by Tom Epperson
“Roberto!”
“Roberto, are you all right?”
“Roberto!”
He opens his eyes. He’s lying on his back on the sandbar. The worried faces of Daniel and Roque are hovering over him. He sits up slowly.
“I’m okay,” he murmurs.
“What happened?” says Daniel.
“I just passed out, I guess. I’m okay now. Really.”
They help Roberto stand up, and then they help him get back into the boat.
* * *
The river’s broad and peaceful and the wind hits Roberto in the face and he drinks some water and feels better. Roque says there’s a town up ahead where they can get some Lomotil for him and Daniel.
A few minutes later, Roque ties the boat up at a floating dock, and the three of them walk into the town. It’s called Occo. Roberto didn’t see it on the trip down the river three days ago because they passed it during the night. It’s dirty and wretched and seems hopeless in the heat. They walk by a tiny post office with the national flag that courageous Colonel Cordoba gave his life to protect drooping from a slightly crooked pole. A shabby schoolhouse is deserted because it’s Saturday. Dogs wander around panting with their tongues out or lie sprawled and dead-looking in the shade. The only sign of energy or enterprise is a man mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow but even he seems to be at the point of toppling over like Roberto at the sandbar.
“Shit,” says Daniel under his breath. “What the hell are they doing here?”
Four soldiers are sitting in orange plastic chairs at a blue plastic table in front of a green restaurant drinking beer. Their rifles lean against the table.
“Just keep walking,” says Roberto.
“They’re looking at us,” says Roque.
Roque is right. Roberto’s suddenly aware of how filthy and mud-bespattered he and Daniel are. Nothing to do but bluff their way through this.
“Good afternoon,” says Roberto to the soldiers with a smile.
The soldiers smile and say good afternoons of their own. Three of them could be teenagers, the fourth is a little older.
“Where have you guys been?” the older one says. He seems more curious than suspicious. They don’t really have any choice except to approach the table. If the soldiers ask for their IDs they’re fucked.
“We were hunting wild pigs,” says Roberto, “but we didn’t have much luck.”
“Well, that’s an understatement,” Daniel says ruefully, and now he points at Roque. “They told us in Tarapacá this little motherfucker was the best guide in town, but he’d get lost trying to cross the street.”
Roque looks sheepish as the soldiers laugh.
“But I always knew where we were,” says Roque. “We were never lost.”
“Is that why we spent eight hours walking in circles?” says Roberto.
“But we weren’t walking in circles,” says Roque, “we were tracking the pigs.”
Daniel rolls his eyes. “Is that what you call being lost? ‘Tracking the pigs’?”
The soldiers laugh again. Roberto notices under the table a little monkey tied by a cord to one of the table legs.
“Wild pigs are mean,” says one of the soldiers.
“I heard a pack of wild pigs chased a man down and ate him,” says another of the soldiers.
“On top of everything else, my friend here has the shits,” Daniel says, jerking a thumb at Roberto. “Do you know any place we could get some Lomotil?”
“There’s a store that way,” the older soldier says, pointing up the street. “They probably have some.”
They thank the soldiers and move on. Daniel and Roberto discreetly exchange that familiar look of relief at having gotten out of a tight spot. They do find Lomotil in the store, and also buy a six-pack of water and a six-pack of the apple-flavored soft drink that Willie Rivera likes so much and three cans of sausages and a package of cookies and a bag of Cheetos. The exhausted-looking woman behind the counter has a small baby in her arms, which is sucking from a bottle filled with coffee.
They walk back down the street past the soldiers.
“Did they have Lomotil?” the older soldier calls out.
“Yes,” Roberto calls back, “thanks a lot!”
The soldier smiles and waves. Under the table the monkey stares out at them, sitting in its own shit like Fercho in the pantry.
They go out on the floating dock and climb back in the boat.
“How much longer till we get out of Tulcán?” asks Roberto.
“We’re not in Tulcán anymore,” says Roque. “We’re in Chimoyo.”
