Kilometer 99

by Tyler McMahon

  This time, we find a hand first. I’m the one to spot it. We make short work of clearing away the rest of the dirt. It’s an old man’s body. Like Pelochucho, he was caught sleeping in. Large adobe bricks fell all around, though his body isn’t crushed like others we’ve excavated. Nobody speaks, but it’s obvious that his cause of death was not falling debris, but live burial. The old woman and the little boy cross themselves and cry. The boy makes honking sounds in between his sobs. We back away. Ben passes out menthol cigarettes.

  The woman and the boy wrap the body with sheets and blankets, just as Ben did with Pelochucho. She takes pieces of twine that were strung along the bottom of the bed frame and uses them to tie up the bundle.

  Once we’ve finished our smokes, the old woman approaches Ben and me. She shakes Ben’s hand, then hands him a folded stack of American dollars.

  Ben is incredulous. “Where did she get this?” he asks me as the woman walks back to the body. “Look at this place.”

  I stare into the hole that was their home. The boy honks away over the bundled-up man—his grandfather, most likely.

  “They must be getting remesas from the States.” I think of Niña Tere and her husband, Guillermo. “The boy’s parents, or one of them at least, probably send back cash. Maybe she doesn’t realize what it’s worth. He”—I point to the twine-tied blankets—“probably took care of the finances.”

  The crackheads approach and steal glances over Ben’s shoulder. I hear one whisper, “Dollars.”

  Ben wraps his fist tighter around the money, then shoves it into the Velcro side pocket of his board shorts. He is flustered—feeling guilty about taking this woman’s money, but knowing that the crackheads will never abide his giving it back.

  “Wait,” he shouts down to the woman and the boy. I didn’t notice, but they are making fruitless attempts to lift the body.

  “We’ll help you,” Ben says. He turns to the crackheads and gestures with his arm. Two of our helpers hoist either end of the body to their shoulder level; once they have it up, the third one supports the sagging middle.

  Ben assures the woman that it’s better this way. She asks God to bless us all—making our team of three possibly the most blessed crackheads in the world. The boy bleats a few more times.

  Our crew doesn’t look happy about the extra work, but they are placated by the possibility of serious payment.

  “Wait a second,” Ben instructs once we’re out of sight of the dead man’s house. He goes around behind me, and counts the money against the small of my back. The three pallbearers turn and try to look.

  “Keep going,” Ben calls out. The edges of the bills tickle the bare skin below my shirt.

  “How much?” I ask.

  “Almost three hundred,” he says. “It’s mostly twenties. I’ll give them three each and keep the more mismatched bills for us.” He stuffs the wad of money into the back pocket of my jeans. Ben smacks my ass lightly, as if sealing the bills there.

  Immediately, I wish she’d never given us that cash. It feels heavy as an adobe block in my pants, as bad an omen as the wads that Pelochucho flashed around a few short days ago, the big ones I had to hand over to the drug boss. Worthless to us under the circumstances, it’s nothing more than a burden, a source of trouble. Once Ben pays these guys their cut, there is no chance they’ll be back to help for days.

  I don’t mean to be judgmental. They are good men, in their hearts. Their left hands don’t know what their rights are doing. In many ways, their acts of altruism are no more selfish than my reasons for joining the Peace Corps—or Alex’s reasons for working with the Red Cross. But their addiction is too strong. The source of their short-term pleasure is too easy, too close, too available.

  Soon enough, we arrive at the makeshift mass grave, and it’s easy to see why Ben dislikes it. Mounds of dirt are piled up at one end, all sprinkled with a layer of lime, like confectioner’s sugar over pound cake. Closer to the entrance, on the town side, bodies are covered in thin layers of earth. A couple of burning tires dribble out columns of black smoke around the perimeter. Above, buzzards fly in patient circles, kept at bay, it seems, by the toxic smoke. The flies are not so easily dissuaded. Most of the corpses are wrapped in blankets and twine like the one that we brought, but some are just bodies, dead in their clothes.

