Erased Faces (20 page)

Orlando now remembered how he had worked up the courage to go to El Brujo to ask him the length of his term as a
boyero
. He had dared to approach the man just a day after his arrival, only to be told that
el patrón
was thinking about it and would give word of his decision. When days passed and Orlando received only the bat-like glares of the overseer, he went to him again.

He approached El Brujo, afraid, but his desire to know what was to become of him overcame his apprehension. He swallowed a large gulp of saliva as he neared the man who, as always, stood apart and silent.

“Señor.”

“¿Qué quieres?”

El Brujo beaked his upper lip as he glared at Orlando, who shifted his feet in nervousness, thinking that the man was deliberately toying with him, pretending to have forgotten their talk of a few days earlier. He breathed deeply, trying to overcome the anger that was welling up in his chest.

“I want to know what Don Absolón has decided about me.”

“About you?”

“I mean, how long will I have to be a
boyero?”

“Until he decides that you have paid for your crime.”

“Crime? I haven't committed a crime!”

“Are you defying Don Absolón's wisdom?”

“No, señor. I'm only asking a question.”

“The answer to your question is that I didn't ask
el patrón
what he intends to do with you, so I'm sure he's forgotten all about you and whatever you did.”

El Brujo's words stunned Orlando, who felt that his legs were about to give out and that he would crumble at the overseer's feet. The boy held his breath, struggling to get control of his racing heart and the overwhelming surge of hatred flooding him. Aquiles' words came to him:
If he even begins to hate a
boyero,
that's it for that poor
cabrón;
that poor devil mysteriously is sucked into the mud, never to be seen again
.

Orlando turned away from the man without a word, knowing that his hatred had leaked out of his eyes, and that El Brujo was now sure to put the evil eye on him. Orlando didn't care, however. Don Absolón and El Brujo had put him there for nothing, and what was worse, he would remain a
boyero
until he died, either with mud clogging his throat or from snake bite. What did it matter if the sorcerer put a hex on him? Nothing mattered now.

It was only his second day in the camp, but Orlando knew he was a dead man. His hatred for El Brujo intensified with each step he took away from the man, and his body grew so cold that by the time he reached the campfire Aquiles had started, he thrust his hand into the burning branches.

“¡Epa, amigo! ¿Estás loco?”

Aquiles lunged toward Orlando and yanked his hand from the embers, but not fast enough to prevent it from being scorched. The burn did nothing to lessen the chill that had invaded Orlando's insides. His teeth rattled one against the other, and his body shivered as if he were buried in ice.

“¡Ese cabrón! ¡Ese cabrón! ¡Qué chingue a su madre!”

Orlando stuttered, hurling insults at El Brujo, mumbling profanities that even Aquiles had not heard. His friend, mouth open, stared at his
compañero
, not understanding the cause of his fury, but when
Orlando regained some composure, he told Aquiles what had happened, launching into more obscenities.

“¡Ay, amigo!
This is not good! This is very bad for you. Be careful because one day that devil will try to kill you.”

Orlando could not bring himself to accept the sentence that El Brujo had hurled at him. If Don Absolón had forgotten him, then it would be true that he was to stay at the
caoba
camp until he died, by accident or at the hands of the sorcerer. A separate idea took hold of him: What about his mother and father? If the old
patrón
had indicted him so severely for doing nothing, what about them? Understanding this compelled him to begin a plan of escape. He spent weeks spying on the guards that surrounded the camp. When he detected sloppiness in one or two of them, he concentrated on their every move: how they snoozed while the overseer was not keeping an eye on them, how they were careless with their weapons, how they became distracted when they joked and gossiped while on guard.

After staking out the guards' day shift, Orlando decided that if he were to escape, his best chance would be after dark. So for countless evenings, while everyone slept, he crawled from his hammock and spent hours spying on the night guards. He discovered that they were even more negligent than the day watch, and that they slept most of the time.

