Debora murmured agreement; her response seemed casual, but Mingolla sensed between her and the waitress a woman-to-woman exchange to which he wasn’t attuned.
“Where you folks comin’ from?” the waitress asked, affecting deep interest.
“Mexico,” said Mingolla. “And Honduras before that.” Made paranoid by the question, he checked her mind for signs of tampering and found her to be a mundane original.
“Mexico!” The way she said it, Mexico might have been something at the end of the boulevard of dreams, the distant glow of paradise. “Y’know, I sell Mex jewelry here”—she hooked her thumb toward the display case beneath the cash register; it was filled with cheap onyx and silver—“and Mex food. Hell, I even had me a Mex boyfriend. That was ’fore the war, y’understand. But I never been down there. Always wanted to go. See the pretty boys and the lizards on the beaches and all. The ruins, too. Always wanted to see them ruins.”
Perky, feeling intimate with them now that she’d disclosed her heartfelt wish, she asked if they wanted more coffee…on the house. She brought the pot, poured, and plunked herself down beside Debora. She inquired about their backgrounds, said “uh-huh, uh-huh,” in response to their minimal answers, impatient, eager to tell her story, the story she got to tell once every slow-predawn-while, the story that made her believe she’d lived that day.
“This ol’ place probably looks pretty nothin’ to you folks,” she said. “But believe me, you can see a thing or two here. The idea of gettin’ their Charlie doctored in Love City brings some strange ’uns thisaway.”
“Oh?” said Debora with polite interest. She glanced guiltily at Mingolla, and he checked his watch. They had time, and it would be okay to sit and listen and pretend for a little while that they weren’t going anywhere special, to have that much normalcy.
“You wouldn’t believe some of ’em,” said the waitress. And she told them about a man and a most unusual dog, and then about two women who’d looked as alike as two beans, pretty ol’ girls, y’know, like starlets, blondes, they was blondes, and it was surgery made them so alike, they’d told her about it, how they was eye-dentical down to their moles, and they’d had their voices altered so they could harmonize even when they just talkin’, not singin’ or nothin’, they sounded buzzy and high-pitched together like a coupla birds who’d learned to speak English. It had been a real treat hearin’ them order the same thing simultaneous, waffles and cream and bacon, that’s what they’d had, and they’d done all this surgery just to make a big splash in Love City.
Mingolla tuned the waitress out, watched Debora, and realized that she was watching him. He seemed to connect with her as he had back in San Francisco de Juticlan, to all of a sudden notice her, know her, and for a moment it seemed to him she was looking through younger eyes, seeing the kid he had been. It was such a clean feeling, that startled recognition, it confused Mingolla…and that was also part of the moment, part of the past, because he had long since learned to deny confusion. The moment was gone almost before it had existed, and he knew better than to try to hang on to it. It was simply there on occasion, one of their minor resources. He found it amusing that Izaguirre—in his guise as divinity—had told them the moment would always be a salvation. They hadn’t believed him; what he’d said had sounded too fanciful to be true…though now Mingolla realized that he’d been talking about a matter of basic psychology. He wondered if the fact that Izaguirre had brought it up was evidence that he had planted the idea in them, that he was still manipulating them. Everything remained suspect. But whatever its nature, the moment did save Mingolla. He began to listen to the waitress, to like her, to see the good thing she wanted to be, the sweet ineptitude underlying her wishes, and he joined in the conversation, joined with all his heart, putting aside who he was and what he had to do, and they talked on into the gray morning, with dirty clouds piling up like seafoam on the horizon, they spoke of common sorrows and touched each other’s hands, they told lies and believed them, they made a passion of forgetting and they laughed.
