Bandits

3

THE BUMS IN FRONT of Holy Family, squinting in the sunlight, shading their eyes, said, Hey, it’s the undertaker man. Who died? That ain’t for me, is it? I ain’t dead yet. Get outta here with that thing, Jesus. Come back after while. Hey, buddy, come back after we’ve et. They said, Here’s one good as dead. Here, take this guy. Jack told them not to touch the hearse. Keep away from it, okay? He walked through them in his navy-blue suit, white shirt and striped tie, sunglasses, nodding with a faint smile, careful to breathe through his mouth. One of them said it must be good soup today, it wasn’t all over the sidewalk. Most of them seemed to be hardcore alcoholics. They stood at the bottom of nowhere on a spring day, done for, but could make observations, even try to hustle him. Mister, gimme a dollar, I’ll watch nobody pisses on your hearse. He got inside the storefront mission with only a couple of them brushing against him.

There were bums hunched over shoulder to shoulder along two rows of tables that reached to the serving counter, where a pair of round, gray-haired ladies wearing glasses and white aprons were dishing out the meal. Jack said to a little colored guy in bib overalls and an ageless tweed coat too big for him, “Which one’s Sister Lucy?”

The man was coming out. He looked back over his shoulder, then turned all the way around and pointed to the line approaching the serving counter. “She right there. See?”

Jack said, “You sure?”

The man grinned, nearly toothless, at the way Jack was staring. “ ‘Nough to make you believe in Jesus, huh? She cook good, too. Come Monday for the red beans and rice.”

Jack saw a slim young woman with dark hair brushed behind her ear in profile. He took off his sunglasses. Saw she was wearing a beige, double-breasted jacket, high-styled, made of linen or fine cotton, moving down a line of skid-row derelicts, touching them. He had posed with girls in designer jeans-but this was a nun wearing pressed Calvins, a straw bag hanging from her shoulder, long slim legs that seemed longer in plain tan heels. Across the room in a bare, whitewashed soup kitchen-look at that. Touching them, touching their arms beneath layers of clothes they lived in, taking their hands in hers, talking to them…

She came over with calm eyes to take his clean hand and he said, “Sister? Jack Delaney. I’m with Mullen’s.” And was surprised again to feel calluses that didn’t go with the stylish look.

Though her face did. Her face startled him. The slender, delicate nose, dark hair brushed back though it lay on her forehead, deep blue eyes looking up at him. She was small up close and now that surprised him; only about five three, he decided, without the heels. She said, “Lucy Nichols, Jack. I’m ready if you are.”

The derelicts outside told her not to go with him. Stay outta that thing, Sister. That’s a one-way ride, Sister. Hey, Sister, you looking good. She smiled at them, put a hand on her hip, and let her shoulders go slack, like a fashion model. “Not bad, uh? You like it?” She stopped to look over the hearse, then at Jack, and said, “You know what? I’ve always wanted to drive one of these.”

She blew the horn pulling away and the bums sunning themselves on Camp Street waved.

“You can handle it all right?”

“This is a pleasure. I used to drive a ton-and-a-half truck with broken springs. Last month, when we had to leave in a hurry, I managed to buy a Volkswagen in León and drove it all the way to Cozumel. That was a trip.”

Jack had to think a minute. But it didn’t do any good. “You drove from where?”

“From León, in Nicaragua, through Honduras to Guatemala. We wore what passed for habits and had papers saying we were going to the Maryknoll language school in Huehuetenango. Then we had to scrounge more papers to get us into Mexico. After that it was fairly easy, from Cozumel to New Orleans and then to Carville. We could have flown out of Managua to Mexico City, but it seemed risky at the time, waiting around the airport. That feeling you shouldn’t be standing still. My one concern was to get Amelita out of there, fast, and continue her therapy. You know she’s the one we’re picking up.”

Jack said, “Oh.” The one they were picking up. Kind of an offhand way to refer to the deceased. But that was the name Leo had written down, Amelita Sosa. He wondered if Sister Lucy thought he knew more about her than he did. What she’d been doing down there. He wondered what she did with the VW, if she sold it. It was like coming in in the middle of a conversation. He didn’t want to sound dumb. He said, “You go around Lee Circle to get on the interstate. Take it all the way to the Saint Gabriel exit. You get tired, just let me know.”

