Hard Red Spring (41 page)

“I'll mail your letter if you translate for me.” If Dan could deny someone baptism for the wrong reasons, Lenore could bend camp rules for the greater good. She was not going to lose another woman, she decided. Not one more.

With the Indian's fearful nod, all of Lenore's confidence left her.

~~~~~

When Lenore returned to the apartment an hour later, Dan was gone. Up to the base with Mincho, she suspected, to report Ama to the General. When she awoke in the morning to the national anthem, he was still gone, but a bunch of crushed, waterless white flowers had appeared on the table. Searching outside, she could find neither Mincho nor Dan. The Indian men of the Civil Patrol oversaw the singing and pledge themselves, herding their own through the Spanish verses.

By the time the sewing class began that afternoon, Dan still had not returned from the base, though Mincho appeared to translate. He refused to answer Lenore's questions about Dan's whereabouts. Blocking the door, he merely stood, staring daggers at Ama, who had no idea why she'd been singled out. Her eyes, in distress, tried to meet Lenore's. Wanting protection, but Lenore had no idea what she could do.

Emelda, who had shown up for her first class, cast her bright eyes from Ama to Mincho to Lenore constantly, sensing something. Lenore knew she could not translate in Mincho's presence. Pressing on, she told the class that they'd move on to men's clothes.

Mincho seethed in the corner, silent, deeming a translation unnecessary.

On top of everything else, Ama and Emelda and her fight with Dan, Lenore did her best to ignore the problem of her two skipped periods. She would not even allow herself to think about it for two more weeks, she decided. False hope and heartbreak had undone her before. She was hungry, voraciously hungry, could think of nothing but food. After Dan disappeared, she ate six Swiss Cake Rolls. The last of them. Then she'd woken up to ants on her face, biting her, carrying away the unwiped crumbs from her mouth.

Each woman cut a pair of practice pants. Mincho watched Ama fiercely, while she hunched over her fabric and did not look up for two hours. She
stitched and stitched a single long pant leg from all her material, afraid to look up and learn the next step.

“That's very good, Cruzita,” Lenore whispered over the girl's shoulder, watching her small brown hands stitch a crotch. No, Lenore could not lose another woman to the base. She wanted so badly to talk to this girl, to ask her what she needed. But all Lenore could do was run her hands over the stitching and say, “
Bueno
,” because she didn't want Mincho to translate.

After class finished, Emelda lingered, the last to leave. Quickly, so not to arouse suspicion, she handed Lenore a folded piece of paper and said, “He doesn't translate what you say. He translates what your husband says, but not you.”

“What does he say?”

“When you say something nice or ask us how we do things, he'll say something else. Like, saying the General is watching them with binoculars from the base. That he can see through walls, can see everything we do.”

“He said that?”

—

Dan, when he did return that evening, was filthy. The marks of someone's fingers made a three-pronged slash across his cheek. He limped in, threw his wooden machete down.

“Where have you been!” Lenore shouted at him. “You've been gone almost twenty-four hours!”

“I came back for a few hours last night. You were asleep. You fell asleep hugging your cakes.” Had he seen the ants swarming her? She raised a hand to her mouth, feeling the red bumps there. “I didn't want to wake you.”

“That's very sensitive of you.” The white star-shaped flowers, now in a Folgers can of water, had started to drop their petals onto the table. She swept them away with her hand. Lenore felt appalled with herself. Why had she said that? Threatening to sleep with someone else for food? But she would not be the first to apologize. She knew she should be, but her pride would not allow it.

Dan, however, was not too proud. He touched her with a gentle hand. “I'm sorry, Lenore. I didn't mean to belittle you last night. I value your opinion. I do value your opinion, I hope you know that. I was just so angry, I felt I had failed.”

Lenore, melting so easily with his admission, with the assurance that he wasn't dead or on a plane back to Kentucky, reassured him that he hadn't failed. She had failed and she had taken it all too personally, and of course she wasn't defending prostitution, she just thought there were factors to be
considered. She had, as Pastor May would point out, forgotten her role as advisor.

