Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  When Aida gets to the part about translating for Ralph, she remembers: that man in the crowd — he was in the newspaper, beside Mitch Wall at the Mil Sueños mine. She asks André to pull up the photo online. He doesn’t understand why Aida cares so much about one stranger, but he does as she asks, reading her the photo caption. It includes the man’s name: Carlos Mendoza Reyes.

  July 5, 1980

  Neela,

  Very bad day. The buzz of military planes is making me crazy. Last week, they got way too close. We had to get into the bunker nearly every afternoon. I spent hours in there, glued to guerrilla radio. They had reports of entire villages being wiped out.

  At last, a couple days ago things calmed down enough for us to leave camp. They wanted me to document a process the faction has started where people elect a ‘poder popular’ in the communities — like town council (which is a totally new concept around here). When we got there, the locals were like zombies. The military had just been there. Some houses were still burning, all the crops destroyed. I saw bodies, Neela.

  These three skinny kids wandered over to us, practically naked, with cuts and blood all over them. They’d lost their parents (kidnapped? killed?). The children had hidden in a shed behind their house until the soldiers left. It was filled with bats — those giant, evil ones I told you about. The oldest got on the shoulders of one of the guerrillas and came with us, back to camp.

  When I came to El Salvador I thought it was going to help me, as a journalist. Like if I published really good stories, I’d get somewhere. But I’m having trouble with that idea now. There are so many stories like those kids. Publishing in Canada — what will that do for them? I wish I was the kind of person who could pick up a gun and fight. But I know I’m not and won’t ever be. I don’t like the way they’re running this war. I don’t like the lower status the women have. Everything is done ass-backwards.

  I’ve tried to talk to Adrian about the problems I see, but he’s always distracted. Always has some important mission to plan. Why won’t he make more time for me? I intend to corner him about this next time he’s here.

  DB

  FRIDAY

  APRIL 8

  9:00 AM. Mil Sueños mine

  “Namaste.”

  “Namaste,” Mitch replies, then separates his palms and lifts them over his head before bowing and bringing them to the floor to begin his sun salutations.

  “Remember to constrict the throat,” the instructor continues. “Build the fire.”

  Mitch does the loud Ashtanga nose breathing, immediately breaking into a sweat. But five minutes later, after arching into an upward dog, he lets himself down onto his stomach while the video plays on.

  “Extend. . . breathe!”

  Mitch promised his wife he’d keep up his practice until his next trip home, but it’s no fun without her. And this room is making it impossible to relax. He’s never minded sleeping at the mine when the two-hour drive back to his apartment in San Salvador feels like too much. But the stress of this abduction is making him long for basic comforts. This portable has none. He sits up.

  “Try to feel the energy of the earth rising through your sit bones, your heels. . . .”

  Mitch wonders exactly what kind of “energy” he’s receiving from the land beneath his trailer — bad karma? Initially, Mitch didn’t give much thought to the hostages. He genuinely feels that they came to El Salvador with their eyes open and must live with the consequences. But this morning he woke up with Carlos’s voice in his head, an echo of something he said over the phone last night. “I don’t see this person shifting their deadline,” he told Mitch. “By Sunday, you’ll have to decide what’s best for you and your business.” All doom and gloom. Mitch wonders if he’s setting himself up for cosmic retribution if he doesn’t agree to an exhumation. It’s a morbid thought, but Mitch lets it drift into his consciousness without judgment, then out again, the way the thin male instructor on the video always tells him to. Mitch sees the Canadian hostages sitting around a campfire somewhere at the crack of dawn, Monday morning. One of them is called to stand and bang-bang! Shot at point blank range. Because of him.