She said, “You don’t know how much I appreciate what you’re doing.”

He kept quiet. What was he doing? His job. Then wondered if Leo had told them there’d be no charge. He couldn’t imagine it. Then looked out the window, trying to think of nun-related things to talk about.

“I had sisters all the way through grade school.”

She said, “You did?”

“At Incarnate Word. Then I went to Jesuit High.” Hearing himself it sounded like he was still going there. “I went to Tulane one year, but I didn’t know what to take, I mean that would help me. So I left.”

She said, “I did the same thing. Spent a year at Newcomb.”

“Is that right?” He felt a little better.

“Before that I went to the Convent, Sacred Heart.”

Jack said, “Yeah, I knew some girls that went there, but they would’ve been before your time. Well, there was one. Did you happen to know a Maureen Mullen?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She got out in, let’s see, ’70.”

Sister Lucy didn’t say when she got out.

He guessed she was somewhere in her late twenties, not more than thirty. Younger than Maureen.

“I almost married her. Maureen Mullen.”

“You did?”

“But, I don’t know. Everybody expected it, our families. I guess I felt pressured. Or didn’t care for what I saw, looking into the future. So I made a run for it.”

She looked at him and smiled. Then looked at the road again as she said, “It almost happened to me, too, the same kind of situation. I was at my own engagement party when I woke up.”

“Is that right?”

“My family and his wanted to set the date.”

“You felt pressured?”

“Did I. I thought, wait a minute. This isn’t what I want, get married and join clubs. I guess I made a run for it, too. All the way… gone.”

He laid his left arm along the backrest of the seat and took a good look at her profile. She had a wonderful nose. Jesus, and one of those lower lips you wanted to bite. Her nose wasn’t quite as thin and delicate as Helene’s, but it was a beauty. He liked her dark hair better. He liked red hair a lot, but not frizzy, the way Helene had it now.

“What happened to the guy you didn’t marry?”

“He met someone else. He’s quite a successful neurologist.”

“Is that right? Maureen married a urologist.”

This Sister Lucy didn’t look anything like a nun; she looked rich. She had on a loose beige-and-white striped blouse, like a T-shirt, underneath the linen jacket. She was wearing, he decided, about three hundred dollars worth of clothes. He wanted to ask her why she became a nun.

Amazing, thinking that when she glanced at him and said, “How do you happen to be in the funeral business?”

“I’m not, really. I’m helping out my brother-in-law for a while. My sister’s husband.”

“What would you rather do?”

Jack edged up a little straighter. “That’s a hard one. There isn’t much I’ve done I cared for, or wouldn’t bore you to tears.” He paused, at first wondering if he should tell her, then wanting to for some reason, and said, “Except for a profession I got into when I made my run. There was sure nothing boring about it.”

She kept her eyes on the road. “What was that?”

“I was a jewel thief.”

Now she looked at him. Jack was ready, his expression resigned, weary, but with a nice grin.

“You broke into people’s homes?”

“Hotel rooms. But I never broke in. I used a key.”

There was a silence in the hearse as she passed a semi-trailer at 70 miles an hour.

“A jewel thief. You mean you only stole jewelry?”

Other girls, wide-eyed, had never asked that. They’d get squirmy and want to know if he was scared and if the people ever woke up and saw him. He said, “I’d take cash if I was tempted. If it was sitting there.” Which it always was.

“You only robbed the rich?”

“There’s no percentage robbing the poor. What was I gonna take, their food stamps?”

She said, without looking at him, “You’ve never been to Central America. There the poor are the ones who are robbed. And murdered.”

That stopped him, until he thought to say, “How long were you there?”

“Almost nine years, not counting a few trips back to the States, to Carville for training seminars. There’s no place like it. If your purpose in life is the care of lepers, and what’s what the Sisters of Saint Francis do, then you have to go to Carville every few years, keep up with what’s going on in the field.”

“The Sisters of Saint Francis?”

“There’re a bunch of orders named for Francis, the guy had so much charisma. He might’ve been a little weird, too, but that’s okay. This one’s the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Stigmata.”

Jack had never heard of it. He thought of saying, I like your habit, but changed his mind. “And you were stationed in Nicaragua.”

