The hostages pick up on the change in Pepe’s mood as soon as they wake up — mostly because he’s usually off sleeping by now. Cristóbal watches their eyes fill with questions. Curiosity keeps them quiet a long time. Eventually though, unable to stand it, they revert to their normal means of communication, using their hands and a sprinkling of quiet words in English, which Cristóbal half understands. But seeing them relax has the exact opposite effect on him. He and Rita and Delmi have been less than strict about the talking rule. Now that Pepe is agitated, the trigger won’t be important. It could be something small. Cristóbal can only hope that if Pepe goes off, the impact of his rage will be minor and won’t harm Rita.
It’s odd. The kidnappers never give up sleep time. But even after Delmi and Rita get back from their daily food preparations and Cristóbal goes out for his afternoon sleep, Pepe sticks around. Everyone waits to see what he’ll do, but for a long time he pays them no attention, stomping in and out of view. Then, abruptly, he sits, takes off a small, dirty-looking pack Danielle hasn’t seen before, then his rifle, and puts them on the ground. From the pack he tugs a heavy-looking pouch, which he lays open to reveal some containers, a cloth, a rod, a thick screwdriver and a brush.
He disconnects the strap from his gun, removes the magazine and loudly pulls back a lever, making Antoine jump. A round falls into Pepe’s palm. Everyone leans forward to see the ammunition. Pepe takes the rest of the weapon apart and lays its sinister black components on an enormous, oversized leaf. Danielle looks between this spectacle and the others, who are transfixed, Rita included, her gaze moving rapidly between the gun parts and Pepe’s mask, maybe as concerned as everyone else that he’s getting ready to put the weapon back together for a specific use.
The cleaning process is slower and more tedious than Danielle imagined, though Pepe tackles it with a manic verve that implies speed, every move an act of aggression. At some point people begin to relax their attention away from him and focus instead on their own tedium: Tina lethargically digging dirt from under her nails with a bit of wood; Pierre murdering ants. Martin, meanwhile, dares to pull Tina’s chess set closer to his side. He requested it earlier from Delmi. Soon he emits a cheerful sound as he begins an early attack against Antoine. Pepe lays down the barrel he’s been plunging with the long brush, gets up, kicks over the pieces of the game, grabs the board and throws it, leaving the young men dumbfounded. Danielle watches Delmi resist as long as she feels is necessary to guarantee her own safety before getting up and recovering all of the pieces.
Danielle can’t decide if Pepe is just making a point, letting them know he’s their only authority, or if there’s more going on. She’s slept better since speaking to the others. That was quite a moment, saying exactly what she felt, naming the problem and doing something about it. Feeling more confident than she has in days — maybe years — she channels her newfound energy into reading Pepe’s signals as he pulls an oiled cloth along the outside of the barrel over and over. Did something go wrong? Does he know of a rescue operation? A refusal of some demand of his — whatever those are. Danielle realizes that she’s already come to rely on Pepe to manage the situation for everyone. Right now, he looks unsteady, like he’s coming undone with his weapon.
The pines swish endlessly above her. The area reminds Danielle of her ignominious departure for Honduras in 1980, but it actually looks and smells like Canada, evoking memories of pleasant weekend trips to Northern Ontario with her parents shortly after her father moved them back to Toronto to take the job at the university. Danielle lets the latter association soothe her. It seems, for a while, that the gun cleaning is just a routine thing, that the day will pass as usual.
Then Pepe forces the magazine loudly back into its chamber, reattaches his strap and rises with the gun in one hand. Danielle hopes he’s leaving. She promises herself that if he does, she’ll warn the others again, using this as an example of his capacity for violence. She’s getting to like herself as a risk-taker.
“Daniela,” Pepe says, not bothering to turn from where he stands with his back to her. “Vente.”
Oh no. Danielle is genuinely afraid of going anywhere alone with him suddenly. Also, humiliated to be called like a dog. She looks around at the others. Their eyes are simultaneously pitying and bitter. Something in her resists.
