Across the courtyard, a flush sounds from the shared toilets. Pelo opens the sheet-metal door with a clang. He studies the too-high stack of cement, as if surprised to find it there.
“Do you want to get out of here for a minute?” I ask Ben. “Take a walk or something?”
* * *
It’s obvious that there is no surf; we don’t even bother with watching from the steps. Instead, we walk into town, heading toward the pier. La Libertad wakes up and comes to attention before our eyes, at an hour we usually spend sleeping in or surfing. Fishermen have breakfast in the alley eateries and food carts along the streets. Hotel employees mop seawater across the concrete floors of their establishments. Toothless old men—with faces so exposed to sun and wind, they look as though they’ve been carved from wood—repair holes in fishing nets for the millionth time.
After a couple of blocks, we come to the pier. I follow Ben out onto the raised concrete platform, several meters above the ocean. Small wooden boats line either side, from which fishermen and their families sell their wares. Women with thick forearms and bloody aprons await customers. For a few cents extra, they’ll scale, fillet, and eviscerate the catch of the day—working fast with a razor-sharp knife and a grooved plank for a cutting board. The most coveted of the local catch are corvina and red snapper. Rumors abound of fishermen coloring lesser fish with red chalk to pass them off as snapper. Live crabs shift and wriggle inside five-gallon buckets. Fresh scallops lay on the half shell, carrot-colored egg sacks resting beside their flat columns of white flesh. Tiny dried fish, like grains of rice with eyes, are sold by the plastic bagful, mainly as a condiment for pupusas or fried yucca. Vendors explicate the virtues of shark fin oil—a sludgy, viscous yellow packed in mismatched glass bottles—as a cure for pneumonia, headaches, and general malaise.
During our honeymoon phase, Ben and I used to come here and buy a whole fish. He had a method of checking freshness based on the clarity of the eyes. We’d take it back to Kristy to cook. Today, we figure she has her hands full.
“Check it out.” Ben points to the far end of the pier. There, one archaic chain winch lifts a small boat up from out of the water. A lone fisherman—aboard a blue-and-white vessel packed full of nets and silvery piscine flesh—hangs in midair, suspended by a thick rusty chain at the bow and stern.
“I’ve never seen them do this before,” Ben says.
“Me, neither.”
The boat reaches the top, and a few other fishermen help unload.
Ben and I walk to the rail of the pier and look down at the calm sea below.
“Some swell, huh?” I say.
Ben shrugs. “Surfing’s a way of life, you know.”
The tide is out. The ocean looks at least two stories below our feet. Behind the bar at La Punta, there’s an old black-and-white photo of a giant set hitting La Lib; in it, monster waves break over this end of the pier. Today, such a thing is impossible to imagine.
“Are we really going to do this?” I ask Ben, staring out at the horizon.
“You want out?” he asks gently.
“I want to go to South America with you. I want to rewind our lives to a few days ago, before we met Pelo and lost our money and everything else.”
Ben nods. “Me, too. The trip—it’s our dream, right? It’s worth fighting for. This little errand is just a way to make it happen.”
“So the ends justify the means,” I say.
He nods again. We stare over at the hapless point.
“You know what’s weird about all this?” I ask. “If I’d helped Pelo out with that hotel, helped him displace all those poor Salvadoran farmers, then it would’ve been fully legal, just as lucrative, and probably good experience on my damn résumé.” I look down at the ocean. “This other plan, it’s like a major sin in the eyes of the world, and the truth is, I don’t feel that bad about it. Scared, sure, but not guilty.”
Ben nods. “It’ll happen, with or without us. Somebody will get that money. Why shouldn’t it be you and me?”
“You don’t think we could get into trouble? I don’t like the idea of a Salvadoran jail too much.”
“Malia, have you ever heard of any gringo having any problem with the police here that couldn’t be solved with a twenty-dollar bill? Hell, we’ll be working for the guys who give orders to all the local cops.”
