The DMZ

  “But—” Julie tried again, but Rick went on inexorably. “You like to call our American military trigger-happy. Well, let me tell you this—the reason you can show up in peace and freedom at your little magazine office isn’t because of our country’s peace-loving nature and democratic ideals. It’s because we have a military that’s the best in the world and is willing to lay it on the line for our peace and democratic ideals. There are a whole lot of nasty little dictators and other people who hate America and what it stands for who would take us out in a minute if they could. But they don’t because they know if they step over the line our military has drawn in the sand, we’ll blow their heads off. Same goes for our allies and a whole lot of other little countries around the world that can’t defend themselves. Maybe it sounds corny—and I know there are plenty of civilians who disagree—but it is the American military and our willingness to stand our ground that’s keeping what little peace there is in this world.”

  By his glare, he was expecting Julie to argue the point.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said meekly. And she was. She hadn’t meant to insult his profession or the undoubted role of peacekeeper American armed forces had played around the world. Clearly, she had pushed some sensitive buttons.

  “You’re right—you can’t make peace by wishing people would get along. It’s just … I wish there was a solution where no one else would get hurt—especially here in Colombia. It’s such a beautiful country.”

  “We all do,” Rick agreed.

  * * *

  It was the next evening—the fifth since Julie had escaped from the guerrilla camp—that their tenuous understanding blew up. It had been a good day until then. A game trail they’d stumbled into along the top of the riverbank had made for easy walking. In early afternoon, they’d come across a slow-moving armadillo crawling right down the middle of the trail.

  “Tell me you don’t cook that!” Rick demanded as Julie picked up a stick.

  Julie shot him an impish glance. “Try me. They even serve it in restaurants down here.”

  Rick refused to have anything to do with dispatching the creature, but since it moved slower than a turtle, Julie had no problem dealing with that aspect herself, and though grumbling good-naturedly, Rick even slung it over his shoulder, its shell bouncing against the back of his ammo vest as they hiked along.

  At midafternoon, the river made a sudden sharp curve to the left. The shift of the land left Rick and Julie on top of a high bluff down which they would have to scramble to continue following the river. The top of the bluff was grassy and open, and they couldn’t see what lay ahead around the bend of the river, so Rick called for an early stop.

  As had become routine, Julie started a campfire while Rick walked back a distance from the bluff to find palms and saplings for the caleta. As she had the turtle, Julie cooked the armadillo in its shell, basting it with coconut milk and lime juice. A large avocado split in half served as salad. Though it looked like an overgrown potato bug, the armadillo was delicious eaten directly from the shell, which Rick chopped into large chunks with his machete, the fatty richness of the meat a welcome addition to their lean diet.

  For the first time, it was still light as they ate their evening meal. Perhaps because they could see for a long distance up on the bluff, Rick seemed more relaxed than Julie had yet seen him. Sprawled against a boulder he had rolled over to serve as a back rest, he dug a chunk of armadillo out of its shell with his combat knife, giving Julie a thumbs-up as he chewed and swallowed.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but this is really good. I’m going to have to see it gets added to the survival list back at Fort Bragg.” He shook his head, and this time Julie wasn’t imagining the approval she saw in the brown eyes. “You really are something, Julie Baker! You know, when we started on this trek, I would never have believed a woman could—”

  “I know what you believed,” Julie interrupted dryly.

  Rick sloped her a rueful grin. “Okay, so maybe it was a little chauvinistic. In any case, I was wrong, and I don’t mind admitting it. Truth is, if I could pick any man in my unit with whom I’d care to be lost in the jungle, I’d take you any day, Julie Baker.” He sliced another piece of armadillo flesh from the shell and popped it into his mouth. “For one, none of them can cook worth beans.”

  Pleasure tinged Julie’s cheeks. Maybe he was thinking only of his stomach, but she’d worked hard not to be a burden on their partnership, and his approbation warmed her. She shrugged dismissively. “Yeah, well, I guess there’s one good thing that came out of growing up in San Ignacio.”

  She could hear the bitterness that tinged her words even as they emerged, and she regretted them instantly as his expression cooled, the approval evaporating as though it had never been there. Tossing the chunk of shell aside, he demanded harshly, “Why do you talk like that? As though San Ignacio—your whole life growing up down here—were some horrible nightmare you’re trying to forget.”

  “I … I …,” Julie stammered, but he swept on relentlessly: “If you hated it so much, why did you come back? And don’t give me all that about just coming here for a good story. I saw the way you looked when we landed and you first saw the place. The way you just couldn’t help sneaking out of the airport!”

  “But I didn’t hate it,” Julie interrupted with a wail. “You don’t understand! I—well, I even loved it. But you heard what happened there. You know about my parents. It was just such a waste! For them—not just for me.”

  “Was it? So you keep saying,” Rick retorted. “What I understand is that this isn’t about your parents. It’s about you. From all accounts, your father and mother were the kind of parents any kid would be happy to have. Decent, caring people who did a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people. Isn’t that right? Or is there something you’ve left out—like maybe they were secretly beating the tar out of you or something?”

