If We Survive

CHAPTER EIGHT

The sound of the door locking was loud in the silent room. I looked at Meredith where she stood. I could see how worried she was.

“He’ll be all right,” I said to her.

I heard Palmer snort out on the balcony.

Meredith took a deep breath. She tried to smile at me, without much success. “I hope so,” she said.

“They won’t kill him, will they?” asked Nicki, in tears. She had lifted her head from the back of the chair. She was looking around as if she’d just woken up from a deep sleep. She looked awful. All her glamour and prettiness were gone. Her face was bloated and streaked, covered with makeup stains. “They won’t kill Pastor Ron, will they?” And she started to cry again, putting her face in her hands. “I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand it.”

“It’s going to be okay,” said Jim—but he didn’t sound as confident as he did before when he was talking politics. He kept watching the door through which Pastor Ron had gone. Staring at it, as if he could see through it to what was happening.

Meredith turned around and faced the balcony. “Palmer,” she said.

He glanced back at her. “What did you want me to do?” he asked her. “Knock him down? The man’s an adult. He makes his own decisions.”

Meredith didn’t respond to this at all. She just asked him: “What are you going to do now?”

Palmer drew a hand along his stubbly jaw, as though he were considering her question. He came inside. There was a small wooden desk against one wall, a wooden chair in front of it. He grabbed the chair, turned it around backward, and straddled it. He gave Meredith a comical look, closing one eye and squinting up at her through the other.

“Who says I’m going to do anything?” he asked.

Meredith didn’t answer and Palmer didn’t seem to expect her to, because he just went on.

“I can’t see my van from here,” he told her. “It’s old—it doesn’t like coming up these hills—so I parked it down in the dirt at the bottom of the road. I can’t see it—but I think I’d be able to see the smoke if they’d set it on fire, so I’m thinking it may still be there, may still be in one piece…”

“You’re going to go get it,” said Meredith.

“I’m going to try. If I can get out of here, if I can get to my plane, I might be able to fly across the border before the whole country goes up in smoke.”

Meredith nodded slowly. “And what about the rest of us?” she asked.

Palmer gave another one of his ironic shrugs. “Well, I guess the rest of you will all be set free after the padre talks sweet reason to the freedom fighter for justice, right?”

“Stop it,” said Meredith softly.

Palmer gave a half smile, but he dropped the sarcasm. “I’m not responsible for the rest of you, lady,” he said. “You make your own decisions. Do what you want. I’m not waiting around for you to make up your minds.”

I saw a tinge of red come into Meredith’s cheeks. “What can we do? We can’t come with you. We couldn’t keep up. Nicki couldn’t…” She didn’t finish, only gestured toward where Nicki sat, limp and exhausted with her face buried in her hands.

Palmer gave Nicki a long, slow look before he turned back to Meredith. “Just as well,” he said. “I’m a lot more likely to slip past these clowns on my own.”

“Then what?” I asked. I was only beginning to comprehend what Palmer was saying. As I did, I felt another flash of anger in me. I stood up off the bed. “Then you—what?—just drive off and get in your airplane and fly for the border?”

“Something like that.”

“And leave us here alone? Just leave us here?”

I felt something clutch in my stomach when Palmer’s eyes met mine. I saw nothing but laughter in them.

“You’re not my problem, kid,” he said. “I’m just the pilot.”

I tried to answer him, but I was so appalled, nothing would come out. I just stood there spluttering like an idiot. “I… I… I…” I looked to Meredith for help, but she went on watching Palmer, her lips pressed tightly together, her cheeks pink. “I can’t believe this!” I finally managed to say.

I stalked out onto the balcony. I needed some air. I needed to get away from that room. It felt like a death trap. Because I guess that’s exactly what it was.

I stood out there on the narrow platform, my hands on the railing. I was looking down at a broad alley between the hotel and the church. The sun was coming down on me from an angle as it sank toward the blue, misty mountains, which I could just make out at the alley’s end to my left. I couldn’t see the end of the alley to my right, but I knew it led into the coffee fields and the jungle beyond. Directly across from me was the white wall of the church, its narrow windows, its open Spanish-style bell tower with the cross on top. There were two men standing against the wall—two men in fatigues with machine guns strapped over their shoulders. They were passing a bottle of some kind of liquor back and forth between them.

I jerked back a little as another blast of gunfire went off on the street. From where I was standing, I could just see a small portion of the plaza. Now and again, someone would pass through my field of vision. Once I saw a woman clutching a child—she ran by in terror. Then there was a soldier, brandishing his weapon and stumbling along with a wide drunken strut.