  The image is alarming enough that Mitch stands and begins to pace. This is crazy. In his heart, he knows that if Catharine Keil would just mind her own business, the police would deal with the kidnappers long before that scenario plays out. Why the hell is the Attorney General listening to her over his own police? And what is that woman’s problem? Keil is unnecessarily rude, first of all. And now Mitch hears she’s brought in some senior bureaucrats from Ottawa to lobby Schiffer even harder into keeping Hernán-dez and the anti-kidnapping unit leashed. Meanwhile, she tries to put the blame on him? As if Mitch made those fools come here on their sham “delegation”! It’s not going to be Keil’s face on the news if the kidnapping goes south.

  Mitch feels his heart accelerating. He’s not practicing his letting-go. He closes his eyes, sits back down, crosses his legs and promises himself to just be.

  A knock at the door.

  Sometimes when his director of operations or the geologists know he’s staying on site, they come by for advice. But Mitch isn’t even dressed. Just the Lululemon shorts and tank top set his wife bought him. “Busy here,” he yells.

  “You asked for the update as soon as I had it, Señor Wall.”

  Sobero. Mitch grabs a t-shirt from his single chair and throws it on. He answers the door to find his Chief of Security looking cool in the brilliant morning.

  “The newspapers,” says Sobero, handing Mitch a stack of Salvadoran dailies.

  Above the fold of the top copy is a blaring headline that reads, “Kidnapper received high-level military training, admits to previous violence.” Mitch scans the article. What kind of warped. . . ?

  The hostages are writing on behalf of the kidnapper now?

  “Christ,” he says, rereading the byline: Danielle Byrd. The old one — delegation “leader.” A total loser, from what he’s read in the Canadian papers.

  “It is not unusual in El Salvador for men to have some formal training,” says Sobero, as if the fact that they’re dealing with a professional killer who’s talked one of his hostages into publicly making his case is an insignificant detail. “Also, it seems they’ll have a few extra today. In the capital.” Mitch isn’t sure he can take more bad news. “How many?” he asks, reluctantly.

  “Not so many.”

  “Like how many?”

  “Two hundred, two hundred and fifty.”

  “What —” Mitch cannot understand why people are attending those demonstrations in San Salvador, or why the papers in Canada are making such a big deal of them. “We should’ve reached out to those families before that Committee for the fucking Environment did. They got them onside while they were easy pickings.”

  Sobero looks disappointed in this outburst. “Families are of no use to this mine. We are going to start putting people on the ground at the cathedral. Eyes and ears. I am also working on some meetings that could assist us.”

  Mitch nods, knowing Sobero will say nothing more about his security strategy. “Thank you, Manuel. I’ll shower and talk to you when I get settled.”

  Mitch closes the door and goes to shut off his video. The shot has changed to a close-up of the instructor in a twisted seated position, his left elbow hooked around his right knee, looking behind him at the camera. “Keep your eyes going further right, extend the stretch. Hold here. Five. Slow. Breaths.”

  1:00 PM. San Salvador Cathedral

  The microphone squeaks. Marta taps it. “Sí?”

  Several people nod. She’s being heard.

  “Bueno. Gracias a todos y todas que están aquí con nosotros. Qué bien!” She claps for the crowd. Their swelled numbers do impress her. She predicted to Pedro that the story in the morning papers about the kidnapper’s life would strike a chord. It has. “Thank you to the Archdiocese of San Salvador for permitting us, again, to be here, on their doorstep.” Marta keeps her eyes on tw
o heavily armed police who are strutting back and forth across the roof of one of the buildings on the west side of the plaza. The cops have also seen the story, apparently. Despite the violence described in it, some people are taking Enrique’s side. The police are on alert. And worried police are always dangerous. Maybe, Marta thinks, it’s the same all over, the way talk of the past makes them trigger-happy. But in Central America, the past is also recent. Its residue is everywhere. “And thanks too to the police and to our government,” she says, “for extending to us such full protection today — to all of us citizens, who have come here in the name of our country’s historical memory and a future in which our environment flourishes.”

  Laughter and applause from the maybe three hundred people on hand. Now Marta shifts her focus to their faces, looking for anyone that might be a plant. She’s still being threatened. More phone calls. One distorted voice that grunted at her, “If you like your life, stop the demonstrations!” then hung up.