  “Of course not!” Julie said indignantly. “My parents loved me—they loved everyone! That’s not the point!”

  “So what is the point?” Rick demanded. “Do you know what most kids—myself for example—would have given for a family like yours? I never knew my father—if I had one, which they tell me is a biological certainty, however small the evidence. My mother was a lush—and yes, she did beat the tar out of me until I got big enough that she didn’t dare try anymore. Okay, maybe I deserved it. I was always getting myself into fights—trying to prove I was tough enough I didn’t need a dad to fight my battles. My mom died of cirrhosis of the liver by the time I was out of high school. The best thing that ever happened to me was when the recruiting officer at our school signed me up for the army. That’s where I met a chaplain who actually showed me there really were people out there in this world who were decent and kind. People who loved God and who actually took seriously things like sacrifice and service. People like your parents!”

  The muscles bunched along his jawline, and under his glare, Julie felt like something that had crawled out from under a rock. “And you—you had a family I’d have given my shooting arm for! But you’re all eaten up inside because they took you to live in the wilds of South America. You didn’t get to have all of the advantages of American kids—toys and clothes and a nice house and all the other things you would have had as an upper-class physician’s daughter back stateside. You had to go to boarding school, and okay, you had some hard times. And you resent that. Oh, don’t bother to deny it—the bitterness practically oozes out of you every time you talk about it. Well, let me tell you, you weren’t the only kid to have a few hard knocks in life. Growing up in a single-parent home in inner-city LA doesn’t allow for a whole lot more of life’s little luxuries than growing up in San Ignacio.”

  “But—that isn’t true! You don’t understand!” Julie was shaking her head frantically, wanting to shut out that relentless voice. “I never resented the things I didn’t have. I never wanted an American lifestyle. And I never resented
growing up in San Ignacio—at least not for myself. It was for them. I loved my parents! They were wonderful people—and brilliant and talented too. If you’d known them … They could have done anything with their lives. And I watched them get sick and old out here. And poor. They were practically retirement age when they died, and they didn’t have a cent in the bank. They just kept giving and giving everything to other people. And never holding anything back for themselves. I … I just always wanted something better for them.”

  “Did you?” Rick countered, and there was no relenting in the expression on his face. “I don’t think so. By your own admission, your parents were perfectly happy doing just what they were doing. They could have walked away any time they wanted, right? The fact is, they were happy with the life they chose. They loved San Ignacio and the people there. You say their ministry was worthless—that it didn’t amount to anything in the end. Well, I don’t think from the sounds of it that they would agree with you. Nor would the people whose lives they touched. Maybe they didn’t make, any earth-shattering impact that we can see, but they made more difference than you’re giving them credit for—just ask Carlos, among others.

  “But that isn’t the point. They did what they felt God was calling them to do, and they were happy doing it. And if they sacrificed their careers and even their lives in the process, that was their choice. Only you didn’t like that. But it wasn’t for them you resented it. It was for yourself, because, willy-nilly, in sacrificing themselves, they sacrificed you too. And they didn’t ask your permission, either. That’s what’s been eating at you all these years, isn’t it?”

  Rick broke off when he saw the stricken look on Julie’s face. “I’m sorry. I had no business saying that.”

  But he didn’t say he didn’t mean it.

  Julie got to her feet stiffly. “It doesn’t matter. You’re entitled to your own opinion of me.”

  Dropping the armadillo shell in her hand, she walked away from the campfire. When Rick made a move to get up, she rounded on him sharply. “No, I want to be alone, do you mind?”

  She walked swiftly along the bluff until she could no longer see the smoke of their fire and the fresh green top of the sleeping shelter. Below her the river was making its sharp curve to the left so that all she could see ahead and to her right was the canopy of jungle rolling away from the bluff in a sea of green. The river was the same silty brown here as elsewhere, yet its placid surface still allowed a murky reflection of the tree-lined banks and one white cloud floating overhead.

  I hate him! How dare he? He has no right! Julie raged silently. But though she tried to dismiss what he’d said, it was as if Rick’s harsh words were as much a mirror as the water below, and she couldn’t shut out the Julie Baker she saw reflected there.

  Although she had deceived herself all these years, and however much she loathed admitting it, Rick was again, and uncannily, right. It hadn’t been her parents’ feelings, her parents’ needs that had roused her bitterness and resentment all those years ago. It had been her own.

  Yes, Mom, Dad—God, don’t you see? When you sacrificed yourselves, you sacrificed me! Didn’t you ever think of that? Didn’t you think of me? Didn’t you love me?

  Tears stung Julie’s eyes. She blinked them away impatiently. She was not a weeper—she had seldom cried since those early bedtimes at boarding school. She hadn’t cried when the news from the Red Cross team came—there had been too much disbelief at first, then too much to do. When her whole world had dissolved with the closing of a plane door behind Norm Hutchens, she still had not cried. Not in front of strangers. In the years since, she had prided herself that she wasn’t one of these weepy females who bawled on the shoulders of any teacher, friend, or available male who came along.