I nod. “It’s a one-time thing, right? We get paid. We get my new passport, and then we get on our way.”
“Absolutely.” Ben puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not greedy; I just want my trip. We earned it. This town owes it to us.”
Out toward the point, a lone pelican dive-bombs into the calm water with a splash, surfaces a second later, and then rises up again.
“Fuck it.” I reach down and take the rubber flip-flops off my feet, tuck them between the middle and index fingers on each hand. “Let’s do it.” I turn around, take two steps, and dive off the pier.
The drop is greater than I anticipated, but it feels safe compared to other dives I’ve made back home. This is open ocean, after all—no boulders or rock shelves to negotiate.
My sandals split the water first. My body slips deep down, into a colder layer of sea, before I finally turn and paddle upward. Despite all the boat fuel and fish guts in the vicinity, the water feels amazing against my skin, like an embrace from an old friend.
I surface, sandals still on my hands. The fishermen make all sorts of chatter—some cheering, others ranting about the dangers of such a stunt. Somebody claims that a jump like that could “explode the lungs.”
A grin grows across my face, bigger and giddier than any I’ve felt in days. Ben looks down at me and laughs. Shaking his head, he removes each of his own flip-flops.
I shout, “Do it!” from below.
Feetfirst, hands and sandals cupped around his balls, Ben jumps. To the delight and horror of the audience along the pier, he makes a giant splash just inches from me. I scream.
He surfaces with a whoop and a holler. His eyes turn big and round. With the sole of his sandal, he pushes water at me.
I squeal and splash back. Both of us laugh. Ben wraps one arm around my shoulders—dog-paddling with the other—and kisses me on the lips. Groans and giggles come from the fishmongers above.
* * *
It takes a while to reach dry land, even with the tide coming in. The flip-flops on our hands slow down the swimming. By the time we come ashore, I’m starving, and still not eager to return to La Posada. Soaking wet, we find seats at one of the food stalls near the pier, a place that sells breakfast to fishermen. I dig a few wet bills from the pocket of my cutoffs. We order beans, eggs, and fresh cream. The woman behind the counter fixes our plates and serves us tortillas but provides no utensils.
“Oh my God,” Ben says.
I look up.
Walking down the street is Crackito. His feet are bare and he is wearing his too-big rags of a shirt and shorts. His entire head—hair, eyes, mouth, everything—is covered in spray paint, mostly blues and reds, a bit of glittery gold in the mix as well.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the spray-painted face gag. Local kids sometimes do that to drunks who pass out in the street. But this seems far crueler—to paint someone so young and helpless.
“Poor bastard.” Ben sighs. “Niño!” he calls to the boy, motions for him to join us.
Crackito shuffles over. Ben pulls out a stool for him to sit on, then asks the woman behind the counter for another plate. She frowns at us, not pleased to have Crackito in her establishment.
“Hungry?” Ben asks.
Crackito nods, staring down at the hands lying empty upon his lap.
“Who did this to you?” I ask.
“Nobody.” Crackito shakes his head.
Once the food comes, he eats the whole plateful in seconds.
I pay the tab and give the cook a large tip. Crackito takes off his shirt and goes into the ocean to wash the paint off, scrubbing at his face and torso with handfuls o
f black sand. It seems to work.
“If you want to stay behind tonight, Malia, that’s fine. Pelo and I can handle it.”
“I said I’m in.” The truth is, I can’t cope with the thought of leaving Ben to do this alone.
“We’d better get back,” he says.
During Peace Corps training, we had a terrifying session on security, meant to scare us into caution and prudence. The only rule I remember is this: If somebody threatens you, don’t ever let yourself be moved to another location. Once the bad guys move you, things always get worse. If somebody in a ski mask puts a gun to your head and tells you to get into a car—which did happen to a volunteer in San Salvador not so long ago—scream, run, but don’t get in the car. I recall that lesson now, in light of Pelo’s new plan. I’m convinced our situation will keep getting worse if we take steps forward in league with him.