Mauve streaked the eastern sky, a couple of truckers came into the diner, leaking cigarette smoke like steam, braying for coffee and steak. The waitress bawled the order out to the kitchen, brought more coffee, and sat back down, still full of stories. But more customers pushed in through the glass doors, all as gray as the sky with fatigue, itchy with highway dirt, their underwear ridden up into their crotches from hours of sitting, and the waitress had to go back to work. Mingolla and Debora waited, hoping she’d have another break, but she kept getting busier and busier. They walked to the register, stood with money in hand, and at last she slopped steak and eggs in front of another trucker, and rushed up breathless to collect her bill. She told them to drop back, tell her how they’d liked L.C., and she’d sure enjoyed meeting them, wasn’t it funny how you could meet up with some people, perfect strangers, and next thing y’know you’d be like old friends talkin’? They promised to stop by again, tipped her big, and waved so-long. Then they went back to the motel and transferred the automatic rifles to the car…
Confused, wanting to reject what he was beginning to understand, Mingolla went out of the hut and stood taking in the dreary particulars of the village. Sunlight glittered on the thatch, still wet from last night’s rain; the puddles pocking the yellow dirt were leaden like pools of mercury. A man and a chicken passed each other on the street, the Indian heading for the jungle, the chicken toward the riverbank where it would hunt worms in the narrow margin of bright green grass. Mingolla recognized all the elements of the scene, knew their names and functions; yet there was a lack of coherence about it, and he came to realize that this incoherence stemmed not from any inherent wrongness in the village, but from the wrongness of his presence. He glanced back at Debora, who was tending to Amalia. Nothing incoherent about her.
Panama.
He remembered a brochure portrait of white skyscrapers and an aquamarine harbor, with Barrio Clarín somewhere behind, labyrinthine and silent.
It suddenly seemed right that he should go to Panama. More than right. It seemed he had a moral imperative, and studying Debora, he wondered if one side-effect of love was that it gave you a moral peg upon which to hang your fear and turned unacceptable risks into causes. Or maybe his desire to go was fueled by the sense of desolate triumph that had accompanied his vision, maybe he just needed a victory, any victory, and now believed one could be gained. No, he thought. He didn’t believe that. Despite what he’d seen, he had the feeling that the future was never assured, no matter how clear your view of it.
Debora came out of the hut, shook her head when he asked about Amalia, and they walked toward the bank. The river was high from the rains, and the edge of the bank was mucky; they sat on an overturned canoe, and she began to talk distractedly of her home, her childhood in a wealthy barrio of Guatemala City, where the houses had fountains and walls topped with broken glass. He knew Panama was foremost on her mind, but now that they were lovers, she was less willing to make demands on him, less sure of what she wanted.
He listened to her happily; he didn’t want to dwell on anything serious, and he enjoyed learning about her life. But a source of greater pleasure were the things he himself had told her over the past days, memories he hadn’t believed consequential, but that seemed integral to the person he was becoming with her. The summer he’d spent on his uncle’s farm in Nebraska, for instance. He’d been fascinated by the corn. He’d never thought of it as other than yellow ears dripping with butter, but standing in the midst of a cornfield he’d discovered that the plants were odd creatures with leaves that cut like stiff paper and white roots so powerful that you couldn’t pull them from the soil. And you could hear them grow. The thick end of each leaf where it met the stalk would emit a soft quacking sound, this sometimes caused by the wind shifting them, but also when there was no wind, no motive force whatsoever. So much green around him, it had made him claustrophobic. And then there was the winter his great-grandmother had died
. Cancer. He’d been going on twelve, and he had taken turns with his mother and grandmother caring for her. His father not disposed to such ministrations. Tumors hard in her neck. He’d had to massage her. Her muscles so tight, she’d felt like a rock with just a flicker of life beneath. Teeth grinding, eyelashes growing inside her lids, adding to her hurt. Eyes as hopeless and empty as crossed-out circles. He remembered her good times. Never talking much, order spreading around her in the form of baked goods and surfaces suddenly clean. She’d married a stunt flier, a guy who’d flown through barns and brought whiskey in from Canada. But she’d remembered none of that, gone inside to nothing. Once he’d stopped massaging her, and her hand had shot out, grabbed him, holding him tightly, and that night he’d dreamed about trying to kill a tiger with a spear. A beautiful young tiger with sleek muscles. It hadn’t moved quickly, but very intelligently, and he’d seen it was trying to show him things as he killed it. Later he’d realized that the tiger’s muscles had the same hardness as the tumors in his great-grandmother’s neck.
