by Terese Ramin
Dressed, she let the lid of the cedar chest thud emphatically down and went along the hall to the kitchen carrying her pack. In a locked cupboard she found and appropriated a bottle of brandy and two mismatched snifters. From her brother’s tiny refrigerator she pilfered a precious bit of cheese, some bread and some fruit. She was about to explore the possibility of finding Fred’s private cache of chocolate bars when a young Indian burst through the door, fear apparent in his every movement.
"Doctor," he begged, rushing to her. "Doctor must come now."
"He’s not here. What’s wrong? Can I help?"
"Doctor," the youth repeated. "Baby come wrong. Doctor. Help!"
Further English failed him, and he resorted to exaggerated gestures, which made his predicament only too clear when he explained in his own tongue. His wife was in labor with their first baby. It was taking too long, and they were afraid it was placed wrong and—
And they were just afraid.
Acasia stepped into the examining room, dragged a smock over her clothes and checked the contents of Fred’s spare medical bag as she slung her pack across her shoulders. Then, with a sigh of regret, she left a terse note on Fred’s message board and followed the man out of the clinic.
* * *
"Why isn’t she back yet?" Cameron demanded, not for the first time. He strode from one end of the veranda to the other, peering anxiously into the unquiet darkness.
"Relax," Fred said, also not for the first time. "She’s fine. She’s delivered babies before, and she knows this forest as well as the Indians. Cool down, Smith. She’ll be back when she’s finished."
"Yeah, right." Easy for Fred to say. He was a lunatic, too, and Acasia was only his sister. To Cameron, who’d been thinking of her nonstop all day, she was a good deal more.
Behind him, Fred opened the screen door and stepped out. Yellow light spilled after him. "Here, drink this. It’ll help you settle down."
He handed Cameron a glass that the latter accepted with suspicion. The drink smelled fermented, which was fine, but… Cameron took a gulp, gagged on the taste and spit the liquid over the railing. "What is this stuff?"
"Native drink. Made from manioc root. Tastes like sin, but lets you feel good without ever really getting drunk. It’s an acquired taste. Drink it."
Cameron passed him the glass. "Thanks, but no thanks. I’d as soon be crazy."
"And I’d as soon you calmed down. You’re not going to do anyone any good like this—especially Casie." Fred took a swallow of Cameron’s drink and made a face. "I, on the other hand, can give her hell, as is my right."
"That because you’re her brother or because you’ve been giving it to her all her life?"
"Not all her life. Didn’t meet her till I was ten. She wasn’t quite three. My mother found out about her and her mother, and decided that if Simon Jones wanted to live in sin he could do it as well with two children as he could with one. Probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Casie’s mom is a bit wacko, but she’s a terrific mother. Mine was more like Casie. Couldn’t sit still for two minutes at a time. Watch out for that."
Cameron leaned on the porch rail and eyed Fred speculatively. In all the hours they’d spent together today, the man had said next to nothing—except to instruct Cameron about the forest. He hadn’t said one word about Acasia. Now he was suddenly imparting bits of the Jones family history. Just what was going on?
Across the torch–lit clearing, rock music blared from an open hut, an incongruous reminder of civilization. Children, teenagers and adults all cavorted to the beat, laughing, staggering around, cuddling in the shadows.
"We had our first teenage suicide here last month," Fred said abruptly.
Silently Cameron waited out the non sequitur, sure it would lead somewhere. Fred didn’t disappoint him.
"Casie was here when it happened. She took it personally, as though there were something she could have done. She just can’t take seeing people quit like that."
"Why’d it happen? You’d think down here, away from the cities, away from that kind of stress—"
"Civilization has long arms. You get some blue jeans, a little music, a dab of reading, and all of a sudden you’ve got want. Then everyone’s got problems—stupid, petty little pressures that never existed before. You can’t always guard against it, and you can’t always see it coming. And sometimes there’s just nothing anyone can do. Casie doesn’t want to realize that."
He was so close to what made Acasia tick that he could taste it. "What don’t I know about her, Fred?"
Fred took another swig from Cameron’s glass and grimaced. "Been here nearly twelve years and still can’t get used to this stuff."
Cameron kept himself deliberately in check, holding back his anger by closing his fist around the porch railing until his knuckles turned white. Someone out of sight behind the corner of the clinic giggled. Torchlight wavered over craggy faces, over dancers, made grotesque shadows out of ordinary expressions and movements. "What has a month–old teenage suicide down here got to do with what kept Acasia from me, Fred?"
"Paolo Gianini’s sister Lisetta committed suicide." Fred looked up at Cameron’s start of surprise, surprised himself. "You’re the only person beside Lisetta who Casie ever really talked to. I thought she’d told you…. I just assumed you knew…."
Fifteen years ago. Spring. Milan, Italy. The Gianini villa.
Acasia and Lisetta had been seventeen, sophisticated, carefree, wealthy, beautiful. At Acasia’s instigation, they’d just left the gates of the villa in Lisetta’s red Lamborghini, headed for Cannes, the Cote d’Azur, excitement. A black car had pulled in behind them, a black van in front. Men with ski masks and weapons had taken them from the red car, shoved them into the van and driven them away.
