Ben turns to me in the darkness. “Your aqueduct?”
“Boulders rolled down the hillside and smashed up the pipes. The spring box broke off the rocks.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
I shrug. “They’re just pipes, right?”
“I guess. I know it means a lot to you anyway. You worked hard.”
I nod, saying the words just pipes over and over to myself, like the very repetition might make me believe it.
“Listen,” Ben says. “I’ve had some time to think today. I’m not sure if I’m up for staying.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at this place.” He gestures backward, toward a village that we can’t see, that isn’t really there anymore. “I mean, what am I supposed to do for the next three months? Sleep under a tree and try to talk to these guys about using natural pesticides? They’ve got bigger problems right now.”
“That’s true.”
“I know people need help after this earthquake, but what do I know about that? And if I stay, where will I live? In some shelter that ought to go to somebody else? Somebody who needs it a lot more than I do?”
“Right.” I hadn’t thought about the future all day. It was as if some cosmic reset button had been pressed, like a bigger pair of hands had shaken up the ant farm that is my life.
“I know we’ve talked about traveling once we finish our service,” Ben goes on. “But now, with your aqueduct destroyed…”
“What are you saying?”
“Why don’t we just quit now? Together. Start our trip a few months early? The handwriting is sort of on the wall, don’t you think? If there were any walls left.”
I let his words settle for a second. “It’s true; I don’t know if I can start over. I don’t know if the agencies will even want to fund a rebuild like that.” And it would definitely take way longer than the few months that are left of my service.
Ben puts his arm around me and pulls me closer to him. I can see the Santa Ana cathedral below, and it looks intact.
“Those are the logical reasons, Malia. And they make sense. But more important, I can’t stand to be apart all the time. Not seeing you for a week or two was hard enough already. Now, after this earthquake, it’d be impossible.”
My mind’s eye still sees those pipes littered through the river valley, all the hours and effort that went into them. My heart still stings with those first awful seconds of finding Ben’s flattened house. Less than five months are left of my service. What does that number mean to anybody besides me?
“Count me in,” I say.
* * *
Most of the time, my story feels utterly trivial: a footnote about a small measure of second- and thirdhand suffering, stuck between the pages of this nation’s history—a history that flows over with far greater suffering.
But other times, my story seems to beg the most fundamental question of our age: What’s a decent person supposed to do when confronted with a fallen world?
5
Ben and I spend that first night in the dirt beside the remains of his El Cedro home. In the morning, he finds a neighbor with a pickup and arranges to hire it for the day. We pull his backpack, his camping gear, hiking boots, and a few other valuables out from under the wreckage, then have the driver take us straight to La Libertad.
Once at La Posada, I help Ben hobble his way to our usual room. For the first couple of days, we hardly leave the hotel. We speak mostly of weather, food, and the lack of waves. I begin to wonder if all that talk about quitting the Peace Corps wasn’t just some posttraumatic moment of weakness.
* * *
On the third or fourth day, I decide to paddle out—if only for the exercise. Though he’s now walking on his own—albeit with a slight limp—Ben thinks it best to give his ankle more time.
La Lib wasn’t hurt badly in the quake. Sitting on my board, bobbing in the midday chop, it isn’t hard to forget about the disaster—which is, I suppose, exactly what we’ve been trying to do.
The ocean surface wears a dull, grayish look. A current pushes toward the pier; I spend most of my time trying to stay clear of its crusty concrete legs. I feel conflicted about Ben’s plan, to say the least. It’s true what he said: It is silly to stay. There’s no time or resources for a fresh start. And I hate the idea of not being with him all the time, of once again living on opposite sides of this country.
But on the other hand, something simply feels wrong about walking away now, in the aftermath of this disaster. We’d volunteered to help this country, hadn’t we? Now we would leave it in its greatest hour of need?
I finally get to my feet on a knee-slapper that has no face and doesn’t last half a second. Once it’s over, I tread water for a while, then decide to head for the beach. Ben and I need to talk. On the way to La Posada, my surfboard under my arm, I wonder how to best breach the topic of our next step.
* * *
“Check it out!” Ben meets me by the entrance, a massive smile across his face. He sits in the driver’s seat of an older-model Jeep Cherokee. There’s a crude paint job on the hood: two unfamiliar flags. The back seats have been torn out and replaced by a plywood shelf. It has Utah plates.
“Whose is this?” I find myself grinning along with him.
“It’s ours, sweetheart!” Ben hasn’t looked this happy in days. “I just bought it.”
“You what?” I nearly drop my board onto the dirt of the courtyard.
“Did you meet that Kiwi guy who was staying at Hotel Rick? He drove this thing down from the States. Today he got a call from home, sick mother or something. Had to leave right away. I got it for a song.”
“So, that’s the New Zealand flag.” I point to the blue one with the Union Jack. “What’s this?”
“Switzerland. He started the trip with a Swiss girl, but they broke up somewhere in Mexico. Met at a ski resort, I think.”
I nod, trying my best to process the whole thing.
“Get in!” Ben says. “Let’s take it for a spin.”
