Diego's Pride

by Deborah Ellis

  ‘We think he uses it to try to make his hair grow back,’ a third woman’s voice said, followed by a blend of giggles.

  Sister Rosa patted Diego’s face dry with a clean cloth. He was able to see more clearly now.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Where else should we be?’ Sister Rosa smiled at him. ‘We headed out as soon as we heard the shooting.’

  ‘Along the trail,’ said another nun, going past them to help someone else.

  ‘I guess Father Javier will have to get his own lunch today,’ said the third, and there were more giggles.

  The nuns had clean water and first-aid kits. Diego saw them fan out across the bridge, black veils flapping behind them.

  There was a lot to do, and Diego wearily got to it.

  The cocaleros decided to move the southern barricade away from the bridge, another fifty meters or so to the south so that they’d have more room now that there were more protesters. The task gave the two blockade groups something to work on together. There was a lot of grumbling from both groups about the smoking tires.

  ‘There was no agreement to do that,’ protesters said. ‘Why would we ruin our own air? Why would we ruin our own roads?’

  ‘What did you think the tires were sitting there for?’ Dario argued back. ‘If you didn’t want me to burn them, why didn’t you say so?’

  Diego kept his head down, his mouth shut and did his work, moving branches and logs to the new barrier.

  ‘There are more soldiers down there,’ someone said, pointing farther south.

  Diego put his tree branch with the others and looked down the highway. He saw military trucks and soldiers where the road bent away, but they looked relaxed, talking and smoking.

  ‘They’re just waiting,’ Leon said.

  ‘Waiting for what?’

  ‘Waiting to get us!’ Leon said, grabbing Diego as he said it and making Diego wonder why bigger people took such pleasure in trying to scare smaller people.

  When he could, he went up to the ridge to be with Emilio.

  The ridge was flat and large enough for toddlers to have room to play. Tarps were strung up for shelters, and a cookfire boiled water and cooked pots of chupe. Even protesters who weren’t wounded went up there sometimes just to rest on soft ground instead of the hard pavement of the bridge.

  Emilio was propped up against a tree trunk. The medicine from the army had helped, but he didn’t have his energy back yet. Beside him on an aguayo was a baby he was watching so the parents could be on the bridge.

  ‘I lost the…chess board,’ Emilio rasped, breathing hard. ‘Or maybe…the helicopter…blew it away.’

  ‘Saves you the pain of a rematch,’ Diego said, tickling the baby on its tummy.

  ‘My father…says I can’t go back to the bridge,’ Emilio said. ‘He says I have to stay up here…and rest.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Diego. ‘You breathed in a lot of gas. Lots of people are up here resting.’ He waved his arm at the protesters taking advantage of the quiet to catch up on sleep.

  ‘But they can come and go. I’ve been ordered to stay here. They plopped this…baby down beside me so that I can pretend to be doing something, but all I can do is make my father worry. I’m useless.’

  Diego could tell from the way Emilio’s face winced up that it was painful for him to talk. Diego understood. His own chest and throat still hurt from the gas.

  ‘Looking after a baby isn’t useless,’ he said. ‘It’s the most important thing.’ He let the baby hold on to his finger and remembered his sister being that small. She had cried a lot. This one wasn’t crying. It followed their conversation with big, wide eyes.

  ‘I know…but there are others up here who could do that.’ Emilio nodded at the older folks around the fire. ‘My father doesn’t think it matters… whether I’m down there or not. He doesn’t think I have anything to contribute.’

  ‘You whine a lot,’ Diego said, too fed up to watch his words. ‘Your father just wants to protect you. Be glad you’ve got him.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Emilio said, folding his arms across his chest and turning his face away.

  Someone on the bridge was calling for a runner. Diego got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll look for the chess set,’ he offered.

  ‘Just like you looked for my inhaler?’ Emilio asked.

  Diego had to walk away.

  He lost himself in work, moving his tired and sore body beyond the point of exhaustion.

