Kilometer 99

by Tyler McMahon

  We stopped for a rest and a snack at the bodega. The owner of the house brought out our Stillson wrenches from his bedroom.

  Mauricio finally spoke. “Okay, boys, let’s get to work.”

  Chago and Chente, two strong teenagers, were the first to load up. They laid pieces of grain sacks over their shoulders, then lifted each end of one six-meter-long galvanized pipe.

  I put one of the Stillson wrenches over my own shoulder, which was about all I could bear. Early on, I’d fantasized about helping to carry one of the big pipes, but watching the men struggle along the steep sides of the river valley had cured me of that.

  We set off down the narrow trails, grabbing at the thin stalks of coffee trees as we went. At last, we reached the pipeline’s stopping point. I asked Felix to help hold the Stillson while I clamped it onto the pipe fitting. He blushed a little as I leaned across him to tighten the wrench.

  Chago and Chente groaned under the burden, which seemed to grow heavier the second they stopped walking. Several other men rushed over to shoulder it for them.

  I crouched along the existing pipe as if it were the barrel of a gun. The men raised the rear of the new pipe to align the threads.

  “Up in the back,” I called. “To the river. Good. Toward me a little more. All right, now!”

  They held the pipe still while Mauricio turned the big wrench. Once the threads caught for a rotation or two, we attached the other wrench to the new pipe and set about screwing it in. I liked this part. Felix often hung his whole bodyweight from one end of the wrench, feet kicking in midair, giggling and hooting. Sometimes two or three guys hung on at a time.

  Once that pipe was tightened, we moved on to the next pipe. And so it went: Our aqueduct advanced in six-meter baby steps. By lunchtime, we’d laid three pipes, which meant it was a productive day. We took our break by the banks of the river, alongside a tall waterfall. Mauricio made a quick fire and we all toasted our day-old tortillas in the coals. Chago and Chente stripped down to their underwear and went for a swim. They climbed to the top of a high rock by the falls and traded flips into the deep pool. It might’ve been a scene from an old Hawaiian postcard.

  A swim sounded nice, but I knew better. Already, it was a semiscandal that I spent my days working in the woods with all these men. If the gossip mill heard that I bathed with them as well, I’d become a walking confirmation of everything Salvadoran women suspected of American girls.

  Instead, I ate my lunch, crunching through the blistered outer layers of the retoasted tortillas. As I returned the trash and dishes to my backpack, I saw that Ben had sent me a page: “SWELL COMING IN. HERE NOW. SEE YOU TOMORROW.”

  I’d almost forgotten it was Friday. I put the pager away and signaled to Mauricio that we should get back to work.

  He stood, whistled, and gestured to the boys.

  I smiled as we walked back to the aqueduct. I had good waves nearby, meaningful work, and a wonderful boyfriend. Now, I’d do anything to get back that version of normal. It’s laughable that I ever thought of that part as hard.

  30

  The next morning, I step out of the tent, still groggy. Ben sits in a hammock strung between two of the remaining columns. He rubs his eyes with his fists. Hiking boots are on his feet—still, or already. Tied around his forehead is a white cloth that reads RESCATE, the Spanish word for “rescue,” in Magic Marker. I nod in his direction, but don’t say anything.

  “Morning,” Ben says.

  “What did you do with Pelochucho?”

  “I found some guys. They buried his body with others. It wasn’t pretty, but he’s underground.”

  “That took all day?”

  “No. Afterward, I helped more people out. There’s lots to be done around here.”

  I find my surfboard under the wrecked Jeep, run my hand over the wax on the deck. It still has plenty of traction. I roll my neck a few times, then gather up the leash.

  “What are you doing?” Ben asks.

  “There’re still waves.” I hear them crashing against shore even now. “Sure as hell won’t be any crowd. I’m going surfing.”

  “You can’t do that, Malia. We’ve got to help.” He is matter-of-fact.

  “Fuck that. I quit being a hero. Remember? It was all your idea.”

  “This is different. People are alive under there. We quit the Peace Corps, but we’re still human beings.”

