The Center of the World (18 page)

CHAPTER 27

 

H
e walked for the remainder of the day, past dusk, into the night, until he came to a town that was large enough that he could inquire about a place to stay. For the first time since leaving the United States, he was struck dead-on with dysentery and a fever that threatened to fry his brain. His immune system had been incinerated along with Hector's village. Through a fevered haze, he checked into a room, the kind that Peace Corps Volunteers called a one-sheeter. The bed had one sheet and a threadbare coverlet.

By the time Will fell back onto the bed, the number of sheets didn't matter. The hallucinations of his fever dragged him back to Hector's village, where the dirt of the mass grave exploded and every man, woman, and child walked past him, condemning him with their dead stares.

For four days he voided everything possible from his body. He was disassembled; parasites and amoebas follow the same opportunistic path that thieves do, checking to see which doors had been left unlocked.

He shivered so violently that the bed springs creaked, followed by a wave of sweat that soaked through all of his clothing. He woke once and searched for his clothes. Had he stripped off his clothes when he was hot, or had someone taken off his clothes? Had he soiled his pants or was that one of the nightmares? One morning, he saw his shirt and pants washed and folded, piled on his pack. When he emerged from his room, he asked what day it was. Five days had passed.

All the spaces newly carved by the amoebas and parasites were filled with the smell of Hector's village after the soldiers had murdered them. His winding trail of intestines had been emptied to make room for the carnage that he had caused. He owned it. He carried it. There was only life before the day that the resistance fighters held him at gunpoint and showed him the scorched-earth remains, and his life after.

Life before receded like a high-speed train, a green vibrant island of language, sidewalks of Brooklyn, the way his mother's hair fell across her face when she graded papers, bicycling through Manhattan, skimming the hot streets as he glided between lumbering cars, his friend Cesar teaching him to salsa, the slick sex with Lisa in their Outward Bound–issued sleeping bags, the taste of fresh tortillas when Hector's family had invited him for a meal, the way all of his life seemed honed for the moment he was called Language Specialist by the State Department.

After the guerillas allowed him to live, a swill of dark tar dripped over his eyes, seeped into his bloodstream, and reconstructed his bones and his breath, his taste buds and his heart. His heart had surely changed shape and color. His finely tuned ear detected the change in his pulse; the heart shriveled and solidified in a jagged, lacework design. This is why they let him live, not because they didn't want to shoot him; he was sure that they wanted to, but now he understood the brilliant craft of their justice.

Will was new to the way time twisted and staggered in drunken oblivion when an old life was destroyed and a new version born. He would not have imagined that a month could go by as he sipped boiled water and gradually added in food, then a few more weeks as he advanced to sitting in the courtyard planning his strategy. By December he paid his final quetzales to the proprietor, hoisted his pack over one shoulder, and waited outside for the bus that would jostle him unmercifully all the way to Guatemala City, back to Ron Blackburn's office.

 

While every cell in Will's body had changed, Ron Blackburn looked untouched. His shirt was ironed fastidiously, the photo of his family still sat angled on the right corner of his desk, and he flipped open the box of cigars as if he and Will were still in mid-conversation from two months ago.

Will had typed in his report of the massacre on the office Selectric.

“You don't look well,” said Blackburn. “Have the secretary give you the name of one of our doctors. They can fix you up. We've all had Montezuma's revenge.”

Revenge? Is that what Will wanted? Hector's face was engraved on his brain. He handed the report to Blackburn.

“You've got a problem with Jenkins. I gave you benign information about agricultural use in the Dos Erres village and the result was mass murder. The military came in and annihilated the village. Torched it. Babies, children, women, old men, everyone. Is that what you're about?”

Will's rage hummed beneath the surface of his skin like fire ants eating their way out.

Blackburn closed the box of cigars. He pushed back in his chair.

“What you might not understand is that the villagers offer aid to the rebels—”

“What I understand is that you used me. Jenkins is well-known in the northern regions. They've got their own name for him. The Horned Toad, that's what they call him,” said Will.

Blackburn shifted, closed his eyes, and took a breath. He slid open a drawer and unplugged a wire and let it snake into a coil on his desk. “A moment of silence will throw the Agency into a fit, so I'll be brief. We have a problem with some of our employees. They are more corporate and less governmental. And I have less control of them. They arrive one day and I'm supposed to fold them into our operation. Jenkins overstepped his position and I'm fully aware of it. The multinational companies hired him and now I'm stuck with him.”

“Multinationals? Who?”

“That's not your problem. Shut up and listen. He will be demoted one rank, which is going to be like poking a bear with a sharp stick, but it's the best I can do. If I were you, I'd be very careful.”

Blackburn picked up the wire. “I suggest that you find a new career. You are no longer on our books. Anything else?”

