All three of us knew at the same instant what it meant. An ambush lay ahead! Why else was Pena at La Cumbre? We had seen him just this morning in Santiago when we picked up our permissions. Patria’s chatty friend had made no mention of being headed in our direction.
We could not turn around now. Were we being followed? We stuck our heads out the window to see what lay behind as well as ahead.
“I give myself to San Marco de León,” Patria intoned, repeating the prayer for desperate situations. I found myself mouthing the silly words.
Panic was rising up from my toes, through my guts, into my throat. The thunder in my chest exploded. Mate was already wheezing, searching through her purse for her medication. We sounded like a mobile sanatorium.
Rufino slowed. “Shall we stop at the three crosses?” Up ahead on a shoulder were three white crosses marking the casualties from a recent accident. Suddenly, it loomed in my head as the place for an ambush. The last place we should stop.
“Keep on going, Rufino ;‘ I said, and I took great swallows of the cool air that was blowing in on us.
To divert ourselves, Mate and I began moving the contents of our old purses into our new ones. The card of Jorge Almonte, Attendant, EL GALLO, found its way to my hand. The gold rooster logo crowed from the upper right-hand comer. I turned the card over. The words were written in big block letters in a hurried hand: “Avoid the pass.” My hand shook. I would not tell the others. It could only make things worse, and Mate’s asthma had just begun to calm down.
But in my own head I was working it all out: it was a movie scene that became suddenly, terrifyingly real. This soldier was a plant. How foolish we’d been, picking him up on this lonely country road.
I began chatting him up, trying to catch him in a lie. What time was he due at the fort and why had he hitched rather than caught a ride in an army truck? Finally, he turned around halfway in his seat. I could see that he was afraid to speak.
I’ll coax it out of him, I thought. “What is it? You can tell me.”
“You ask more questions than mi mujer when I get home,” he blurted out. His color deepened at the rude suggestion that I could be like his wife.
Patria laughed and tapped my head with a gloved hand. “That coco fell right on your head.” I could see she, too, felt surer of him now.
The sun broke through the clouds, and shafts of light shone like blessings on the far valley. The arc of His covenant, I thought. I will not destroy my people. We had been silly, letting ourselves believe all those crazy rumors.
To entertain us, Mate began telling riddles she was sure we hadn’t heard. We humored her. Then Rufino, who collected them, knowing how much Mate loved them, offered a new one to her. We began to descend towards the coast, the roadside growing more populous, the smell of the ocean in the air. The isolated little huts gave way to wooden houses with freshly painted shutters and zinc roofs advertising Ron Bermúdez on one side, Dios y Trujillo on the other.
Our soldier had been laughing loudly at the riddles he always guessed wrong. He had one of his own to contribute. It turned out to be much nastier than any of Mate‘s!
Rufino was indignant. “A Dio‘, are you forgetting there are ladies in the car?”
Patria leaned forward, patting a hand on each man’s shoulder. “Now, Rufino, every egg needs a little pepper.” We all laughed, glad for the release of the pent-up tension.
Mate crossed her legs, jiggling them up and down. “We’re going to have to stop soon unless you quit making me laugh.” She was famous for her tiny bladder. In prison, she’d had to practice holding it in since she didn’t like going out to the latrine with strange guards in the middle of the night.
“Everybody serious,” I ordered, “because we sure can’t stop here.”
We were at the outskirts of the city now. Brightly colored houses sat prettily in their kempt plots, side by side. The rain had washed the lawns, and the grasses and hedges shone emerald green. Everything was a fresh joy to see. Groups of children played in puddles on the street, scattering as the Jeep approached, so as not to be sprayed. An impulse seized me. I called out to them, “We’re here, safe and sound!”
They stopped their play and looked up. Their baffled little faces did not know what to make of us. But I kept waving until they waved back. I felt giddy, as if I’d been granted a reprieve from my worse fears. When Mate needed a piece of paper for her discarded Chiclet, I pulled out Jorge’s card.
Manolo was upset at his mother for letting us come alone. “She promised me she wouldn’t let you out of her sight.”
“But, my love,” I said, folding my hands over his, “reason it out. What could Doña Fefita do to protect me even if I were in danger?” I had a brief, ludicrous picture of the old, rather heavy woman banging a SIM calie over the head with her ubiquitous black purse.
Manolo pulled and pulled at his ear, a nervous habit he had developed in prison. It moved me to see him so nakedly affected by his long months of suffering. “A promise is a promise,” he concluded, still aggrieved. Oh dear, there would be words next time, and then Doña Fefita’s tears all the way home.
Manolo’s color had started to come back. This was definitely a better prison, brighter, cleaner than La Victoria. Every day, our friends Rudy and Pilar sent over a hot meal, and after they ate, the men were allowed to walk around in the prison yard for a half hour. Leandro, the engineer, joked that he and Manolo could have mashed at least a ton of sug arcane by now if they’d been rigged up with a harness like a team of oxen.