  She ploughs ahead, trying to forget those words. “We have all read in the newspapers today an account of the life of the man who carried out this abduction. This letter has affected me deeply. Maybe, like me, these words have caused you pain, and you are wondering why we should continue to be here in support of demands by a man like this. But hear me out. The crimes he describes committing are heinous, unfeeling. But I challenge anyone here to tell me that Mil Sueños, with its famoso expansion at El Pico, is not carrying out crimes today that parallel those of the military during our war. What else can we call the dynamiting that has destroyed the land around Los Pampanos except unfeeling? Have the people who’ve made millions selling this gold internationally given a single thought to the families who live downstream from the mine? To the value of their lives? Their children’s lives? I challenge anyone to deny the crucial role the people of Los Pampanos played in dismantling El Salvador’s military. They faced terror, death squads, mutilation. And yet they succeeded because they knew the regime was criminal. So tell me why we shouldn’t do the same to Mil Sueños now? What you read today about ‘Enrique’ is a crime of the past. He has owned up to it. Mil Sueños and the El Pico expansion are crimes of our time. Of this very day. No one wants to admit to those. But we can prevent more tragedies. We must write a new ending for El Salvador.”

  Just as Marta feels her face flushing with emotion and she’s begun leading the crowd in a cheer of “El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!” she looks out and her eyes fall on the person she’s least expected to see again so soon: Carlos Reyes. She watches, confounded, as he actively ignores her, shaking hands with people, moving forward, stealing away one vote at a time for his new political party. Why should this surprise her? Men like Carlos always sniff out opportunities for political gain. It takes an effort for Marta to keep on with her cheer and look like a leader for those gathered and the several news crews that have come out to cover the event.

  Then Carlos stops. He has come to stand behind Marta’s young guest, Aida Byrd.

  Aida feels a hand on her shoulder.

  “Miss Byrd?” says a deep voice.

  She turns to see a middle-aged man with a lazy smile and a thick head of curly hair extending his other hand towards her to shake.

  “Carlos Reyes.”

  It’s him. The man in the suit. Mitch Wall’s friend. Aida blushes. “I know.”

  “Ah?”

  “You were in the papers. With the helicopter.”

  Benoît, overhearing from nearby, practically leaps towards them. “You’re with the mine! I think that you need to leave ’ere,” he says to Carlos, looking like he’ll either hit him or fall down crying. Benoît has found a real live human who sides with the company that’s condemning his son to death. Aida is embarrassed for him. Benoît and Sylvie are disintegrating by the hour. Ralph, meanwhile, looks and seems the same. Not particularly friendly towards anyone. He keeps a calm eye on the confrontation between Benoît and Carlos. Sylvie just shakes her head.

  “Please. I am only here to acknowledge the situation you are all in,” Carlos says, continuing in excellent English. “I offer my support. I am not ‘with the mine.’ I work as an independent investigator of the police. My office is close by. I thought I would introduce myself. I believe there is still room to negotiate the —”

  As he talks, Aida feels that Carlos is addressing her more than the others, often turning to look her in her eyes. She can’t decide if he’s being flirtatious or just acknowledging that they’ve seen one another before. She loses track of his words.

  Eventually Benoît interrupts. “I don’t think we should trust any man that walk off the street with a business card.” He eyes the one Carlos has just handed to him.

  “Benoît!” Aida chides, taking one for herself. As she does, her hand comes into the briefest contact with Carlos`s. His palm is dry and warm, unlike her own, which is unpleasantly sweaty. If anything, the city air is denser and more pungent than yesterday. “I don’t think the people who are trying to hurt us would come here — to this demonstration.” Her defense emerges before she’s had time to think it through, and Aida searches Carlos’s eyes, looking for proof that he deserves it.

  “I hope I will not cause you any trouble at all,” he says earnestly. “I came by to see if any of you would consider discussing with me what interactions you’ve had so far with the police.”

