Blood Lake (2 page)

“Then they'll be here any second.”

“Where
is
that bastard?”

“Where he always is,” I say. “In class, his office, or his house.”

“I've been to his house! He's not there!”

“Well, he moved since—” Since he turned you and five
other comrades in to the secret police and you spent the last year and a half being tortured in an underground jail cell.

“Take me to him!”

I'm listening for the tromp-tromp-tromp of hobnailed boots up the stairs, taking a last look around at the life that I will have to bail out of
immediately
if he's led them to me.

“
Juanita, mi amor
,” he says, “take me there.” He's got a stolen police pistol jammed into his belt. “Now!”

I throw a poncho over his head to cover the prison clothes and the gun, take a quick look out the window to make sure they're not blocking off the street yet, and slam the door on my brief, tranquil life as a transfer student at the University of Cuenca.

We fly through the streets, the echoes of our steps on the cobblestones becoming a dozen phantom Furies sweeping through the city behind us. I won't look back. I know they're there.

I was in another part of the country, with a name they wouldn't know, when Johnny's group was hit a year and a half ago. Five were murdered, six were spared, because Johnny's group knew things, and the cops wanted to know things, too. And soon the living envied the dead.

But word got out. Word always got out. About who had turned them in.

And now we're going to visit him.

No knock, no pound. Johnny kicks open the door, takes a quick look at the empty rooms downstairs, then seemingly sniffs the air and propels himself up the shaky stairs to the study. He swings the door open with a whirlwind force that blows Professor Dos Caras out of his chair as papers and volumes of Marx fall to the floor. Dos Caras backs away as Johnny rushes in, trapping him against the window that dangles over the Tomebamba River, looking south across the Knife Valley towards the mountains.

“
No, no, Juanito—
” says Dos Caras, his hands quivering in front of his pallid face like reeds in a storm.

“Don't call me that!” says Johnny, shoving the man's arms
out of his way. “You phony!” Johnny curses him. “You traitor! Do you know what we do to traitors?” Johnny's hand comes out from under the poncho holding the stolen pistol.

“No, no!” Dos Caras protests. Johnny smacks him across the mouth with an open hand. It sounds like a car door slamming.

“Please stop him, Filomena!” squeals Dos Caras.

“Who?” Johnny flashes a look at the open door. Then one look at me and he understands. I'm trying to go straight. And I just heard a second car door slam.

Dos Caras ducks away from Johnny and runs straight at me, towards the door. Johnny raises the pistol, but he hasn't got a shot. I get in Dos Caras's way, slam the door shut as Dos Caras starts screaming for the police to come up and help him. Johnny throws both arms around him and tries to stop his mouth with a free hand. But Dos Caras is slimy, and the poncho gets in Johnny's way.

“It wasn't me!” Dos Caras manages to shout.

“Don't lie to me, you chickenhearted little bastard!” Johnny yells, grabbing for him again, stumbling into the desk, knocking over more books so they fall to the floor with a heavy thud, as boots tramp across the wooden floor one flight below.

“It wasn't me!” Dos Caras struggles to speak through Johnny's grip.

“Then who was it?”

Dos Caras's eyes flit to the door. The boots are circling back from the kitchen and dining room.

I'm jamming his chair under the doorknob. Good for about two seconds.

“Stop wasting my time, you dirty
fulana
!” Johnny spits the words in the professor's face, shoving the gun up into the soft flesh under Dos Caras's jaw.

Dos Caras tries to save himself: “It was Luisa Ramera! She did it! I swear!” Dos Caras is squirming, and Johnny's grip isn't good enough. Boots are stomping up the stairs, and Johnny wants to finish him with one shot.

“Hold still, you fucking coward!” Johnny grabs the short oily hair on the back of Dos Caras's head with his left hand, shoves the pistol into the professor's mouth and blasts a hole through the back of the professor's head, taking the top half of two of his own fingers off as he does it.

