by Tom Epperson
He rummages around in his pack for something to eat, and finds the packets of guava-filled cheese he bought at the airport. He holds them out to Daniel.
“Hey Daniel, you want some?”
Daniel smiles. “Oh man, I love those!”
There are seven of them, and Daniel takes four. He opens one and bites into it.
“You’re a prince, Roberto. Everyone should fall down at your feet and worship you.”
Roberto eats his own guava-filled cheese and looks at the morning. The river is beautiful, flowing through the green forest, sliding placidly toward the sea. There are birds everywhere, and not one of them seems ordinary. Kingfishers dive-bomb the water. A white heron flaps on graceful wings from one side of the river to the other. Five great egrets are sitting in a huge tree; they are spaced out evenly, up and down and across the tree, as if they’ve been placed there as ornaments. Several vultures are hanging out on a sandbar. They’re ugly with their naked heads and necks and ungainly as they hop around, but then one of them decides it’s time to fly, and in the air it’s just as graceful as the white heron. Roberto notices Roque is watching the birds too, through a pair of small, expensive-looking binoculars. There are many birds Roberto doesn’t know the names of; he’ll have to ask Roque about them.
Lina sits down beside Roberto.
“How’s your arm?” she says.
He touches the bandages lightly.
“Seems okay. Hasn’t been bothering me.”
“Good.”
The breeze tousles her hair. Roberto wonders if she’s ever killed anyone.
“So tell me about Chano,” he says. “Have you known him long?”
“Yes. In fact, you could say I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for him.”
“You mean in the TARV?”
“No, I mean physically existing on the planet. Chano grew up in this river town called Aucayo. His father was a white man who got drunk and drowned in the river when Chano was five. His mother was an Indian. When he was a teenager, gold was discovered in the area. People came from all over, they’d dig up the banks of the river and poison the water with mercury and ruin things for the fishermen. And then they’d come into town and get drunk and go after the local girls. Chano got in a fight with one of them and killed him.”
“How’d he kill him?”
“With a broken pool cue. He drove it through his throat.”
“Wow.”
“The police didn’t arrest him because they said it was self-defense, but the gold miner’s friends came after him, so he had to run away. He went to San Miguel and started working as a laborer. One day he was playing soccer in the park—he was good at soccer, he’d been the best player in Aucayo. He started talking to another player, a young white guy about his age. He was a college student, he was studying sociology. They had absolutely nothing in common but they instantly became great friends. Not long after, Chano’s sister came from Aucayo to live with him. Her Indian name was Xochilt. Her white name was María Alejandra. María Alejandra was very beautiful. Chano’s new friend met her and they fell in love and got married, and about a year later I came along.”
“So Chano’s your uncle.”
“Yes.”
He hears another motor and sees a long skinny boat with three fishermen in it heading their way. The fishermen wave and smile as they go by and everybody waves back. Daniel takes their picture.
“What led Chano to join the TARV?” asks Roberto.
“He didn’t really join it; he was one of the people that created it. After eight or nine years in San Miguel, he went back to Aucayo. He saw everything he loved being destroyed by the gold miners, the cattle ranchers, the sugarcane and soybean farmers. He could see the politicians weren’t going to be of any help, they were in the pockets of the rich and powerful. So he decided he needed to take direct action. If that involved shooting people, he didn’t mind.”
“And how did you get involved in this?”
She thinks about it. “It was a gradual process. I guess really things started to change for me when I was twelve. That’s when my mother died.”
Roberto’s been scribbling all this down in his notebook; now Lina looks at him.
“Roberto? Don’t write about me. I don’t want to be in your story.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not important. The victims are important.”
“I have no idea what I’ll be writing. It depends on what happens over the next couple of days.”
The motor splutters and dies, and the boat glides silently through the green water. There are several white plastic containers of gasoline in the back, and now Roque gets one and starts refilling the gas tank.
