Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  A moment later, Martin reaches back and Tina has the long, soft piece of material in her hand, part of his shirt tied to hers. She waves her free arm until she has Cristóbal’s attention. “I have to shit,” she says when he walks up. “Mierda,” she adds, remembering the word.

  He goes with her a little ways off and makes her wait while he clears branches and digs a small latrine hole. Then he retreats and turns his back as she undoes her pants. Cristóbal isn’t so bad. Tina almost feels guilty deceiving him. At least she doesn’t have to fake the shitting. She’s been trying not to focus on her sickness. She can’t afford to be seen as weak, even if she’s starting to feel that way.

  She ties the material to a low branch of the furthest tree she can reach, then does her best to pull other branches in front of it. She uses leaves to clean herself and buries her mess, as they’re expected to do. “Done,” she says, her pulse increasing as Cristóbal inspects the job. She wills him not to look around anymore carefully than absolutely necessary.

  “Okay,” says Cristóbal. He follows her back towards the others.

  Now she’s on the ground again, trying to sleep a few minutes more. She lulls herself with the image of someone good — someone clever and careful — picking through this entire area, searching for them. Tina sees this person, who takes the form of her brother John, pulling up the piece of cloth and recognizing it. Then she sees herself back at home, leading her yoga class, standing on just her head and forearms, strong and calm.

  September 16, 1980

  I’ll start with the good news: I finished the feature about the medical team. Definitely my best so far. These people will inspire you. That makes seven full-lengths in the can, by the way. See? I haven’t been totally useless here.

  The bad news is the doctors had to refill my medication. I’m sick again, and it’s bad this time. I haven’t kept much down for the past two weeks. You should see me. I’m like a scarecrow. Two new holes poked in my belt.

  More bad news: the war feels like it’s getting further from a resolution, rather closer to one. The head doctor of the medical team, a Cuban, told me about a man she treated recently who was tortured by the military. The way she described his wounds. . . I had to debate how much to include in the article so Canadians could handle it.

  It feels like anyone here could end up tortured now. Or dead. Even me. I had a dream last night that I took my stories, rolled them up, put an elastic around them and floated out of camp. It was such a great feeling, looking down, knowing I was free of all this ugliness (not to mention laziness and backwardness).

  But I woke up beside Adrian and I knew I couldn’t leave. They need reporters here. He needs me.

  DB

  PS — We’re shifting camp to stay clear of the fighting. We move tonight, so I’ll only write when we end up wherever we’re headed.

  SUNDAY

  APRIL 10

  11:40 AM. Multiplaza Mall, San Salvador

  They meet in the food court. He buys two heaping plates of Chinese food and Cokes and carries them on an orange plastic tray to an out-of-the-way table. Aida can’t stop smiling. “I didn’t tell anyone about our call.”

  Carlos seems concerned. “You lied?”

  “Not exactly. I do need a shirt. Something for when my mother gets back.”

  “You believe that. That your mother will be back,” he says, his tone not very distinct, not making the words into a question or a doubt.

  “Of course,” says Aida, surprised. “They’ve got a name to go with the police sketch now, right? Rita something.”

  Carlos does not react to this news. He seems to be in a daze. Dark circles rim his pretty eyes. “You look a bit tired,” Aida says, smiling shyly.

  “I sometimes have trouble sleeping. An old disturbance for me.”

  “Well, that woman, Rita, and her sister dumped their kids with relatives and said they were going away for a couple of weeks,” says Aida. “The embassy considers it a huge break. They’ll probably just give up now. Or the police will do a rescue.”

  This time Carlos hears, but his face is grim. He looks unmoved by these scenarios. Maybe, Aida thinks, her enthusiasm does go a bit overboard. Marta has already given her ten reasons for doubting the success of a rescue. “I could take you to the graves of several hostages who would be alive today if the police had just waited,” she said, shaking her head. But how long can they wait this time? The kidnappers’ deadline is coming up fast. Something has to give! Carlos is in a position to at least hint at whether the police will intervene. It occurs to Aida that the reason Carlos looks so unhappy is that he might think she’s using him, asking for more than he can give — a conflict of interest with his job. “Or,” she ventures, changing channels, “I guess if it doesn’t go that way, do you think maybe Mr. Wall might still decide by tomorrow to close his mine? Buy everyone some time.”