“You're firing me because I'm reporting Jenkins's massacre?” asked Will. “Are you okay with killing unarmed villagers? I mean wiping out entire villages of civilians.” Will wanted more from him.

Blackburn put down the wire and wiped his face with both hands, starting at his forehead and moving down to either side of his neck. “I didn't invent the system. Read your history books. Unarmed civilians are precisely the people who are killed in wars.” He plugged in the wire and closed the drawer.

“Thank you for coming in. This concludes the need for your linguistic services. The Department offers sincere thanks for your efforts to make Guatemala a free and democratic state. You can pick up your final check in several days.”

The price for killing everyone in a village was a demotion, one rank down the ladder? Rage churned through Will's veins as he walked along the corridors, seeking the fresh air outside.

CHAPTER 28

 

W
ill rubbed his thumb along the inside of Kate's arm. A wind chime rang with a new tempo as the gusts swirled throughout the city. Finding Kate changed everything. He was not cut out for revenge. He did not have to pursue Jenkins. He deliberately left out details about Jenkins when he described Hector's village to Kate. They could leave the worst of the horrors behind and start a new life in the States. He was positive that he could find a way. He would do this for Hector, for all the people who had died senselessly. Kate and Sofia were about living.

They squeezed into one chair outside Marta's kitchen, where they could keep an eye on the kids. Kate had one leg over his and they were turned inward to each other, a kind of V shape.

Time had accelerated with Kate; he had to speak up or she might slip away as soon as she obtained adoption papers. He swallowed hard. His vast linguistic skills were on the verge of failing him—all of his words were stuck in his throat, bumping into each other in terror that Kate would reject him. How to say something simply, clearly?

“If we were in the States and you and I had just met, I would . . .” He would what? Know that Kate was exactly the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? How could she ever believe him? Kate had faced down armed soldiers, protected a child from helicopter gunfire, bushwhacked across Guatemalan mountains, and now he wanted to offer himself, his dubious, multilingual self. How could he measure up?

His lips trembled. “I'm in love with you. I want to be with you wherever you are. You and Sofia.”

Was she smiling, had he ever seen such a tender smile? Was it meant for him? Then her smile left as she squeezed her lips together.

“You don't know enough about me. You only know this part right now. What if you knew everything about me and then it was too awful for you and you'd leave me?” Her last words were whispered. She turned her face away as if she had dragged the words through barbed wire.

“My father saved me after my mother died. I was going down hard and he pulled me back in. Even so, the first time I felt like I had some traction beneath me was when I went to college.”

“What sort of traction? I might need to know,” he said. He pressed his thigh against hers.

“Biology, science, things that jump out at you from beneath a microscope. Things that we are all made of. Water. The thing that I found in the biology and botany class was like someone switching on a light,” she said, shaking her body like a damp dog, changing topics.

“What was your worst?” He was prepared to take in her hard years.

“The worst? Trying to blot out my mother's death with sex, alcohol, and a few drugs thrown in. My father had to pull me out of my own way again and again. I think we saved each other.”

Will tried to picture a teenaged version of Kate, motherless and inconsolable. He took her hand and kissed it.

“It was just like my mother said, except I felt it explode inside me. We're all made of the same stuff. We all need water, sunlight, and food. We all thrive if we are touched, even tomato plants. In my last big drug blowout, I mean it was 1984 after all, my two textbooks merged like strands of DNA and they wrapped around me.”

He put his right arm around her and pulled her into a crushing embrace.

“That's how you got some traction going? You are a funny scientist, all wrapped up in a big postapocalyptic-psychedelic DNA strand.”

A sudden wave of warmth hinted at the end of the Guatemalan winter, something bursting up from the volcanic earth, the kind of air that made bougainvillea bloom and orchids unfold. Kate placed her hands on either side of his face.

“I never thought I'd find you here, but here you are. I don't need a microscope to see you.” Kate looked like she was standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to fly or drop. She was taking that much of a chance with him.

Out of all the languages that he spoke, all the nuances, the tonalities, every musical bit of Mayan, he had never heard or felt anything as beautiful as Kate's words of love.

 

They played with Sofia until it was time for bed. Will read one of Felix's books to the children, tucking one on either side of him, the three of them nuzzling into Marta's couch. Felix put a pirate hat on Will's head and he kept it there, perched on his thick hair, tilting to one side.

Marta raised an eyebrow at Kate, then placed both hands over her heart and stage-whispered, “If I wasn't a married woman, I would have that man for breakfast.”

“I heard that,” said Will. Love was stitching him back together again. “All my breakfasts are spoken for.” Forever.

CHAPTER 29

W
ill borrowed a motorbike from complicated means that included Fernando. He looked comically oversized perched on its seat and she wondered if it would make the first hill out of town.

“I need a day, maybe two in Guatemala City. One of my former language students in the Department could help with the documents for Sofia. It's a long shot but worth a try,” said Will.