* * *
Roberto doesn’t usually like sugary drinks, but he downs a bottle of the pink apple drink pretty fast; he feels his system could use a jolt of sugar. He eats several cookies, then pulls soft pink sausages out of their can with his fingers; god knows what they’re made of but they’re very tasty. Meanwhile, Daniel has turned his fingers orange emptying the bag of Cheetos.
“I’ll see my fish soon,” he says, licking his fingers. Now he looks out at the river and says in English, “Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. It flows along forever, with trees on either hand.”
“You must be feeling good,” says Roberto, “if you’re reciting poetry.”
Daniel smiles. “I am, Roberto. I never thought we’d make it out of there.”
Roberto didn’t either. He knows that until the wheels of his plane lift off the runway at Robledo he’s not completely safe, but at least he’s not in Tulcán. As he leaves the jungle, the pull of the life he’s led before is like the gravitational field of a planet. He’s returning to not the real world, but another world, his world. Memories of the jungle are being supplanted by thoughts of his friends, his family, the future. Is it really possible that he’ll be at the airport at Saint Lucia tomorrow night, that Caroline will come running into his arms?
Daniel discovers one of the watermelons they bought from the twins still lying in the bottom of the boat.
“It seems a shame to let it go to waste,” he says.
“You’re right,” says Roberto. “Let’s eat it.”
Daniel borrows Roque’s machete. He puts the watermelon on one of the wooden seats and prepares to whack it open.
“Try not to cut any fingers off,” says Roberto. “I prefer my watermelon without blood on it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Whack. The green melon parts to reveal the crisp red meat. Roberto takes two wedges to the back of the boat. He hands one to Roque, and sits down and eats with him. The pink juice runs down their chins. He thinks about the twins and is drawn back into the past.
Roque waves at someone. Roberto looks and sees a man poling along a raft in the shallow water near the bank. The raft’s made of inner tubes tied together with wooden planking on top. It’s carrying an old bicycle, some wooden crates and burlap bags, and a wire cage with a couple of chickens in it. Roberto waves at the man too, and he waves back.
“How long till we get to Tarapacá?” says Roberto.
Roque shrugs. “Two hours?”
If Roberto wants to say anything to Roque, now’s the time.
“I don’t know what to say, Roque. Except I’m so sorry about Lina and Quique and Ernesto. We owe you guys our lives, we owe you everything. We’re hoping the story I’m going to write and the photographs Daniel took are going to make things better in Tulcán. Maybe they’ll help to stop the violence.”
“I hope so, Roberto. That would be nice.”
“You were very close to Lina, weren’t you?”
“Yes. She was like my sister. She always worried about me. She always worried about everyone, but never about herself.”
“Lina thought of you as her little brother. She told me that.”
Roque is silent. A tear eases out of an eye and slides down his face.
“Where are you going after this?” says Roberto.
“Home. To my village.”
“Do you have family there?”
<
br /> Roque smiles. “I have a wife. And a daughter. Her name’s Ana.”
“Really! How old’s Ana?”
“She’s only a baby. A few months.”
“So on her first birthday, are you going to give her that soup that makes her smarter? It’s made out of bird brains, what’s the name of the bird?”
“Caciques. Of course.”
“Thanks for teaching me about the jungle.”
“When I would tell you things, and you would write them down in your notebook? That always made me feel good. It made me feel that what I was telling you was important.”
“It was important. Very important.”
“Do you have a wife, Roberto?”
“Not yet, but I will soon. My fiancée lives on an island in the Caribbean called Saint Lucia. I’m flying there tomorrow. I plan to live there for a while. Saint Lucia’s very beautiful. You should come visit me there.”
“‘Saint Lucia.’ It sounds nice. Yes, I’d like to come.”
Roberto looks at him skeptically. “So you’re really coming to visit me, Roque?”
“Yes,” said Roque, and then he adds, with a sly smile, “Maybe on my way to Chicago.”
Roberto laughs. The boat drones on up the river. Near sunset, they reach Tarapacá.
