Sanibel Flats

by Randy Wayne White

  Ford was watching the boy, studying him out of the corner of his eye. Physically, Jake Hollins was a mess. His long brown hair hung matted over a grimy face, and his Miami Dolphins T-shirt was as mud-caked as his jeans. He had shown some interest when he heard them speaking English, turning toward them with a face that emanated a glow as brief as a firefly's, an expression of pure hope. But he had quickly withdrawn again, sliding down into a curious sitting fetal position, rocking back and forth as Ford had seen blind invalids rock. The boy had wanted the face of his father, not the stares of more strangers.

  Now Jake Hollins didn't seemed to hear them at all; seemed, in fact, oblivious to everything around him. After ten or twelve days in this hellhole, Ford guessed, oblivion would be a welcome escape. Especially for a sick child—the boy clearly had a bad case of dysentery, judging from the mess around him. He looked feverish, too, staring out from dark eyesockets like an animal peering from a cave. It was the one painful ingredient in the whole initiative that Ford hadn't anticipated: They couldn't tell the boy they had come to help him. Not right away, anyway, not until Ford was convinced Zacul or Suarez hadn't planted an observer inside the jail. They couldn't take the chance of Zacul discovering that the child's life was a potential bargaining tool. And, from the look of him, Jake Hollins might not last much longer without some word of hope.

  Ford took a deep breath, sighing, and Tomlinson seemed to pick up on what he was thinking, saying "I wish there was someone else in this dump who spoke English. No offense, Doc, but you haven't exactly been a joy to talk with lately."

  The boy just sat there, still rocking. Didn't even look up.

  Ford slid closer to the boy as he pretended to stretch. Then he began to collect the twigs Jake had been playing with, taking care to keep the pile right in front of the boy. Tomlinson said, "See, Doc, you've got the advantage here. Conversationally speaking, I mean. You can speak Spanish, so you can talk to anybody you want. But me, I don't speak anything but English, so I've got no one else to talk to."

  The boy still did not react.

  Ford began to lay the foundation of the house. But he laid it out crooked so that the next level of twigs didn't quit fit, and the next level fell.

  Tomlinson said, "You aren't much at building boats either."

  Ford said, "It's a house," as he began to lay the crooked foundation again.

  Then someone else spoke, a soft voice from halfway down the room saying "You are Americans, no?" Leaning forward to make himself known was a slightly built man sitting in white underwear and covered with mud, but with a formal expression on his face, as if he were at a cocktail party and about to make introductions. "I hope you do not mind that I try my English on you, but lately—" He shrugged, oddly embarrassed. "I so seldom get the chance to be using it."

  "We're Americans," Ford said.

  "Ah, yes, I thought so by your accents."

  Tomlinson said, "Not that it makes any difference around here. General Zacul seems to treat all prisoners as equals."

  The man shook his arm and the chain made a rattling noise in the dusky light. "Not completely equal. You are to be here only a short time. Me, I have been here for ..." He stared at the ceiling as he calculated. "I have been here for nearly a month. Perhaps longer. They would have chained you if you were to be here like the rest of us. Since the floor is earth, they are afraid we will dig out."

  "You're considered criminals, then. That's why you're here?" Glad for the diversion the man was creating, Ford got to the third level of the house before the twigs fell this time. Once again he started to rebuild on a crooked foundation.

  "Oh, yes. Every person here has committed a crime. We are all very desperate criminals." The man sounded so weary that the sarcasm in his voice wasn't easy to read, but it was there. "The person sitting across from me, his name is Fredrico. Fredrico's crime is that he sold some vegetables to a group of government troops. Fredrico has been here even longer than I. Two months, he says. And that boy sitting by the door, his name is Jesus. Jesus is not yet eighteen years old, and his crime is that he refused the attentions of one of General Zacul's advisors, a Cuban officer named Arevilio. When Jesus's parents learned that a man tried to take their son to bed, they naturally contacted the authorities. For their crime, they were murdered. For his crime, Jesus was brought here. Someday Zacul or Arevilio or one of the other officers will come and seduce the boy again, for it is their way. Until that time, he will stay here chained with us. Or they will take him to the little wooden shed near the cliff to await execution." '

  The man was sitting there in the filth, speaking softly, talking about outrages but not sounding outraged, just tired.

