “What happened, Lulu?”

  “Mama died.”

  A pool of liquid gathered at the inside corners of Toño’s eyes, overflowed, and etched a zigzag trail through the stubble on his face. At the sight of his tears, Luz broke down. And Antonio Torres, outlaw commander of the Frente Popular de Liberación, pulled her close. He rocked Luz back and forth, like her grandmother used to. When her tears slowed, he pulled out a handkerchief and patted her cheeks dry before passing the cloth across his face. He studied the damp cloth for a moment, then folded it precisely into a tiny square and stowed it once again in his pocket.

  Luz hugged him. “It’s so good to see you again, Toño.”

  “And you, too, little Lulu, my favorite cousin all grown up. But how is it you managed to return? You’re not using your real name and—we followed you—you work for that bastard Benavides. So have you gone over to the dark side? Am I going to have to kill you?”

  Toño’s voice was light enough to defuse his threat, but his expression serious. Luz had to give him as much of an explanation as possible, without revealing the extent of her involvement. He clasped her hand and led her across the small clearing to a group of sawed-off logs around a campfire. Beyond, under tree-cover, were several Jeeps under a netting of brush and camouflage tents into which men were stacking the new supplies.

  “Let’s sit here.” Toño parked himself on a stump with a clear view of the only track into the encampment and patted the log next to it. After Luz sat, he stared at her in silence long enough to make her uneasy. “You’re so very much like your mother,” he finally said.

  Tears filled her eyes again, for Toño was remembering Josefina from the old days when she was their group’s unofficial logistics manager—dedicated and smart, intensely practical, a wizard at procuring blankets and enough food for everyone.

  “She must have missed your father so very much.”

  “Oh, yes.” Luz told Toño a bit about their life in the States and about her mother’s decline—refusing to learn English, gradually confining herself to their apartment, getting sick.

  “Do you remember that story your father told?” Toño asked. “The one about the bird?”

  “Of course.”

  “He never came right out and said it was about him and your mother, but I think everyone knew it was.”

  Her father began the story the old-fashioned way: Había una vez.

  It went something like this: Once upon a time, way back at the beginning of the world, God created a bird. It wasn’t a bird like we have today; this bird had no wings. When it looked at the sky, the bird knew it belonged in the clouds, but it couldn’t reach them. God, recognizing his mistake, made the bird a wing. In the language of the old days, this wing was called “man.” The bird joyfully flapped its wing and lifted up—but could only fly in bobbling circles. So God called the bird back and gave it a second wing to balance the first. This wing, he called “woman,” and the bird rose up to the clouds and soared away.

  Although the words in the main part of the tale varied with each telling, her father always finished ritually, like a priest giving benediction, “As a bird needs two wings to fly, so do people fly highest and straightest with two wings of equal strength.”

  Luz spoke through the lump in her throat. “Mama knew. Papa would call her mi otra ala.”

  Toño bent to light a cigarette from the fire and, Luz thought, to wipe his eyes again. “Your return worried us,” he said, straightening. “How did you know to make contact through Tia Juana?”

  “The Aunt Juana part is easy. When Mama knew she wouldn’t get well, she told me about the old-lady market network. She gave me three names, Juana and her sisters, but she also said I should try anyone selling oranges from La Esperanza. To wear her rings and see if I got a reaction.”

  “Juana noticed.” Toño blew out a long plume of smoke. “It was brilliant of your mother to remember that after staying out of touch so long.”

  Luz tugged his arm. “Toño, you have to understand. Mama never adjusted to life in the U.S. She longed to come back here, but we knew it was too risky. Then she got sick.” Luz squeezed her eyes tight-shut against another wave of tears. “Mama made me promise—it was her only request, Toño—not to bury her under a mountain of cold dirt, where snow would lie on top of her. She told me to have her cremated, and when it was safe, to bring her ashes back. She wanted to return to the waterfall.”

  “To your father.” Toño nodded, took another long drag on his cigarette. “She must have known we would bury him there.”

  “Yes, married for life at the waterfall and buried there together. It was only the belief they would be together again that sustained her. Sometimes the talk of heaven drove me crazy,” said Luz with a shrug, “but in the end, that hope was all she had.”

  Toño exhaled heavily. With the wince of someone expecting bad news, he asked, “And the ashes?”

  “In my apartment.” Luz jabbed his belly. “Your men abducted me on the street before I could get the urn. I told them to wait.”

  Toño made a stop sign with his hand. “They were following my orders—”

  “I need to come back to bring them.”

  “Oh, Lulu, you ask too much. These trips are dangerous. And the waterfall is far from this camp. Ten hours’ march, at least. Longer still, believe it or not, if we go mainly by road.”

  “Can you get word to me through your aunt? Please?” The corners of his mouth quirked up. He was softening. “Please, Toño. We could do it another weekend, but it’ll have to be soon.”

  He exhaled a massive lungful of smoke. “How soon?”

  Yes! Luz resisted going for high fives and considered the variables. In the lead-up to Martin’s assassination, Toño, as a major—if currently outlawed—player in Guatemalan politics, would soon be moving toward Guatemala City.

  “Before Christmas?” With her lack of progress into Martin’s apartment or Bobby’s briefcase, the bombing couldn’t happen before then.

  “Not a chance.” Toño swiveled his head decisively. “It’ll have to wait for spring. We’re moving camp next week, Lulu. We’ll take advantage of the coming dry season to consolidate our positions in Alta Verapaz.”

  What? That was the wrong direction. “You’re not heading south, closer to the city?”

  Toño snorted. “So we can run right into government patrols and get slaughtered?”

  A log crashed, dislodging several others; flames sparked higher. Luz gazed into the now-raging fire. The Frente Popular had already been tipped off about the assassination. Toño’s plans didn’t make sense.

  “You understand, don’t you,” Richard had said, “that getting rid of the Benavides is a win-win. In addition to putting a monkey wrench in their cocaine network, it will remove the biggest stumbling block to true multi-party democracy in Guatemala. We’ve made sure the Frente Popular is prepared to walk into the power vacuum.”

  When Richard took Luz to meet John, he had been explicit: “With Martin dead and his son disgraced, the FPL’s leaders will have an excellent shot at leading the government.”

  Perhaps she’d been out of the loop too long. “Aren’t you thinking in terms of
getting ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Returning to the capital.”

  Toño leaned back against the tree and roared with laughter. “No hurry, Lulu, no hurry,” he said when his guffaws subsided. “We have many months to go—a year, more—until we’ll have the strength to mount a definitive assault. Meanwhile we’re circling here in the north, you see. We’ll wait until we have the strength to control the major highways, cut off the large cities. Only when—”

  Toño stopped. Luz guessed he was reacting to her obvious confusion at his sensible, long-term strategy to wrest power from the oligarchy in the city.

  “I’m not really telling you too much, Lulu,” he said. “It’s on the news, what our plans are. The army is simply spread too thin to be able to do anything about it. Oh, they try—and the villagers pay a heavy price. But they’re with us. The small towns, the small shopkeepers, they’re with us, too. The teachers. Some of the priests—not all.”

  “I’m confused, Toño,” Luz blurted. “People say you’re the commander of the Frente?”

  “I am.”

  His words were resolute, but the way Toño rolled his wrist back and forth—it was like her father equivocating maybe, maybe not. So Luz asked, “Just you? Or are there others who might challenge you?”

  Toño sat forward on the tree stump, and his eyes narrowed. He took a last long drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt into the fire. “I control the largest group of fighters, but there are two others. We agreed to cooperate to bring down the corrupt government.” He slapped his hands to his lap. “After that, who knows, but for now, it is in all our interests to work together.”