It’s a relief not hearing the motor. Just the cries of birds, the splash of a fish chasing food. Roberto’s about to ask Lina another question, but then he hears a new sound. Something mechanical, a throbbing. It’s coming from upriver. From behind them. All five of them turn around and look.
About half a kilometer away is a bend in the river. Now helicopters begin to appear, one after another, ten in all, following the river, coming toward them low and fast.
“Daniel, come here!” Roberto yells. Daniel’s been at the front of the boat taking pictures, and now he comes stumbling back under the green roof with Roberto and Lina.
Roberto stares at the helicopters as they approach. They’re Black Hawks. Sleek machines with three-man crews, armed with two machine guns, capable of carrying eleven soldiers. He’s relieved to see they’re not slowing down, after all there’s no reason they should concern themselves with their little yellow boat, and both Roque and Ernesto smile and wave as they zoom overhead. Roberto watches them continuing down the river, and then Daniel very softly says: “Shit.”
The last of the ten Black Hawks is slowing down, is circling around.
“God damn it,” says Roberto. “What are they coming back for?”
“Be still,” Lina says. “Stay calm.”
The Black Hawk stops a little in front of the boat and hovers there, making a great clattering noise and ruffling the river with the wind from its main rotor. Ernesto stands in the front of the boat with his hands on his hips smiling up at the pilots, as if immensely pleased that they’ve come back to pass the time of day. Roque unhurriedly replaces the cap on the gas tank and then puts away the empty container. Roberto can see the tail of the Black Hawk with its whirring rotor but he can’t see the pilot because of the roof, which means they can’t see him either. He glances over at Daniel. He wonders if his own face looks so pale with fear. The pilots must clearly see this is just the boat of poor fishermen and at any moment they’ll go away. Except the Army after all has come here to sow terror, and at any moment the Black Hawk might open up with its machine guns, shredding the roof, shredding their bodies, turning the boat into a million matchsticks floating on the blood-soaked water.
The wind blows off Ernesto’s cap. He laughs and moves to pick it up, which seems to break the spell somehow, as the helicopter turns around and heads back down the river.
Roberto and Daniel look at each other. Daniel shakes his head, reaching in his vest for his cigarettes.
“Motherfuckers,” he says.
Lina is doing her best to act as if nothing of any importance has happened.
“Roque,” she says, “come on. Let’s get going.”
It always seems to take Roque exactly three yanks to start the motor, and that’s what happens now. The day is getting very hot, and the breeze as the boat picks up speed is welcome. Roberto touches through his shirt the St. Jude medal.
* * *
The yellow boat is not far now from the Maniqui River, which will take them to Diego’s house. Roberto sees a boat with a motor with a very long shaft coming toward them. Two teenage boys are in it. The boat’s so loaded with watermelons, there’s hardly room for the boys. Ernesto waves at them and says to Roque, “Hey, let’s get some watermelons!”
Because of the weight of the m
elons, the sides of the boat are barely above the water, so Roque has to go over to it slowly in order not to swamp it. Ernesto takes two melons after a brief negotiation, and Roberto hands the boys two thousand pesos, which they seem very happy with. They’re around fourteen or fifteen. They’re wearing nothing except ragged shorts and have thin dark-brown bodies. Roberto assumes they’re brothers, but now as he looks from one back to the other he realizes that not only do they look alike, they’re mirror images of each other.
“Are you guys twins?” he says.
They smile. “Yes,” the one on the right says shyly.
“What are your names?”
“Pepe,” says the one on the right.
“Jesús,” says the other one.
They both have dark hair falling across their foreheads and they keep brushing it away from their eyes with identical gestures. Daniel of course has his camera out.
“So tell me, guys,” he says, “do you ever fool people? Does Pepe pretend to be Jesús and Jesús pretend to be Pepe?”
They look at each other and laugh.
“Sometimes,” says Jesús.
Roque motors away from the boat as Ernesto takes a machete and skillfully chops up one of the melons. It’s pleasant to be on the river and eat the sweet red meat of the melon and spit out black seeds over the side. Lina sits next to Roberto eating her own red wedge.