  Once again Ford's house fell.

  The man said, "The man lying near the door, his name is Creno. Creno's crime is that he is a Miskito Indian. Normally, the soldiers of El Dictamen shoot Miskito Indians on sight, for that is the wish of General Zacul. But Creno has not been shot because he apparently saw something that he should not see. What this thing was, Creno has been kind enough not to tell us. But because it is possible that Creno told others about this thing he should not have seen, General Zacul has ordered that he be tortured each day until he talks. Only after talking will he be shot. It is a thing you call irony, no? Normally, one is threatened with death if one does not cooperate. But Creno faces certain death if he does cooperate. So he has endured these many weeks. Three weeks, I think. Yes, more than that. He has been a great inspiration to us. But, as you can see, he cannot last much longer."

  Creno was a tiny man with straight black hair who lay naked, face down on the ground. There was a random grid of red welts on his back and buttocks, whip scars, probably. He had not moved since their arrival, just lay there panting in the heat like a wounded animal.

  "What about you? What's your crime?" Tomlinson asked.

  "My crime is that I am a physician. I could have opened a practice in Masagua City after internship, but I chose instead to spend a year practicing in the rural areas of my country—to pay a debt of respect to my own people. About a month ago this army attacked Pochote, a mountain village they suspected of helping another guerrilla group here, the Masaguan People's Army. Zacul's soldiers burned the village, but that is not the worst thing he did. He assembled the men of Pochote and offered them the chance to join his army. He asked for volunteers, which was Zacul's way of tricking them for, of course, none of the men volunteered. He had burned their village, you see.

  "There were forty-three men in that village over the age of fourteen. Zacul and his lieutenants cut the testicles off all forty-three of those men. They stripped the men, tied them with ropes, and used no anesthetic. It took all night. When I arrived two days later, the floor of that place was like a charnel house. It was black with blood. I tell you, when Zacul goes to a village now and asks for volunteers, all the men step forward. That was his intent when he tricked the men of Pochote. I have heard him joke of it."

  The doctor continued, "I learned of the atrocity and traveled two hundred miles to help those men. Several had bled to death, two had committed suicide. Those who survived were already badly infected when I arrived, but I had brought medicines and set about trying to treat them as best I could. Several days later I was arrested. Four times they have taken me to a room and beaten me. Each time I am asked to sign a paper which says that

  I agree to serve as a medical officer in Zacul's army. I am not a strong man. In fact, my classmates considered me to be a coward. So I was surprised and rather proud that I did not sign that paper during the first torture session. Of course, they did not beat me badly. They are desperately in need of a physician, so I'm sure they treated me more gently than the others you see here, such as Creno. But I began to take strength from the courage of poor Creno and I survived the second beating. Now I have survived four, and it has been three or perhaps four days since either Creno or I have been beaten." The young doctor leaned farther forward, anxious as a child as he said, "You, obviously, are not considere
d criminals by General Zacul. I will not ask why you are here, but perhaps you have even spoken with the general. Perhaps you know him as a man in some way. Do you think it is possible that he has given up his efforts to force us by torture? Do you think it is possible that we might some day be released?"

  Ford was reaching to reconstruct the foundation of the twig house for the seventh time when a small white hand reached out and stopped his. Jake Hollins was staring at the pile of twigs, but watching him peripherally. There was an expression on his face: impatience, Ford decided. As if to say Can't you adults do anything right?

  Ford liked the expression on that small, grimy face with its cleft chin; recognized something in the light of those dark-brown, gold-flecked eyes that he had once admired in Rafe's. As Tomlinson and the young doctor continued to talk, he and Jake Hollins began to build the house together.

  Ford did not answer the physician's question.