The gun hits the floor and rolls. Johnny grabs his bleeding finger stubs with his right fist. The door billows out as the cops ram into it. It splits, but holds. We've got exactly two seconds. The gun's in the middle of the floor. I'm about to grab it and empty it through the paper-thin door when Johnny takes a step towards me. Then he turns and runs at the window. The door splinters open. I spread my arms out like a soaring condor, but they knock me to the floor and open fire as Johnny throws his body through the window, shattering the worm-eaten wood and falling in a hail of bullets and glass, towards the rocks and the icy waters of the Tomebamba, seventy-five feet below.

Seven heavily armed cops run over to the shattered window frame and look down. Then they turn and look at me. They've got blood on them from the broken glass.

El que se dedica a redimir injusticias sociales tiene que pensarlo muy bien. Tiene que convencerse de que no va a morir de viejo en una cama. El General Torrijos sabe que va a morir violentamente, porque violenta es su vida, señores. Yo sé, y esto está previsto …

He who dedicates himself to reforming social injustices must think it through. He must realize that he is not going to die of old age in bed. I know that I am going to die violently, because my life is violent, gentlemen. I know, and am expecting it …

—Brigadier General Omar Torrijos Herrera, Panamanian leader, who died in a suspicious plane crash, August 1, 1981

WE'RE MAKING
the steepest banking curves I've ever felt, nearly vertical, tugging my gut in new directions, when the plane slices sideways and free-falls heavily through the ether until it smacks the bottom of the pocket, landing on a cushion of air that is actually willing to hold us up a little while longer and carry us in to Guayaquil airport.

I push away the tray table with the “continental breakfast” that I can't finish and wonder, which continent did they have in mind? Maybe Antarctica. I keep picturing all those baby penguins feeding on regurgitated krill.

We slip below the clouds, and I lean over to Antonia and point out the flat green islands floating in the great salt estuary, clogging the mouth of the Guayas River.

The heat hits us even before the doors open.

Then the doors open, and a sticky blanket of tropical heat
embraces me as we step onto the old hand-positioned rolling stairway that passes for a gangway.

We climb down the narrow metal steps, our legs wobbly and unsure after so many hours in those narrow-assed seats, stumbling after the clumsy passengers in front of us who are as overburdened as pack animals with sacks and bags and carry-ons full of video cameras, waffle irons, and DVD players from the free-trade mecca up north. Then we trudge camel-like across the hot tarmac to the 1960s-era terminal, its Pacific blue doors and windows open to let in the jet fuel-scented breezes.

Going home to a poor country is like going back in time. A time when people still get yellow fever and typhoid and cholera, when one bad harvest means prices soar and two bad harvests means people die, and anyone who can steal something back from the government is a local hero.

I feel like a tropical turtle who has been wandering for years, over thousands of miles, but in the end I must return to my homeland, to that beach where I was spawned. Except that I was spawned in a cornfield, in a mud-walled shack high in the Andes.

There's no air conditioning inside the terminal.

We line up to go through immigration. By now my hands are cold and my fingers are tingling. If Antonia notices, she doesn't mention it. I distract myself with the complimentary copy of
El Mundo
that the airline handed out as we went into a tailspin over the Gulf.

I learn that the former Minister of Health and Welfare, Octavio Seboso, a repulsive blimp of a man (and you should know that I don't repulse easy), is being asked to explain why the 350 garbage trucks that he bought for the city of Guayaquil ended up costing 1.4 billion sucres more than projected. Watchdogs suspect that Seboso had his hand in the till. Hand in the till, hell! This guy looks like he
ate
the till.

“Why are you reading that paper?” Antonia asks me.

“I'm trying to find out what's been happening since the last time we visited. Why are you reading that comic book?”

“I've learned a
lot
of good stuff from comic books,” she says, defensively.

“Like what?”

“Like, if you're trapped in a mausoleum with nothing to eat but a corpse, don't eat it, 'cause the embalming fluid will poison you. I learned that from
Creepy Tales
number thirty-six.”