“You were telling me about your mother,” he says. “How did she die?”
“Cancer. Leukemia.”
“How old was she?”
“Thirty-two.”
“That must have been hard on you.”
She nods. “But it was even harder on my father. The day of the funeral, I remember him falling down on the floor and not being able to move because he was literally paralyzed with grief. In one way, we had opposite reactions to what happened. My mother had been very religious and I’d go to Mass with her, but my father would never go—he wasn’t a believer. But he began taking me after she died. He’d listen intently to the priest as he talked about God and Christ and angels and so forth, but I no longer believed a word of it. It all just seemed like a stupid fairy tale.
“Anyway, you asked me how I got into this. I started asking a lot of questions when I was twelve, and I’ve never really stopped. I realized there’s no authority to appeal to, there’s no one who can tell you what’s right or wrong. You have to figure it out yourself.”
“Did you go to college?”
“Yes, to the University of Lima. That’s where my father went. I was working on a degree in law and political science, I was planning to become a lawyer, but things started getting so bad here that I felt that I had to come back and try to help somehow. I got a job with the Institute for Agrarian Reform—they build roads and schools and hospitals in rural areas. I loved the work but after about a year, two of my colleagues were abducted and killed. Tortured first of course; the girl was raped.”
“Who killed them?”
“Who knows? Does it matter? I just knew I didn’t want to be next. So I got in touch with my uncle. Chano. And I’ve been working with the TARV for the last two years.”
“But isn’t working with the TARV a lot more dangerous than what you were doing before?”
“No. In a place like this, it’s much safer being a combatant than a noncombatant. If you live in some little village, you’re at the mercy of whatever armed group happens to come walking out of the jungle. That’s why so many poor young men join the Army or the guerrillas or the paramilitaries; they want to be the strong ones for a change and they feel protected by their comrades. It’s like they’re all the same eighteen-yearold boy, they talk and dress alike and have the same tattoos and listen to the same shitty music. It’s not about ideology, which makes it very easy for them to change sides. A guerrilla one day is a guide leading an Army patrol to the guerrillas’ hide-out the next day.”
Roberto takes a bite of the watermelon and chews on it and looks at her. Thinking about how smart she is. And how pretty. She’s getting to him a little.
“You can’t help but feel a little sorry for them,” Lina says. “They’re perpetrators, but they’re also victims. Most of them would have led decent, peaceful lives if they’d been born into a different kind of world.”
Roberto thinks about Manuel. His own world shrunk to his weights, his dog, his radio, and his rabbit.
A watermelon seed hits Roberto in the face.
He looks toward the front, where Daniel and Ernesto are laughing.
“That’s very funny,” says Roberto. “Such sophisticated humor.”
“Thank you, Roberto,” says Daniel. “Hey, Ernesto was just telling me how he gets the semen from the bull, it’s fascinating—”
“Lina,” Roque says, and now Lina and Roberto look ahead toward where Roque is pointing.
Beyond a curve in the river, black columns of smoke are coming up over the trees.
“That’s Jilili,” says Ernesto.
“What’s Jilili?” says Roberto.
“A little fishing village,” says Lina, and now Roberto hears the faint staccato sound of gunfire. Lina tosses what’s left of her watermelon into the water and stands up, wiping her hands on her khaki pants.
“Roque,” she says, “give me your binoculars.”
She takes them and peers through them toward the smoke, and then takes a look at the west side of the river. Hills thick with trees rise up steeply.
“Want to see what’s going on?” she says to Roberto.
“Sure.”
“Let’s go there,” she says to Roque, pointing toward a jagged inlet. Roque turns the boat that way. Lina gives him back the binoculars, then pulls back a tarp, revealing two gleaming all-black assault rifles with tubular steel stocks, along with clips of ammunition. The rifles are Galils, the same kind the Army uses. She hands one to Ernesto and keeps the other for herself. Roberto wonders why Roque doesn’t have a rifle.