  The piles of stones had to be replenished, and the cocaleros tried to recreate some sort of order on the bridge. They went into the river valley to look for tarps and things the helicopter propellers had sent flying into the wind.

  Diego found one of Emilio’s chess pieces – a black knight – and brought it to him. He was asleep, with the baby across his lap. Diego put the knight in Emilio’s hand and closed his fingers around it. There was no sign of the inhaler.

  Clean water had to be hauled up to the bridge, and even higher to the ridge, where it could be boiled and made fit for drinking, out of the range of the tear gas.

  Clothes had to be washed, too, to get rid of the gas on them. That meant taking turns wearing blankets while everything was scrubbed with whatever bits of soap could be scrounged. The nuns helped, even rushing back into the village to get more blankets and extra clothes.

  People moved slowly, lying and sitting down a lot to rest. Everyone was tired, and their lungs ached. Some had been hit by rubber bullets and limped with big bruises on their legs.

  ‘How’s it going, Bug?’ Dario asked, sitting down beside Diego on the bridge pavement. ‘You’re a good fighter, you know that?’

  ‘I’d rather be a good farmer,’ Diego said.

  ‘We fight today so we can farm tomorrow. You want a mint?’ He held out two wrapped candies. ‘Nuns are giving them out. They say it will help our throats.’

  Diego took one and unwrapped it. He hadn’t had a candy in a very long time. It did soothe the pain a bit.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Diego asked suddenly. He realised that he knew almost nothing about Dario in spite of working and living closely with him on the bridge. ‘In a perfect world, what would you do?’

  ‘In a perfect world?’ Dario didn’t seem surprised by the question. He looked around in case somebody might be listening, then said in a low voice, ‘Chickens.’

  ‘Chickens?’

  Dario explained. ‘No one in my family has ever owned land. Ever. Go far back in the generations, and we’re all mine workers or tenant farmers or workers on the big rubber plantations. I go from farm to farm up here, looking for work, but with the coca crops stolen, no one can hire me. I’m going to have to go to Santa Cruz when this is over, or Cochabamba, and try to get hired on as a day laborer in construction. I’ve done it before. I hate it. I hate cement.

  ‘In a perfect world, I’d have a small piece of land, with a little house. I’d grow food to eat and to sell, and I’d sit on the porch in the evenings and watch the chickens scratch around in the yard. They would be my chickens on my land – land that would stay in my family forever. It’s not too big a dream, to own a little piece of land in the country of my ancestors.’

  Diego’s family had been tenant farmers, too. Someone else was farming their land now, he was sure. Even when his parents got out of prison, there would be no home to go back to.

  ‘What’s your dream, Bug?’ Dario asked. ‘In a perfect world?’

  ‘The same as yours,’ he said.

  Dario laughed. He took the baseball cap off his own head and put it on Diego’s.

  ‘We’ll buy land side by side,’ Dario said. ‘We’ll be neighbours.’

  For that one moment, Diego could actually see it happening. Then Dario went and ruined the mood by saying, ‘Spear and I have a plan…’

  ‘Keep me out of it,’ Diego said, getting back to his feet. ‘And keep Emilio out of it.’ He didn’t need to add anything about Bonita. She’d keep herself out o
f it.

  ‘What’s the matter, Bug?’ Dario called after him. ‘Too chicken to fight with the big boys?’

  He made chicken-clucking sounds. Diego kept walking away. Then he reached up, took off the baseball cap and dropped it to the pavement.

  FIFTEEN

  Trouble was brewing.

  Diego could smell it in the air – something more than the fear and the whiffs of gas and the stench of vomit drying on hot pavement.

  He was good at watching people – inmates and guards at the prison, classmates at school, gangs on the street. He was good at smelling trouble.

  His father had taught him.

  He remembered visiting his father in the men’s prison, sitting with him and Mando on the balcony overlooking the courtyard.

  ‘What do you see?’ his father would ask. It was sort of a game they played. There wasn’t much to do in the men’s prison. They would lean against the railing and watch what was going on below.

