The Book of Lost Saints

by Daniel José Older

  I’d seen Enrique Gutierrez a few times already as we marched through the forests of the Escambray. We exchanged pleasantries but hadn’t bothered going over the list of our dead in common, our reasons for joining the fight. His new sideburns make him look like the wolf-man, and he doesn’t seem to care that the new regime has sent hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, men whom many of these rebels used to fight alongside, into these woods with orders to exterminate us completely, no mercy, no prisoners. He walks like he’s bulletproof.

  I made contact off a tip from Padre Sebastián. Still aching from the loss of Isabel, still replaying my imaginary version of her death over and over, I found these men and boys, some of whom stormed the Presidential Palace with the Student Directorate back in the hazy midway days of the revolution, and watched their whole movement collapse in a hail of gunfire as the attack fell apart. The scattered remains ended up here in this same forest and most of them never left, sensing the very thing they’d fought for had been betrayed even as the last government garrison fell in Santa Clara and the victors marched in La Habana. Others streamed in from the provinces, bedraggled and exhausted, chasing whispers to this small group that the government called banditos.

  And I must’ve looked just desperate and enraged enough to be of use, because they took me in and handed me a rifle. I am filthy and covered in bug bites and wondering if I did the right thing and wondering what else I could’ve possibly done under the circumstances, because nothing was never an option.

  And Enrique hasn’t looked my way much until right now, when he does, down the hill and right into my eyes. I can tell even through the shadows cast by the setting sun. He’s not just looking; he’s gazing. Staring even. In a way that would be considered rude in any normal human society. The way he used to stare at Nilda.

  And I like it.

  Oye nena, he calls. You gonna make it up the hill by yourself or you need help? A concierge, perhaps, to carry your heavy luggage?

  Cállate, bruto.

  Bueno … He turns around, then looks back and winks at me. You’re on your own, then.

  A few hours later, I’m sweaty again and the sweat runs in dirty brown beads down my dirty brown skin and I’m thinking I might not be able to make it but knowing I will. And I’m thinking, in an offhand casual sort of way, about Enrique. His smile first, but then my thoughts trickle down his sturdy body, slide inside his open collar, and get lost in the sweat-stained folds of his shirt. Then I imagine his penis. The only ones I’ve seen have been implied in the folds of a dying saint’s tunic or carved in stone, ancient Greek statues. I imagine Enrique’s starting as just a sad, droopy thing and then, as his eyes take me in and his smile expands, it grows, rock-hard erect, bursting out his pants for me and only me, and then shattered wood and whizzing bullets erupt all around me as gunfire shatters the still forest and I’m falling into the embrace of the underbrush, wondering if I’m dead or about to be dead, wondering if everyone with me, if Enrique, is dead, if it was all for nothing. But there’s no blood when I land, no pain. And then there’s quiet, a horrible eerie quiet around us that makes me think maybe I’ve gone deaf until I hear voices calling from the wilderness, telling us to give up. They’re getting closer.

  Enrique yells, Run, fuckers! and I hear his rifle exploding and more bullets whiz over my head. He’s laying down fire so we can get away, this man with the smile that knows things. A few others join him, letting loose blast after blast and then a steady rat-tat-tat and I’m crawling on my belly, eating dirt, smelling shit, my insides clenched, my whole body trembling, as fast as I can and praying, gasping, praying, gasping, barely breathing and gasping as I go and I keep moving until I’m somewhere far far away from the echo of tiroteo.

  It’s getting dark.

  I’m alive. Safe even, whatever that means. But I’m alone and exhausted in the jungle infested with government soldiers and who knows what else. I roll over onto my back, stare up at the blue-gray sky, and breathe for what feels like the first time in months. Then I do something else I haven’t done in I don’t know how long: I smile.

  It’s a completely true one, not for the benefit of anyone else but me and the sky. It’s probably because I’m alive and I actually want to be, finally. I earned it. My whole body clenched with intent, I survived. Took action and survived. I’m still too afraid to raise my head above the tall grass, but I’m not too afraid to laugh, silently, painfully, but it’s as true a life as I’ve ever known, so I let it blurt out of me like a stream.

