by Pam Withers
“If they arrested this guy Vargas, why did they release him?” I ask.
“Well, it’s tough to hold these guys ’cause neither the birth parents nor the adoptive parents are willing to come forward,” the excitable guy from England says, noticing me for the first time. “So this scam artist has disappeared. Probably running around the country trying to scare up more girls he can hide away till it’s time to sell their babies to the top bidder. Totally wrong, wrong, wrong!” The finger is now wagging at no one in particular.
I picture the beggar girls we saw on the steps of Vargas’s former office building in Cochabamba. Raul and I only need to glance at each other to know we’ve heard enough.
David is pacing back and forth beside the soup operation with such concentration that he doesn’t notice us steal by. As we creep closer to the tents, I hear Mother whispering something and Dad’s low, comforting voice in reply.
“He doesn’t know who arranged the adoption,” he says. “And we didn’t know it was illegal.”
“We … should have,” comes the firm reply.
Raul and I turn back. David is now sitting on the ground with his right boot and sock off, staring at a raw, puffy mess of blisters. I lower my backpack and pull out first-aid gear. “Let me dress that,” I say, and he lets me without a word more between us.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The light rain has turned to a serious hammering by the time Dad shakes us awake. We pull on rain gear, switch on our headlamps and accept bowls of porridge from the tired-looking volunteers.
“Andreo, David would like to have a go at navigating this section,” Dad addresses me.
“But I’m navigator, and I’m the one who has worked out the route!” I protest. Dad, of course, approved it earlier.
“We’re proud you worked it out,” Mother says, “and you remain chief navigator, but it’s time David has a turn.”
“Just a thought,” Raul inserts hesitantly, “but jogging down a super-rocky mountain in the dark and rain and cold is where we need an experienced—”
“You know I can do it, so just hand it over,” David says, grabbing the map from me.
Dad slips the compass from my wrist and places it around David’s. As if I’d ever win where Mother and Dad have to choose between us.
“Whatever,” I grumble. “Onward, fearless leader, and if we get lost, we’ll all know whose fault it was.”
Raul is correct about the challenge of this section. Climbing up to Checkpoint No. 4 before dark was tough enough. Doing a nighttime descent in a downpour is a horror show. Plus, three hours of sleep wasn’t enough. Every one of us slips and flounders in the mud at some point. Soon we look like brown, mucky ghosts in our hooded rain gear. Five headlamps bob in single file. David leads; Raul and I take up the rear just out of earshot of the others.
“Wish we were still with Team Cochabamba,” Raul grouses.
“And that would be for what reason?” I tease him.
He refuses to answer; he’s obviously that smitten. So much for any designs I had on her.
“Well, we’re faster than them. Had to happen sometime,” I say.
There’s silence as we work our way between giant boulders and down a treacherous, stepped, craggy ridge.
“Not much of a trail here,” Raul says eventually.
“Or there is, and David has lost it,” I say loud enough for the others to hear.
“Relax. He has been studying up. And he’s a math whiz,” Raul tries to reassure me.
“What’s that got to do with it?” I grumble. “Anyone can count paces.” I pause as a picture of the route I’d planned flashes into my mind. “Maybe my map memory is wrong, but I thought the trail dropped off the main ridge and picked up a narrow ridge to the east—back there in the boulder field. But hey, David’s in charge.”
“How long do you figure to the lake now?” Mother asks David, as everyone studiously ignores me.
“Six, seven hours.”
“Good thing I’ve got The Man to keep me going,” Raul says. He pulls earbuds out of his pocket and gets Bob Marley happening. Soon his headlamp is bobbing to the rhythm, and I’m left to my own thoughts as David leads us up and down—mostly down—this endless slope of mud, glistening boulders and dripping, leg-scratching bushes. There are no other teams within sight, but that’s not unusual. I shiver and aim my light at my feet to minimize tripping and falling.
Bob Marley, or what I can hear of him, starts a new song, something about beauty. It gets me thinking about Maria and beauty queens.