  It’s obvious that the architects of this place never expected it to grow so large, even in the first two days of its existence. They’ve already begun moving the dirt around near the entrance, expanding it in the direction of town. I wonder how long it will take before this mass grave swallows up the whole port, until it connects with the graveyard on the point, and La Libertad is nothing but dead bodies and killer waves.

  The most unsettling part of the mass grave is the men working there. They all have on long-sleeve shirts with collars pulled up against the flies and sun. Handkerchiefs or pieces of cloth cover their faces from the stink—not unlike the Colombians who gave us those accursed cocaine bales. They work—digging and dragging corpses, sprinkling lime, and fanning the fires—with a slow, persistent cadence, like real-life grim reapers.

  “Who are these guys?” I ask Ben. “The … attendants?”

  “Who knows?” he says. “The rumor is that they’re guys who lost everybody. Guys who have no idea what happened to their families or loved ones—where they were at the time of the quake. They’re esperando to come across the bodies.” To describe what these men are doing, Ben chooses the Spanish verb, which means both to hope and to wait—another word that cannot be satisfied. “But my theory,” he goes on, “is that they’re guys who somehow did wrong by the ones they lost. The way they seem obliged to do this shit … it’s like they believe they can make up for something by serving the dead.”

  Our three crackhead helpers hand off their burden to one such man. He doesn’t speak to them, just drags the body off to a pile, where a cloud of flies scatter. It’s like watching the dead bury the dead.

  * * *

  We walk away from the grave and back toward town. The crackheads ask Ben about the money. He takes the bills from my pocket and hands them each three twenties.

  “There it is,” he says. “Gracias.” But we’re invisible by then. They are off toward the crack house, not like men celebrating, but like men on a most urgent errand. I think of myself this morning, standing at the water’s edge with my surfboard. These men are not free to indulge; they are forced.

  “We can forget about seeing them for a while,” Ben says.

  The crack house—or its temporary shelter—will probably be the last place in La Lib to take currency. Everywhere else will soon accept only barter: food, water, fuel. I wonder, in the event that we’re stuck here much longer, if the dealers won’t find a way to get more raw cocaine into the port before the rescuers arrive.

  The sun is low along the horizon. We walk back to La Posada with shovels over our arms. I keep thinking of the self-appointed undertakers at the mass grave, for whom even hope is death. Isn’t that the logical end of our efforts? Isn’t that what we will be reduced to tomorrow, once that many more hours have passed? Won’t all relief work become, at some point, merely a process of burying the dead?

  * * *

  We find the gate locked back at La Posada. One of the columns holding it up has been bent by the earthquake; it closes cockeyed, but keeps us out regardless. Still wobbling a bit on her bad leg, Kristy comes over with a key ring and lets us in. She’s cleaned the place since we’ve been gone—cleared the rubble and broken glass around the kitchen, made little caches of food and supplies.

  “At last,” she says. “You’re back. I’ve been worried; I had no idea where you’d gone. The people here, they’re getting desperate.”

  I’m not sure if she’s afraid for us or for herself. For the first time, I understand how lucky we are: caught in an empty hotel, with plenty of food, and only the three of us. But if things go on like this much longer, our luck could be our undoing. La Posada will be a prime targe
t for looters and thieves, once it comes to that.

  Niña Tere once told me a story about how, when the farmers burn the sugarcane fields, a mass of snakes comes writhing out in a tangled, swirling mess—a rolling wave of refugee serpents—a few feet in front of the fire. Is this what has become of us here in this city? A homeless bunch of earthbound creatures, slithering our way toward the next temporary hole, choking and strangling one another as we go?

  I wonder briefly why my grandfather never told similar stories about the cane plantations in Hawai‘i, then remember that we have no snakes on the islands.

  Kristy takes a key from off her big ring and extends it toward the two of us. “Here,” she says.

  I reach out and take it.

  “We’ve got to keep this place locked up at all times. I see how the people are looking at it.”

  I put the key in my pocket. Ben walks over to the side of the Jeep. He opens the rear hatch, sits on the bumper, and unlaces his boots. I take off the RESCATE bandanna.

  “We won’t be gone so long tomorrow,” I tell Kristy.

