Matthew’s head was still smarting. The blow he’d taken from the rifle butt during the attack at the river had rendered him unconscious for nearly a full day. The three-inch gash had been crudely stitched by Aida, a thirteen-year-old girl of a guerrilla who claimed to know how to sew. She knew nothing about the need for sterilized needles, however, and trying to get the wound properly cleaned and bandaged was about as likely as room service. All day long Matthew would search himself for a few square centimeters of clothing that weren’t covered in grime, and then he’d dab the pus away. It galled him to think that after all he’d been through he could seriously end up dying from infection.
“El vaso, por favor,” he said to a passing guard. One of these lowlifes had stolen his only possession, a cracked rice bowl that he’d been using to collect clean rainwater, both for drinking and for washing his head wound.
The guard just kept walking, not his concern.
Matthew could easily have exploded, but he forced himself to remember that he was better off this week than last. He was out of his hole in the ground, though still held separately from the other prisoners. He spent his days beneath a stretch of canvas behind the guerrillas’ smoky hut, while the others were housed on the other side of the slope in army tents that had come with the last mule train of supplies. He’d seen Nisho once, but only from a distance. He’d passed the entire group on his way to a bathroom break. Jan, Emilio, the old-looking Colombian, and Rosa were seated around a small fire, eating. Nisho was off to the side by herself, curled into a ball beneath a blanket.
It was hard for him to say how long it had been since the rape. The weather was in such a cold, drizzly pattern that one day was utterly indistinguishable from the next. He wished for a pen and paper just to mark the passage of time. The guards who brought him food or took him to the latrine would generally tell him nothing. He would ask how long he’d been in captivity, what day it was, how many days till Christmas. Their response was always along the lines of “?Que te importa?”
What does it matter to you?
It had gotten to the point where he just didn’t talk to the guerrillas and they didn’t talk to him. Except for this morning. A few hours after dawn Aida had brought him breakfast, the usual slop. Silence was the normal routine, but this time she’d placed the tin at his feet and, out of the blue, asked the strangest question.
“How old was your sister when she drowned?”
It had so completely thrown him that, instinctively, he almost asked her to repeat it. But he was certain he’d heard her correctly. “Who wants to know?”
“Your son. Now answer the question.”
“Seven,” he replied.
Without another word, she turned and left.
Elation had been his immediate reaction. The videotape had been a good sign of progress, but this question from Nick was the first real confirmation that his family was in contact with his kidnappers. All along, his biggest fear had been that his wife and children wouldn’t know whether he was dead or alive, and that not knowing would make their lives an even worse hell than his.
As the morning passed, the elation gave way to more complicated emotions. His sister’s drowning had always been a very private matter, one he’d never even mentioned to his son. It disturbed him to know that Nick was aware of it, and he worried what, exactly, Nick had been told about the whole horrible incident. His mother had her version. The coroner had another. For Matthew the worst version of all was his own. Because it was the truth, and he’d seen it with the eyes of a five-year-old boy.
It was raining again. Heavy drops pattered loudly atop his canvas tarp. The pattering was softer in the background, a soothing sound of a light shower on the jungle canopy. He stared off to the middle distance, letting his mind escape this place. Part of him resisted, but he needed to go back to that rainy morning in the Florida Keys almost fifty years ago. .
“Run, Stacy, run!”
Matthew was struggling to get free, his drunken old man sprawled on the floor and pulling at his ankle. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his mother rising from behind the couch, her nose bloodied. She lunged forward and kicked his father in the groin.
He yelped, but it had worked. Matthew was suddenly free. His mother wrestled his old man down the way he’d seen her do it so many times before. She held him in a contorted hammerlock with his left arm behind his back. His right arm she pulled straight down, between his legs, and out the back side like an inverted tail. Anytime he squirmed, she tugged, and he felt it right where it hurt most.
“Go, kids!” she shouted.
Matthew froze. His mother was a small woman, and he knew she couldn’t hold a man as big and drunk as his father for long.
“Mom, no!”
“I said, go!” she shouted.
“I’ll kill you!” his father growled. “I’ll kill every one of you bastards!”
“Take your sister and go!” his mother shouted.
“But, Mom!”
She locked eyes with her son, her face straining with intensity. “Listen to me, Matthew. Go right now! Go far away!”
He didn’t want to leave her, but he never disobeyed her. He grabbed his sister by the arm, and together they ran out the door. They raced down the stairs, across the lawn, and into the street. They were sprinting at full speed in the rain, Matthew leading his sister by the hand. Stacy was still wearing nothing but the diaper her father had forced on her as punishment.
“Where are we going?” she shouted, her voice shaking as they ran.
“Away!” he shouted. “Mom said to go far away!”
They were huffing and nearly out of breath as they turned down the wet, sandy road that led to the shore. Stacy was about to collapse as they reached the water.
“Help me,” said Matthew. He was pushing the little fishing boat into the water.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to go far away. Mom said far away!”
His feet sputtered in the sand. He pushed with all his strength, and finally the boat slid back into the water. The rain was falling harder.
“Get in!”
Stacy jumped into the seat up front. Matthew was in back, tugging at the starting cord on the little outboard motor.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Mom showed me.” One more tug and the engine started. He turned the throttle and the little boat roared away from shore.
“Matthew, slow down!”
“We have to go far away! Mom said so!”
The engine whined, the stern went down, and the bow rose as the boat headed straight into the gulf. The waves were beginning to crash. The rain and salty sea-splash pelted their faces.
“Slow down!” she shouted.
Matthew couldn’t hear her. The wind was blowing harder, the engine straining just inches from his little ears. All he could hear was his mother’s order. Go away! Go far away!
A loud crack rocked the boat, and the sudden jolt sent him tumbling forward over the seats. Stacy screamed as she sailed over the bow and into the sea. The boat continued on its own till Matthew got his bearings and killed the motor. He was alone in the boat.
“Stacy!” he cried.
He tried to stand, but a large wave knocked him over. He grabbed the engine and scalded his hand, but it kept him from being tossed overboard. He glanced back and saw the buoy bouncing in the waves, and he realized that the boat had hit it at full speed.
“Stacy!”
The storm was intensifying. The waves were now whitecaps, splashing into the boat. The sky had gone from gray to black. Sheets of rain were practically coming sideways, propelled by a chilly north wind. He stood at the back of the boat, his eyes searching frantically for any sign of his sister on the choppy surface.
“Stacy, where are you!”
He waited anxiously for her to shout back. He heard nothing, saw only wind, waves, and rain, rain. More rain. Nothing but rain. .
Matthew stared blankly into the jungle, numbed by his memories, chilled by the endless cold mountain rain. His face was soaked, partly from the leaky tarp, but mostly from the tears that thoughts of his painful past had unleashed.
Stacy’s death had haunted him all his life. It had been an unspoken tension between him and his mother. Outwardly, she had always blamed her abusive husband. But another side had emerged with her Alzheimer’s, her senseless but painful accusations that Matthew had killed his sister. He knew that it was the disease doing the talking, that she didn’t really mean it. Still, one tragedy seemed to pile atop another in his life, all stemming from Stacy’s drowning. It was his deep sense of guilt that had driven him to drink as a younger man, and it was the drinking that had led to the blowup with his own twelve-year-old son some fifteen years ago. One stupid fishing trip, way too much alcohol, and their relationship was changed forever.
He and Nick. Another tragedy at sea.
The wound on his head was throbbing again. He removed his soggy boot and rinsed the pus away with rainwater, wondering what his son would think of him now.