“Doctor!” I suddenly shout.
Raul turns and takes out an earbud. “You okay?”
“Do you need a doctor?” Mother has rushed back to check on me.
“No, no,” I say, embarrassed. “Just falling asleep on my feet, I think.”
Mother hands me some chocolate-covered coffee beans for the caffeine, and Dad reminds us all to drink from our energy drinks at least every hour.
“Doctor,” I whisper to Raul after everyone has resumed their position. “If my mom really was a beauty queen, it means maybe my dad really is a doctor.”
“Sure, you and me and the other five hundred and ninety-eight babies,” he says in a low voice. “It was a sales pitch, stupid.”
“Not for me,” I say, and tell him about my Internet find—my birth mom’s photo and the news she was from Torotoro. I dare not pull out the torn picture to show him here.
“Your mom’s photo?” he whispers incredulously. “And we’ll be in Torotoro in just twenty-four hours.” Then he turns away and reinserts his earbuds, but not before I glimpse mixed emotions on his face. The fact that I’m making progress on finding my birth parents and he isn’t is beginning to bum him out.
We’ve been going for more than an hour, the rain refusing to let up. I’m half-jogging, half-slithering, my mind on autopilot, when David approaches me, map in hand.
“Just want to double-check the route with you.”
“You mean we’re lost already.”
He bristles. Dad comes to stand beside the two of us and gives me a warning look.
“We’ve come a couple of kilometers since that last junction, I figure,” David says.
“Okay,” I reply.
“And we were going to take this ridge bearing off to the east, right?” He’s pointing to the map, which everyone has gathered around.
I think back to the terrain we’ve been traversing. I remember a short uphill section interrupting the relentless downhill of an undulating ridge—and wasn’t there a broader plateau at one point, the one where I tripped and fell over a bush? (Where I really, really wanted to sleep rather than get up, as Dad made me do.) I study the map. I borrow back my compass and squint into the rainy blackness, which stubbornly obscures all features. I sigh.
“The ridge divides. See the plateau in between? You took us left at that junction, correct?” I ask.
“Yup, two kilometers ago,” David answers.
“How do you figure two K?” I don’t hide the impatience in my voice.
“Three hundred steps per kilometer. I’ve been counting.”
He sounds proud. I want to kick him.
“Three hundred paces, David, not three hundred steps. A pace is two steps.”
David frowns and hangs his head.
“So we wouldn’t be at the ridge junction yet even if we were still on course! We must have taken this trail back here.” I stab my finger at the map. “So much for the great math whiz!”
“Andreo!” Mother snaps. “Be respectful toward your brother. He’s learning.”
I point again at the map. “We’ve come a kilometer down the wrong ridge.”
“What exactly are you trying to say, Andreo?” Dad asks in a warning tone.
“With all those boulder fields and the height we’ve lost, we’re looking at a twenty-minute or longer scramble back up, then another ten to where we’d be if this idiot hadn’t been put in charge,” I say.
David balls his hand into
a fist and lets fly. We tumble in the mud till Raul and Dad pull us apart. Then we get subjected to a Dad lecture about team cohesiveness, team spirit and brotherly love as Mother looks horrified.
For a split second, I contemplate sprinting away—leaving the entire team and racing to Torotoro, to where my birth mother was raised. I imagine her waiting for me with open arms in the door frame of a cute adobe house, an elaborate luncheon laid out on the table. In the backyard, my birth father will be swinging lazily in a hammock, and after lunch, they’ll be eager to show me a collection of photo albums filled with pictures of other relatives eager to meet me.
“Andreo! Are you spacing out on us?” Raul nudges me.
I’m so tired, I have to put a lot of effort into pulling myself back to reality. “Best bet is to cut across the gully to our right,” I finally say. “We’ll lose height to begin with, but then it’s only a short climb. I suggest we contour out to the southeast—maintaining altitude on this contour line—and pick up this other trail. Then we’ll meet up with the one we would have been on in another ten kilometers.”