We sat around in the little yard where they usually brought us during our visits if the weather was good. Unaccountably, after the bad storm, the sun had come out in the late afternoon. It shone on the barracks, painted a pea-green, amoeba-shaped camouflage that looked almost playful; on the storybook towers with flags flying in a row; on the bars gleaming brightly, as if someone had taken the time to polish them. If you didn’t let yourself think what this place was, you could almost see it in a promising light.
Tentatively, Patria brought up the topic. “Have you been told anything about being moved back?”
Leandro and Manolo looked at each other. A worried look passed between them. “Did Pedrito hear something?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Patria soothed them. And then she looked to me to bring up what the young soldier had reported in the car, that two “politicals” would be going back to La Victoria in a few weeks.
But I did not want to worry them. Instead I began to describe the perfect little house we’d seen earlier. Patria and Mate joined in. What we didn’t tell the men was that we had not rented the house, after all. If they were going to be moved back to La Victoria, there was no use. The big white Mercedes parked at the door of La Cumbre crossed my mind. I leaned forward, as if to leave its image physically at the back of my mind.
We heard the clanging of doors in the distance. Footsteps approached, there were shouted greetings, the click and slap of gun salutes. The guard was changing.
Patria opened her purse and withdrew her scarf. “Ladies, the shades of night begin to fall, the wayfarer hurries home ...”
“Nice poetry.” I laughed to lighten the difficult moment. I had such a hard time saying goodbye.
“You’re not going back tonight?” Manolo looked shocked at the idea. “It’s too late to start out. I want you to stay with Rudy and Pilar and head back tomorrow.”
“I touched his raspy cheek with the back of my hand. He shut his eyes, giving himself to my touch. ”You mustn’t worry so. Look how clear that sky is. Tomorrow we’ll probably have another bad storm. We’re better off going home this evening.“
We all looked up at the deepening, golden sky. The few low-lying clouds were moving quickly across it—as if heading home themselves before it got too dark.
I didn’t tell him the real reason why I didn’t want to stay with his friends. Pilar had confided in me as we drove around looking at houses that Rudy’s business was about to collapse. She did n
ot have to say it, but I guessed why. We had to put more distance between us, for their sake.
Manolo held my head in both his hands. I wanted to lose myself in his sad dark eyes. “Please, mi amor. There are too many rumors around.”
I reasoned with him. “If you gave me a peso for every premonition, dream, admonition we’ve been told this month, we’d be able to—”
“Buy ourselves another set of purses.” Mate held hers up and nodded for me to hold up mine.
Then, there was the call, “Time!” The guards closed in, their flat, empty faces showing us no consideration. “Time!”
We stood, said our hurried goodbyes, our whispered prayers and endearments. Remember ... Don’t forget ... Dios te bendiga, mi amor. A final embrace before they were led away. The light was falling quickly. I turned for a last look but they had already disappeared into the barracks at the end of the yard.
We stopped at the little restaurant-gas pump on the way out of town. The umbrellas had all been taken down in preparation for night, and only the little tables remained. Since Mate and Patria were thirsty and wanted a refreshment, I went and made the call. The line was busy.
I paced back and forth in front of the phone the way one does to remind someone ahead that others are waiting. But neither Mamá nor Dedé could know that I was waiting for them to get off the line.
“Still busy,” I came back and told my sisters.
Mate picked up her new purse and mine from the extra chair. “Sit with us, come on.” But I couldn’t see how I could sit. I guess it was getting to me, listening to everyone’s worries.
“Give it another five minutes,” Patria suggested. It seemed reasonable enough. In five minutes whoever was on would be off the line. If not, it was a sure sign that one of the children had left the phone off the hook and who knew when Tono or Fela would discover it.
Rufino leaned against the back of the Jeep, his arms crossed. Every so often, he’d look up at the sky—checking the time.
“I think maybe I will have a beer,” I said at last.
“iEpa!” Mate said. She was drinking her lemonade through a straw, daintily like a girl, trying to make the sweet pleasure last. We would be stopping at least once more on the road. I could see that.
“Rufino, can I get you one?” He looked away, a sign that indeed he would like a cold beer but was too shy to say so. Off I went to the bar for our two Presidentes. I tried the number again while the obliging proprietor dug up his two coldest ones from the bottom of the deep freeze.
“Still busy,” I told our little table when I got back.
“Minerva!” Patria shook her head. “That wasn’t five minutes.”
The afternoon was deepening towards evening. I felt the cooler air of night blowing off the mountain. We had not brought our shawls. I imagined Mama just now seeing them, draped brightly on the backs of chairs, and going to the window once again to watch for car lights.
Undoubtedly, she would pass the phone. She would see it was off the hook. She would heave a sigh and replace it in its cradle. I went back to try one more time.
“I give up,” I said when I came back. “I think we should just go.”
Patria looked up at the mountain. Behind it was another one and another one, but then we would be home. “I feel a little uneasy. I mean that road is so—deserted.”
“It’s always that way,” I informed her. The veteran mountain-pass traveler.
Mate finished the last of her drink and sucked the sugar through the straw, making a rude sound. “I promised Jacqui I’d tuck her in tonight.” Her voice had a whiny edge. Mate had not been separated from her baby overnight since we’d come home from prison.
“What do you say, Rufino?” I asked him.