The sluggish current carried bits of vegetable debris to nudge and clutter against the bank, and watching them be sucked beneath the murky green chop, Mingolla came to a decision.
“Debora,” he said, breaking in. “When you wanna start?”
She looked up, uncomprehending.
“For Panama,” he said.
Her face remained blank, but after a second a thin smile surfaced and she gave him a hug. It was a weak, sheltering hug, and in concert with the smile it seemed she was accepting him into the arms of her sadness.
“It’ll take me a few days to get things ready,” she said, and then, after a pensive silence, she asked why he’d changed his mind.
“Does it matter?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
He knew she wanted to hear that it was because of a commitment to truth and justice, or some shit; but he couldn’t lie. “Because of you, because I can’t let you go alone.”
She took his hand, toyed with his fingers, and finally, in a little-girl voice, shy and somewhat perplexed, she said, “Thank you.”
Two days before they left, Mingolla visited the computer. Though he had rejected it, he at least wanted to acknowledge its existence with a farewell, for it had played a part in his coming to terms with many things. Debora scoffed at the idea, her rationality offended, but she went along to humor him. It was late afternoon when they reached the hollow, and the blades of golden light skewering the chopper were so defined by dust and moisture, they looked like transmuted chords of music, the sort of light that accumulates above organs and choir stalls in vast cathedrals. The skeleton of the pilot looked gilded and smiling, and the computer’s voice seemed the implementation of a rich silence, of words saved up for centuries.
“You have my blessing for your journey,” it said.
“This is ridiculous,” said Debora.
“You’re wrong,” the computer said. “Lovers need blessings. Their rectitude is not enough to counter the loveless process of the world. They must depend on the strength of the moment, and if they do, then they are blessed. Look around you. A machine has become the Host. Light has been transformed into something rarefied. Even death has been transfigured. What you see here is an ordinary beauty made extraordinary by a moment that has outlasted its advent. And that is the best definition of love, the one most pertinent to you in your peril. Your moment lingers. You have hauled yourself up onto it and are living upon it even now. Sooner or later you will be pulled down, but that height is always there for you. Always reachable, always offering salvation. What the heart makes, the mind cannot destroy.”
Debora made a disparaging noise.
“You believe me,” said the computer. “But you don’t want to hear your beliefs spoken by the unbelievable something you think I am.”
The vines holding the chopper creaked, the light trembled, as if a mighty thought had troubled the innermost structures of the hollow.
It was approaching twilight when at last they headed back to the village. Birds were roosting, monkeys chattering, the beams of light withdrawing from the jungle floor. From the boulders ringing the hollow the trail wound downhill, narrowing into an archway of low-hanging branches, a leafy tunnel that curved west and opened onto a glade of palmettos and sapodillas. At any time of day the glade was lovely, but as they came out of the archway, they discovered that it had been made more lovely by the presence of millions of butterflies perched on every twig and frond. There was so much color and pattern that for a moment Mingolla failed to notice Nate standing on the opposite side of the glade, himself flowered with butterflies; some were swirling around his head, forming into a cloud through which his cold unreadable face could now and again be glimpsed.
“Nate!” Debora’s voice was sharp with panic, and Mingolla, already deep into panic, probed at Nate, but to no effect. That peculiar pattern he had encountered on his first day in the village resisted his efforts, creating a fluctuating barrier he was unable to penetrate.
