If We Survive

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I don’t know how many there were: maybe a dozen. They were stationed just within the trees, nearly hidden by the giant fronds and dense leaves all around them. They looked like villagers, like the folks back in Santiago. They had flat, dark brown Indian features. They wore jeans and cotton shirts and some of them had baseball hats. A few wore kerchiefs tied around their necks or foreheads, like the rebels did, only their kerchiefs were blue instead of red. Each of them was holding a rifle in his hand, low by his side.

“Uh…,” I said.

Kneeling over his AK, Palmer glanced up at me questioningly. I gestured with my head toward the jungle.

He looked that way—and he practically jumped to his feet. At first I thought he was going to raise his gun and open fire. Instead, he grinned. The gunman standing closest to us—a very large, very broad-shouldered man—also grinned, his smile white in his red-brown features. He came forward out of the trees. The other men followed him onto the riverbank, toting their rifles with them.

Until that moment Nicki, Meredith, and Jim hadn’t seen the gunmen. They all started in surprise when they did and Nicki moaned, “Oh no!” as if this were the last straw, as if she just couldn’t take any more excitement.

But Palmer and the large gunman were already grasping each other’s hands and slapping each other’s shoulders in a friendly greeting.

“Paolo,” Palmer said.

“Amigo,” said the gunman.

The two of them started talking to each other in rapid Spanish. Palmer laughed. He turned to us, his features unusually bright.

“He says they got word of what happened to us back in Santiago. They’ve been expecting us.”

“You mean they’re not rebels?” asked Jim.

“Not hardly,” said Palmer with another laugh. “They’re Achil—one of the oldest and purest tribes in the country. I was heading toward their village. It isn’t far. They’ll take us there and give us a ride to Santa Maria.”

Palmer and Paolo talked some more in rapid Spanish. Palmer pointed at the river, then at Nicki, then at me. I guessed he was telling him what had just happened with the rapids and the crocodile and all. Paolo nodded judiciously, looking my way. Then he moved away from Palmer and stepped up to me.

He was even bigger up close. I’d bet he was six-five or so. He towered over me. He looked down at me from his great height and nodded. He spoke in Spanish very quickly. He pointed out at the river—to the place in the rocks where I’d just been stuck. Then he pointed over at Nicki. Finally, he reached out with one enormous fist and pounded me lightly on the heart. It was just a tap, but he was so large it knocked me back half a step. Then he tapped his own heart as well.

“What’s he saying?” I asked Palmer.

“He says you’re the single ugliest little punk of an American he’s ever seen,” Palmer said. “He says they’re thinking of shooting you just to save the women from the misery of having to look at you.”

Meredith gave that laugh—that girlish giggle I’d heard in the temple chamber the night before. “Palmer, stop,” she said.

The big villager gave me a playful slap to the side of the head—which nearly knocked me unconscious—and walked away. He headed into the jungle with the other villagers behind him. Palmer gathered his weapons and Jim got his pack and they followed. Meredith helped Nicki to her feet.

“That isn’t really what he said, Will,” Meredith told me. “He said…”

“I get it, I get it,” I said—and, embarrassed, I hurried off into the jungle before she could tell me anything else.

We moved through the trees quickly now. I couldn’t see any trail, to be honest, but the natives seemed to see one well enough. They moved through the branches and leaves as if on some invisible path of least resistance. Simply by staying in their wake, we were able to move along far easier than we had before.

The land started to rise. We were climbing a hill. It was still hot, and soon we were all panting and sweating as we trudged along. After about half an hour, the villagers stopped. They had canteens strapped to their belts and they shared the water with us. That made us all feel stronger and we continued up the slope.

Palmer and Paolo walked together and as they walked, they kept up a steady dialogue in Spanish. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, of course, so after a while I stopped listening. Their talk just became another of the jungle noises.

After another half hour or so, the jungle seemed to grow a little thinner around us. We broke out of the trees as we reached the top of the hill. There was a village there. Not much. Just a bunch of little cinder-block-and-plaster houses with red-shingled roofs arranged around small gardens and fields. There was a central stone plaza that had a large round well. And lots of laundry lines strung up between one house and the next with clothes hanging from them. The place occupied a small clearing at the top of the hill and spilled down the opposite slope. There was more jungle surrounding it, but I could also see a dirt road winding off into the distance and several ancient green pickups parked nearby.

Most of the men of the village seemed to have come down to find us and walk with us, but the women and children were here in the village and they poured out of their houses and climbed up from their fields to meet us. They seemed especially glad to see Palmer. Several of the women kissed his cheeks and the children danced around him and plucked at his jeans for attention. The women made a fuss over Meredith and Nicki too—which Nicki seemed really grateful for.

I moved up beside Jim. He was standing off to one side by himself. His skinny, stoop-shouldered figure seemed sort of pulled into itself as if for protection. Those buggy eyes of his were scanning the village scene intensely, his thin lips pressed together.