Though Crackito has now run along, an image from a few minutes earlier, of him in the surf, still lingers in my mind’s eye—the way he scoured himself with sand and salt water, while that thick and ugly layer worked its way off. I wish I knew a similar way to scrub off some of my recent missteps.
“I’ll meet you at the hotel,” I say to Ben. “I want to make a phone call.”
* * *
At the ANTEL office, I tell the clerk the only phone number that I still have committed to memory. In my head, I count back the time zones and figure out the hour in Honolulu.
“Hello?”
“Dad,” I say. “It’s me, Malia.”
“Malia.” He’s excited. “How are you? I’ve been waiting to hear from you. How’s the aqueduct?”
I pause so long that it becomes awkward. Then: “I don’t know, Dad. I’m not working on it anymore.”
“Oh,” he says. “Is that right?”
“With the earthquake and all … it’s not really a priority. I left the village.”
“I see.” He sounds utterly confused. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m staying at the beach, with Ben. You remember Ben? I—well, we, we’re thinking about doing some traveling.” I cringe as I say it, but at least the words get out of my mouth.
“Traveling?” my father says.
“Yeah, Dad. We may go to South America for a while.”
“South America.” He says it just above a whisper. “Do you … do you have the money for that?”
Another awkward pause from me. “Of course.”
I’d been dreading this conversation for so long. It was meant to be a confession of a truth that my father didn’t want to hear. Somehow, it’s become more a mix of falsehood and omission.
My father’s breath sounds like static through the phone. “It all sounds very interesting, Malia.”
I feel the beginning of tears, and clench my teeth together. “It’s what I want. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance like this again.” That much is true.
“When do you think you might come back here, to Hawai‘i?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It could be a while.”
“Well, well,” he says. “I guess you know what you’re doing.” He doesn’t sound confident in his own words. Perhaps he fears that I’m turning into my mother—prone to run off with strange haole men, no thoughts for family or future.
“I’m very proud of you, Malia.”
That’s when the tears finally get the best of me.
“All the things that you’ve done in that country—it’s incredible.”
I want to tell him about the night with Alex, about the robbery, about the fact that I walked away from that aqueduct when it might have needed me most, and about the plan for tonight—to make the money that I claimed to already have. I want some way to tell him about everything, a way that might actually make sense to him. Most of all, I wish I still had the kind of problems that my father could fix with a few words.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too, Dad. I need to go now, but we’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Okay, Malia.”
I wipe at my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt, then pay the ANTEL clerk for the call.
On the street, I take some deep breaths and try to compose myself. It’s time to go back to the hotel—to find Ben and Pelo—and to go get this over with already.
24
The night is still and warm. Once outside of town, we pass no other cars. For once, I’m happy to ride in the back, lying on the plywood shelf. It makes me feel hidden somehow, safer. Ben drives slowly and cautiously. Pelo doesn’t light a joint.
From the back, I’m able to make out only the odd painted rock along the side of the road. By the rising and winding of the Jeep, I can tell that we’ve left town.
“Simple,” Pelo says in a gentle voice.
Ben grunts.
“We’re like Peseta now,” I say from the shelf. “Runners. Legs.”
Neither of them responds.
After what feels like hours of driving, Ben slows and says, “This is it, right?”
“This is it,” Pelo replies.
Ben shifts into four-wheel drive. He turns left and we bump our way down a rutted dirt road toward the beach. My hips and shoulders slide and bounce on the plywood.
“Try to get the car into those bushes,” Pelo says. “Might as well be subtle.”
Ben shifts in and out of reverse. We jolt forward and back a few times. Leaves brush up against my back window like the rollers in a car wash. The thin limbs scratch and groan against the Jeep. Ben cuts the engine.
“All right.” Pelo exhales and cracks open his door. “Now we do the waiting thing.”
A second of silence passes. Pings sound from the motor.
“Could somebody let me out of here, please,” I say from the back.