“Wouldn't they have to meet us, see us?” she asked. Will sat on the bike outside the doors of Marta's guesthouse. Kate wasn't sure who “they” were but Will had said that she should not know names.

“Not yet. If I get the green light, we'll use the photo that Marta took of Sofia for a passport.”

Marta had taken a roll of film to a friend who patched together a dark room. They now had a series of round-eyed photos of the child with her hair stubbornly sticking up on one side.

Kate waved him off as he bumped along the cobblestones, spewing gray smoke.

They spent the night before together at Casa Candelaria, pulled together in a tight universe, making plans for leaving Guatemala. After Sofia was asleep, they tiptoed to Will's newly rented room two doors beyond Kate's and hungrily slipped out of their clothes and into bed.

The street noise had been muffled by the two-foot-thick stone-and-adobe walls. The walls of the small bedroom strummed to the only sound that had been reverberating within them for hours, the sound of lovemaking and their matched heartbeats.

She hadn't wanted to think about Kirkland, about Manuela, about small boys with soccer balls. She had reached up, placed her hands on either side of his jaw, and tilted his face so that she looked into his eyes.

“I can't keep looking at you,” he managed to say before his body took over, before a river of sex and want turned into a white-hot light igniting them where they connected, as if a switch had been thrown, a giant circuit breaker that had been off for years and was suddenly turned on. Kate held on to his face.

“Don't look away, don't close your eyes.”

She had never said this to anyone before. Kate wasn't sure if it was her own voice speaking. Here is the man who wouldn't leave her; they were bound by massacres and love.

A river of light shot up her spine, blue and astounding, from her tailbone to her skull. The light spiraled upward and then she saw it in Will's eyes too, the arc of it from one to another, bodies buckling and imploding. Eyes linked, both of them responded with a shout of unbridled surprise, a round sound and for Kate, without precedence. The distance that she had held between her and her old lovers crumbled.

They sagged against each other, sweating, patting faces, shoulders, shuddering, sighing, their corporeal selves jumbled amid the collision. Will pushed off to one elbow, his eyes soft and huge, pupils dilated so that only a rim of blue remained, his eyebrows rising up in the middle.

“What just happened?” he said. His lips were soft and swollen from kisses.

Kate's bones dissolved and what used to be her spine hummed with the remnants of light. A rooster from the next courtyard crowed. The thinnest layer of gray sliced through the curtain.

“Don't tell me . . .” she started. They understood simultaneously and laughed, slowly at first, then helplessly until tears cascaded. They laughed as the sun tried to light up the cobbled streets. They had made love all night. Morning had found them.

 

After Will left for Guatemala City, she took Sofia to the central park, a peaceful place. Stone paths began at the four corners, leading into a broad stone-paved circle around the fountain. The water bubbling from the breasts of the four statues drew everyone in. Today, an old Mayan woman rested on one of the benches that faced the fountain, her feet not touching the ground.

She walked with Sofia, forgoing the rebozo that would tie the child to her back. The going was arduously slow with a two-year-old, but it had to be a relief for Sofia to get outside the confines of the guesthouse. Still, the ten-minute stroll took forty-five minutes due to Sofia's curiosity with every crevice in the sidewalk. By the time they reached the fountain, Kate welcomed the chance to sit down on a bench, while Sofia continued on, fascinated by the water.

As she stood up, a man appeared just a few feet from her.

“Adoption?” he said.

She took a step back. He was American, unremarkable in all ways except one. He had a lump, the size of a robin's egg, located between his left eyebrow and his hairline. She tried not to look at it. Why didn't he get something like that removed? Surely he could.

“Are
you
here to adopt? Is that why you assume that I am?” she said. Something about him grated at her. She forced herself to look at his eyes and not the protrusion.

“Am I being rude? I know in Guatemala that you can't just ever say what you want to say. There's all the inquiry about family, the food, the endless customs. But I saw another American and my old New Jersey boy came out.” He smiled and squinted so much that she couldn't see his eyes. He extended his hand. “Henry Matthews.”

“Kate,” she said, deciding against an alias. His hand covered hers and he held it too long. The child had just stepped into a bed of flowers. Calla lilies. Kate pulled her hand out of his grip.

“Sofia, stay with me, over here.”

“Oh, let her be,” he said. “I haven't spoken with a gringo all week and I need to speak English every now and then. We can see her from here.”

We? There was no
we
. This was a mistake.

“I have an appointment, otherwise I'd stay and talk for a bit. But I'm already late,” she said.

Kate picked up Sofia, swinging her onto her hip. There was a hint of spring in the air. A few rain clouds emerged from the western sky.

“Allow me to walk you out of the park then. If you think you're late for an appointment in Guatemala, then you're early. Are you working with one of the adoption outfits in Antigua? They're all government-run, you know. Eventually you have to negotiate with them. Ghastly system.”