  “What’s the point?” I ask him. “I spent two years trying to help that one little village. And then”—I snap my fingers—“boom. Like that. A waste of time.”

  “You’ll regret this,” Ben says. “Trust me.”

  “Do you know what happened to me the other night, Ben?”

  “What, while I was in jail?” His head cocks to one side.

  “This close.” I hold up my thumb and forefinger and pinch a centimeter of air. “I came this close to being raped by some fucking Salvatrucha drug dealer. Trying to get you back.” I feel the tears along my cheekbones. The burning in my gums doubles.

  “I didn’t know.” Ben shakes his head hard. “You didn’t want to tell me. Who was it? Tell me who it was. I’ll go find Peseta and—”

  “Peseta’s the one who saved me. He’s probably dead now because of me. Because of that ridiculous plan that you and Pelo came up with.” There’s still more anger in me than I realized. “And don’t you dare think up some kind of half-baked revenge scheme. This isn’t the high school parking lot; these guys are real.”

  Ben looks down, ashamed.

  I lower my voice. “All I wanted was to leave, to get out of here.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” He reaches out a hand and tries to touch me.

  I move my shoulder away from his fingers. “You want me to help this town? Forget it. I’m going surfing.” I walk away, my board under my arm.

  * * *

  Outside of La Posada, things grow worse. People carry machetes and clubs. Abandoned stores and businesses are rummaged through for anything of value. Teenage boys fight over firewood and ripe coconuts. The final semblances of civility threaten to erode fast.

  The point is firing. Sets of four and five waves, double-overhead, barreling, dead wind. It’s one flawless thing, an oasis of perfection, within a vast desert of both natural and man-made disaster.

  I realize then, or remember perhaps, that a surfer’s idea of perfection is different from everyone else’s. It isn’t abstract or inscrutable, some shadow on the wall of a cave. We know what it feels like—perfection—how it looks and the sound it makes.

  And here it is right before my eyes: world-class waves all to myself. But somehow, the point suddenly has strings attached. It tempts me like one of those fast-talking salesmen in the Faustian stories, asking only for my soul in return. Were the surf mediocre, I’d put in without a second thought. But right now, the heaven that’s in the water shows the hell that’s on land in greater relief. I still think most of these development and relief efforts are pointless, on a long-enough time line. But in this place and at this moment, it suddenly isn’t about the results anymore. It’s simply what I ought to do, an end in itself.

  Weeks ago, I came across a rare kernel of wisdom in an article from that same faded surf magazine; it feels appropriate now: “Surfers are not free to live in the moment; surfers are forced to live in the moment.”

  I turn around and walk back to La Posada.

  * * *

  Ben is still there. Water boils on his camp stove. He squats beside it, brushing glass and ants from a piece of salvaged sweet bread.

  “You’re back,” he says.

  “I want to help you.”

  He smiles. “Get your boots on, and find something you can drink coffee out of.”

  I put on my boots and baggy jeans, along with the tank top I’d borrowed and then stolen from some new volunteer in San Salvador last week. Ben pours my coffee into a tin cup from the cab of our ruined car.

  “I’m sorry, Malia.” He puts his hand around mine. “I’m sorry
for what happened to you, for getting us into that mess in the first place.” His eyes are moist and twitchy. “It was my fault.”

  I nod and look away from him, not wanting to talk about it anymore.

  After breakfast, Ben pulls two shovels and a pick out from under the Jeep. With a marker and the remains of a torn T-shirt, he makes me my own RESCATE bandanna. We leave La Posada. We walk within sight of the crack house, but it’s a pile of rubble. By one of its fallen corners, a crude tent has been built from a black tarp. I make out the bearded doorman from the other night, but don’t see Pardon Me Mother or the boss man.

  Soon enough, I understand that Ben didn’t work alone yesterday. We’re joined by two older crack addicts—men I can remember seeing around town. They are keen to help out, and introduce themselves as Flaco and Alacrán.

  As the four of us walk together, I suddenly think of Crackito—the young human punching bag with whom we ate breakfast a few mornings before.

  “¿Y Crackito?” I ask Flaco.

  “No” is all he says. “No, Chinita.” Flaco shakes his head and looks at the ground.