No, he was sorry. He hadn't planned on including her in the decision about Ama in the first place, which was unfair. He'd sprung the information on her, forcing her to react suddenly. He promised to consult her from now on before making a major decision like that. He had forgotten his role, and that had made her forget her role.

And in this way, both slinking back to their spheres of responsibility, the thing between them was resolved. They had forgotten how their roles were supposed to balance and complement one another. Almost all of their fights started in this way, and they were both surprised not to have recognized it sooner.

“I like my flowers,” Lenore told him later, in bed. “Where did you get them?”

“In the woods.”

Lenore sat up. “Out there? How did you get out there?”

“I walked.”

“What? Why? Where did you go?”

“I'm sorry, if I knew I was going to be gone so long, I would have told you. I just went up for a meeting, but then I had to see the road sites to give my opinion, so we went out and there's stuff going on you wouldn't believe, Lenore.”

“There are guerrillas in those woods, Dan! You could have been shot!”

“That's the point, Lenore. They're everywhere. I saw one of their abandoned camps nearby. The General thinks they have agents here, to communicate with them.”

“Communicate how?” Lenore looked at the table, at the letter Emelda had given her to mail.

“I picked them and had to stuff them in my pants so no one saw. I had them in my pants all night. I'm sorry they're sort of ruined.”

“They're beautiful,” Lenore said, staring at the letter, folded three times. She had opened it earlier, prepared for the worst. Maps, battle plans. But she found only words. Indeed, a letter, all in Spanish. Lenore could not understand a word of it.

“I don't want you to think that I'm not willing to bend the rules here when I think it's necessary. I don't want to be just another soldier, you know.”

“I know.”

“We're going to have to step up security. This place is constantly on the
verge of attack, Lenore. We have to look out for agents, anyone suspicious in the village.”

“How do you define suspicious?”

“Anyone who sticks out, anyone who is trying to gather the Indians and talk to them. Anyone trying to communicate with the outside. They're speeding up training, too. A lot of the soldiers are leaving tomorrow for terrain training. Mincho will be gone. So I'm taking over the Civil Patrol for a week. Have you noticed anyone who's suspicious?”

“No.”

“You wouldn't believe what's going on out there,” Dan said, his eyes awash in fear and nearsightedness without his glasses. “I saw bodies. Burned bodies. They looked like they were made out of paper.”

In the dark, Lenore worked her fingers into his knotted shoulders, but he could not relax. The sooner she told him about Emelda the better, the less like a deception it would seem. But what would she say? That in anger she'd bartered with a blasphemous woman, a possible guerrilla, in return for services he didn't think necessary? And she knew he'd turn her in as a guerrilla. The muscles in his back felt thin and tense, like ropes strained by a great force—a sail alighted, unstoppable, on some wind.

“I named the village today,” he told her. “The General actually took my suggestion: New Life Village. We're going to get a sign made. But it'll be in Spanish. I don't know how it'll sound in Spanish.”

“Did you talk to the General about Ama, too?”

“Yes.”

And that was all Lenore could bring herself to ask. Outside, the wheat was just tall enough, knee-high, to make soothing noises in the wind. A whispering that now washed out distant battle sounds, making the nights more peaceful.

Once Dan fell asleep, Lenore returned to Emelda's letter. By the light of the church, she read names, places, and dates that did not need translation:
Evie Crowder, 1902, Ixna, 1954, Guatemala City, Miami
. Lenore looked up repeated words in her pocket dictionary.
Land
and
grandfather
came up often. But the more she understood, the more afraid she felt. The words became political and without context, they took on a sinister shine:
Americans
,
The Voice of Liberation
,
American ambassador
,
United Fruit
. And finally, the last word, a word that appeared several times:
murder
.

~~~~~

Lenore awoke in mute horror, shot up from bed with the rip of helicopters overhead. Taking the soldiers, taking Mincho, away. She heard them and immediately believed Dan was up there, too. She began punching at the blankets, looking for him. He was gone, a soldier now. She envisioned him in the green, buttoned-up uniform with an AK-47. The logic seemed an extension of whatever dream she had awoken from.