It’s just routine civilian traffic on the bridge today. No convoys. Roque leaves the main channel of the river and enters the little inlet, which is crowded with boats coming back from the day’s fishing. The boat putters along till it reaches a dock, on which Yadier is standing. Roque has called him on his cellphone and already broken the terrible news. Tears are streaming down Yadier’s face, and he hugs each of them as they climb on the dock, pressing them against his fat belly.
“I can’t believe they’re gone, but it’s God’s will,” he says. “They’ll be happy in heaven forever now.”
Roberto can perhaps imagine Lina and Ernesto in heaven, but it’s hard to picture Quique with his jaguar whiskers there. Roque is going back to Yadier’s house with them. They trudge up the hill to Yadier’s white Corolla, and Roberto and Daniel get into the back. The radio’s tuned to a salsa station. Despite the lively music, Yadier sighs and sniffles and blows his nose as he drives into town. Motorcycles and motortaxis are buzzing and zipping all around, street urchins dash through the traffic, a woman with a grotesque purple growth coming out of the side of her head begs for money from passersby. They’ve returned to civilization.
Yadier’s car goes by the Park of the Parakeets. Bright fruit hangs in the mango trees. It must be about six, because thousands of parakeets are flying out of the jungle and over the town and converging on the park. Roberto gazes out the window at them, thinking the last time he saw them he didn’t know it yet but he was just about to meet Lina.
“Hey, Roberto,” Daniel says with a grin, “look who’s here!”
He’s pointing toward a man in a straw hat sitting on a bench.
“Napo!” says Roberto.
Napo seems to be in the same clothes he was wearing at the bar. He’s perusing a newspaper, his legs crossed in a relaxed way.
“You know, he was supposed to have gotten that check yesterday,” says Daniel. “If you wanted to stop, I’m sure he’d be glad to pay you back the twenty thousand pesos you loaned him.”
Roberto laughs. “I’d probably just end up giving him another twenty thousand.”
It’s dusk by the time they arrive at Yadier’s house. There’s Daniel’s yellow Twingo sitting under a tree. Yadier’s dogs bark at them, his numerous children stand around and stare. His wife asks if she can make Roberto and Daniel dinner, but they just want to change their clothes and hit the road. They go in the Happy Boys bedroom. Roberto opens his suitcase, is reassured to find his billfold and his passport still in the hidden compartment. As the Happy Boys watch from all the walls, Roberto and Daniel take off their muddy boots and clothes. They put on clean clothes and put the dirty ones in plastic garbage bags provided by Yadier’s wife. Roberto goes in the bathroom and washes his face and neck and hands and arms, and then he and Daniel go out to Daniel’s car and load their stuff in the trunk. Roberto thanks Yadier, who gives Roberto another hearty, tearful hug, and then Roque approaches and hugs him in a curiously shy way, barely making contact.
“Be safe, Roberto,” Roque says.
“You be safe too, Roque. I won’t forget you.”
Roque nods. Roberto and Daniel get in the car, and Daniel starts it up and turns on the headlights. He drives away down the dirt road. It’s dark now and he can’t see that Roberto’s crying. Soon Daniel reaches the main road, turns right, and heads for Robledo.
* * *
“You’re going to asphyxiate me with your cigarette,” says Roberto.
“Sorry,” says Daniel. He lowers his window. They’ve been on the road about an hour. There’s very little traffic. The jungle’s been left behind, and they’re traveling through dark fields planted in soybeans and cotton.
They should pull up at the old hotel that was once the hacienda of the Saldamandos around one or two in the morning. Since Roberto’s plane doesn’t leave till the early afternoon, he’ll have plenty of time to sleep late, to take a long hot shower, to have a leisurely breakfast with Daniel, to walk around the enchanting town, to look at the oak trees and the bright blue sky.