Dad takes the map from my hands and studies it. His face looks haggard in the pooled light of our headlamps. “Might be a rough descent. And there’s a stream down there.”
“I agree,” I say, “and with all this rain, it could be interesting getting across it. But I still say it’s better than retracing our steps.”
David fidgets and stares at the ground.
“Andreo is right, team,” Dad pronounces. “Just remember, we are a team and these things happen, especially with visibility so compromised.” He sighs. “It’ll set us back, but we’re tough; we can handle it. And I take some responsibility for not keeping a closer eye on things.”
“We’ll make up some time risking the gully,” I venture.
There’s silence except for the pounding rain.
“My foot blisters are killing me,” David finally dares to say. “Let’s go for the gully. I’m sorry I went wrong, Andreo.”
I swallow, and I want to say it’s okay, that it was just a small error—we would, in fact, be right on track except for the math mistake—but the sight of Mother stroking David’s elbow reassuringly seems to choke off my answer.
“Shall we take a vote?” Dad asks. Our headlamps reveal four for the shortcut, only Raul against.
“Okay, I’ll lead,” Dad says, and we’re off, our heads bowed, our shoulders slumped, David limping.
“Why did you vote no?” I whisper to Raul.
“So Team Cochabamba can catch up with us,” he replies with a smirk.
“They may yet, if this doesn’t go well.”
It doesn’t go well. For one thing, the map is not as reliable as what we’re used to. The gully is way steeper than indicated, and getting there cleans out my dwindling supply of energy. When we get to what must have been an insignificant stream earlier, we’re faced with a torrent that makes my heart ram against my ribs.
“Form a chain,” Dad commands. “Make sure you have a good foothold before you take the next step, and don’t let go of anyone’s hand.”
He goes first. He’s halfway across when he stumbles and just manages to right himself on a midstream boulder. The misstep is all it takes for Mother to go in. Without Dad’s and David’s lock-hold on her slim wrists, she’d have been swept all the way to who-knows-where by morning.
“I’m fine,” she says bravely, though she’s thoroughly soaked.
I watch David wince as his blistered foot searches for secure footing. Raul all but dances across after him, tugging me along. The water isn’t icy like at home, but it’s plenty cold. I’m utterly drained after the crossing.
Dad fishes dry clothes out of Mother’s waterproof pack, despite her protests, then busies himself handing us all power bars while she changes.
As we slog on, I’m relieved Dad has taken over navigation duty. My mind is as numb as my body, and putting one foot in front of another is all I can manage. Still, I take satisfaction in noting that contouring out of the gully takes us to the lower trail and finally puts us back on course. How far now till the canoeing lake? With no more delays, I figure maybe we’ll get there by mid-morning. I check my watch. It’s 3:30 a.m.
Four, five and six o’clock pass in a blur before the first streaks of light appear on the skyline. Dad permits us a brief rest at some point, but without relief from the rain, it offers little respite. We haven’t seen fellow racers now for hours. We’re alone in Bolivian backcountry and on the brink of collapse. We resemble a pack of exhausted miners, headlamps bobbing in a downward march. I feel a steadying hand against my back, supporting me, pushing me forward.
“Thanks, Raul,” I mumble sleepily.
I’m definitely sleepwalking, with only that hand to guide me, when I hear Mother shout, “Up there! Look!”
I blink and look up. Five bright stars are moving above us in the night, or maybe it’s the lights of a UFO. Wait, no. They’re headlamps. Adventure racers trudging southward, but they’re a hundred feet immediately above us, like they’re walking on air.
“Our shortcut worked. We’ll soon be back on the main trail,” says Dad with relief. “All we have to do is scramble up this last ridge.”
I’m about to protest that I can’t do it when I feel Raul pushing me gently, firmly again from behind. “Okay, okay,” I say.
A hand reaches for mine as I near the top, where night is turning to dawn.
“About time,” Raul says as he pulls me up.
I roll onto the muddy trail, breathing hard. I blink at Raul, then peer back over the ridge. I’m the last person up. There’s no one below.