Pepe turns to see what’s taking her so long. In a swift motion he’s at her side, lifting her with one strong hand in a grip that feels like it will crush her upper arm. Danielle doesn’t know what’s got into him, but she’s relieved, at least, for the effect it has on the others. They gape, open-mouthed. Danielle hopes it too will reinforce how useless it is to defy Pepe, how stupid to side with Rita.
Stepping past Tina, whose colour has returned somewhat today, Danielle distinctly hears her whisper to Martin, “He should leave her be,” and sees Martin nod. Pierre, who’s been sitting apart from everyone, apparently still preoccupied with whatever Rita told him, acts as if the scene has nothing to do with him whatsoever. He chews a blade of dry grass like beef jerky, the sore on his lip dried into a hard scab. As she is pulled out of view, Danielle glances towards Antoine, who seems to understand her meaning and tries, in turn, to make eye contact with his friend, though as far as Danielle can tell before Pepe draws her out of range, he fails.
Eventually Pepe pushes Danielle ahead of him and provides clipped instructions for where to walk. She rubs her arm where he’s bruised it. The skin is already rashy from a prickly bush she brushed up against during the night, and now it throbs and itches simultaneously. She tries to ignore the discomfort, to put aside her worries over her physical health for once. They go further into an area where the huge, low-growing plants Pepe pulled his big leaf from grow at the feet of tall pines. Danielle’s footsteps disappear beneath them and into a thickness of dry, skeletal leaves and fallen needles. Behind her, she hears Pepe breathing loudly. She turns to look and sees that she’s got some distance on him. Pepe’s tired. He’s missed a good chunk of sleep and it shows.
Eventually, he yells at her to stop. Danielle doesn’t see anything special about the spot except that it’s far enough away that no one else can hear. Pepe sits and takes his phone from his belt, as he did before. Danielle sits too. She assumes they’ll be using the phone again. But Pepe must just be trying to get comfortable in his underslept state because now he rests his immaculate weapon on his other side atop that same small pack he was wearing earlier, further unburdening himself. He reaches into his pants pocket and hands her two blank pieces of paper, then reclines somewhat into the pine needles. Even after all that, he still doesn’t seem relaxed. The papers are much dirtier than the pieces Danielle’s written on before. She wonders if Pepe took them from that house with the children. She visualizes those wide-eyed little ones deprived of even paper to draw on. She gives the sheets a shake, though they remain gritty, and accepts the ballpoint Pepe offers.
For a long time, Pepe just looks down at his gun. He seems to require a moment to go into his memories. Danielle is conscious of his energy shifting, becoming weightier. His eyes are empty, somewhere else altogether.
“As I said last time,” he begins, finally, a little too loudly, as if lecturing to a crowd, for he still does not look at Danielle directly, “in the middle of the war — ’85 — I got out of the military. My unit was on patrol in the south end of this province, at the edge of guerrilla territory. A dangerous place for us. It was early morning. I can still feel that air on my face. Very cool.”
The air on his face? Pepe hasn’t used such intimate description before. It’s at odds with his gruff tone of voice, the way his sentences come in short bursts.
“We were on our way to a village that was only accessible on foot when one of our scouts picked up on something about a hundred feet off, up a hillside. He came and told our commander that he was sure it was subversives, sleeping.
“Something about it wasn’t right. We’d been hearing that the guerrillas were changing tactics, moving in
smaller units, using ruses. Why would they just be lying there, in a contested zone? But it was war, and you never knew what to believe. The commander got excited at the prospect of an easy kill, something to get him promoted. He ordered us to move forward in formation.”
Pepe sits up. Danielle sees the butt of his handgun shift a little on the back of his belt.