He watches the smoke and listens to the guns. Daniel sits down beside him.
“Here we go, huh?” says Daniel.
“Yeah.”
Vultures and turtles are sunning themselves on the bank. The vultures take to the air and the turtles to the river as the boat approaches.
Roque cuts the motor. Ernesto jumps out, splashes through the water, and pulls the boat up on the beach. An expanse of dried, multicolored mud, puddles of water, and twisted pieces of wood leads up to a vine-covered ravine. They all begin walking except for Daniel, who lingers by the boat to take pictures. A yellow butterfly flies up and circles around Roberto and then continues on its way. Daniel catches up with him. Nobody says anything, they’re all listening to the gunfire, single shots, pop, pop, pop, interspersed with bursts of automatic fire. Roberto pulls a blue bandana out of a pocket and takes his glasses off and cleans them. His heart is beating wildly and he puts his glasses back on and looks up toward the top of the ravine, beyond which lies Jilili.
Roque leads the way up, slashing at the tangle of vines and bushes with his machete. Ernesto and Lina sling their rifles over their backs and follow, and then come Roberto and Daniel. Roque and Ernesto and Lina ascend as steadily as if they’re scaling a ladder, but Daniel and Roberto pant and sweat and grope for handholds and slip on the muddy slope. Roberto’s glad he’s in front, so if Daniel falls, he won’t take Roberto with him. Roberto grabs the base of a bush to pull himself up, and it’s like a faucet’s been turned on but it’s not water that comes out but ants, they’re big and black and they pour down his arm biting the hell out of him.
“Shit!” he says, slapping at them and trying to brush them off.
Lina looks over her shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
“Ants, they’re all over me!”
Ernesto laughs. In a couple of minutes Roberto crawls out of the ravine and then reaches down and gives Daniel a hand. A drop of sweat dangles from the end of Daniel’s nose, he looks like he’s taken a swim in the river. Roberto feels an ant inside his shirt biting him a
nd he slaps at his chest.
About thirty meters up a much gentler slope is the top of a hill. The gunfire is louder now. Added to it is the sound of screams: a long, drawn-out feminine scream, and then the shrill scream of a child, and then a man hoarsely screaming “No!”
Roberto and Daniel exchange a look. Daniel pulls a bottle of water out of one of his vest pockets and takes a drink and hands it to Roberto. Roque and Ernesto are already going up the hill, clearing a way through the undergrowth with their machetes. Lina crouches in front of Roberto, holding her Galil.
“Just stay low and be careful, all right?” she says.
Roberto and Daniel nod. Suddenly Lina whirls and points her rifle at two figures stumbling out of the jungle. It’s a young woman holding the hand of a small boy.
“Help us!” the woman says, frantic and weeping. “They’re killing us!”
“Who’s killing you?” says Lina.
“The soldiers. They came in helicopters. Pedro and I were working in the yucca field, and then we heard them and then they came flying in. We ran to warn the others, but it was too late, helicopters were landing by the river. Pedro and I ran, we were looking for my husband and Carlos, he’s my other son, but the soldiers were everywhere and began to shoot people. Pedro and I ran right past them but they didn’t see us. God must have covered their eyes so we could escape.”
Lina touches the woman’s shoulder. “You and Pedro are all right now. Just stay here and hide.”
Roque and Ernesto are at the top of the hill. As Roberto and Lina and Daniel approach, Roque and Ernesto look back at them and their faces are grim. When Roberto was eight or nine, he leafed through an old art book at his grandparents’ apartment and came upon a medieval painting depicting the tortures of the damned. Hell was a vast cavern lit by leaping flames, and naked men and women were being tormented by demons in every part of it, a man being boiled in a cauldron here, a woman hanging upside down and being stabbed with pitchforks there, here a woman being devoured by rats with human heads and there a man being pursued by a demon with an ax. It was all so deliciously frightening it made Roberto believe in God or at least the Devil for a week or two, and as he peers over the hill he’s reminded of that painting.