  Sometimes there was a soccer game, but always there was the passing of secrets. ‘What do you see?’ his father would ask, and Diego would whisper, ‘Two men in the corner planning a fight,’ or ‘The man by the woodshop door just stole something.’

  Diego could almost hear his father now, asking what he was seeing.

  He was seeing Leon and Dario making plans. They huddled together and strutted around like they had a big important secret.

  He was also seeing protesters starting to bicker. People were tired, they were sore, and they were scared.

  ‘I just want the whole thing to be over,’ a young woman said to an older one.

  ‘You don’t care enough,’ the older woman accused her. ‘If people like you were stronger, we would have won already.’

  It was all nonsense. Diego had seen it in the prison. Inmates attacked each other because they couldn’t go after the guards. But it put everybody in a bad mood.

  Then the press arrived.

  Diego was leaning against the north barricade when the TV crew got into an argument with the army.

  ‘You have no right to keep us away,’ the reporter said to the captain. ‘There’s still freedom of the press in this country. Or do you want to take that away? Make sure you get his answer on tape,’ he said to the woman operating the camera.

  ‘I’m not trying to stop freedom of the press,’ the captain said. ‘I’m just telling you that we can’t guarantee your safety if you go on to the bridge.’

  ‘Go get Vargas,’ Diego was told, but someone had already fetched the union rep and was bringing him to the barricade to talk to the reporters.

  Diego kept walking down the bridge. The bickering had stopped. The protesters wanted to present the best picture they could of themselves to the world.

  Diego turned his back on the bridge and leaned against the railing, looking down at the river. Sister Rosa was playing with some of the children down there and getting them washed.

  ‘Diego!’ Martino called up to him.

  Diego decided to join them. He needed a break.

  He was soon caught up in some sort of game that had no rules or purpose except to make noise and splash a lot. Sister Rosa didn’t want anyone to go too far into the river, and Diego helped with that, but mostly he just yelled and heaved in rocks so that they would make a big splash, and pretended to be a river monster, making the kids yell and laugh. He didn’t think about chores or prison or debts or justice. He only thought about being the very best river monster he could be. He pretended that his throat hurt from yelling instead of from tear gas.

  They played until the children got tired. Then they just sat on the rocks and watched the river flow by. Sister Rosa taught them all a little-kid song about animals. Diego sang along as though he wasn’t a serious working man, but just a regular twelve-year-old kid.

  Then he looked up at the bridge. It was a long way up, just like the bridge Mando had fallen from. This one was made of cement and steel. The one Mando had fallen from was made of ropes and planks, but they were both high, and the ground below both of them was harsh with rocks.

  How scared he must have been, Diego thought. How hard he must have landed.

  ‘You’re not singing,’ Martino said. ‘You’re crying.’

  Diego wiped his eyes and tried to bring himself under control, but a loud sob escaped from his throat.

  Martino climbed into his lap.

  They sat like that for a little while. Then Martino said he was hungry. Diego helped Sister Rosa gather the kids together and hike them up the hill – first to the bridge, then farther up to the safer place.

  Shortly before sunset, the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

  ‘I have some news for all of you. My superior officer has arrived. I now introduce you to Major Garcia.’

  The loudspeaker crackled as the microphone was passed from man to man. Then a new voice came on.

  ‘This bridge will be cleared at sunrise tomorrow. You have my word as an officer and a Bolivian that nothing will happen before then, as long as my soldiers are not attacked first. My men, and my tanks, will stay behind the barricades. You are all free to disperse at any time tonight. You will not be stopped. You will not be arrested. But when the sun comes up, we will take back this bridge.’

  There was the rumbling of motors again. The tanks and trucks shifted to one side, and a giant bulldozer rolled down the middle of the highway. It stopped in front of the northern barrier and turned off its motor.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Diego said to Bonita, who was standing nearby. ‘It had to end some time.’ He was grateful it was over. It was beginning to look more and more like there was nothing in it for him, no matter what happened to the blockade. Maybe there would be more justice for the cocaleros down the line, but that wouldn’t put any money in his pockets today.