  “It’s not so simple, Aida.”

  There’s a finality in this statement that makes Aida redden. Like he’s slapped her — lightly, but on purpose. “Marta said you wouldn’t help me,” she mumbles, hurt by it.

  Carlos looks around. He seems edgy, like he thinks he’ll find Marta in line at the KFC. “I thought you said no one knew you were coming.”

  “They don’t. She said that before. Forget it.”

  Aida and Carlos descend into tense silence, glazed Chinese food cooling on their plates, untouched. Aida has hoped for a confidence boost. Or some help. Or some warmth. So far, she has nothing, which makes the silence feel endless.

  Finally, Carlos seems to shake away the cloud that’s been hovering over him. He reaches out and puts his hand over Aida’s. A long scar she didn’t notice last time runs across the back of it, up to his wrist. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s a stressful week. I’m glad you came.”

  The scar is intriguing — from the war? Aida won’t ask. Too personal. But its rough edges seem to validate Carlos’s gesture.

  He’s been through so much, and yet he really seems to care. “How have you been?” he asks.

  “Those stories. In the papers? They’re still hard,” says Aida, disarmed, dying, she realizes, to talk. “It was weird to see the video of my mother, but these are on another level. They sound like her. She’s making this guy’s stories her own. Danielle never believes in herself, or in me, but she believes what this guy’s telling her about his family, his past.” Aida crosses and uncrosses her legs, pushes away the little tears she can’t hold back. “Sorry.”

  “Are you angry with your mother?”

  Aida checks Carlos’s face to see if he’s being cruel. “There’ve been so many articles about our families in the press.”

  “I haven’t been following so closely.”

  That’s strange. Didn’t Carlos say it was part of his job to follow her mother’s case? “Danielle didn’t exactly raise me. She was there, sort of. She lived with us on and off, me and my grandparents. But it wasn’t her I looked up to. I didn’t have a father. Never knew him. He was Salvadoran. He died. My mother, she —” Aida stops. “I found out some things recently.”

  Carlos’s hand comes off hers. “About?”

  “She left me some letters.” Aida pulls a folded envelope from her bag.

  Carlos stares at it uncomprehendingly.

  “It’s all way in the past, but I just — can I read you something?”

  Carlos looks unsure. Aida is too. She really didn’t come here to tell him about Danielle’s letters. They made no plan over the phone except to spend more time together. But Aida feels the same impulse that made her hug Carlos after coffee — she does want to share something intimate with him. “It’s this one letter. From the end of her time here, with the guerrillas. She was involved with a man. He was an important person. She was lonely when he wasn’t around. Like, she makes it sound like the war was an obstacle to her ‘love’. . . but, anyway, while he was away, she went somewhere to write a story. Oh, and she was also sick, so the people she was hiking with sent her into a vil
lage with a guide so she could rest and get better.”

  Carlos gives a slight, confused nod that reminds Aida of her boyfriend André’s resistance to finding out more about Danielle. “You’re not interested. It’s okay —”

  Carlos places his hand back over hers. His scar is so long and faded. Definitely from the war. “I am,” he says.

  Aida takes a breath.

  When I woke up I got disoriented. Guns were firing outside. People were yelling slogans I’d heard before in the faction. Isidrio said it sounded like an ‘incursión.’ That means the faction goes into a town, makes a big commotion and tries to convince young people to join. (I know because I interviewed someone just last week who was saying they’re doing it more now, with Ronald Reagan in power. The Americans are probably going to beef up the Salvadoran military.) Isidrio told me it’s a punishable offense to interfere with this kind of operation. We had to get out. He said he’d hike up and try to get behind the unit, tell someone they had a sick foreigner down below. Then he took off.