Roberto takes out his cellphone. He wants to check his messages to see if Caroline has left him any, but he discovers his phone is dead. He’d really love to hear Caroline’s voice. He considers borrowing Daniel’s cellphone and calling her now, but then he decides it would be a bad idea. He intends to maintain the fiction that he’s been in Contamana researching his book until he gets to Saint Lucia at which point he’ll tell Caroline everything (minus a few things about Lina, of course). But he’s so wiped out physically and emotionally that if he were to get on the phone with her now he doesn’t trust himself not to burst into tears and blurt out the truth. Better to get a good night’s sleep and call her tomorrow from Robledo.
It’s nice to be back in the Twingo. It’s a return to normal life. He looks over at Daniel, smoking his cigarette, staring at the road, and then he thinks about last night at El Encanto. Daniel coming through the door of the guesthouse with his eyes so big and panicky as he waved his gun around. There would have been something almost comical about it if the circumstances hadn’t been so dire. Roberto doesn’t think anyone else he knows except his father or his grandmother would have been willing to do something like that for him. He’s not sure if he would have had the guts to do it if the circumstances were reversed. And this was just one moment of a trip on which Daniel’s life was in danger all the time. He wants to find the words to thank him, but just like with Caroline, he’s afraid he’d fall apart if he tried to do it now. Tomorrow over breakfast in Robledo.
The radio is on and an announcer is giving a news update, and now Roberto hears President Dávila talking today about Tulcán. “In Tulcán, the greatest evil known to humankind, namely terrorism, is being dealt with in an exemplary fashion.” The president’s voice is so resonant and smooth he could be a radio announcer himself. “The Army, under the able leadership of General Oropeza, is conducting counterterrorism operations in such a way as to minimize civilian casualties. Even one innocent life lost is one life too many. Unfortunately, our enemy has no such compunctions.”
“Excuse me, Roberto,” says Daniel. “I need to stick my head out the window while I puke.”
“You know, I think I prefer Landazábal to Dávila. At least Landazábal doesn’t pretend to be anything except what he is, an unrepentant old fascist. He’s not some phony ‘technocrat’ that acts like he’s on the side of the people.”
“I wonder what he’s going to say about Oropeza’s leadership when he sees the pictures of him at Jilili,” and now Daniel yawns. “Shit. Can’t wait to get into a real bed.”
“You want me to drive for a while?”
“No, I’m okay for now.”
Roberto settles into his s
eat, closes his eyes. He imagines sitting on a plane ten thousand meters over the earth, listening to the muted powerful roar of its engines as it takes him to Saint Lucia. “What would you like to drink?” a flight attendant asks him.
“Whiskey,” he replies. “A double whiskey. On the rocks.”
Next thing he knows, he’s waking up. Daniel’s parking the car in front of a restaurant.
“Where are we?” asks Roberto.
“That shithole town we stopped at to get my car alarm fixed. I need food and coffee. Especially coffee.”
They go inside and sit down at a table. The place is almost empty. A waitress wearing huge gold hoop earrings and red stretch pants comes over, not looking happy that they’re here.
“All we got left in the kitchen’s tripe soup and beef with beans,” she says. “But if you want any you’ll have to eat it fast because we’re about to close.”
“Will you agree to eat fast, Roberto?” Daniel says.
“Sure.”
“Me too.”
The waitress gives a weary sigh. “Tripe soup or beef with beans?”
“I’ll have both. Roberto?”
“I’ll have both too.”
“We’ll both have both,” Daniel says to the waitress. “And bring us coffee. Lots of coffee.”
The waitress nods, and walks away.
“She’s charming,” says Daniel. “I think I’m in love.”
Roberto laughs. He gets up and goes in the bathroom. He’s been taking the Lomotil, but it hasn’t quite done the job yet. The toilet’s filthy. It was actually more pleasant shitting in the jungle than here.
When Roberto comes back, the food and coffee are already on the table. He sits down across from Daniel.
“That was fast,” says Roberto.
Daniel nods. He drinks some coffee, looks out the window at an eighteen-wheeler rumbling by on the road. His mood seems to have changed in just the few minutes Roberto was gone.
“Everything okay?” says Roberto.