I stood next to him and gestured at the sky. Now that we were out of the thick trees, I could see that the clouds had covered the blue completely while we walked. The clouds were still a light gray, but they were darkening by the minute.

“Guess the thunderstorms are on their way,” I said, by way of making conversation.

“They murdered these people,” Jim answered. “They wiped out whole villages.”

Well, it wasn’t the usual answer to a remark about the weather. So I said, “What? Who did?”

“The soldiers—the government. To try and suppress the rebel movement, the government sent soldiers into the native villages to terrorize them. They slaughtered men, women, and children.” He looked at me with his intense, intelligent eyes. “That’s what men like Fernandez Cobar and Mendoza are fighting. That’s what they’re rebelling against.”

I looked around at the villagers—all of them seemed to be out in the open, greeting Palmer, fussing over Nicki and Meredith.

“These folks all seem okay.”

“The soldiers were here, though,” said Jim. “I heard Paolo and Palmer talking about it. Apparently Palmer brought the villagers guns.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. When the soldiers came, they were surprised because the villagers fought them off. Paolo says they haven’t been back. So I guess Palmer must’ve known.”

“Known what?”

“Palmer must’ve known what the government was doing.”

The way he said this—that Palmer knew about the soldiers— was almost accusatory. It made me feel like I should say something, you know—defend Palmer. He had saved all our lives, after all. He’d saved mine more than once.

“So what?” I said. “So he knew about it. You knew about it…”

“I read about it in Cobar’s book and his op-eds in the newspapers.”

“So then anyone could know about it. And Palmer brought the people guns so they could defend themselves, so that’s a good thing, right?”

Jim didn’t answer. He just looked off in Palmer’s direction with a sort of sullen glare.

I was about to ask him what he was angry at Palmer for, but before I could, I saw Meredith coming toward us. She had left the crowd of villagers, but several of the little children had apparently adopted her. They were dancing around her the way they’d danced around Palmer.

“They say the storm is coming,” she told us. “The road won’t be usable again until the morning. We’ll have to stay the night.”

Well, that was fine with me. I was tired of walking. Hungry, thirsty. Wet, sweaty, smelly, generally disgusting. Spending the coming storm indoors—and getting a night’s sleep before moving on—these seemed like good ideas to me.

In fact, that night was pretty much the first non-horrible thing that had happened to us since Mendoza walked into the cantina and shot Carlos. The villagers gave us some fresh clothes to wear while our clothes dried out. I can’t tell you how good that felt—or how pretty the girls looked in the long, colorful native skirts. Then all the women rushed around bringing in the laundry before the rains came. And then they rushed around making dinner.

Paolo and Palmer, Jim and I, meanwhile, walked along the ridge to a small open field. The mountains fell away into flatlands below us, giving us a nice view for a pretty good distance. We could even make out a sort of blue haze near the horizon line that Palmer told us was Santa Maria, the capital. Paolo gestured out over the expanse, moving his hand back and forth and speaking quietly but with what seemed to me great seriousness.

“Can you tell what he’s saying?” I murmured to Jim.

“He says the rebels have control of everything from here to the capital. They’re patrolling the area with helicopters to make sure the government soldiers don’t try to regroup and make another attack. He says trying to get to the capital will be dangerous. If we’re spotted by one of the choppers, they’ll come after us, especially if they think Palmer’s with us.”

That surprised me. “The rebels are after Palmer?”

We were talking in low voices so as not to interrupt Paolo and Palmer, but I guess they heard us because Paolo turned to us and started speaking very quickly.

The afternoon had gotten very dark and now the black clouds let out a rumble of thunder. Paolo glanced up and spoke again and started moving back toward the center of town. He walked with Palmer while Jim and I trailed after.

“What’d he say?” I asked Jim.

“He was talking too fast,” Jim said. “I only got parts of it. Something about the guns Palmer was bringing people… but I’m not sure.”

The storm came just as we reached the house. It was nice to sit inside with a fire going in the fireplace and listen to the rain on the red tiles of the roof. I dozed off sitting by a wall, and when I woke up, the storm was subsiding and it was dinnertime. We sat around a wooden table and had a great meal of tortillas and rice and beans. Nicki and Meredith had helped Paolo’s wife and daughter prepare it.

“Boy, the guys get a good deal in this place,” said Nicki, sounding a little bit more normal than she had for a while. “The women cook and clean and the guys sit around and talk and sleep.”

“Sounds like a good system to me,” I said.

“Don’t get used to it,” Meredith said with a laugh. “We’re bound to get home sometime.”

All the while we were eating, Palmer and Paolo went on talking to each other. And Jim sat silently. Now and then, I’d glance his way and I’d see him watching Palmer with that same dark glare. What was his problem now, I wondered.

Finally, Paolo’s wife—Corinna, her name was—started to clear the dishes from the table. When she came to Palmer, she stopped. Then, sort of impulsively, she grabbed his head in her hands and gave him a great big smooch on the top of his head. This made both Palmer and Paolo laugh.