  My next inexplicable thought: I hope that boy was high as Mount Everest when the earthquake happened. I hope he still had a little of my money, or that he’d stolen something in the night that was worth a big hit from a borrowed stem, when whatever doorway or makeshift shelter he’d found to sleep under had come crashing down upon his head. This is the best fate I’m capable of imagining for little Crackito.

  First thing, we find an old man and a young woman trying to lift chunks of concrete where a two-story house has fallen. The four of us put down our tools and help with the heavy columns. The work is difficult. It takes everybody at once to hoist the bigger debris. Soon we see a blackish foot from which dangles a rubber flip-flop.

  “Look,” Ben says.

  The old man and the woman come over. They call out a name a couple of times: Jacinto. The woman cries. The old man has already resigned himself to the worst. The two of them clear the rest of the rubble from the body. We all turn away, as if it’s a sort of rite that we owe to them.

  Through tears, the woman uncovers the dead man’s face. Her husband? Brother? The old man shakes Ben’s hand and thanks him. They speak softly. Ben motions toward our two Salvadoran comrades. The crackheads stand there leaning on their tools, with gaunt frames and vapid expressions, like a postapocalyptic rock band posing for a photo. The old man walks over to them, reaches into his pocket, and gives them each a bill and a few coins. He says, “God bless you.”

  They nod and mutter, “Gracias,” then drop Ben’s tools and wander off.

  “Where are they going?” I say to Ben.

  “To buy crack.”

  Ask a stupid question, I think to myself.

  “Once they get back, we need to move inland. Here it’s just fallen houses. There it’s worse. Landslides and homes tumbling down the bluffs.”

  The corpse is nearly clear now. I try not to look, but I can tell that he’s wearing blue jeans cut off below the knees. Whoever it is, he must’ve been somewhat successful; it’s a nice home.

  The old man approaches us with a nearly full pack of menthol cigarettes. “Would you like?” he says. “I don’t smoke.”

  Acting on a mix of politeness and indifference, we take them. It isn’t until after Ben has lit us both up and I’ve taken a couple of drags that I realize the cigarettes must’ve come from the dead man’s pocket.

  While we smoke, the woman wraps a blanket around the corpse.

  “Can you two handle things from here?” Ben asks the old man.

  He nods.

  “Where will they take the body?” I ask Ben in between drags.

  “To that mass grave those guys started.” He points with his hand. “Where I took Pelochucho. I don’t like going there too much.” Ben blows minty smoke. The crackheads reappear around the corner. Their eyes now cloudy like unfresh fish, they are no less somber. Two more walk with them. Now six, we start up the hill to Las Lomas, Ben in the lead.

  “We saved three people who were pinned down yesterday,” Ben says as we walk. “But it was easier. They were screaming and stuff.”

  As if on cue, a woman’s cry is followed by a clatter of metal. We turn in the sound’s direction. The frenzied shouts finally take the form of words.

  “¡Auxilio!” It’s a fat woman with wavy hair and pale skin. She stands over two young boys, both of them digging furiously with bare hands at a pile of dirt littered with scraps of corrugated metal.

  “He’s alive!” she shouts.

  We run over. Sure enough, somebody is beating from below on a piece of the metal roofing, one corner of which has been unearthed. Muffled shouts come through the dirt. It looks as though this was an adobe house, which has fallen down and also been partly covered by the collapsing bluffs.

  “Careful, careful,” Ben shouts as our crackheads dig through the earth with their hands and hoist the heavy chunks of adobe.

  “¡Niños!” Ben shouts at the two boys. “Go and find some water. Fast!”

  They run off. The fat woman stands behind us, muttering “Help” and “He’s alive” alternately. She dances from one thick leg to another. Finally, Ben and I are able to lift the corrugated-metal square.

  I expect something beautiful, the happy ending of a sappy movie where the buried man hugs his wife as the score reaches its crescendo. Instead, I am terrified.