She felt like she was eight years old and a bad man had just stopped his car to offer her a ride. She wanted to shake him off, but he stuck to her like a burr. She didn't want to go back to Marta's because she didn't want him to see where she lived. Not Fernando's café either; she didn't want to drag in an unknown.

“I have a medical appointment. Parasites,” she said.

His nose twitched as if he could catch the scent. “Yes, of course. The scourge of the third world. Maybe I'll run into you again. You never know.” He pivoted on one foot and turned to go. He looked at her over his shoulder. “But Kate, you don't want to jeopardize your chances with the child. I know people. I could help you.”

This is where she should walk away. And if Kate had been in Massachusetts or Davis, she would have. If she had not found Will and the suddenness of his love, if she hadn't held Sofia in her arms, if she hadn't been scared senseless by Kirkland's death, if the entire landscape of her world hadn't shifted, then yes, she would have walked away. But what if this man, who made her pull her sweater closer around her chest, could help her? What if one little dip into the black market could set them free? Had she just found a black market possibility for papers?

“How could you help me?” Kate kept Sofia on the hip farthest from the man. Will said his contact in Guatemala City was a long shot. Could this man be any less of a long shot? The playing field changed on the day the soldiers shot Manuela and her son.

“I understand their system. I've worked with an adoption agency from the United States. Once you know your way around, it's quite simple. Well, it wouldn't be simple for you, but the government agencies trust me and they kindly remove roadblocks. But you shouldn't trust just anyone and you don't know me. So . . .” He turned his hands so that they opened, palms facing inward, soft and without aggression, priestly.

Kate felt like she was hiking in the White Mountains with her mother at dusk when they had to decide whether to turn back or not, straddling the option, wanting to go on, to get to a lookout that drew her mother with the promise of a sunset.

“Let's drop our packs and run,” she had said, thrilling Kate. When they stumbled back into camp at dark two hours later, her father was furious.

“What were you thinking?” he shouted, still reverberating with anger.

“I was thinking that sometimes you have to break the rules. It was a magnificent sunset,” said her mother.

Was this one of those times when you had to break the rules?

“Wait,” said Kate. “Tell me how you could help.” If ever there was a time to break the rules, it was now.

He turned around, smiled and blinked. “I know a place where we can talk, a cantina.” He pointed one finger in the opposite direction from Marta's guesthouse. “Unless you'll be late for your medical appointment . . . I wouldn't want to keep you from taking care of yourself.”

She didn't have to like him; she just had to get his help. He was as noxious as the gas fumes spewing from the buses.

“How far away is the cantina?”

“Three blocks. Would you like me to carry the girl?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“No. Let's go.” This would be a time-limited encounter. If he could help them, she could tolerate him for a brief time.

The cantina was three blocks behind the cathedral, unremarkable, small and dark.

“What would you need to orchestrate the adoption?” said Kate. She tried to imagine how Kirkland would handle this.

He sat across from her at the small table. The tip of his shoe touched hers and she moved her foot away. Sofia sat on her lap, munching on a tortilla fresh from the kitchen.

“Your name, address. Passport number. And the status of the child. How did you come by her? I want to stop calling her the child. What is her name?”

Kate's heart rate was gathering speed and the sound of her own blood began to pound. “Katherine Malloy, Leverett, Massachusetts.” She dug into her bag where she carried a copy of her passport. She wrote down the number on a scrap of paper. “Her name is Sofia. She is an orphan. Her parents were killed.”

He pulled the paper toward him, grazing her hand. “War is a terrible thing.” He slid the paper into his shirt pocket.

She waited for more. More what, she wasn't sure, but this couldn't be all the man needed. “What else?” she said.

“That will be all that I need to get this started. There will be the expense, naturally, but I am doing this mostly as a favor, to help a fellow American. But in order for this to work, I need your most solemn promise to keep this confidential. If anyone was to get wind of this, my credibility would be destroyed and I would no longer be able to help people. And I mean no one, Kate, not friends, family, or lovers. Do you have a lover?”

She pulled back from the table. “That is none of your business.” She didn't like how she sounded, young and reactive. “When will you know something?”

He smiled again and Kate felt something slip away from her grasp but she couldn't say exactly what it was. She needed to be careful of him. She couldn't shake the feeling that he had touched her where he should not.

“Oh, three days, tops. I'll meet you here in three days at noon. You'll have everything that you need,” he said.

He stood up to leave, placing a hand on her shoulder as he passed. Her shoulder muscles retracted from his touch.

She waited five minutes, then yanked open the door and walked quickly back to Marta's. There was no way to contact Will, to let him know that she had dipped into the black market to get a passport and adoption papers for Sofia. She would tell him the instant that he returned.