  “Ojalá,” she says.

  I walk over to our corner of the courtyard, sit in Ben’s hammock, and unlace my own boots. One then the other, they fall to the ground with dull thuds.

  Ben rummages through the back of our car, taking a rough inventory of its contents. Finally, he appears from the side with a half-full bottle of Nicaraguan rum.

  “What do you think?” he asks me. “Cocktail hour?’

  * * *

  Barefoot, we walk up the stairs to the roof over the undamaged part of La Posada. My heart flutters at the top of the stairs, but I figure that this building has weathered two bad quakes already. It can hold us for another hour. Our patio chairs still stand undisturbed from a couple of nights ago. The sun is now in its final stages of setting. Down the coast, fires in the cane fields burn away, past the landslides, where the road is impassable.

  “Swell’s dropping,” Ben says.

  I look out at the point. If this is a set wave that we’re seeing, then he’s right.

  “What’s the tide doing?” I ask.

  “Filling back in. I think high tide was around ten today. And it’s real high, with the full moon and all.” Resting on a cinder block by our chairs is an empty jelly jar that we used as a beer glass days ago. Ben blows the dust out of it and pours in a couple fingers of rum.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to leave Kristy here by herself? She seems to think things are going to get ugly—looting and whatnot.”

  “The boats should get here soon, now that the surf’s coming down.” He slurps the big shot of rum.

  “And if they don’t?”

  Ben grimaces. “If people come in here to steal from us—food and gas and stuff—then maybe they need it more than we do.”

  “From now on,” I say, “we won’t find anything but bodies under the dirt, will we?”

  Ben shrugs and shakes the jelly jar upside down. “You know, if we dawn patrol”—he pours more rum into the glass—“we might get a nice tidal push, maybe some punchy waves.”

  “That’s true.” For a second, I wonder if this isn’t a joke, the old bait and switch.

  Ben passes the glass of rum to me. “Maybe the looting won’t start until after breakfast.”

  I roll the rum around in my mouth for a second before swallowing. “Maybe we should go surfing tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Ben says the word in that occasional Southern drawl of his. “Tomorrow we can do whatever we want.” He doesn’t mean this as permission, but as a basic—and in some ways, a difficult—fact of life.

  We trade shots of rum for a while longer but don’t speak. Surfing, I realize, is so much simpler than living. If you’re too far inside, don’t go. If you’re too far down the shoulder, you can’t make it. And if you’re right in the pocket, then any semblance of a decision fades away. All mistakes or misjudgments—you pay for them within a half second. I thought there should be some similarity in this earthquake thing—both are a matter of responding to nature. But it isn’t the same at all. Each new happening holds no clear response, and every misstep inspires days of second-guessing.

  When the bottle is empty, Ben hands me the last glassful and says, “We’ll get on it first thing.” He squeezes my shoulder and makes his way down the stairs. I finish the last shot in two sips, then head down myself. He is already asleep in his hammock. I crawl inside the tent. This time, I need no Valium to get me through the night. And I wonder if that—the ability to fall asleep without trouble and without pills—is reason enough to go on with the exhaustive work of burying the dead.

  31

  I think I’m dreaming. Short, soft breaths puff along my face. A child with small lungs moves over me. Something shuffles beside my head. The breath smells bad, like rotten fruit but also chemicals. This is not a dream. Somebody is in my tent with me, and it’s not Ben. He goes for my Che wallet.

  Without thinking, I push him hard with both hands and curse in English. “Fucking sneak thief motherfucker!”

  The tent cloth whooshes with motion. He tries to scurry his way outside the door on knees and elbows, but I grab him by his wrists. The two of us wrestle our way through the still-open flap.

  Out in the courtyard, I scream, “Ben! He was in the tent!”

  Ben snaps upright in his hammock. He sees the two of us struggling in the dark. I hold tight to each wrist. The thief thrashes and convulses like a snake in my hands, tries to kick me in the knees. To Ben, it must look like some bizarre dance of violence.