“The hospital, Sagrada Familia, was near Jinotega, if you know where that is. On a lake, very picturesque. But it isn’t anymore, it’s gone.”

“You’re a nurse?”

“Not exactly. What I did was practice medicine without a license. Toward the end we didn’t have a staff physician. Our two Nicaraguan doctors were disappeared, one right after the other. It was only a matter of time. We weren’t for either side, but we knew who we were against.”

Were disappeared.

He’d save that one for later. “And now you’re back home for a while?”

She took several moments to say, “I’m not sure.” Then glanced at him. “How about you, Jack, are you still a jewel thief?”

He liked the easy way she said his name. “No, I gave it up for another line of work. I got into agriculture.”

“Really? You were a farmer?”

“More of a field hand. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola.”

She was looking at him again, now with a grin, showing dimples. It inspired him.

“Up the interstate to Baton Rouge, then Sixty-one till you get almost to the Mississippi line, turn off toward the river and you come to the main gate. Inside, you drive along a white rail fence. It’s hard to see, through the wire mesh they have on the windows of the bus, but it looks like a horse farm. Till you notice the gun towers.”

“Really? You were in prison?”

“A month shy of three years. Met some interesting people in there.”

“What was it like?”

“Sister, you don’t want to know.”

She said, in a thoughtful tone, “Saint Francis was in prison…” Then glanced at Jack and asked, “But how do you feel about it? I mean committing crimes and then being locked up.”

“You do it and forget it.” He hadn’t heard about Saint Francis doing time… But he was talking about himself now. “I have a healthy attitude about guilt. It’s not good for you.”

He saw her smile, not giving it much, but he smiled back at her, feeling a lot better, thinking maybe they should stop on the way, have a cup of coffee. She was nice, easy to talk to, and he was still a little hung over this Sunday afternoon. But when he mentioned coffee Sister Lucy frowned in a thoughtful kind of way and said they really didn’t have time.

Jack said, “I’ve found one thing in this business, there’s very little pressure. You go to pick up the deceased, and I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but they’re gonna be there waiting.”

She said, “Oh,” in her quiet, unhurried way, her gaze lingering, “no one told you.”

Jack said, “I had a feeling there was something you thought I knew. What didn’t anyone tell me?”

She said, “I think you’re going to like it.”

He had to admit he liked the idea she was playing with him now, seeing a gleam in those calm eyes as she looked over again, about to let him in on a secret.

“The girl we’re going to get-”

“Amelita Sosa.”

“Yes. She isn’t dead.”

Seven years ago, when Amelita was fifteen or sixteen and living in Jinotega with her family, a National Guard colonel came along and put stars in her eyes. This guy, who was a personal friend of Somoza, told Amelita that with her looks and his connections she’d be sure to win the Miss Nicaragua pageant and after that the Miss Universe; appear on international satellite television and in no time at all become a famous film star. “You know, of course,” Sister Lucy said, “what he had in mind.” This was during the war. Before the Sandinistas took over the government.

Jack understood what the colonel was up to, but wasn’t exactly sure about the war. He knew they were always having revolutions down there and did understand there was one going on right now. He remembered when he was little his dad, back from Honduras for a few days, telling them the people down there were crazy, hot-tempered; if they weren’t fighting over a woman they were biting the hand that fed them. Jack would picture shifty-eyed guys with machetes, straw sombreros, bullet belts crossed over their shoulders, waiting to ambush a United Fruit train loaded with bananas. But then he would see Marlon Brando and a bunch of armed Mexican extras ride into the scene and government soldiers firing machine guns from the train. It was hard to keep the borders and the history down there straight. He didn’t want to interrupt Sister Lucy’s story and sound dumb asking questions. He listened and stored essential facts, picturing stock characters. The colonel, one of those oily fuckers with a gold cigarette case he opens to offer the poor son of a bitch he’s having shot just what he wants in these last moments of his life, a smoke. Amelita, Jack saw a demure little thing with frightened Bambi eyes, then had to enlarge her breasts and put her in spiked heels and a bathing suit cut high to her hips for the Miss Universe contest.

