Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  When she’s finished, Rita nods seriously at Pierre, who looks back intently, as if confirming something. Then she returns to the far wall, laying her rifle across her lap. “Stop looking at me, all of you,” she says in Spanish. Danielle doesn’t need to translate. Everyone tries to find somewhere else to put their eyes. “And tell Pierre he’s allowed to choose one person to whisper to,” Rita adds.

  “Pierre,” says Danielle.

  He nods without looking up.

  “She says you can whisper what she said to one person.”

  That gets his attention. Pierre shoots Danielle a questioning look then turns to Rita to verify. When she eggs him on with a nod, Pierre makes the obvious choice. Antoine, who’s still holding his cards, puts them down slowly, like he thinks it’s a set-up and he doesn’t want to bite. Rita rolls her eyes. “Vaya!” she says, pointing to Pierre. Slowly, Antoine walks over to his friend. Looking a bit hurt, Tina trades places with him, sinking into his spot and twirling her hair around one finger, as she tends to do. Then Antoine pulls off Pierre’s gag again and listens while his friend whispers in his ear. Afterwards, the gag back on, they sit staring at one another, exchanging secret meanings.

  This is not funny. Something has happened. Danielle has nothing to go on except her profound distrust of Rita. Can she be involving these two in some plot? A product of her deranged mind?

  Pierre might be susceptible to someone who would make him feel like the heroic young man of his dreams. Danielle was that way once too, so she knows how you can get taken in. Rita will use him. To mutiny? She tries to read Rita’s eyes.

  In response, Rita produces a feral grin.

  Danielle switches to silently begging Pierre not to take anything this woman says seriously, explaining to him with her eyes that Pepe really will kill anyone who disobeys, while telling herself that Antoine is measured, reasonable. A bike mechanic. A good kid. Not someone to scheme or partake in risky plans, even for his oldest friend.

  Pepe appears in the door. Everyone jumps like he’s the dad and they’ve all been naughty. “Daniela,” he says, looking around suspiciously. He signals for her to come out.

  Danielle’s heart sinks. She wants to stay, to be like the others, not a conspirator. But she gets up, feeling all their faces turn, their eyes burrowing into her, but especially Pierre’s, which, when she looks back, seem to be doing some very scary math.

  2:40PM. Outskirts, Los Pampanos, Morazán

  Julia Rendita is in her church clothes when her husband is pushed through her door by two strangers and hits the dirt floor with a thud. Babbling and slobbering, he tries to prop himself up on his single arm but fails. As the strangers step over him, Julia registers that he’s not the one they’re after. She picks up her baby from the cochón and thrusts him into the arms of her second youngest, Ufemia, then advances to meet the men, giving her daughter her best chance to get out.

  Each takes one of Julia’s arms and pulls.

  “Perdóname!” her husband calls, crying now, whimpering, as they drag her past him. “Perdóname!”

  The stark afternoon light hurts Julia’s eyes. The strangers shove her into the front of a truck. One of them has square shoulders like a rack, the other a thick beard. She screams and wiggles furiously, but they’re too strong and pay her no attention. Julia’s face ends up pressed into the dashboard beside a sticker with an image of a chunky fist holding a lock. Below it in block letters, a word: MAXSEGURO.

  Some neighbours have come out to watch. What else can they do? Julia wishes desperately that she’d never been approached by that woman who offered her the money, that she had never agreed to go up the old trail.

  The men get in and the truck starts up, driving for a long time. When it stops, one of them sticks a gun to Julia’s belly and tells her she’s going to lead them to the place where she met the kidnappers. Then she can go back to her children. Thinking of her baby threatens to make Julia’s breasts leak, so she shakes the image of him away, concentrating on staying alive. She tells the men the truth: she never saw anyone. The men pull her roughly from the truck and make her walk anyway. Julia remembers her childhood in the refugee camp, how people tried to reason with the guards. Those soldiers never listened either.