“Maybe ten feet on, we set them off. Our feet activated the land mines. Arms and legs and blood went flying. Some of those things were hitting me. In the chest, in the thigh. I heard, like it was after, the sound of the explosives. My ears hurt and I was on the ground, dirt and leaves and wet substances all over me. I made out voices over the ringing in my ears. ‘Cristo Santo!’ someone yelled. There was laughter too. ‘One’s alive,’ someone said. ‘Shoot him!’ said a different voice — a woman’s. But the one who’d laughed refused. ‘No, Compa. No. He must be a true survivor.’ This man stayed with me. He walked beside me, and when I eventually got my head clear, I remember registering his face: the face of the man who’d saved my life. It was painted dark green, with twigs floating above his camouflage helmet, and just the whites of his eyes showing.
“Later, I was well enough to stand and march. They gave me the choice of going over to the Red Cross or joining la guerrilla. I knew if I went to the Red Cross, the military would find me and torture me. I wanted to die, but not like that. Anyway, I still thought these guerrillas would kill me. Or maybe I would kill them and get away. I took their offer.
“They named me Milagro, cleaned me up. The blast had torn my clothes off so they put me in a uniform that belonged to one of their own who’d been shot. A dead subversive’s uniform. Even though my training had been to find this insulting, I didn’t care. I’d been dead for so long, what difference did it make to me which side I was on? It was going to be more killing. More getting killed.
“Just a few hours later, reinforcements from my military base came in looking for my unit. Dropped down from helicopters. We all ran and I got separated from the guerrillas. It was me and the man who’d stopped the others from shooting me. We hid in a hole in the ground. Twenty-four hours or more like that, like worms. At first I didn’t want to talk. He was going to try to get information out of me. Or murder me. But he kept going on about things I’d never heard of. He said there were lots of jobs inside the guerrilla that didn’t involve killing. Lots of people were just growing food for the rest. Learning to read. I said I could read fine. Better than any brainwashed campesino with their priests telling them what to think. But then he had me talking. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. There was no light in there, so it was like talking to myself. We didn’t have any food except a bit of sugar in a bag and a canteen of water. We could hear gunshots everywhere. Finally, there was no sound. We got out and started walking.
“But they were still there, the government soldiers. We walked right into them. They were about to shoot — I know I would’ve. So I yelled out. “We’re military! Hunters!” That’s what we always called counterinsurgency specialists. And these guys, they hesitated. Just for a second. The man I was with was quick. He didn’t miss the chance. He jumped in with a whole invented story, gave details. Said we were posing as guerrillas and infiltrating controlled territories. Said these soldiers better keep their mouths shut or they’d hear from the general. He used names we’d all heard. Important names. They bought it. They were like me — stupid and young.
“We marched with them back to the helicopters and they flew us to a garrison I’d never been to. There we were, this subversivo and me. The others were looking at us strangely. I knew we only had so much time. We went to the mess to eat. We stuffed ourselves and then, without saying a word, we walked out the door. Casually, like we were going for a stroll. We didn’t stop walking until we’d reached the main road. We put our guns to the head of the first truck driver who pulled over for us and told him which way to go. That’s how I joined the guerrilla.
“I had to retrain. The guerrillas had a different system. Didn’t kill anyone unless there was a specific mission. Never non-combatants.”
Danielle swallows a lump forming in her throat. This story just confirms how unlucky she was to see a breach of the guerrillas’ rules by Adrian when he killed that boy.
“The man who’d saved me more or less adopted me,” Pepe continues. “He taught me how to live invisibly, as a commando has to. I got good at their way of making war. I’d been trained to be vicious by the military, and the guerrillas channeled that. I ran my own four-man unit, doing long-term mission planning. We’d spend days lying on the ground, snakes crawling right over us — whatever. Totally silent. Each in our position, watching a target — a dam or a bridge or a storage facility. We could get inside and make a mental map of any place without them ever knowing it. That’s how we were. But their way was also more fair, more reasoned. I spent the rest of the war behaving like them, like a human being.