  So I was alone. It was dark. I was petrified. Super sick. I promised myself that when I got home, I’d give up on politics. Just live my life. I don’t care about other people’s battles. I know you won’t want to hear that, but it’s true. I crawled to the door and ran out, following the noise. I ended up on a kind of bump overlooking the village plaza. Young guerrillas were everywhere. But the real shocker was who was addressing the villagers: ADRIAN!!!

  My first instinct was to run to him, but something told me not to. He went on about the people’s struggle, ‘la lucha,’ and everyone cheered, until this kid stepped out. He was fifteen, maybe sixteen. I was too far away to hear, but he was obviously disagreeing, and he wouldn’t give up. Adrian reacted really badly, tried to turn the crowd against him.

  This went on until Adrian gave an order and two compas pulled the kid out of the crowd. They forced him down on his knees. There was more arguing. And then Adrian shot him.

  Neela, he pulled out a gun and shot a kid. Just like that. Dead.

  Carlos has his lips pressed together tightly when Aida looks up.

  “What?” she asks. “It sounds made up, right?”

  “No. It doesn’t sound made up.” Carlos begins attacking his food, putting an entire chicken ball in his mouth. “Continue,” he manages to say, chewing rapidly.

  “That’s all, actually,” says Aida, folding the letter back up. “I don’t even know why I read it.”

  “It’s very upsetting.”

  “You were a guerrilla fighter too, right?” Aida asks, tentatively, the scribble of his scar still facing her as Carlos picks up a forkful of fried rice. “Is that why you can’t sleep?”

  Carlos flinches, a few grains falling to his plate. “No.” He doesn’t elaborate. He uses his napkin to wipe his mouth. “It was a hard life. I am glad it’s over. We should all be glad.”

  “I think it sounds terrible. People did terrible things.”

  Carlos lifts his eyebrows, creating confused ridges along his forehead. “We were fighting because we thought that conditions were extremely unjust.” He points down at her bag, where Aida has put her letter. “That incident was an isolated case.” He goes back to eating for a long moment, then says without looking up from his plate, “Your mother, she wrote more about what she saw in that village?”

  Aida shakes her head. “This was her last letter home. She left your country not long afterwards, chickened out of publishing the news articles she’d written — which pretty much wrecked her idea of becoming a journalist. . . that and the pregnancy.”

  “The man, in the village. He got away with murder, you think.”

  “I guess.”

  “Was he a person who knew your father?”

  Aida looks out the windows at a full parking lot below, its gleaming rows of cars absorbing the intense afternoon sun.

  “Aida, in the war, people did things that they thought were necessary.“

  “Don’t say it wasn’t his fault. He had options. He didn’t have to do what he did.”

  “Our war was not optional. And, in a way, you came out of those difficult circumstances.”

  “Me? No. Biologically, maybe. But I have nothing to do with that. My grandparents raised me. My grandfather worked until the morning he died. Studying. Writing. My mother, meanwhile, she barely works to this day. She blames your war and me for everything that happened to her! It’s seriously sad. People should move on. You did! The people at this mall did!”

  “They have, in some ways. In other ways, they live with the past.”

  “Well, I’m trying to move on, okay? Obviously, it sounds looks like this killer was my father. But that doesn’t mean anything about me. Only about Danielle. She couldn’t resist a tough case. It’s like catnip for her. Marta and the Committee are just another example of that. They don’t let anything go. They’ve made a big political issue out of the mine and the kidnappers are using that rift. Meanwhile, they haven’t seen the possibilities. The Committee should have worked with Mr. Wall. The way you do.”

  “Negotiations are always possible,” says Carlos, and something seems to cross his mind. “But, even so, you shouldn’t be so hard on Marta.”

  Aida nods uncertainly. Why should Carlos care what she thinks of Marta? Those two seem to repel one another.

  “Marta lost a great deal in the war,” Carlos goes on. “Her parents were early activists. They were harassed, beaten. And then her husband was disappeared. Her life was threatened. She had to leave her country.”