But once he got her to Managua the colonel never mentioned beauty pageants again. The only feeling he had for Amelita was lust. Good word, lust. Jack couldn’t recall if he’d ever used it, but had no trouble picturing the colonel, the son of a bitch, lusting. Jack put an extra fifty pounds on him for the bedroom scene: the colonel taking off his uniform full of medals, gut hanging out, leering at Amelita cowering behind the bed. Jack watched him rip open the front of her nightgown, show-class breasts springing free, as Sister Lucy said, “Are you listening?”

“To every word. And then what?”

And then, by the time the rebels had reached Managua, the colonel was in Miami and Amelita was back home, safe for the time being.

The next part brought the story close to the present but was harder to follow, Sister Lucy referring to the political situation down there like he knew what she was talking about. It was confusing because the ones that had been the government before, it sounded like, were now the rebels, the contras. The ones that had started the revolution back in the seventies were now running the country.

He got that much. But which were the good guys and which were the bad guys?

While he was still trying to figure it out Sister Lucy was telling how the colonel had now returned to Nicaragua as a guerrilla commandant in the north, came looking for Amelita in the dead of night and took her off with him into the mountains.

Say one thing for the colonel, he didn’t quit. “Maybe the guy really liked her,” Jack said, reserving judgment, still not sure which side the colonel was on, even taking off, briefly, the extra weight he’d put on the guy. And got a look from Sister Lucy; man, a hard stare. “Or he was driven by his consuming lust,” Jack said. “That would be more like it, huh? A lust that knew no bounds.”

She said, “Are you finished?” Sounding like Leo with that dry tone. He told her he was and she said, good. It was a new experience, the feeling he could say just about anything he wanted to a nun, of all people, and she’d get it because she was aware-he could see it in her eyes-and would not be shocked or offended. He had been to prison, but this lady had been to a war.

They came to the part where Amelita found out she had Hansen’s disease. It was while she was still in the mountains with the colonel. Brown spots began to appear on her arms and face. She was scared to death. A doctor in camp-“Listen to this, Jack”-made the diagnosis and told the colonel Amelita would have to go to Sagrada Familia immediately, that day, to begin sulfone treatments. There was no sensory loss, the disease would be arrested in an early stage, and the doctor was confident there would be no disfigurement.

Jack said, “It’s hard to imagine a good-looking young girl like that-”

Sister Lucy said, “Listen to me, will you?” It surprised him and shut him up. “Where do you think the doctor was from he could take one look at her and make the diagnosis? Yes, absolutely, even before he did a biopsy and saw M. leprae bacilli and confirmed it, she had near-tuberculoid HD. Jack, he was our doctor, from Sagrada Familia. One of the disappeared ones.”

There it was again.

“Well, he didn’t just disappear then.”

“Of course not. He was taken by force, guns pointed at his head. They kidnapped him.”

“Then why do you call it disappeared?”

She said, “My God, where have you been? It isn’t only in Nicaragua and Salvador, it’s a Latin American custom. It happens in Guatemala, it’s popular all the way south to Argentina. Don’t you read? People are taken from their homes, abducted, and they’re called desaparecidos, the disappeared. And when they’re found murdered, you know who did it? Los descomocidos, unknown assailants.”

Jack was shaking his head. “I’m not sure I ever heard about that.”

“Listen to me.” She snapped it at him. Then continued in her quiet tone. “The doctor, Rudolfo Meza, from our hospital, he told the colonel Amelita was in the early stages of leprosy. And you know what the colonel did? He drew a pistol and shot the doctor four times in the chest. Murdered him, standing close enough to touch him with the gun barrel. A witness told me, a contra woman who deserted a few days later and came to us. Amelita was there, of course. She saw it…”

“I was gonna ask you.”

“And she ran. The contra woman helped her get to Jinotega, then came to the hospital to warn us, the colonel had sworn to kill Amelita… And you think maybe the guy really liked her. Is that right, Jack?”

He sat there in his navy-blue suit and striped tie and couldn’t think of one goddamn thing to say back to her. This lady was not as nice as she appeared; she could show you a hard edge. They had left the interstate and were approaching the river, past chemical works in the near distance, the sight and smell of them along the flats.

“He murdered the doctor for telling him. Then came to the hospital looking for Amelita. He said she had defiled him.” The sister’s tone hushed in the quiet of the air-conditioned hearse. “He said she had allowed him to enter her body in order to give him the disease and he would kill her for that reason, trying to make him a leper.”