  “Weefer!” Ben screams. It’s the guy who briefly helped us. “¡Mañoso culero!” Unlike me, Ben remembers how to speak Spanish. He runs over and puts Weefer into the same kind of headlock he used on my first night here. Also like that night, I notice how comically small the crackhead in Ben’s arms actually is. I wonder if it could be the same person.

  “Let me go!” Weefer screams.

  From her own room near the kitchen, Kristy emerges, shouting. She screams for the police, which is almost laughable, under the circumstances.

  While Weefer thrashes around in Ben’s arms, I go for one of his pockets—dodging his flying knees and elbows, airborne spittle everywhere. I manage to pull out my Che wallet. In the process, a small pink piece of glass falls to the dry earth of the courtyard. I pick it up. One end is charred and black. The other end is broken off.

  “Fucking crackheads.”

  To help me access the other pocket, Ben switches his grip, pulling upward. Somehow, Weefer gets one of his arms free. It swings toward me in a windmill motion. I take a step back.

  In a blur of spinning limbs, Weefer reaches up and then appears to pat Ben on the back. The two of them freeze, their arms around each other: Weefer on his tiptoes and extending his head up at Ben’s, Ben leaning forward, toward the smaller man. It’s like Weefer wants to whisper something into Ben’s ear, or kiss him on the cheek.

  Then Weefer is gone. The speed with which he climbs up the stairs to the roof and then scurries down the tree is almost comical—like the old sped-up footage from silent movies. Ben goes to his hands and knees, wheezing as though he’s just surfaced from a two-wave hold-down. Blood pours from his back. I look. A little metal stalk blossoms to one side of his spine.

  “Take it out!” He coughs the words.

  I’m frozen: waiting for the punch line, not getting the joke.

  “Take it out,” Ben pleads this time.

  I nod, then wrap my fingers around the silver stick and pull straight up. It’s that butter knife sharpened on both edges—the same one Peseta used to save me, or one that’s identical. Ben turns over on his back, arms out at his sides. This isn’t right, I want to say. Ben told me himself that they never carry weapons when they come in to steal. No, I shake my head, incredulous. Go back! It’s an illegal move. Over the line! From underneath Ben’s back, puffs of dust blow out with each of his belabored breaths.

  “Kristy!” I shout. “¡Llame a un médic
o!” I finally remember how to speak Spanish.

  “You’ll be okay,” I say to Ben. At that point, I still believe it.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “Kristy’s calling a doctor.”

  He smiles at this, as if trying to laugh, seeing the absurdity that I’ve missed in the very notion of calling anyone, let alone a doctor.

  “We should’ve left here,” he says with great difficulty. “We should have left here a while ago, sweetheart.”

  “No!” I say it out loud now. “No. We survived!” The equation simply doesn’t add up: Ben’s will to live was greater than two major earthquakes, but less than a fucking butter knife? It can’t be so. I put my hand on each of Ben’s round shoulders. “Listen to me: We’re the survivors!” I shake him as I shout, but he doesn’t stir. “We’re the survivors!” I say it again and again.

  Sweetheart is the last word Ben says. I turn him onto his front, thinking I can plug the hole in his back somehow, with my fingers or with the same towels we used to hold together Pelochucho’s face. But by the time I have my hand over the wound, it is too late. That manta ray of muscle across his back now feels as limp and lifeless as a supermarket steak. No air comes in or out, only blood. Ben has drowned to death on dry land.

  Beside him, on the dirt of the courtyard, I curl myself into a fetal position, spooning his body one final time, blood soaking into my shirt. I cry until my face hurts, muttering words like fuck, goddamn, and love every so often.

  An hour passes before Kristy finally comes and pulls me off the ground. She helps me over to the hammock where Ben had slept before I woke him. She covers me up with a sheet, then covers Ben’s corpse with a thick wool blanket. I can smell him still in the thin nylon strings of the hammock. Drained of tears, I tremble and hyperventilate away the rest of the night.

  A random bit of wind blows in with an odd, metallic smell to it. A few drops of rain fall—raising small puffs of dust about the courtyard—and then grow into a heavy downpour. I wonder, if this rain had started an hour earlier, would it have kept Weefer at home?