But somehow it seemed to really get on Jim’s nerves. “I don’t get it,” he said suddenly. He was talking directly to Palmer—and the words seemed to burst out of him before he could stop them.

Palmer glanced at him—and raised one eyebrow in a sort of comical, questioning look. “Something troubling you, Professor?” he drawled.

“I… I just… I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”

“I’m providing transportation to tourists like yourself,” Palmer said.

“You’re running guns,” said Jim. “Aren’t you?”

Until that moment, there had been a sort of general chatter at the table. Nicki and Meredith and I talking, and Corinna and her daughter, and Paolo and Palmer. But now everyone fell silent. Everyone looked at Jim and at Palmer and then down at the table.

The silence went on a long time—at least it felt that way to me. All the while Palmer kept looking at Jim, one eyebrow cocked in that mocking way of his.

Finally he said, “Now and then, I may have supplied a weapon or two to people who needed them.”

“These people, you mean,” Jim insisted. “These villagers. You brought guns to natives like these all over the country. You brought them weapons so they could defend themselves against the government.”

“I seem to remember something like that happening from time to time.”

“Because the government soldiers were murdering them, right? Their own citizens. The government was murdering the natives in order to terrorize them so they wouldn’t join Cobar and the rebellion.”

“I believe that was the general idea.”

“You fought the government… this murdering government that Fernandez Cobar has just overthrown. The same government that the United States—our country— us—supported and helped keep in power during the last revolution.”

Jim seemed to feel he had made some kind of important point here, because he sort of sat back in his chair and gave Palmer a triumphant glare.

But Palmer just shrugged. “You don’t like it, write your local congressman and complain,” he said. “From my point of view, if you’re interested, the US supported these government clowns back in the day when the Communists in the Soviet Union were trying to take the continent over—the continent and the world. The murderous Costa Verdes government stood against the Soviets—who murdered and enslaved a nice little chunk of humanity, if you remember— so the US stood with the Costa Verdes government. I’m sure if we could have found someone a bit more like Abraham Lincoln down here, we’d’ve supported him instead.”

“That’s why Mendoza didn’t kill you right off the bat,” said Jim bitterly. “He didn’t like you, but he thought you were a friend to the rebels. That’s why he didn’t kill you, isn’t it?”

“You’d have to ask him,” Palmer said. “I thought it was because of my sunny personality.”

“And that’s why the government wants to find you now, because they realize you’re not on their side at all. That you’re against them. Or maybe you just don’t care. Maybe you were just running guns for the money.”

Palmer answered with another shrug.

“But… I don’t understand. How can you be against the rebels?” Jim sputtered as the fervor of his beliefs overwhelmed him. “Fernandez Cobar has risked his life, has risked everything, to bring this horrible government down. Even Mendoza…”

“Mendoza, who gave the order for you to be lined up against a wall and shot,” Palmer reminded him mildly.

“I know. I know,” Jim said. “But don’t you think Mendoza has a good reason to be angry? You know he does.”

Again, it was a long time before Palmer answered, and during that time no one said anything. Nicki and Paolo and Corinna and her daughter went on studying the table, as if the whole conversation just embarrassed them. But Meredith—she kept her eyes on Palmer, watching him, listening to every word he said. Trying to get some idea of who he really was, I thought.

Jim, meanwhile, waited for an answer, glaring at Palmer across the table, his eyes practically leaping out of his head. Palmer casually looked down at his own hands, fiddling with his spoon and smiling with one corner of his mouth.

“What I know about Mendoza,” he said slowly after a while, “is that he’s a petty gangster who enjoys pushing people around. I’ve already told you what I think of Cobar: a psycho killer.”

“But in his book—”

“I know,” said Palmer, lifting a hand. “But a killer who writes a book is still a killer—even if it’s a book about peace and justice. A thug with a lot of high-blown political ideas is still just a thug in the end.”

“But he’s at war with a brutal government…”

“Gangsters get in wars with each other all the time,” said Palmer. “That doesn’t make one side good and the other bad. And it doesn’t mean I have to care which bunch of bullies and thugs wins the day. You think the people in this village will be any better off when it’s Cobar’s government murdering them instead of the government they had before? The only one who’ll feel any better about it is you, because you’ll think it’s all for some higher cause—fairness or justice or whatever they’re calling it nowadays. Whatever they do call it, it always translates to the same thing in the end: obey the man with the gun or he’ll kill you. The truth is, Professor, there’s only one higher cause I know of. That’s the right of every man to go his own way and spend his own money and speak his own mind and find his own salvation. You show me the side that stands for that and I’ll fight for them. I was a United States Marine, friend. I have fought for them.”

Palmer made a face then, as if he was annoyed with himself for saying so much. “I’m going to sleep,” he said. “I suggest you all do the same. We leave before dawn.”