Still in my bathing suit, I stash my board in our room and then climb into the passenger seat. We drive east—out of town, to a section of the Litoral that follows the coast and winds around a series of hills and cliffs. We hoot and giggle, as if having a good surf session. It is, by far, the best I’ve felt since the earthquake. My faith in our plan is instantly restored. The road, the coast, this car, and Ben—this will be my home for the foreseeable future, maybe for a full year. I can’t imagine anything better. The sound of the wind rushing past my ears drowns out all the second thoughts. It’s not unlike that barrel I had half a year ago.
“When we get back,” Ben shouts, “we should call the Peace Corps office. We need to do the paperwork and get our money.”
“Right.”
* * *
The next morning, a loose itinerary materializes from our hotel bed. We’ll surf our way south through the rest of Central America, then continue on to the South American continent—find wet suits somewhere in Peru, surf the Pacific coast, see the Amazon, the Andes, Patagonia. The hardest part will be crossing Panama’s Darién Gap. There’s a rumor that the ferry service no longer travels around it. Ben’s confident that we’ll figure something out.
He talks about this for hours while I lie beside him, nodding. Sunlight seeps in through the jalousies in broad horizontal stripes. Above us, an oscillating table fan is bolted to the ceiling—upside down—and points at our bed; it moves from side to side with a series of jerks and clicks.
Ben props himself up on one elbow. His other hand runs back and forth along my thigh.
“Are you stoked?” His fingers pause at the bony rise of my hip.
I smile. “Stoked. I can’t believe we’re doing it.” The doubt that I felt in the water yesterday has become a distant memory.
Ben turns toward the window. “Once we get to the bottom of that big old continent”—his slight Southern drawl emerges while talking about our trip—“down to the Tierra del F
uego, I want to throw one stone out into the water.” His arm makes a mock throwing motion.
“I never thought I’d see something like that,” I say. “Make it that far from home.”
“Why don’t we go to the office tomorrow morning, get things settled. After that, we can pay off our tab, get on the road. If we don’t make it all the way to San Juan del Sur on the first day, we can stay the night in Managua.”
“Okay.” I nod.
Ben lies back down at my side, wraps his arms around me. I turn closer into him.
A car pulls into La Posada’s dirt courtyard—norteño music blaring on its stereo—and quells our conversation. The oompah bass line shakes the doors and windows, an accordion riff maxing out the little speakers. The dust cloud drifts all the way to our room with the onshore breeze. Ben and I sit up and have a look.
It’s a taxicab. To its roof is strapped a large surfboard case: the wheeled, hard-shelled, expensive kind called a “coffin”—not the sort of equipment carried by the low-budget surfers we’re used to meeting here.
The taxi parks by the air-conditioned wing. The driver kills the engine and the music. Kristy stops sweeping and greets the new guest.
“Shit.” Ben rolls his eyes. “I guess the earthquake didn’t scare all the rich cocksuckers off.”
“It’s just a cab ride and a decent board case,” I say, lying back on the bed. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
Ben shrugs, then follows me down to the mattress.
I can tell the new arrival is a gringo from his Spanglish. Poorly pronounced words like amigo, dinero, and gracias carry in as he dismisses the driver. The taxi’s engine turns over and the music resumes. A lesser dust cloud follows its exit.
Ben moves his hand back to my thigh, tracing the small ridge and valley made by waist and hips, lingering at the hard crest of my pelvis.
“It’ll be cool to see all those places.” He speaks right against my ear. “But this is what I want the most: to get some waves during the day, and to wake up next to you every morning.”
I smile. It all sounds too good to be true.
6
Jim, the Peace Corps country director, says, “It’s not your fault,” and for a second I wonder if he means “fault” like responsibility or “fault” like the lines that cause earthquakes.
“Don’t blame yourselves.” Behind him, ribbons tied to his air-conditioner grille flap and flutter in the artificial breeze. Framed degrees and commemorative plaques hang upon the back wall, dividing it up into squares of dark wood and shining glass.
“We don’t blame ourselves.” Ben kneads his beard between his fingers. “It’s not like that. We want to be together. Our villages, our projects—they just didn’t work out.”
Jim furrows his brow, then nods. “All right, then.”
He places two official documents in front of each of us. We sign and date them without reading a word. I reach over and lay my hand—palm upward—upon Ben’s knee, so that he’ll hold it.
“I feel terrible about this, truly.” Jim struggles to look us in the eye. His gaze settles on our two interlocked hands.
“You shouldn’t feel bad,” Ben tells him. “It’s not meant to be right now; that’s all. We’re just rolling with it.”
Jim sighs. “You can use my phone, to call your families.”
“No thanks,” Ben says instantly. Both of them turn in my direction.
The thought of calling my father brings me close to tears. All he’ll understand is that I’ve quit, given up work on the aqueduct. I want badly to hear his voice, to beg for his understanding. But I can’t imagine doing that here, in this office, while Jim and Ben watch. My eyes linger on the shining plaques behind Jim’s head, all those communities, all that thanks.
“It’s too early,” I say, “in Hawai‘i.”
“That’s it, then,” Jim says. “Go see Astrid about your plane tickets.” He stands and gives us each a firm handshake. “I am sorry that things turned out this way.”