  Maybe I drift off, half slumber. Yes, I do, because at some point it’s night and I’m waking up. There are stars above me, beyond the treetops, and the forest is alive around me. I’m itchy and aching, but I’m alive too and I’m still grinning with the wild joy of it when I hear a high-pitched hoot that’s too corny to be made by any animal. My heart gets to beating faster and faster and I remember who made that hoot before, a few days ago, as we set out. Enrique, his face tinged with a touch of self-consciousness as he demonstrated the secret code for finding each other and everyone laughed at him. Whatever, he’d shrugged, and then hooted again.

  Just to be clear. Nesto had chuckled. Is this supposed to be a very sick monkey or a dying owl?

  Shut your face, gordo. Enrique tried to say it seriously, but his grin crept out anyway.

  There it is again: high pitched and pathetic. I pray it’s Enrique, because I am perfect in this moment: disgusting and perfect. I put my hands to my mouth and hoot back. Movement in the bushes; he’s not far away. And then I’m looking up at a shadow against the night sky, blotting out the stars. Smiling.

  You gonna lie there the entire night or come back and join your friends, nena?

  I might just lie here the entire night.

  He nods. I see.

  I have to tell you a secret, I say, and it’s easy, like the forest night is feeding me each word before I speak it. I am just a vessel. I release myself to the night, my tired, ecstatic body, I give it over. He approaches, fake cautiously, knowing, I’m sure what’s coming; he trusts the night too, in his own Enrique way.

  Dímelo.

  But now he’s strayed close enough for me to sweep my legs hard against the back of his knee, so I do. He falls with a little gasp of alarm and then I crawl on top of him and pin both his hands to the dirt. You have too many teeth, I whisper, almost directly into his mouth. And not enough face.

  He stares up at me so hard that for a moment I think this whole game is over—I pushed too far, too fast.

  Then that grin erupts in an unruly lopsided curve and he pushes his hips up to mine, and I feel that dick I’d been dreaming of straining through his trousers against me. Still?

  I nod enthusiastically. Still.

  And what will you do with me now that you have captured me? he asks, almost earnestly.

  I lean in close. He smells like the forest and the night and sweat and the danger and drudgery of so many days on the run. He smells like he wants me, to devour me whole and he smells like Man. Whatever I want, I whisper.

  Then I release his wrists and my back arches as his hands reach around my waist, and I buck my hips against his erection.

  Mmmgh, he mumbles into my chest. Gently.

  I want him. The night knows it, curated it, in fact. He does too; his face says so, even louder than the pressure of his hardness against me. I try to imagine the steps between this and him being inside me, the tangle of buckles and buttons coming undone, legs pulled from pants and arms from sleeves, and it all just seems like so much—too much—or maybe I’m scared.

  The coarse fabric rubbing between us, I’m not sure if his moaning is pleasure or pain—it feels like there’s a brand-new sun being birthed in my pelvis, and it’s rising within me, sending rays of heat and light hurtling up past my stomach, through my chest, into my brain, and out into the night.

  I feel—he starts, still grinding away, but I shush him; nothing can change; it’s all so fragile. I will tolerate nothing that will stop that sun from bei
ng born. When I close my eyes I can see it.

  I just feel—he gasps, hands grabbing my breasts through my shirt and then I gasp because now I’m sure nothing at all could stop that sun; it’s gigantic, bigger than me somehow, it fills the whole world with light. And I’m sure rays of it are shooting up into the air from wherever we are, terrible, fantastic lights, burning into the dark sky.

  Enrique’s breaths come faster and he’s given up talking, which is good, and instead just pushes harder and harder against his own pants and my pants and me and then he yells and I can’t breathe and the sun has risen and the night is alive and bright and all the trees seem to dance.

  ’Ñooo … Enrique groans as I roll off him and we both lie there panting and staring at what part of the sky the trees allow through. Everything is filthy, and the crotch of my pants is wet, his soaked, but it feels alright somehow, part of the world, and in a way it just doesn’t matter. For a few moments, it’s just the sounds of the forest and the murmur of night as we catch our breaths.