More butterflies eddied up, the cloud filling the glade, and Debora pulled at Mingolla, broke into a run back toward the hollow. He glanced behind him and saw that the archway was choked with a flurrying tide of butterflies, a tide of flowers flooding a green tube, making a whispery rustle that chilled him and weakened his legs. They reached the boulder that overlooked the chopper, and poised on the brink, butterflies streaming about her head, Debora shouted, “Jump!” They jumped together, and Mingolla landed in a crouch, fell forward. Spotted Debora slipping off the side of the chopper, which was swaying violently. He caught her arm. Butterflies were batting at his mouth, his eyes, and he swatted them away. He dragged Debora toward the hole punched by the missile and followed her inside, slicing his hand on the ragged edge. He slid past the blinking telltales to the dark end of the computer deck and began prying at the cockpit hatch. Debora joined him, straining at the rusted metal, working her fingers into the crack of the seal. Butterflies everywhere. Light touches on his face and hands. He spat them off his lips. His heart was doing a fancy dribble against his chest wall. The hatch squealed open, and they wedged through, forcing it shut behind them. Several dozen butterflies had poured into the cockpit, and in a frenzy, Mingolla went about killing them, crushing them against the plastic bubble, stopping them, squeezing them into a glue of broken wings. Once he had killed them all, he leaned against the copilot’s chair, gazing at the skeleton, its ribcage protruding from the shreds of a flight jacket. The skull was parchment yellow, blotched with brown; dessicated tendon strings adhered to the corners of its mouth, lending the grin a grotesque silliness. Mingolla had the notion that the pilot was about to tell a joke; then a blue butterfly fluttered up in an empty eyesocket, and the expression of the skull was altered toward the sinister. With a shriek, Mingolla backhanded the skull, knocked it off the neck to roll on the floor; white dust puffed from the splintered spinal column.
Breathing hard, he turned to Debora. She had sagged down against the hatch, her knees drawn up, resting her forehead. “We’re okay,” he said. “We’re okay now.”
The light dimmed, dimmed with such suddenness that Mingolla wheeled around to learn the cause. Thousands of butterflies were massing on the crack-webbed plastic, obscuring the reddened light with a matte of wings and brittle bodies. Like looking at a puzzle of butterflies laid on a red table, with a few pieces missing. The missing pieces filled in rapidly, and the cockpit grew dark, only a faint effusion of reddish glow filtering through the overlapping wings. He could sense the enormous weight accumulating on the plastic, and moments later he began to hear scratchy sounds of strain, the bubble giving way.
“C’mon!” He groped for Debora, plucked at her shoulder. “Find Nate! Stop him!”
He flung out his mind, made immediate contact with Nate, and focused his fear into a knife that pried at his defenses. But even when Debora added her strength to his, that resistive pattern disrupted their attempts to penetrate it. The creaking had intensified, sh
arp bits of plastic dusted Mingolla’s face, and he felt the tonnage above them as a pressure on his chest, a crushing weight that was forcing air out of him. Desperate, he tried merging with the defensive pattern, and—a triangular chunk of plastic fell from above, striking his cheek—he found that he could. Wings rustling, prickly legs stalking his forehead; he bit down on something that crunched, spat it out. The edge of his fear flowed in complicated loops and arcs, stitching along Nate’s pattern with the rapidity of a sewing machine, and he added all his strength to the flow, accelerating it. Debora’s mind joined his, and the signature knot of their involvement threaded itself into the pattern, overwhelming it, drawing it into a bizarre three-way connection of pain and sexuality. Then a scream from beyond the cockpit, and with the suddenness of a spell being broken, the connection was dissipated.
Butterflies lifted from the plastic; the dying light streamed in between the mattes of crushed bodies and wings that remained, stippling the floor with shadow. Through a gap, Mingolla saw Nate’s blond head lying on the boulder above, and felt his mind roiling in the sluggish tumble of unconsciousness. Butterflies settled in Debora’s hair as she leaned on the pilot’s chair, shaking, and dozens more were eddying inside the cockpit, but Mingolla had no energy left to deal with them; he watched them batting around the headless skeleton, some fluttering out the new rent in the bubble, their colors flamed by the sunset, drifting higher and higher like glowing ash, until they became invisible against a lacework of black leaves and crimson sky.
Life During Wartime Page 27