  ‘You see anybody leaving?’ Bonita asked. ‘Do you see anybody packing up?’

  ‘You mean people will stay? Knowing what’s coming?’

  ‘This is for our lives,’ Bonita said. ‘Our lives, not yours. Go if you want to.’

  Then she looked at him without the usual scorn on her face.

  ‘You have family to get back to. My family is here. It will be all right if you go.’

  ‘What will happen in the morning?’ he asked her. ‘What will the army do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But Emilio would. He went through this during the water protests. Let’s ask him.’

  They looked for Emilio all over the bridge, and then they went up the hill to the ridge. He wasn’t there either.

  Diego went to an old woman by the fire.

  ‘Have you seen Emilio? Vargas’s son?’

  ‘Vargas’s son?’ a woman replied, poking a stick into the fire. ‘A good boy. Polite. Went off with those older boys. The not-polite ones.’

  ‘You mean Dario and Leon?’ Diego leaned over and yelled in the old woman’s face. ‘You mean Dario and Leon! Why didn’t you stop them?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Bonita pulled him away and apologised to the old woman.

  ‘We have to find them,’ Diego said, his panic rising. ‘They’re up to something, and they’ve dragged Emilio into it. He’ll get himself shot.’

  ‘Emilio’s not that stupid,’ Bonita said.

  ‘He wants his father to be proud of him.’

  ‘What?’

  Diego didn’t understand it either.

  ‘When did they leave?’ he demanded of the old woman. ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I’ve got my own work to attend to,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep track of boys coming and going.’ She waved her fire-poking stick at Diego.

  Bonita knelt down and spoke gently to the old woman in Quechua. The woman answered back, stroking Bonita on the cheek.

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ the woman said. ‘You know how to be respectful.’

  Bonita grabbed Diego’s arm. ‘This way.’

  They ran the length of the open ridge, dodging around groups of parents trying to se
ttle their children down for the night.

  ‘Shouldn’t we get Vargas?’ Diego asked as he ran.

  ‘There isn’t time,’ Bonita told him. ‘Can’t you run faster?’

  The ridge ended with the forest. ‘There must be a trail,’ Bonita said. ‘Help me find it.’

  Night had fallen, and there was no moon. They skirted the edge of the woods trying to find the entrance until Bonita got fed up and plunged right into the trees.

  ‘Wait!’ Diego called. ‘Let’s stick together!’ There was nothing to be gained by getting lost.

  By accident, they stumbled upon the trail that led south above the highway. In a short while they found themselves peering down through the trees at the convoy of military trucks and bulldozers. Soldiers were talking and laughing, eating their evening meal and listening to music on a radio.

  ‘They must be down there somewhere,’ Diego said. ‘Leon was talking about sneaking around and attacking.’

  ‘You knew about this?’ Bonita whispered, swatting him on the arm. ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’

  ‘I thought it was just talk.’

  ‘Congratulations. You may have just gotten another friend killed.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen!’ Diego pushed past Bonita with such determination that she fell over. He heard her get up and follow him, but he didn’t wait. He had to find Emilio.

  The hill was fairly steep, and there was almost no light to see where he was walking. His foot slid once, knocking debris down the bank. He and Bonita froze, terrified that the army would hear and start shooting, but the soldiers were too busy eating and talking to notice.

  Now crawling on his behind, Diego inched closer and closer to the camp. He kept his eyes wide open, straining to see Emilio and the others in the dark.

  It was Leon who gave them away. He was arguing with Dario.

  ‘I made the thing! I should be the one to throw it!’

  ‘We both made it,’ Dario said. ‘Who got the gasoline?’

  ‘Who got the bottles?’

  ‘Who broke one of the bottles?’ Dario hissed in return. ‘We stick to the plan. Emilio, take this one, crawl under the bulldozer, light it, then crawl out like mad before it goes off. As soon as the bulldozer explodes, I’ll throw this one.’