“You were in front of me this whole time?” I ask Raul.
“Duh.”
“Then who was behind me, helping me along?”
“No one.”
“The ghost,” David mocks me. “The guide who helps—”
“Those who get lost,” I spit out at him.
CHAPTER NINE
I’m staring at a lineup of men in handcuffs, standing in various poses of defiance and feigned disinterest. I’ve been told all but one of them is a fake. Police Chief Ferreira taps me on the shoulder.
“Which one?” he asks.
“I don’t know!” I answer for the third time, distressed at being pulled from the adventure race for this ridiculous exercise, and aware that my family and Raul are steaming with impatience outside the police station.
I look from one man to another again, from the one with bad teeth who glares at me in a sinister way, to one vaguely resembling the statue of the heroic mountain guide, to a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck.
I point to the last man. “The doctor,” I finally rule, “is my birth father.”
“Excellent choice,” says a deep voice behind me, and I turn to see the tall fat man in the black fedora nodding, chuckling and slapping his knee in delight.
Opening my eyes to a brilliant blue sky, I know I’ve been dreaming again. I’m lying full-length in the bottom of a cold aluminum canoe, still damp from the night’s descent and eventual exit from Carrasco National Park. The unexpected cold makes me shiver. I have little memory of the final trek by daylight to this long brown lake surrounded by fields of wheat, broad beans and sweet potatoes. Vaguely, I recall Mother inspecting the canoes lined up on shore and muttering about how she was going to find us one without dents. As if a tiny dent or two was going to slow us down to the point we’d lose a place in this race. When I raise myself on my elbows, the boat rocks slightly.
“Easy, son,” comes Dad’s voice from the bow.
Mother, working the stern like she owns this lake—and like she hasn’t been racing for almost thirty hours with only three hours’ sleep—smiles brightly. “Good morning, Andreo.”
“How long have I been asleep?” I ask, catching sight now of David and Raul in the canoe behind us, frantically trying to keep up so they can ride Mother and Dad’s wake.
“Long enough to get the rest
you needed,” Mother says. “Want to give Dad a break now?”
“I don’t need a break,” Dad protests, but since no one is suggesting that Mother does—she’s clearly happy in her favorite command post—Dad and I wriggle about till we’ve completed the swap. I’ve stroked less than five minutes when he starts snoring.
“You actually put David and Raul in the same canoe?” I tease Mother.
“They’re way too busy trying to match our pace to argue,” she replies lightly. “Three, two, one, swap sides.”
Our paddles do the switch without losing a single stroke. We’ve been doing this together for as long as I can remember, and little is more peaceful, efficient and satisfying in life than paddling a canoe through water with my powerful mother.
“Land ahoy!” comes a shout from Raul.
We squint ahead and, sure enough, the mid-lake islet we’ve been waiting for is in sight.
“Checkpoint No. 5,” David says in a tired but pleased voice. “We get a quick rest here, right? I so need a nap.”
“Me too,” says Raul, making me feel guilty that I’ve had one.
“Sure, one hour,” Mother says in a low voice with a finger to her lips, pointing to Dad.
Springing out of the bow, I tie the canoe to shore, then beeline for the food table as Mother manages to step gingerly over Dad without waking him. Near the checkpoint, a row of snoozing bodies fills a tarp on the ground. I glance around and see other racers napping in their tied-up canoes. One team has pulled their canoe to shore and overturned it as a shelter for whoever is sleeping beneath it, his mud-caked shoes sticking out at an angle.
“Maria!” I hear David’s and Raul’s surprised voices greet our friend in unison.
“Uh-oh,” I joke to Mother, who pretends she hasn’t heard as she gets our team passport stamped.
Mother ends up chatting with some female competitors in the food line as David, Raul, Maria and I pile our plates with tostadas, corn cobs, potatoes, apples and a tasty local corn drink we’re told is called wilkaparu. We plunk down on the ground for a picnic under the watchful eyes of Maria’s dad and uncles. David and Raul vie for who can sit closest to Maria.