  Outside the vehicle, there is nothing in sight except trees. But as she steadies herself, Julia distinguishes a familiar hilly landscape to her left. She points her feet instinctively towards them.

  When, nearly four hours later, Julia reaches the bottom of the shelf of rock she rose to that day, she mumbles that this is it — where they left the envelope. The men snap at her to shut up, forcing her into a crouch. One keeps Julia there, a hand cupped over her mouth, as the other moves ahead. Eventually, he returns, looking frustrated. Obviously, whoever left the package for her to pick up is long gone. She could’ve told them that.

  The men make a joke about Julia being a stupid campesina and push her back and forth like a ball until she falls. Their game is unnerving and demeaning. Julia considers the excitement she felt retrieving the envelope, counting out the money, and the thrill of travelling to the capital to leave the tiny memory card at the newspaper office the woman had given her directions to. Except for the refugee camp, Julia has rarely left Los Pampanos. Now she wonders if she’ll die for those experiences.

  One of the men takes her by the waist, pressing one of her arms to her side. The other, with the big shoulders, takes her free arm and forces it back until Julia hears a crack. Her knees buckle. Her mouth fills with saliva. “Now you match your husband,” the man says, matter-of-factly, and in Julia’s mind, the pain blossoms into a clear image of these two men entering the bar where her husband always goes to meet his old war buddies on the days she travels to town to pray. He bragged to them, made a spectacle of himself. If only she’d been able to hide the money.

  The one with the beard steps off to make a call on a heavy-looking phone. Julia doesn’t care who he’s calling or why, but the other shoves her out of earshot at gunpoint, telling her they’ll be back to cut off her breasts and kill her children if she tells anyone about where she’s been. For good measure, he fires a shot near her feet.

  Julia cradles her injured arm. She moves so fast her lungs seize and it becomes difficult to breathe. But she presses on, trees streaming by, night eventually overtaking the sky. Julia runs so long and hard that she enters a terrain of memories from her early life, before the war, when she collected herbs in this area with her grandmother, so that when she gets back onto the familiar trail, free to return home, she feels almost happy.

  “We’re close, Jefe,” says the man, wind creating sucking noises around him.

  “How close?” Sobero shifts the receiver to his other hand.

  “We’ll find them. Soon.”

  Sobero is in his office, facing a bank of security cameras. On one black-and-white screen, he can see Mitch Wall moving along a corridor followed by that public relations flack, Barraza. Both men are agitated, talking with their hands. Finally, Wall is beginning to show signs of genuine concern. He’s understanding that this incident will not be wished away.

  “I chose you because I know your skills, but you have achieved nothing,” Sobero says into the phone. “I am only so patient.”

  “Sí, Jefe. We’ll find them.”

  Sobero hangs up angrily. It’s boring to have to threaten such negligible elements, but so far they are the only weapons in his arsenal. He remains seated a moment longer, watching Wall. Sobero knows his employer has tended to see this abduction only in the narrowest terms. Wall isn’t aware of its broader implications, either politically or for Sobero’s own status. Sobero experiences a sharp prick of irritation at this: he must always consider Wall’s interests, while Wall will never consider his. The irritation passes, though. Sobero decided long ago that ultimately Wall’s ignorance is advantageous. He picks up his phone again. If his trackers are moving this slowly, he will need to explore other avenues.

  4:45PM. Morazán

  Wh
en Danielle has taken down all his words, and Pepe has given her, as he did last night, about an hour to turn them into a coherent text, he comes back. Danielle is still scribbling, but Pepe swipes the paper from under the pen. He ignores her dirty look and sits across from her to read silently.

  At that time, most people in the countryside were hungry. They never were. Enrique’s father was on good terms with the local patrón, so the guardia didn’t bother them. For these reasons, his family was considered well off.

  His mother was religious. She’s the one who’d gone to meetings organized by the priests who were teaching people to use the Bible to think about oppression.