“I hope I never need to use that information,” I tell her, peeling back a few pages of boldly inked action to view the glossy and plentiful gore. Yuck-o.

“Then I suppose you also know that if you're planning to conduct any experiments using molecular teleportation, you should make sure there are no flies in the lab first, right?”

“
Everybody
knows that.”

“Oh.”

Getting through immigration can be very difficult when you've had to start your life over a couple of times. Right now I'm concentrating on getting through the next fifteen minutes. I look up at the clock on the wall. Seven
A.M.

The line moves up. I drag my carry-on bag two feet farther and go back to the paper, flipping past an article detailing the municipality's plans to pave the roads linking the new suburbs with the city center, and scanning today's exchange rates, when ripping red bullet holes stop me in mid-breath. The man in front turns around to look at me.

“Hot, isn't it?” I tell him, summoning my best smile.

He nods, smiles back at me, takes a look at Antonia and turns back to what he was doing.

There are so many ways to die, so much blood, in color.

The bodies of a man and a woman are indistinguishable under a couple of bloody sheets, while police stand around looking at the dirt. It's a lonely road in the back country near the town of La Trampa about sixty miles north-northwest of here. Both victims were members of the National Democratic Party, whose candidates are favored to be among the victors in the upcoming elections—that is, if they live that long. Sergeant Roca of the North Guayas Police believes that
guerrillas
are responsible, because the nature of the damage points to Soviet-style assault rifles.

Assassinations were never our specialty. And I've seen enough damage done with “Soviet-style assault rifles” to know that we're not the only ones who had them.

The hot sweat turns cold on the back of my neck. Welcome to the Third World. Check your rights at the door.

Yeah—the brain of the all-night traveler is not a safe place for kind thoughts.

An authoritative voice startles me up out of the open newspaper: “
¡Pasaporte!”

I hand over the passports. The corporal stares at us, comparing Antonia with her name and photo, then he opens mine, and spends about three times as long staring at my name and photo.

“This girl is your sister? Your niece? Your cousin?” he asks.

“She's my daughter.”

His eyebrows begin to flow together. Her American passport gives her name as Antonia Buscarsela Sánchez. That's my last name followed by her father's, because normally she only uses mine in the U.S. and we just lop his off. But in Ecuadorian culture, the father's name comes first, and my passport clearly indicates that my last name isn't Sánchez. So something's wrong. I don't fit the mold, as always.

“
¡Capitán!
”

The travelers behind me curse. I look at my watch. Seven-fifteen in the morning and already above ninety degrees.

The captain lifts one foot, then the other, drifting towards me with the poise of an ocean liner cruising gently along on a hot tropical breeze. He asks what the problem is.

A drop of sweat falls onto my customs declaration card. I blot it out with my sleeve.

The captain takes hold of my passport. “
Señorita
, what is your name?”

Only a half dozen people left alive know that Filomena Buscarsela was once a hotheaded revolutionary who went by
the name of Juanita Calle. We were Juanito and Juanita. That was a very long time ago. But now my name is the same one I was born with, and somebody might remember that. This is a small country. And there are a lot of soldiers standing around holding automatic rifles.

“Mom? What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” I assure her, then I explain to the immigration police that I'm not married and that Antonia carries my last name in the U.S., where they don't typically use the second family name.

“You are
ecuatoriana
?” asks the captain.

“
Sí
.”

“So you changed your citizenship?”

“
Sí, señor
.”

“Do you have your
cédula
?”

“Of course.” I separate my old national identity card from a grimy pile of documents. They examine it closely.

“It's expired,” says the corporal, making my chest muscles tighten the way they do when a stray dog is baring his teeth at me, but hasn't attacked yet.

The captain examines my
cédula
more closely, and eventually declares, “She is covered by the extension law.” I rediscover the lost art of breathing. He turns to me to explain: “This class of
cédula
is now valid indefinitely. Corporal, update this
cédula
.” The captain jams the card back into the corporal's hands, gives me a slightly rakish salute, turns on his heels and sails off to rescue yet another hapless traveler.