“We can make it to La Cumbre before dark, for sure. From there, it’s all downhill. But it’s up to you,” he added, not wanting to express a preference. Surely, his own bed with Delisa curled beside him was better than a little cot in the tiny servant’s room at the back of Rudy and Pilar’s yard. He had a baby, too. It struck me I had never asked him how old the child was, boy or girl.
“I say we go,” I said, but I still read hesitancy in Patria’s face.
Just then, a Public Works truck pulled into the station. Three men got out. One veered off behind the building to the smelly toilet we had been forced to use once and swore never again. The other two came up to the counter, shaking their legs and pulling at their crotches, the way men getting out of cars do. They greeted the proprietor warmly, giving him half-arm abrazos over the counter. “How are you, compadre? No, no, we can’t stay. Pack us up a dozen of those pork fries over there—in fact, hand us a couple to eat right now.”
The proprietor talked with the men as he filled their order. “Where you headed at this hour, boys?”
The driver had taken a large bite of the fried rind in his hand. “Truck needs to be in Tamboril by dark.” He spoke with his mouth full, licking his greasy fingers when he was done and then tweezing a handkerchief out of his back pocket to wipe himself. “Tito! Where is that Tito?” He turned around and scanned the tables, his eye falling on us. We smiled, and he took his cap off and held it to his heart. The flirt. Rufino straightened up protectively from his post next to the car.
When Tito came running from behind the pumps, his buddies were already inside the truck, gunning the motor. “Can’t a man shit in peace?” he called out, but the truck was inching forward, and he had to execute a tricky mount on the passenger’s running board. I was sure they had performed the maneuver before for a lady or two. They honked as they pulled out into the road.
We looked at each other. Their lightheartedness made us all feel safer somehow. We’d be following that truck all the way to the other side of the mountains. Suddenly, the road was not so lonesome.
“What do you say?” I said, standing up. “Shall I try one more time?” I looked towards the phone.
Patria closed her purse with a decisive snap. “Let’s just go.”
We moved quickly now towards the Jeep, hurrying as if we had to catch up with that truck. I don’t know quite how to say this, but it was as if we were girls again, walking through the dark part of the yard, a little afraid, a little excited by our fears, anticipating the lighted house just around the bend—
That’s the way I felt as we started up the first mountain.
Epilogue
Dedé
1994
Later they would come by the old house in Ojo de Agua and insist on seeing me. Sometimes, for a rest, I’d go spend a couple of weeks with Mamá in Conuco. I would use the excuse that the monument was being built, and the noise and dust and activity bothered me. But it was really that I could bear neither to receive them nor turn them away.
They would come with their stories of that afternoon—the little soldier with the bad teeth, cracking his knuckles, who had ridden in the car with them over the mountain; the bowing attendant from El Gallo who had sold them some purses and tried to warn them not to go; the big-shouldered truck driver with the husky voice who had witnessed the ambush on the road. They all wanted to give me something of the girls’ last moments. Each visitor would break my heart all over again, but I would sit on this very rocker and listen for as long as they had something to say.
It was the least I could do, being the one saved.
And as they spoke, I was composing in my head how that last afternoon went.
It seems they left town after four-thirty, since the truck that preceded them up the mountain clocked out of the local Public Works building at four thirty-five. They had stopped at a little establishment by the side of the road. They were worrying about something, the proprietor said, he didn’t know what. The tall one kept pacing back and forth to the phone and talking a lot.
The proprietor had had too much to drink when he told me this. He sat in that chair, his wife dabbing at her eyes each time her husband said something. He told me what each of them had ordered. He said I might want to know this. He said at
the last minute the cute one with the braids decided on ten cents’ worth of Chiclets, cinnamon, yellow, green. He dug around in the jar but he couldn’t find any cinnamon ones. He will never forgive himself that he couldn’t find any cinnamon ones. His wife wept for the little things that could have made the girls’ last minutes happier. Their sentimentality was excessive, but I listened, and thanked them for coming.
It seems that at first the Jeep was following the truck up the mountain. Then as the truck slowed for the grade, the Jeep passed and sped away, around some curves, out of sight. Then it seems that the truck came upon the ambush. A blue-and-white Austin had blocked part of the road; the Jeep had been forced to a stop; the women were being led away peaceably, so the truck driver said, peaceably to the car. He had to brake so as not to run into them, and that’s when one of the women—I think it must have been Patria, “the short, plump one”—broke from the captors and ran towards the truck. She clung to the door, yelling, “Tell the Mirabal family in Salcedo that the calies are going to kill us!” Right behind her came one of the men, who tore her hand off the door and dragged her away to the car.
It seems that the minute the truck driver heard the word calie, he shut the door he had started opening. Following the commanding wave of one of the men, he inched his way past. I felt like asking him, “Why didn’t you stop and help them?” But of course, I didn’t. Still, he saw the question in my eyes and he bowed his head.
Over a year after Trujillo was gone, it all came out at the trial of the murderers. But even then, there were several versions. Each one of the five murderers saying the others had done most of the murdering. One of them saying they hadn’t done any murdering at all. Just taken the girls to the mansion in La Cumbre where El Jefe had finished them off.
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