  Someone found out about it and made a list. That’s what Enrique thinks happened. The military came into town a few times to scare people. After that, like some other men, his father took the family to sleep every night in the bush above Ixtán, on the slopes of El Pico, to avoid a night raid.

  But there were a lot of spies then. People needed the money. The military played on old rivalries. Someone must have told.

  One night, Enrique had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t wake anyone up and went off by himself, making a game of it, pretending to explore the mountain. He felt grown up. There was no moon and he got a bit lost. He’d just sighted the outline of that big tree when he heard the noise. People were coming.

  His mother yelled. Enrique stayed where he was, behind a rock that was nearly as tall as him, trying to figure out a way to save her — all of them. He had a younger sister, Liliana. She was fat and funny and stronger than a boy, and they were always together. But he was so scared. If he stood up on his toes and looked over the rock, he could see figures moving in and out of flashlight beams.

  For the next hour he listened to the soldiers taunt his father, saying he was a subversive, that his wife and daughters were whores. They must’ve done something else too because Enrique heard his mother scream in pain. Enrique started running towards her, but an arm grabbed him by the waist. A second soldier put a gun to his chest and laughed, said he’d caught one. One to keep.

  Enrique howled for his family. And his mother yelled back until the men stuffed something into his mouth and took him away. That’s when he started his life as a soldier.

  But his family didn’t go anywhere. To this day, he believes they’re still at El Pico. Exactly how they fell when they were shot, probably in a shallow hole. He knows because this is how the military did it in those days, how he was trained to do it.

  Since then, no one has ever agreed to acknowledge them. After the Ixtán evictions, the mine controlled the land and it was impossible to —

  That is as far as Danielle managed to get. When Pepe finishes reading, he looks up.

  “Lo siento,” she says. I’m sorry.

  Pepe points sharply towards the campsite, which is just out of view. He doesn’t even bother leading Danielle there because he knows she won’t run. She leaves him on his rock staring at the papers in his hands.

  Before making her last turn though, she glances back. Pepe still hasn’t moved. He looks frozen. What must it be like to read the story of your past, of the loss of your family? Danielle thinks of her own parents, of her mother’s illness, and then of Aida, reading her letters from the 1980s. Was it fair to leave, to force Aida to interpret them alone?

  An unnatural sound interrupts these thoughts. A vibration. Very faint. So faint Danielle thinks she’s dreaming it. Pepe is reaching for something — his phone. He puts its boxy form to his ear, answering. Danielle wants to scream for joy — for help. Someone is calling! But no. Whoever it is will be on Pepe’s side. She should go. But her curiosity is physical. She takes a step off the path and into the bushes to watch.

  How the same, and yet how different Pepe looks. Moments ago he was stiff with what Danielle read as pain and memory. Now she sees only need. Pepe barely moves as he receives whatever information is coming over his precious line out. She should be back with the group by now. She’s pushed it too far. Also, she needs to piss. But Danielle feels that she has no choice but to keep standing where she is. She presses her legs together and waits.

  Pepe shifts. He reaches into a pocket of his fatigues and pulls out folded paper, holds it up. It’s her story! The first or this latest one? Impossible to tell. Pepe starts reading into the phone. He’s sending one of her stories to the newspapers — or TV, the internet. Whatever. Part of Danielle is amazed that Pepe can bear to repeat those words about his life. Part of her can’t help picturing her name attached to them.

  Then Pepe touches a button and the call is over. Danielle wants to go, but something’s wrong. Pepe seems perplexed and then flinches — with anger, Danielle thinks. He looks directly over at the spot where she stands. She doesn’t breathe, makes herself as small as she possibly can, praying to each branch, each leaf between her and him to do its job as camouflage. Has she been seen? If so, Pepe will kill her, murder her while the others eat their dinners. But he just looks back at his phone. Danielle is about to get away when Pepe reaches into a different pocket in his pants. This time he pulls out the Swiss Army knife Danielle has seen him use before. Cursing under his breath, he flicks out one of its implements and presses the tip into the seam where the front and back components of the phone come together. He applies enough pressure that his mask bends at the mouth, the hole closing outwards. He keeps at it until schwwiiick! The front plastic cover pops off abruptly, landing among the leaves at his feet. To Danielle, this is tragedy. Why would Pepe ruin his perfectly good phone? He puts on his flashlight and scrutinizes the inner parts. After a moment, all of his body seems to relax. Pepe retrieves the cover and snaps it into place.