One night, after waiting for Aquiles and everyone else to fall asleep, Orlando rolled a
petate
, lashed it to his back and tied a gourd filled with water to his waist. He crawled away from the
palapa
, past circles of fading embers in the center of the camp, past snoring
boyeros
, all the while grazing arms and legs that dangled from hammocks. Orlando slithered on his belly, clawing at the soggy earth with elbows and knees, struggling to muffle his strained breathing, knowing that the sound of a cracking branch might alert at least one of the snoozing sentries.

As he moved, he felt joy surging through him, knowing that each stroke of his arms and legs dragged him further away from the camp, away from the hateful sorcerer. When he judged that he had penetrated the ring of guards, he gingerly got to his knees and looked around him. The jungle was especially dark that moonless night, and there
was only the humming of nocturnal reptiles and the occasional whelp of a howling monkey. He got to his feet and began to walk, carefully at first, then picking up pace until he reached a brisk rhythm, in spite of his sandaled feet sinking into the ooze of the jungle floor, hindering his speed.

Orlando's heart beat wildly because of the exertion, but more so because he understood that he would soon be free, that no one would be able to find him once he buried himself in the jungle, that never again would he fear a sorcerer or any
patrón
. His mind raced at the same speed as his heart, thinking, planning, rejoicing, knowing that he was no longer a captive.

He was suddenly yanked from his thoughts when something stopped him, and his legs seemed to be paralyzed as his ears tried to decipher a strange noise, something different, foreign to the night sounds of the jungle. He squinted his eyes as if this would sharpen his hearing. It was a rasping, flapping noise, like that of a bat's webbed wings beating against the humid night air.

Orlando's head jerked upward trying to see, but his vision was cut short by the dense canopy of tree branches. Terrified, his eyes searched, eager to penetrate the gloom from which the whipping sound grew stronger and nearer; he even felt a swirling current of air graze his face. He began to turn in circles, arms outstretched, gnarled fingers groping wildly in the dark as he strained to recognize the sound that was increasing his terror with each moment. His eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, as he scanned the treetops until he thought he caught a glimpse of a bat's silhouette. As he spun full circle away from the hateful image, his mouth open and gasping, his heart beating uncontrollably, a voice brought him to an abrupt halt.

“Boyero, ¿Qué haces?”

Orlando knew who it was. The shrill, hissing voice was unmistakable. When he gained control of his body, he turned toward the voice and he saw the bulbous, onyx-colored eyes of El Brujo shining in the blackness. Even in the dark, Orlando was able to make out the revolver in his hand. El Brujo held it high, pointed at Orlando's face.

“¡Vámonos!”

Nothing else was said. Orlando was so shaken that his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. He could hardly force his legs to obey his mind, but he walked, nonetheless, stiffly at first, then at a brisker speed. As he moved, his mind was a swirl of confusion, fear and hatred. He could not understand how El Brujo had caught him, how he had known where to find him in the jungle's density and darkness. Orlando could not account for the flapping sounds he had heard, nor for the bat's image he was sure he had seen. He wondered if it had only been his imagination.

As he marched, he felt the sorcerer's gun grazing the nape of his neck; he could even smell the man's heavy breathing. Aside from that sound, everything was quiet. The jungle creatures were watching in silent awe, as if they, too, were wondering what would become of Orlando Flores.

When Orlando and El Brujo reached the camp, it was bristling with the comings and goings of men, no matter that it was before daybreak. At first it was only a rumor that got around that someone had tried to escape, and that it had been the new
boyero
Quintín Osuna. Few men were alarmed because a first infraction by a
boyero
usually received a mild punishment: five days without nourishment, except for water. But it was always El Brujo who decided on the severity.

At dawn the gossiping among the
boyeros
stopped abruptly, when word went from mouth to mouth describing what was said to be Orlando's punishment. It was to be the worst, not the mildest. Aquiles rushed to El Brujo with the intention of intervening for his friend, but he saw that the sorcerer, two armed guards by his side, could not be approached. Besides, Aquiles also saw that Orlando was already being led to the pillory, where he would be flogged until he lost consciousness.