  Is it true we take money from the CIA? I say into the silence.

  Enrique scoffs. Qué romántica. Then, when I don’t say anything: Probably. We’ll take money from anyone at this point.

  Thinking of Isabel, longing for her, I hock a loogie straight up into the air and we both roll out of the way so it doesn’t land on us.

  Ay, chica, he says, still laughing and panting. I’m not sure if you noticed, but they’re wiping us out. We’ll make a deal with the devil if it keeps us alive another day.

  Fuck the CIA, I say, and roll over into my memories.

  Enrique keeps laughing and talking about how only the yanquis can save us now as a deep sadness sweeps over me.

  All at once, I feel beautiful and dirty and wild and so alone. I miss my sister. I never got to mourn her, not really. And I miss my parents, whom I abandoned when they needed me most. I even miss Nilda and her sallow face and dancing orchestra hands.

  The loneliness grows inside me, a sudden, expanding stain, and I know without a single doubt that I need to go home. Not to stay. I will keep fighting. But I can’t keep pretending that the memory of my parents isn’t eating me from the inside. I can’t keep letting them worry, not knowing if I’m dead or alive. I have to let them know I’m okay. I have to see them.

  * * *

  Enrique coughs and sputters awake, clutching his heart. A woman his age sleeps beside him, her eyes covered with a silky light blue mask, her snores outrageous. It’s strange, giving these dreams that are memories to someone who isn’t Ramón. Being so deep within a whole other body. It’s like staying in a stranger’s house, nothing is quite in the right place.

  Enrique feels more alive than he has in years, even with the lingering memory of a sharp pain in his chest. His breaths come in quick, uncertain gasps but he smiles, lets each one out through a pursed grin. Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, Enrique realizes he has an erection. He smiles even wider, chuckles even. His first in years. More than that, the front of his pajamas are soaked. Not only does he have an erection, he’s already come. Christ, he’s like a teenager again!

  The dream.

  The girl.

  The forest night.

  “¿Enrique, qué te pasa, mi amor?” the woman mumbles.

  “Nada, mi vida. Go back to esleep.”

  She does.

  The night.

  The girl.

  The dream.

  Enrique rises, stumbles to the little office he has adjacent to his bedroom, plops languidly at the desk, and clicks on the computer. The screen awakens with a blue light, a series of emails, the terrible back and forth from earlier in the night.

  Coño. It all comes swirling back.

  The fire at the club. The fatalities. Alberto. Never gets it right. Never. It all seems so pitiful suddenly. So useless. The old man spasms into a coughing fit and is shocked to find his erection is still intact. Marvelous. A miracle. But the club fire is a tragedy. Another in a long series of tragedies that Enrique can put his name to as author and architect. One more horrible night, more lives lost. Enrique sighs.

  The girl. Flickers of her brown face close to his, that toothy smile, her eyes rolling back, her mouth open now, gasping for air. His hand finds his own hardness. But the ugly blue light from the computer screen keeps flickering at his attention.

  This has to stop, he types quickly. We must make a change. A major change.

  He rubs himself a little harder, feels the length of his fully awake cock in his hand and grins. We will find a new way to freedom. A new path. One that is about peace. About love above all else. My friends, it is time to make a change.

  The girl. Her nipples hard and perfect dark purple brown in the night, perfect in his fingertips, his lips.

  The change begins now.

  ~Enrique

  He puts Alberto’s address in the To box and CCs the entire organization. Then he adds his whole email listserve just for good measure. Why not? It begins now.

  Her hips grinding into his. Her shadow above him, riding him in the darkness. Enrique’s eyes roll back, his brow furrows. His hand moves faster, slows, moves faster again. Pinpricks of pain erupt along his entire left side and he moans, works himself a little harder. Tiny bursts of light splatter the insides of his eyes and those thighs opening. He blinks and the ceiling gets blurry as her body seems to burst through him, rise up from inside of him, the essence of her alive and ferocious in his gut, his mind, his dick. He bucks forward, suddenly standing, exploding inwardly and out, falls to his knees.

  I rise above him, thoroughly exhausted and even more of a flickering wraith than usual. I have to get back to Ramón soon or I’ll be gone for good.