Then she saw his shadow. Up before the helicopters, Dan moved in the lighted church, practicing for his first day commanding the Civil Patrol. She watched him as he drilled himself with the wooden machete. He sliced the air into an X, then across the top, decapitating some invisible enemy.

Not long after he left, Lenore found a note from him, placed near the hot plate.
I am proud of you for your work with the women here. The sewing class is such a good idea that I've gone around the General, written Operation Open Arms, to suggest they ask all the missionaries to try it.

Her first note. She'd nearly forgotten Pastor May's instructions to use notes to encourage each other as well. Holding this compliment in her hands, Lenore wondered if Dan had written home about her yet. Any complaints for them to read once the mission was over. Maybe he knew that she mostly just watched television with the children. Maybe he already knew she secretly recruited a female interpreter. When they returned home it would all be clear, and all this—Ama, Mincho, the helicopters, the smoke, the situation with the well, Emelda—all of it would really seem like nothing.

—

As she'd hoped, the sewing class relaxed a bit with a female translator. They did not speak, only listened, but with an attentiveness that surpassed anything Lenore had yet to witness in the camp. She explained, through Emelda, that the Civil Patrol would be coming in to be measured for pants. She explained a lot of things that she thought had been explained before, but evidently had not been.

Lenore had no idea how she'd tell Mincho he'd been replaced. The soldiers would be gone for at least a week. What would he say, hearing about an Indian who spoke English? And Quiché and Achí and Spanish? The General, of course, would be suspicious. And Mincho would accuse Emelda of turning Lenore against him, though she did not need to be convinced that he was bad for the women.

“Did you mail my letter, Lenore? To the address I put on the top?”

“Yes,” Lenore lied. A necessary lie, as she'd made two mutually exclusive promises, to Emelda and the General. And once she crossed the
General, there would be no going back. She must be careful. She had agonized over the address all morning. An address in Quetzaltenango, to someone or something called
Prensa La Verdad
.

“Did you put your own name for the return like I asked? For a reply?”

Lenore nodded. That had not been a part of the original deal, getting a reply. Emelda was pushing it, and she knew. “What's in the letter?” Lenore asked casually.

“It's a letter for my grandmother.”

And then everyone dropped to the ground, as someone battered the metal door for entry. Dan, with the Civil Patrol following. “Hup, hup!” he cried. “
¡Uno, dos, tres! ¡Uno, dos, tres!
” They marched into the class, counting their steps.

“Dan!” Lenore rushed to stop him, rushed and found herself shielding Cruzita. The girl lay under her table, on her belly. “What do you think you're doing?”

He looked around him, while his men looked to him. “What?”

“What makes you think you can march into my class and terrify my women?” She used that term, my women, and it pleased her.

“We didn't mean to terrify anyone,” he mumbled, noticing only now the women hiding under their tables. “We're the Civil Patrol. We're here to protect them.”

“Well, you scared the crap out of me! And I'm married to you!”

“I'm sorry,” he said, as Lenore began to help the women up. Cruzita remained under her table, extracting a needle that was sunk deeply in her palm.

“This is my class,” she said, “and you have to go by my rules. First, you march your men back out there and leave those silly machetes on the ground. And you walk back in, like decent men. Just walk, I don't even want to hear you counting your steps!”

“I'm sorry,” he said, already in retreat. “Okay.”

While they measured the men for pants, no one spoke, not even Emelda, because Lenore had no choice but to ask her to remain silent around Dan. Her interpreter asked no questions, did not seem surprised at the request. They sewed pants for two days, with Emelda tactfully lowering her voice every time the Civil Patrol marched around the church. And still, Emelda and Lenore were the only ones to speak. Lenore tried to get the women to speak, she asked them questions, which they would only answer with dull Spanish phrases.
Sí, gracias
. But Emelda finally brought it up.