Ben comes around and opens the hatch. The two of us sit on the tailgate. It’s still a beautiful spot—or seems so at night. The cove is narrow and rugged, full of palms and small bushes. Two tall shoulders of land reach out on either side of us. The sea laps gently against shore. The full moon turns the landscape as bright and gray as a marble statue.
Pelo walks down to the water’s edge. Ben makes a cigarette at my side, the rolling papers crinkling against his fingers. I can tell from his jerky movements and shallow breaths that he’s nervous. For whatever reason, I’ve turned calm. It’s like paddling into big surf: Once you’re out there, anxiety doesn’t do you any good. My problem was always deciding whether to go out in the first place.
“It’s nice out here,” I say.
Ben sparks up the smoke. I can hear that he’s packed the tobacco too tight by the way he sucks on the tip. “It’s not bad,” he admits, a chattering quiver in his voice.
Pelo paces along the shore, staring out at the horizon.
I reach over and take the cigarette from Ben’s hand. “Relax,” I say. “We’re here now. Might as well be cool.”
“Right.” He breathes in through his nose, then out through his mouth, and straight away becomes more composed.
“I think I hear something.” Pelo sings the words like a children’s song.
We go quiet. The tiny, distant buzz of an engine slowly becomes audible. It sounds like one of the lawn mowers my father used to bring home to repair. The three of us turn still and stiff. For a long span of minutes, we do nothing but listen to the buzz. It grows louder and closer, and for a moment I wonder if it might be a tiny airplane.
At last, a small craft turns the corner and becomes visible inside the cove. Ben and I rise from off the tailgate. I squint my eyes. It’s impossibly small, a Zodiac, and so loaded down with cargo that it appears to be dragging below the ocean’s surface rather than floating atop it.
“Take these.” Ben holds up the keys to the Jeep. “Wait behind the wheel. If anything happens, start it up and bail.”
I accept the keys from him but don’t move. My feet feel planted to the ground. “Who are those guys?”
Two men pilot the Zodiac. Both wear handkerchiefs over their fa
ces, like gunslingers from the Old West. Apart from that, they appear to be dressed in dirty collared shirts and baseball caps—not unlike the local campesinos.
“Colombians, I suppose,” Ben says. “Or guys that work for them.”
“Did they come up from Colombia in that thing?”
Ben stifles a laugh. “They must have a bigger boat out there somewhere.”
“What’s with the handkerchiefs?”
He shrugs. “Frankly, I’d just as soon not see anybody’s face tonight.”
Pelo waves his arms above his head to signal them, as if they can’t see him standing there.
“Get behind the wheel,” Ben says again.
This time, I do as he says.
From the driver’s seat, I hear the chatter down by the water’s edge. The Zodiac’s engine shuts off. Feet shuffle hard against the sand. Soon, I look into the rearview mirror and see Ben and Pelo carrying a rectangular package wrapped in a grain sack and tied up with twine. They drop the first one in through the Jeep’s rear door, onto the plywood deck. For a second, I fear that it won’t fit inside and we’ll have to find a way to disassemble that wooden shelf. But they’re able to hoist it a little higher and slide it in.
“Do we need to check and see if it’s real or something?” I ask as they push the bale flush against my seat back.
Pelo laughs. “You’ve seen too many movies, Chinita. Try trusting people once in a while.”
Ben claps dust from his hands. “I’d rather we get this over with and get the fuck out of here, to be honest.”
The two men from the Zodiac carry the next one. They speak Spanish to each other in an accent I can’t place. One of them meets my stare through the rearview mirror and I hear him mutter the word muchacha. I turn my eyes away.
All four men head back to the water’s edge. My mind slips into paranoia. This is the moment, I think to myself, this would be the time for them to kill both Ben and Pelo, then come back for me. Were I a Colombian thug hoping to make off with both the money and the product, to take advantage of some amateurs, now would be the time to shoot. Sweat comes coursing through the palms of my hands. Be cool, I order myself; you’ve seen too many movies.
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