  The first thing that hits me is the smell of shit and piss that rises out of that hole. The trapped man sits up from the waist and gasps for air. The space that the section of metal made for him resembles a coffin. Now upright, he looks like a shabby vampire. In the more than twenty-four hours that he’s been under there, his body has evolved into something meant to live that way—his skin pale and moist, his legs crammed together and looking as boneless as two earthworms. He throws a hand up to cover his eyes against the sun.

  In some ways, for me, this is more difficult than finding the dead body. I wonder if all of us, walking around La Lib now, are truly survivors. Or are we trapped in a kind of limbo state somewhere between life and death? A state that might even be worse than death. Nobody else shares my reaction.

  His eyes still closed, the undead man mutters “Claudia” between shallow breaths. Ben helps him out of his hole. When the reunited pair finally embrace, it’s more a matter of her holding him up. His long-numb limbs struggle to move, and soon enough she sets him down onto the ground. The children return with a shallow bucket of water, and the man takes several trembling sips. “Papá!” the boys shout. Too weak to embrace them, the father reaches out to brush his fingers against their cheeks and shoulders.

  Ben and I sit down. I worry about the crackhead situation. We helped for only ten minutes or so, and now there are several of us. This family doesn’t look like they have any spare cash to contribute to our cause. While nobody forces the issue, the crackheads stand around awkwardly; one of the new guys—the smallest among them—looks particularly restless.

  The woman wipes dirt and debris from the man’s face and hair while he continues to force down water and blink furiously. She shouts an order to the kids and they disappear into a hut of plastic and cardboard on the far side of their fallen home.

  The children return with a cold pot of boiled potatoes. “Toma,” the older one says, and sets them down in front of us. Ben and I aren’t bashful. The smaller boy runs back inside and produces a dish of salt. The crackheads are slightly more hesitant, but they tuck in soon enough. I am hungry, and with all the awful smells around, this meal has the right degree of blandness for me to stomach. A new guy, the small one who’s been looking restless, takes a couple of bites, then chucks his potato to the ground. He grumbles something I can’t understand. Flaco shushes him.

  After two or three of the cold potatoes, Ben brushes his hands together and stands. “Vamos,” he instructs the rest of us.

  The family thanks us all and asks for God to bless us. They are still in a state o
f overwhelmed shock. I get the feeling they don’t quite understand who we are or what exactly we’re doing.

  “¡Qué mierda!” shouts the smallest crackhead once we’re out of earshot. The others reprimand him in a Spanish so hushed and slang-ridden that I can’t follow, though I assume he expected cash for helping the man. To me, it’s fairly obvious that the family would’ve dug the body out within the hour, whether or not we’d shown up.

  At first, Ben doesn’t appear to pay attention, but then suddenly he stops walking and turns to the complainer. “Weefer, why don’t you fuck off, then? Nobody promised you anything. There’s no minimum wage here. That family didn’t have shit to give you. Walk away, pues.” Standing there with the headband on, bare-chested, lean from skipped meals, glaring down at a rival, Ben looks exactly like the real Chuck Norris in his prime.

  Weefer—I gather that’s his name—spits on the ground, then walks off muttering curses.

  Ben walks onward. We follow.

  There are no more dramatic screams or critical rescues. Everyone around us resigns themselves to the slow grind of excavating bodies. I feel self-conscious about the silly RESCATE bandanna upon my head.

  Soon enough, we fall in, helping unearth a house that is badly buried. An old woman and a small boy dig through the rubble with sticks. Few words are exchanged; we take our shovels and move earth. The boy communicates by pointing and making a sort of bleating noise through his sinuses. As the minutes and shovelfuls go by, and I watch the old woman gesture and signal to him, I understand he is deaf as well as mute. We carry the dirt away in buckets and grain sacks. This family also looks too poor to pay us anything. It’s a good thing that Weefer left.

  The minutes spent digging turn into hours, and I wonder if there truly is a house underneath all this dirt and dust. The moment that thought enters my head, my shovel hits a piece of corrugated metal. We hoist out the heavy chunks of old junk—tire rims and broken cinder blocks—used to weigh the sheets of roof down. All of us put aside our shovels and pick through the pieces with caution. Now that the sounds of digging diminish, I can hear the perfect waves breaking in the distance.