  He’s old. But still good-looking. Authoritative, though Aida can’t figure out what makes him seem that way. The voice? The hair? She hears her mother telling her she should be more wary of older men. What Danielle has never understood is that it’s exactly wariness that repels Aida from men her own age. She filters out inexperience and game-playing. Older men are direct — even when they intend to use you. Still, as an offering to her invisible mother, Aida decides to reserve judgment on Carlos. For now.

  “I want to ensure that you are treated with respect,” Carlos continues, but he doesn’t get any further because Marta Ramos has appeared.

  “Here you are,” she says, her face unusually severe. “Again.” Aida looks between her and Carlos: these two know each other?

  “Marta. I came in support of the spirit of your event. And to offer my assistance to these Canadians.”

  But Marta doesn’t seem to be listening, which reignites Aida’s protective urge towards her new acquaintance.

  “As you know, I have a greater chance of controlling the police than you,” Carlos adds.

  “Coddle, yes. Control. . . ?”

  Carlos’s smile fades. “You’re being unfair, Marta. I only —”

  “Okay!” Marta says over him, reverting to her poor English. “Everyone, Pedro is ready. Maybe you go home a leetle bit early today.”

  Aida watches the others nod obediently, preparing to leave in the direction Marta is pointing, back across the plaza. Like lambs. Aida stands her ground. As of this morning, it appears that her mother is writing on behalf of the kidnappers, a fact that, in truth, Aida doesn’t doubt. The kidnappers are toying with the press. But from the tone of the piece, Danielle is more than their middleman. Like Neela, she’s prone to seeing the world through the lens of victimhood. Her mother has always been susceptible to thinking she feels other people’s pain. It’s easier for her to deal with than her own, or Aida’s. Since reading about that horrible man, Aida has been struggling all morning to keep a positive frame of mind, and she doesn’t need Marta robbing her of the one personal contact she’s enjoyed all day.

  But to her surprise, Carlos is giving in like the rest. He bows, excuses himself politely and waves goodbye.

  Aida trails the others to the car, where Marta issues a warning that Aida is forced to translate. “Carlos Mendoza Reyes is a man our country owes a debt to for his bravery in our civil war. But he has important political ambitions and a lot to gain by ingratiating himself with many different people, even while he remains close to Mitchell Wall.”

  Benoît crosses his arms and whistles, Sylvie shakes her hair, and Ralph sighs, all of t
hem united in judgment. Aida’s face remains neutral. As soon as she can, she jumps into the car and stares straight out her window all the way home.

  4:05 PM. 33 KM southeast of previous campsite

  The hostages are spending the day in an actual house. Just a one-room adobe shanty, but it has an owner, which makes it ten million times better than that rotting shed, as exciting as theatre. He was sitting in a corner on his haunches when they arrived. Looked about seventy, with the palest beige button-down, through which Danielle could see a patch of grey chest hair. He had exceptionally long arms that ended in a pair of skeletal hands. It was only through sheer discipline that Danielle tore her eyes from him and put down her tarp for sleep, worried that he might leave before she woke up. The others obviously felt the same, arranging themselves in nearly a line so that they could look until their eyes drooped closed. This man might be capable of something — a great performance, of telling them their ordeal is nearly over, that his house is their last stop. But when Danielle awoke around noon, he was still squatting in exactly the same place, smoking the cigarettes Cristóbal gave him and saying nothing.

  Now Danielle feels the hope she and the others have shared — of an ally or a show or a miracle — thinning, blowing away with the man’s languorously exhaled smoke. He’s only changed positions once since lunch, to go out and piss. They all overheard the stubbornly healthy-sounding stream.

  Pepe only reappears after his usual absence, just before supper. He nods briefly at the man, who responds with a single, slow bat of his turtle-like eyelids. Danielle is busy trying to figure out how the two might know one another — from their home village? the war? — when Pepe turns to address her. “Venga,” he says, calling her away as he has each time before.