  Yet she had found tears coming to her eyes more often in the last few weeks than in her entire life. It was as though the dam she had so carefully erected against grief and loss and pain was crumbling brick by brick, and all her efforts were doing nothing to stop it.

  Spinning on her heel, Julie strode away from the bank and across the bluff, not stopping until she came to the jungle edge. She sank down under the enormous umbrella of a mango tree, its fruit still green and small overhead. Her hands clenched as she struggled to force the floodgates shut again.

  “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die …”

  But, God, I never asked to be a grain of wheat. I never asked to be part of this.

  “He who loses his life for my sake …”

  I didn’t ask to give my life! I didn’t ask to give my parents!

  The tears began to come. Mom, Dad—didn’t I matter as much as all those people you poured out your life for? Didn’t it matter what you were doing to me? Oh, I know it was for a good cause. I know those people needed you. I know you were doing God’s work. But I needed you too. I loved you—and I know you loved me. But you weren’t there when I needed you. You weren’t there when I cried myself to sleep at night in a room full of other homesick girls. You weren’t there when I had a birthday and no one remembered even to sing. You weren’t there to tell when the bigger girls were mean to me. And on vacation I had to be brave so you wouldn’t know how much I missed you. I learned not to cry—not to let you know how I felt.

  And then you went away! I didn’t even get to say goodbye. If you had left earlier—if you had thought more about me than your patients—we would still be a family. I wouldn’t be so alone. When I got on that plane, I lost my whole world. Not just you, but every person I’d ever known, everyone I’d ever cared about—even my dog! Did you think of that. Mom—Dad? Did you think of the consequences to me? I needed you too! I still need you!

  And she wept. She wept as she had not wept in all the long years when strangers had told her how well she was coping and what a brave young lady she was, wept as she had never permitted that independent, resilient young woman she had trained herself to be. Somehow, she wasn’t sure how, Julie found that she was face down on the ground, her face pressed against the warm moist earth, the dirt crumbling under her hands. O God, why?

  It was not a question to which she expected an answer. Nor did she receive one. At long last, she raised her head from the ground. She could smell the familiar warm fragrance of the grasses where she had crushed them in her clutching fingers.

  Julie rolled over on her back. A tangle of lianas hung down from a branch just above her head. Orchids grew among them, and only an arm’s length above her was one exquisite specimen, its heart deep purple with traces of gold that lightened by shades to a pale lilac, then paled again to cream on the petals. The creamy petals curled back from that gloriously colored heart in long, slender curves that tapered to a tendril at the end of each point like a spider plant.

  The blossom was far more exquisite in that web of wild vegetation than it would have been in the refrigerated case of a florist shop, and as Julie turned her head, she glimpsed beyond the overhanging branches a piece of late afternoon sky that was so deep blue it didn’t seem real. Above her, among the vines and leaves, she caught the brilliant turquoise and scarlet of a macaw that peered down at her, making an inquiring sound as though to ask what was hurting her. The first cooling breeze of dusk whispered through the branches overhead, touching Julie’s hot face with its soft caress.

  It was all so beautiful. And she loved it so! Julie could admit that now, give herself over to the pain of it. This lonely, wild, beautiful spot on the planet was part of her heart and soul. As Rick had said, so much of her was bound up in this place. Her independence. Her confidence—sometimes overrated—that she could tackle anything if she put her mind to it. The resilience and adaptability birthed by constant change. Kenny back at WCI in Travel & Equipment had once said that if Julie were dropped into any remote spot in the world, she would in short time have made herself understood, recruited local allies, and be busily writing up her experiences while arranging her own rescue.

  Yet the constant underlying ache that no place on earth w
as home, the barriers that kept even close friends at arm’s distance because any new change might snatch them from her life, an aversion to accepting help or leaning on anyone, an aloofness that never quite left her no matter how many people were around—these too came from this place.

  That was what it came down to. How could she love a place that also held so much hurt? How could the same God who had placed such beauty into her life place such pain as well?

  Why did You give me such wonderful parents and then take them away? Not just when they died, but all those boarding school separations when I needed them so much. Maybe that’s just the way missionary life was back then. Maybe it was the way it had to be to bring Christianity to the world. Why does winning the world for God have to involve breaking apart families and saying goodbye?

  Julie sat up, brushing the dirt and twigs from her clothes and arms. Her hair was undoubtedly full of debris as well, but Julie didn’t bother to check. With a ragged release of breath, she lifted her head. Better get back before Rick thought a guerrilla or wild animal had her—if he would care.

  That was when she saw him, sitting just a few yards away, his back resting against the trunk of the mango tree, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his AK-47 resting across his lap. He’d been watching her—for how long? Julie didn’t bother to turn her face away or try to hide the evidence of her tears. They were way past that. As she lifted her chin to meet his gaze, he said quietly. “Are you okay?”

  Shifting to dig into his pocket, he extricated a handkerchief, folded into a neat square, and passed it to Julie. Julie took it, bemused. All this time, and he still had a handkerchief in his pocket? It was even clean, though damp from the last time it had been used for washing, and Julie could smell on it the warm musk of his body scent.