  Below me, Enrique collapses, gasping, and rolls over onto his back. And there they will find him the next morning, very dead and still grinning with that smile that knows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I barely make it back to the hospital, and when I do, I find Teresa and Aliceana watching a flickering TV screen while Ramón sleeps.

  There isn’t time to pause and take in the peaceful moment. It was foolish, perhaps, to risk so much just to unlock that strange memory within myself, within that old fool. It took so much out of me, to be away from the home that this snoring behemoth has become. I felt my own essence spilling out of me all the way back, whisked away on these icy New Jersey gusts.

  I barely made it, I barely made it. The truth of that burrows through me in aching pulses as I collapse over Ramón’s rising and falling chest. I am still here, somehow, by the grace of something bigger than me.

  A tingling buzz erupts along the edges of my consciousness: healing. The strange non-fabric of who I am rebirthing itself now that I’m safely back to my anchor. I loathe this dependence. I accept this dependence. Somehow, it will get me to the truth, if I can keep from recklessly hurling into oblivion.

  Ramón lets out a thunderous snore. I gather myself. Allow some more time to pass, then more. Somewhere down a corridor, they’re working frantically and pointlessly to save old Pepe. Nearby, Teresa pretends to be alright, chatting in an offhand way with Aliceana.

  It is time. I don’t know if I’m fully recovered yet, but I also don’t know how long Ramón will stay asleep. And deep within me, I know the nightmare that comes next, at least some shadow-play version of it. I need the rest. I need to get it over with.

  Slowly, I seep into Ramón’s consciousness; slowly I unravel.

  * * *

  Las Colinas.

  Home.

  Or it once was. These streets wrapped around me once.

  They were broken and muddy, but the faces looking out from the porches and windows knew my name, my parents’ names, our lives. Las Colinas raised me.

  The name is a lie though; there are no hills in Las Colinas. No one knows why it’s called that. If tourists ever came here someone would surely make up a pretty story to go with the name, but they don’t. You can look straight down the main avenue all the way past
the church and central plaza to the very edge where Las Colinas becomes smaller shacks and then fields and forests. The roads are bumpy, but the land beneath them is flat all the way to the foothills and in the other direction, the sprawling suburbs that eventually turn into the madness of La Habana.

  Now I stand in the view outside my bedroom window: a ditch that always turned into a lake, sometimes filled with trash, a weathered old house beside it with a weathered old palm tree out front. Behind me loom the mountains; before me stands the house.

  My house.

  Or it once was.

  I wonder if Isabel ever stood here, in this same spot, and watched us with echoes of an urgent warning in her ears like I have: Don’t do it, girl. You will be captured. Hell, they might be captured too. Is that what you want?

  For me, the words are Enrique’s. For her, it would’ve been Gómez who said it, or some other guerrilla I never knew.

  I just know this: I have to see my family again. And I won’t get caught.

  These are still my streets. I still know their secrets. Certainly better than any bearded soldier from the campo.

  And anyway, no one’s around, so I walk calmly across the street and up to the door, and then my hand is on the knob, the same knob I turned as a little girl, and then I’m staring at Cassandra’s wide eyes and she blinks once and then embraces me, calling my parents and Nilda in.

  Nilda comes first and wraps her thin arms around me and what wells up inside catches me so off guard I start trembling. I’d missed her. I’ve missed her all along and haven’t even realized it. And now that she’s holding me, all I want is to collapse into her and sob and let her comfort me. Instead, I squeeze back and close my eyes and then she whispers that she’s sorry, but she has to head off to get something from the store.

  I catch an unexpected sob before it gets out. But—

  She holds me at arm’s length and flashes a strange kind of a smile—it’s toothy and too wide and really speaks of fear more than happiness. Her fingers tremble against my skin, like her heartbeat is shooting through them into me. And maybe, if I’d been paying closer attention, that’s when I would’ve known. Instead, I think: How could she leave when I’ve only just arrived and been gone all this time? And don’t bother answering the question at all, I just shake my head and let her go, and the door closes behind me just as my parents walk in from the kitchen.