“At the end of 1988, we started hearing talk about a decisive battle — a general insurrection. The guerrilla leaders were going to provoke it with actions in each of the major cities. Surprise attacks. It was going to take a year to plan. I was still close to the man who saved me. Whenever we were both in the same place, we would talk, eat together. He was part of the top tier of guerrillas who were planning the actions for the capital city. By then, people were calling him ‘Comandante’ — though he was never a real commander. But he was important and people loved him. Women loved him. He knew what to say. He was the kind of man who —”
Danielle is listening intently to this story, scribbling quickly to keep up with Pepe’s telling, which has become more and more hurried, almost automatic, like he has rehearsed this version of the events of his life to himself many times before, and this is a preamble to the part where everything goes wrong. She waits for it.
But now, suddenly, a howl startles them.
They look towards the campsite. Danielle recognizes the voice as Pierre’s. Her heart flip-flops. What has Rita done? She gets to her feet, pine needles falling from her pant legs.
Pepe picks up his rifle, stands too and grabs her arm again, seemingly all at once. This time, Danielle feels no pain. She’s already being dragged towards the scream.
Another howl. “My head! My head!” screams Pierre.
Danielle hears herself say his name under her breath: “Pierre.”
Pepe keeps pulling her forward and Danielle thinks she should speak up. “It’s Rita,” she mouths, in Spanish, but Pepe isn’t listening. “It’s Rita,” she says again, much louder, and realizes, as they come into view of the others, that maybe Rita hasn’t done anything to Pierre, that this could be the event she’s been hoping against: Pierre doing something he planned with Rita. Danielle says to him, or to Pepe, “Don’t do it!” but the words come out in English and are lost as Pepe lets go of her arm and pushes her aside. She stumbles and falls. Pepe stops in his tracks. Pierre is writhing on the ground with his hands on his head as Antoine tries to comfort him. Tina is lying on her side, her hair half out of its ponytail, her eyes wide with terror. Martin has his palms on the ground and is scooting backwards towards a nearby tree.
“Qué tienes?” yells Pepe, pointing his gun at Pierre.
Cristóbal comes jogging into the clearing with his gun in one hand. His hat is off and he’s still tugging down his balaclava, the eyeholes not quite in place. He’s obviously been asleep.
“Where is she?” says Pepe, turning towards his cousin, but Cristóbal just stands there. Delmi looks at the ground.
“My head, my head, my head,” says Pierre.
But Pepe is suddenly ignoring him, his gun going down to his side. He seems to realize something. He tears out of the clearing back in the direction he and Danielle have just come from. Cris-tóbal hesitates a split second before running out after him.
The moment they’re gone, Danielle watches as Pierre stops moving and takes his hands from his head. He sits up, alert and apparently not in pain. If she had a gun, Danie
lle would shoot him for his stupidity. “What are you doing?” she says, but he ignores her. He’s breathing hard from his performance.
Delmi stands, her rifle up, her eyes darting about in confusion while they all listen as the men run further off, through the trees, branches snapping and the thumping of their steps growing fainter.
Cristóbal catches sight of Pepe in the place where he must have been with Danielle just now, judging from the papers strewn on the ground. Pepe is standing over Rita, yelling at her not to move.
Rita is on her knees, holding Pepe’s satellite phone. Rita looks hopefully towards her husband, which makes Pepe turn too. Cristóbal catches his cousin’s eye and something passes between them, but Cristóbal doesn’t have time to understand what it is because in that flicker of hesitation, Rita drops the phone and runs from them both before either can stop her. Pepe follows, making a grunting sound, pushing branches out of the way, and Cristóbal chases just behind. “No, Primo. No,” he says.
Danielle hears the noises becoming louder again: they’re coming back. Her heart beats in an unusual, unhealthy rhythm. The pine smell in the air is suddenly cloying, sickening. She sees Rita rush into the open space of the campsite and pivot on the heels of her boots as she pulls up her rifle. She’s shooting back into the trees. Loud, fast, echoing shots that hurt Danielle’s ears. Rita looks unpracticed, one hand unsteady around the muzzle. Everyone takes cover. Danielle is down low, her face against some pebbles, her legs stuck into some bushes.
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