  Aida remembers the photos on Marta’s wall, how there’s no husband anywhere. “Disappeared? For good?”

  Carlos touches her hand again. She pulls it back, ashamed.

  “If you talk to her about it, you’ll see that she’s quite understanding. She’s always been that way. With everyone except me.”

  Aida smiles, though she is perplexed. Do Marta and Carlos share so much history? If so, why does Carlos still trust Marta when Marta doesn’t trust him back?

  “You should eat,” Carlos says, pointing at Aida’s nearly untouched plate.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Carlos smiles more widely. “Eat anyway.”

  Aida finishes about half her food. Then Carlos suggests they take a walk. They stroll past electronics and shoe stores, a children’s clothing store and then a jewelry shop, where reams of cheap gold necklaces and earrings cascade down the forms of necks and ears. Aida still refuses to see the blood that Neela and Marta want people to imagine is inseparable from the production of this precious metal. André gave Aida an 18 K gold bracelet last year. Thin, with a simple turn of the metal to make it pop. She wouldn’t give it up for anything.

  When they get to one end of the mall, they stare out over the thoroughfare that passes the main entrance below. Traffic is thick and smog gives the scene an otherworldly sheen. Then they turn and walk all the way back. The entire time they say nothing, but it’s a good silence, like when they’re not talking she and Carlos understand one another better. Aida lets thoughts of blood and killers and mines slip away.

  As they pass a women’s clothing store, Carlos stops. “You said you have some things to buy. And I must get back to work. I will leave you.”

  Aida is crestfallen. She’s imagined this meeting lasting longer, turning into the afternoon together.

  “I will come see you at the demonstration tomorrow,” says Carlos. “If you’re attending.”

  “Okay, yes. I will. It’s just I thought we would. . . I shouldn’t have read that letter. It was stupid.”

  Carlos smiles. “It was courageous.”

  Aida feels a wave of heat reach her ears: he thinks she’s got courage. “I will see you at the demonstration tomorrow. Yes?”

  “Yes.” She makes a mental note to tell Marta she’s changed her mind.

  “Good. Hasta mañana, tonces.” Carlos looks at her long enough that Aida starts to wonder whether he intends to kiss her, or simply communicate something profound that
she’s missed. But a moment later he steps onto the downward escalator, blending with the rest of the shoppers as he glides to the lower level.

  2:20 PM. Unknown location, northern Morazán

  The men keep their eyes down, scanning the earth and stones and grasses. Every so many steps one of them pauses to survey three hundred and sixty degrees at eye level, tilting his head to scrutinize tree branches, trunks and the spaces between them. They’ve been walking since before dawn and both ache with fatigue. One man takes out a bandana, ties it around his head, scratches his substantial beard, itchy from layers of perspiration. Their movements are more or less in sync. For this reason, they spot them almost simultaneously — small cuts aligned and angled on a single tree. The man with wide, square shoulders puts two fingertips into one of the cuts, pulls them out, rubs them against a practised thumb. He nods to his companion.

  Keeping silent, each crouches and pulls up his weapon. The man with the beard gives the signal to split up and walk deeper into the bushes, one this way, one that way, silent footfalls, leaves grazing their large forearms. Ten minutes later, the bearded man calls out, “Nada.” His companion yells back the same.

  They meet by the tree and look again at the machete marks. They know these could be traces of passing herdsmen or anyone else. A few nicks don’t make a lead. Then, just as they’re about to walk on, feeling deflated after three long days of trudging through heat and insects with nothing significant to report to the Jefe, one of the men looks into a thickness of bushes and finds something much, much more promising: two strips of coloured cloth tied together to a branch with a crude knot, near which the men also locate human feces — fresh, watery, carefully buried, though not quite carefully enough. The man with the beard, who feels himself to be in charge, pulls out his phone triumphantly.

  Sobero answers on the first ring and takes in the update with a faint click of his tongue. There are loud traffic sounds behind him. “Unless you are eager to stand there sniffing their shit all night, hang up and keep moving,” he says.