  Three A.M., and Ford was whispering, "A boy who lived in Tambor used to bring me sharks' teeth. Hundreds of them, some °f the biggest and best I've ever seen. I finally convinced him I'd still buy the teeth if he showed me where he was finding them. He brought me here."

  Both Tomlinson and Ford were lying on their stomachs, gripping the steel stake to which Jake Hollins was chained, trying to twist it free. The stake was driven through the chain, through a heavy grommet built into the fiberglass, then deep into the ground.

  The boy was asleep, knees drawn up to his stomach, lying on his side.

  Ford said, "The question was obvious: Why so many sharks teeth a half mile from the lake and nearly a mile from the sea? They weren't fossilized; nothing to suggest a prehistoric drop in sealevel. It gave me something to think about, and, believe me, you live alone in a place this remote, you treasure little mysteries like that.

  "At about the same time, I met Pilar. While her husband was on a tour of Europe, she had rented a little cabana about a quarter mile from my lab and lived alone. We met on the beach, and gradually—very gradually—became friends. I began to help her in her work, and she began to help me in mine."

  "And that's how you fell in love with the Presidente's wife, man. I can see how it could happen."

  Ford said, "Balserio wasn't president then but, yeah . . . that's how it happened. Pilar and I had some great talks sitting outside that cabana at night, just the two of us. She was about as desperate for company as I was at first, but then it became more than that. We weren't lovers; not completely, but I guess I was in love with her—as close as I've ever come to being in love, anyway. Twice she said that she loved me, and a woman like that doesn't use the word loosely."

  They were twisting the steel rod back and forth, working it like a crossbuck saw, and it was beginning to move. Tomlinson said, "A guy like you, he's got to be in prison before he opens up. I think you ought to consider this a kind of therapy; make it into a positive thing."

  "Uh-huh, right. Pilar s the one who told me the story about the Kache, the conquistadors, the calendar, the earthquakes; all of it. The problem she was working on was what happened to the calendar. If the legends were correct, the calendar should have been someplace in the lake. It's a hell of a big lake and it's deep, but it's only really deep toward the middle and, considering all the people who have looked for the calendar, someone should have found it. At that time, Pilar was plotting constellations for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, doing a lot of complicated math and trying to figure out exactly where the Tlaxclen priests would've had to mount the calendar to reflect the light of a certain major constellation. She had settled on Orion as the constellation because it had seven bright stars and, in Tlaxclen tradition, the last year of the calendar was called the Year of Seven Moons. This event only happened once every fifty-two years—"

  "I know, I know," Tomlinson said impatiently. He was sweating, working hard but trying not to look like he was working in case anyone was watching. "Christ, I'm the one who told you."

  "Oh, yeah . . . Anyway, she kept coming up with the eastern shore, where we are now. But so had a lot t>f treasure hunters, and this was the only section of the lake that had really been thoroughly searched, even with all the sharks. That's when it came to me, sitting outside the cabana with Pilar one night. The earthquakes that came after Alavardo's conquest either drastically reduced the level of the lake or altered its position. Where we are now was once underwater, that's why all the sharks' teeth. If the Tlaxclen priests had really pushed the calendar into the lake, it would not be sitting beneath the jungle a half mile or more from the shore. "

  "Not bad, man. I bet Pilar loved that idea."

  Ford had both hands on the stake and slowly worked it out of the ground. "Pilar like the idea. She loved me."

  "So why did she leave you?"

  Ford slid the stake back into the ground and patted earth around it. "That's a mystery I never solved."

  EIGHTEEN

  Late the next morning there were voices outside the stockade. The door was pushed open and an unfamiliar figure stood staring in, lean in the bright column of light which jarred through.

  It was Julio Zacul.

  He peered into the darkness for a few moments, trying to see, then turned away as if the effort was undignified. To the guard he said, "Bring the Yankees," and disappeared from the wedge of light.

  Ford patted Jake Hollins's leg, telling him to stay put, to hang on. The boy seemed to understand as quickly as he had discovered upon waking that the stake which held his chain was loose.

  Now, as then, he said nothing; just blinked brown eyes at Ford.