When I looked in the other direction, I could see smoke— black smoke—rising into a sky that was already turning gray in preparation for the afternoon thunderstorms. I realized the smoke had to be coming from the nearby coffee plantation. I guessed Mendoza and his men had set the big house on fire. Probably killed the family that owned the land. Justice. Progress.

I looked down—down at the two men drinking in the alley below me—down and over at the turmoil that appeared to me in brief glimpses in the square. I didn’t see how Palmer thought he was going to get down there, get past all the gunmen to his van. I knew I couldn’t do it. And I knew he was right—he couldn’t do it with us in tow. If he was going to have any chance of escape, he’d have to go alone.

But I didn’t care if he was right or not. I was angry at him for talking about abandoning us. Just leaving us here to die at Mendoza’s hands.

“If you’re going,” I heard Meredith say behind me, “I think you should go.”

She was talking to Palmer—and now I heard his answer.

“No. It’s too soon. They’re not drunk enough yet. There must be thirty of them out there—thirty men with machine guns. One of me—and I’m unarmed. They’re going to have to be awfully smashed for me to make any kind of a run for it at all.”

Meredith answered. Her voice was still steady, but I could hear the urgency in it. “I think we both know that Pastor Ron doesn’t have much time, Palmer.”

“That doesn’t change the facts. If I go out there now, I’ll be killed.”

“If you don’t, you won’t be in time to help him.”

“Who said I was going to help him?”

There was a long silence between them. I stood on the balcony, my back to the room. I watched the two gunmen drinking, chatting, and laughing below me. One was leaning drunkenly against the church wall. The other wiped his mouth with his hand and staggered. He looked unsteady on his feet, like he might topple over any second.

“A moment ago,” Meredith said behind me, “you asked me what sort of man I thought you were. Did you really want to know?”

“Sure,” said Palmer ironically. “It’d pass the time.”

“I think you’re an exceptional man. I think you’re a hero.”

Palmer laughed—but Meredith went right on speaking over his laughter.

“Something’s happened that made you bitter—I see that. And I see that you think you can get back at the world for whatever it is, that you’re telling the world to go hang itself. And I can see it confuses you how that just makes your bitterness worse and worse.”

I kept staring out over the balcony, but I wasn’t seeing anything now. I was just listening—listening to Meredith’s voice. The stuff she was saying to Palmer—it made me feel— I don’t know—bad somehow. Maybe jealous is the word I want. I couldn’t imagine her ever telling me that I was exceptional. A hero…

But Palmer only laughed at her again. “Wow,” he said. “You sure have a lot to say on a lot of subjects. Are you gonna spit in my eye now too?”

“No,” said Meredith. “But I am going to tell you one more thing.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

“I’m going to tell you that you’re about to do something very dangerous.”

“Oh, I think I figured that out all by myself.”

“I don’t mean that,” said Meredith. “I don’t mean just getting shot.”

“That sounds dangerous enough for me.”

“I mean if you reach your van—if you reach your plane— if you get away from here, get out of this country—and if you leave us to die because you think the world has mistreated you and it can go hang—you’re going to lose the man you were made to be. Not just misplace him, as you have now, Palmer. But I mean lose him, really, forever.”

It was weird. I felt a real tightness in my throat as I listened to her. I’d never heard anyone talk like that before. So simple, so straightforward, so sure of herself like that, so sure of what she knew. And again, in a weird way, I sort of wished it was me she was talking to…

But Palmer answered in his sarcastic drawl, “Wow! Lady Liberty! What a piece of work you are. That’s a lot of fancy talk just to get a man to risk his life for you.”

“Not for me.”

“Oh no! Sure. Not you. You don’t care about yourself at all. You’re not even afraid, right?”

“Look at me, Palmer,” Meredith answered in her calm, quiet voice. “Do I look afraid?”

There was silence. I couldn’t believe it: it sounded as if Palmer was finally lost for a smart reply. Out on the balcony, I found I had been holding my breath the last few seconds. I let it out now.

“Whatever,” Palmer said then. “All I know is that those guys out there aren’t drunk enough yet or distracted enough for me to make my move. And if you’ll forgive me, I don’t feel like getting riddled with machine-gun bullets for the sake of your high principles. And even if you won’t forgive me.”

I waited for Meredith to answer, but it seemed the conversation was over. I started to turn away from the railing, to head back into the room. But before I could, I saw something so horrible it froze me to the spot.

“Oh,” I heard myself say. “Oh no.”

A chair scraped in the hotel room. A second later Palmer was standing at my shoulder right behind me. Then Meredith was at my other shoulder. Jim and Nicki were there too, pressing in to get a glimpse.

We all stood together and stared down into the alley. What we saw made me feel as if my heart had turned to ashes.

Two rebels, machine guns strapped over their shoulders, came marching into the alley. They were dragging Pastor Ron between them.