The lashing began in view of all of the workers; it was to be a lesson. As the whip cut through the air, each one of those men could feel the steel-tipped leather bite into his own flesh. Orlando at first was able to stay on his feet, but as the lashing increased, his knees began to buckle and eventually cave in, so that he was hanging with the entire weight of his body held up by his wrists, which were strapped into an iron ring at the top of the post.

Orlando's knees had failed him, but his heart continued to burn with hatred for El Brujo and all he represented. Orlando stayed conscious by repeating a promise to never forget what was happening to him, and what happened every day to men like him, and what had happened to his people for generations. His eyes fluttered, opened, fluttered and opened once again, letting everyone know that he refused to surrender to unconsciousness. The guard who was whipping him tired and had to be replaced, but Orlando still would not faint. The flesh on his back was in tatters, yet he would not allow himself to fall into darkness, despite the pain.

The men around him began to shift and move in indignation as the whipping continued; they cast angry eyes at El Brujo, but Orlando remained alert, aware. The sorcerer, urged by the other overseers, finally gave the order to cease the punishment. After all, his intention had been reached: Orlando was pulp and blood; the other
boyeros
had seen and learned their lesson. Yet, he had one more detail to add to that example.

“¡Córtenle un dedo de cada pie!”

To have a toe severed from each foot gave Orlando intolerable pain and even long after the wounds healed, the memory of that agony inhabited his heart and mind, and would do so until the day of his death. He never forgot that his was a solitary pain, but the suffering that anguished his people was universal, and this thought mitigated his own agony. These were the thoughts that caused Orlando to cease being a boy.

Now as he listened to Aquiles, Orlando realized that time had crawled for him since then. He had aged as if more than five years had passed. Only twenty-one years old, his body had taken on the appearance of a much older man. The constant labor of dragging chains through dense ooze while struggling against the pull of oxen had stunted Orlando's growth; only his feet had developed, but they were now out of proportion with his body size, and each foot missing a toe. His arms were long and sinewy, their veins coiled from elbows to hands like blue snakes trying to slither around untold pockmarks left by relentless mosquito attacks. His face had broadened, flattened; his lips had also changed, clinging to the hollows caused by knocked-out
teeth; and his eyes had lost the light that had been there on the day he left his
palapa
.

Orlando's greatest change, moreover, took place within him: somewhere around the heart, in the niche where his spirit lingered. The punishments he had endured, as well as countless unanswered questions, had left him with a growing anxiety, which surfaced masked as bitter rage. He often picked fights with his
compañeros
, battering anyone who would so much as glance at him.

Because his intelligence had been stunted, neglected, his mind often groped blindly for a way out of its dungeon, and he looked for reasons, for answers, but there was only emptiness. Orlando would often howl in desperation. He did this almost always when he was on a team of men, struggling, pulling at the chains that guided straining oxen. At those times, his screams disappeared into the din, swallowed by the clamor of grunting, cursing men, snorting beasts, shouting overseers and groaning, creaking tree trunks.

Now, listening to Aquiles, Orlando's mind drifted; he was thinking of where the mahogany trees grew. His thoughts traveled to the heart of the jungle, where torrential rain and humidity gathered in ravines and crevices, where that moisture penetrated the earth. There, fallen leaves rotted, mixing with dirt, dead insects, and reptiles, becoming impenetrable mud. It was there that for thousands of years, the mahogany had flourished. Their growth had been silent and secret until the
patrones
had discovered its worth: a wood more precious than gold to people beyond the ports and rivers of the Lacandona.

Orlando was thinking of how many boys he had seen perish, devoured by the mud of the jungle. His mind was looking at the gangs of workers responsible for prodding and pushing teams of oxen into dragging a trunk, and how that tree became caked with mud, rendering it heavier with each step. He was used to seeing
boyeros
risk tripping just to goad the oxen ahead, even if falling meant death under the beast's hooves, or asphyxiation by mud.