Ben says, “Don’t be sorry.”
I manage a nod.
* * *
In a smaller, less impressive office, Astrid calculates the cash equivalent of our airfares home. My San Salvador–Honolulu ticket turns out to be more than double what Ben gets for a flight to North Carolina. She hands us each a white envelope of American currency.
“There you go.” Astrid is businesslike, and casts no judgment. “Your readjustment allowance should show up in your bank accounts by the end of the week. Good luck.”
* * *
The second we step outside the office, Ben and I share a reassuring kiss in the carport. I half-open the envelope full of money and run my thumb across it.
“Hey, guys.” The greeting comes from over Ben’s shoulder.
The two of us turn and see a lanky gringo walking up the driveway. He’s dressed for something official—pleated pants and collared white shirt. His sleeves are long, in spite of the heat. A red speck below his chin shows where he’s nicked himself shaving. The skin of his face is sunburned. One pronounced blood vessel squiggles its way down the side of his forehead.
“Alex,” I say.
Ben offers him a handshake that morphs into a one-armed hug.
I kiss Alex on the cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll bring the car around.” Ben speaks in a gentle voice. He points his thumb in the direction of the gate, then starts toward it, his limp barely noticeable. “It’s good to see you, Alex.”
Ben suffers from a mile-wide jealous streak; I’m pleasantly surprised by his willingness to leave me alone for a few minutes to say good-bye to an ex-boyfriend.
“You have a car?” Alex tips up his sunglasses. He takes two lone cigarettes from his shirt pocket and holds one toward me. “I heard you guys might early terminate?”
I wave away the offered cigarette. “Yes, and yes. We just signed the paperwork and cashed in our airfare. Ben bought the car yesterday.”
“That’s cool.” Alex lights up and looks puzzled. “So what’s the plan?”
“Surfing.” I nod and hug my own elbows. “We’re heading south, soon.”
He lets out a mouthful of smoke.
I feel smaller and somehow younger than he is—though I know us both to be the exact same age. A gust of his secondhand smoke tingles in my throat and almost makes me cough.
“Going back to Cara Sucia?” Alex squints against the sun.
I shrug. “Maybe. How about you? How are things in El Vado?”
“I’m not so much there anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m with the Red Cross now. I was here in the capital for the quake, you know. And my bus wasn’t running, so I went down to the refugee camp at La Feria.”
“I heard about that.” It’s all a bit ironic: Alex was a notoriously unproductive volunteer before the earthquake. It wasn’t laziness, exactly. He was constantly sick, and spent much of his time traveling back and forth between doctors’ offices.
“After the first couple days, they put me in charge. I’ve been living in the city ever since. Jim worked it out so I’m technically still a volunteer. He’s looking the other way on my salary. I signed a year’s contract with the Red Cross.”
“Wow.” I haven’t seen Alex this happy and together in a long time.
“That’s the reason I’m here, actually. I wanted to see what you were up to. We’re thinking more about reconstruction now. I’m sure we could use somebody like you—an engineer, with the language and experience in the campo. But I guess…”
Outside the gate, a car horn plays a sloppy version of “Shave and a Haircut.”
“I have to go,” I say. In truth, to hear myself talked about this way—an expert of sorts, qualified for things, needed—unnerves me so much, I can hardly speak.
“Right.” He reaches into his back pocket.
“It’s good to see you.”
“Take this.” He hands me a business card with his name and the Re
d Cross logo on it. “I’ve got a place not far from Metrocentro, if you’re in the city again, before you go.”
We share another cheek kiss, and I run over to meet Ben.
* * *
“How’d that go?” Ben hands me a beer as I climb into the passenger seat, a barb of suspicion in his voice. He must’ve bought the six-pack at the supermarket where we parked.
“Not bad.” I pop the top off the can. “Earthquakes seem to bring out the best in him.”
“Some people love tragedy.”
I take a long pull from the beer. Alex and I came here in the same group. We were a couple in training and then during our first few months as volunteers. We had an ugly breakup. A few months later, there was an incident: Alex cut his wrists. They sent him to D.C. for counseling. After six weeks, he returned to El Salvador.
I was with Ben by then, and it became an all-around awkward situation. Part of me was disgusted that the Peace Corps would send Alex back so quickly. Another part could tell that he’d be worse off if they forced him to stay home.
I hold the beer can between my legs and open my purse. I tuck the envelope of cash and Alex’s business card inside my purple Guatemalan wallet, alongside my passport.
“So, we did it,” Ben says. “How’s it feel?”
“Weird,” I say, “scary.” I take another gulp of beer. The giddy excitement over our money and our freedom has faded as fast as it arrived. All those second thoughts I’d felt in the water yesterday roll back up like incoming tide.
Ben turns onto the La Libertad highway. The traffic untangles and the car gets up to speed.
“I’ve always been the girl who did what she was supposed to, you know. This is new territory for me.” It’s true. My tendency was to avoid hard decisions. I never cared about engineering; that was what my father wanted. Studying on the mainland was fine by me, but it wasn’t my idea. Applying to the Peace Corps might be the most decisive thing I ever did, before quitting today.
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