  Danielle senses that he will get up at any moment, and so she moves, letting tree branches pull against her as soundlessly as she can, returning towards the shed. She tells herself that Pepe will not hear or even think of her. As she goes, she plays back everything she’s seen. Why check inside the phone? And then she knows — for no reason except years of watching police procedurals: he thought it was bugged, that someone was tracing him, someone he doesn’t trust. Who? Rita? Danielle cannot imagine Rita trying such a sophisticated ploy. Who else? Pepe’s contact out there in the world — the one calling him? But that makes no sense at all. The contact is almost certainly someone like the delegation’s bus driver, Ramón, obviously paid to lead them into a trap. Or like the spies who sold out Pepe’s family. People in need of money.

  Unable to determine the object of Pepe’s distrust, Danielle is left with a strange feeling that takes her some time to identify. It’s pity. She pities the man who has taken her captive. His aloneness, his history. She wills the feeling away. She doesn’t need Stockholm syndrome on top of everything else. But Danielle also knows firsthand how distrust can make you crazy.

  By the time Pepe returns to the shed, Danielle is sitting down, having already wolfed down half the food on her plate. He looks around for her, finding her as she knows she is: pale and sweaty, sick with fear, about to piss her pants. But he must assume this is a consequence of what she’s just heard about his life. Pepe’s eyes only rest on her a moment before he snarls at the others, then goes back out. Ten minutes later, Delmi comes in. That didn’t take long. Everyone knows they’re sleeping together. No one cares. Danielle finally gets permission to urinate. Returning, she sits down to share the silent anxiety of the group over the walk they know begins momentarily. Will it be harder? Rockier? What happens if someone breaks an ankle?

  Finally, Pepe reappears. The sex must be working for him because he’s looser. He walks directly over to Pierre, tears off his gag unceremoniously and cuts his wrist bindings. “Vamos,” he says, and everyone tries to overcome their surprise to scramble into line, retying boots and hauling on their packs. Pierre is last to get going. Danielle turns back and sees him running a hand delightedly over his lips like they’re brand new.

  June 14, 1980

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEELA!!

  Do you believe it? A quarter century! Who
knows, maybe I was already too old to take this trip on. I’m bored, Neela. The faction controls my entire life. I need permission to go anywhere, do anything. But they’re so disorganized, nothing ever happens when it’s supposed to! I end up sitting around reading. If it wasn’t for that American journalist I told you about, who left me some paperbacks, I’d be reduced to reading canned food labels.

  The other day I was cutting my toenails, eating a banana, thinking: aside from the food, the diarrhea and the bugs, I could be anywhere. What am I doing here?? I’m still gathering material, sure. But it’s like being allowed to add one piece to a puzzle per week. And can I just add that a lot of people in this faction are quasi-literate at best? I hear you cringing. I guess I thought it would be idealists and visionaries all around. But I’ve only got Sosa and Adrian to talk to, and Adrian’s not here right now, as you’ll have guessed by my mood.

  DB

  THURSDAY

  APRIL 7

  12:50 PM. San Salvador

  Aida is riding in the backseat of an overly air-conditioned car between Ralph Joseph and Sylvie Duchamp. Having watched the kidnapper’s video an unhealthy number of times, Aida notices that Ralph has the same jaw and the same high forehead as his niece, the hostage named Tina, while Sylvie, so tall and freckled, bears only a passing resemblance to her son, Antoine — unlike Sylvie’s husband Benoît, seated in the front, who’s a dead ringer for Antoine.