  Zacul was waiting for them, standing with Colonel Suarez in the shade of a wide guanacaste tree. Both wore fatigues and Suarez had something in his hand, something Ford couldn't see, which he held to his nose before handing it back to Zacul. Now they were both lighting cigarettes: Zacul, tall and lean with stars on the epaulets of his shirt, leaning toward Suarez's lighter, his hand cupped around the flame. It was the face from the photograph, older, heavier, but still with that pointed expression: skeptical, judgmental. But there was something different in the eyes now—a glassy look without emotion, like illness. Ford guessed him to be twenty-eight or twenty-nine, six three, two hundred pounds, but with the softness of someone who had grown up inactive and indoors. All the little nervous mannerisms added to the impression of hyperactivity: the way he tapped his fingers incessantly, bloomed his cheeks out as he tasted the cigarette smoke, shifted from one foot to another, talked in sudden bursts. The black hair was combed straight back, shiny with combing, and the face was gaunt, handsome and cruel with the sickle-shaped scar pale on the pale skin of his left cheek. He had a long chin and a strong, straight nose, like a beak. An automatic pistol rode low on his hips in a gunbelt studded with ammunition clips, and Ford had the impression he wore it that way for style, the way another man might wear an ascot.

  "Your sleep was good, I hope." Suarez was grinning at them, still enjoying his bad jokes in English.

  With Tomlinson a step behind him, Ford stopped just inside the circle of shade. "Maybe you think it's funny, Suarez, but I'm not accustomed to sleeping on the ground with a launch of criminals. Listening to them crap their pants all night, Christ. That's not the way I treat people I want to do business with." Wanting to show displeasure, but not too much, hoping to get a quick reading on what Zacul had planned for them.

  Zacul spoke, talking quickly; a man on power overload needing a vent. He said, "The colonel wanted to show you how we treat people who endanger our cause. Bad people. People who lie to us or try to trick us—as a warning. But perhaps he could have chosen a better way. Yes, I'm sure he could have chosen a better way." No introductions, speaking formal classroom English, Zacul gave Suarez a brief look of reproach that Suarez accepted for the fiction it was. They wouldn't have been put in the stockade if Zacul hadn't wanted them there. "He has told me," he continued, "of your business proposition. I am interested. My army and my political organization will soon rule all of Masagua but, f
or now, we must also be capitalists. We must make money where we can to finance our great cause." Saying this mechanically as his dark eyes searched Ford's face. "This man Hollins, he was a friend of yours, correct?"

  "I did business with him a couple of times."

  "As did we. I found him a good man, a trustworthy man." The eyes were still boring in on Ford.

  "Maybe we're talking about two different men. The Hollins I knew was a thief and a cheat. He got exactly what was coming to him."

  "You did business with a man you didn't trust?"

  "I make it a habit not to trust anyone I do business with. I don't expect them to trust me so why should I trust them? I like things right up front, goods and money on the table. Don't confuse me with Hollins."

  "I confuse you with no one. But Hollins is still in my debt in certain ways, just as it is true we owe him certain things. I wanted to know if you were aware—"

  "Any debts between you and Hollins have nothing to do with me. I'd rather not even hear about it. I'm offering you a new deal entirely—and probably a better deal, too. "

  "That will be for us to judge, not you."

  "So judge. We will pay you forty percent fair market value for quality stuff, and pay you cash in American dollars. Half up front, half after sales. Because we plan to distribute through auction houses in L.A. and Miami as well as New York, we'll have wider distribution, and that means we'll buy a lot more product and still keep the prices up. We'll assume all risks, absorb any losses. All you have to do is provide the product, a landing strip, and the men to load it onto our plane."

  "You are talking only about artifacts."

  "Why? You have something else to sell?"

  From the expression on Suarez's face, they obviously had something else to sell.

  Ford said, "If it's what I think it is, we'd be willing to handle it, but in a small way. We'd job it out, not do the actual transporting ourselves. That's too dangerous. The Coast Guard looks for drugs. Pre-Columbian art is a whole lot safer. "