Acasia was helpless, mouth and eyes taped, hands and feet bound, jackknifed between the seats, listening to, and memorizing demands. They didn’t want her; she was to be their tool. They threw her from the van, and she lay in a heap on a sidewalk with a broken arm until someone found her. Then she did as the terrorists had instructed her: acted as a liaison between them and Lisetta’s family; taking phone calls and relaying messages; picking up recordings of Lisetta’s tearful messages proving she was still alive—maybe.
Lisetta’s parents, her brother Paolo—then a captain in the carabinieri—had pressured her to remember and relive everything: sounds, voices, inflections, road bumps, smells….
"Lissi spent five weeks in a state of virtual sensory deprivation and solitude before they finally found her and brought her home," Fred continued. "Casie played the whole thing tough, as usual, but Lisetta… She wasn’t a survivor like Casie. She broke. There was therapy for them both, of course, but it could only do so much. Lissi got to the point where she hung on Casie, depended on her for everything—and Casie let her. I guess she figured—and I’m sure people must have made her think—the whole thing was somehow her fault, that if she’d done God–knows–what Lisetta wouldn’t have been kidnapped, or would have been found sooner. Survivor’s guilt, I guess. When Lissi threw in the towel for good, Acasia decided that was her fault, too." Sightlessly, Fred stared at the sky, where flashes of violet lightning singed the clouds. "Sometimes the smartest people believe the dumbest things." He shrugged and shook off the mood.
"Anyway, after Casie pulled a couple of really stupid stunts, she decided on her own that she needed help coping with the guilt. But I think she’s been dealing with it in one form or another ever since." He looked at Cameron. "That’s it."
Cameron strangled the veranda railing. She’d lied to him in her letters, but he’d known that. Misrepresentation and evasiveness were part of the Simon Jones gene pool, but he’d always assumed that if Acasia was ever in need, ever hurt, she’d come to him for help—if not because they’d been lovers, then because they were friends. He should have known better.
Needle–sharp rain descended suddenly, dousing the torches in the clearing in front of the clinic and s
tinging Cameron’s cheeks. The music, muted by the rain, sharpened in tempo, the beat escalating, going wild.
"I looked for her," he said finally. "Simon ever tell you that?" When Fred shook his head, Cameron laughed shortly. "I forgot. Messages rarely passed through Simon." Tiredly, he wiped the rain out of his face. This anger was a new one for him, but old and out of place for Fred. He couldn’t go back to fix the past. From here out there was only the future. "Where is she?"
"She’ll be here." Fred did a few shuffling dance steps, as though unable to resist the music any longer. "About the only thing you can do for Casie is wait." He danced across the veranda toward the steps. "I’m going across. Coming? Easier to wait if you’re busy."
Cameron shook his head. "Later, maybe," he said, and stood without moving, staring into the driving rain.
Chapter 7
SHE WAS DOING what she did best in the world: waiting for something to happen, ready to help things along if nothing did.
There were two of them, within reach but reluctant to be born, their hearts beating fast and steady in her ears.
Acasia lifted her head to smile at the young mother. "Soon," she said quietly, rubbing the swollen brown belly. "Soon." She unbent and pulled the stethoscope from her ears. Soon was always relative. In this case, it was a matter of hours instead of days.
The father hovered anxiously near his wife’s head, his query mute but clear.
"There’s no problem," Acasia told him in his own tongue. "You have two babies coming. They’re slow, but they’re fine. No problems, okay?"
He believed her willingly, grateful for her presence, her reassurance, her knowledge. Acasia handed him a wet cloth, and he used it to cool his wife, smoothing it over her face, her breasts, the belly where his babies lay waiting. Just as Cameron might have done in another place, another time.
Another life.
Bleakly Acasia, the intruder here, turned away, giving them their privacy.
Afternoon clung to the sky, beginning to wane at the edges. Evening nudged the ground, scattered it with patches of darkness, traced deceptive shade through its heat. The support of a seventy–foot tamarind beckoned, and Acasia leaned against it, wriggling a shoulder to find a comfortable spot among the lichen. In another place, another time, she might have found cigarettes in the pocket of her shirt and sought ease in lighting one. In another place, another time, she would have relished the first long drag, pulling smoke deep, holding it in as an act of meditation, exhaling to stave off the bugs. Another place, another time…
The waiting mother cried out with another contraction, and her husband, trembling, bolted from her side and disappeared behind the hut, seeking courage. Acasia went inside to calm her, kneading the woman’s stiff back to take away the pain. The father returned, shaken and pale, to take Acasia’s place.
Again she turned away to leave them alone, unsure exactly why. They came from a culture that expected to share. Privacy was a concept born of civilization and often confused with dignity. This young couple living in the forest alone, without benefit of a hamlet of adjoining huts and family, was the exception rather than the rule. Acasia wondered for a moment if they had been ousted from the tribe, and if so, why. She didn’t dwell on it, however, too involved with the conflicts in her own life to intrude on theirs.
"I’m sorry, Cam," she whispered, scrubbing a palm over her clammy pants before burrowing into Fred’s medical bag in search of sterile instruments she would use later. "You should know better than to count on me. I’ll make it up to you sometime. Maybe. If I can."
She carried the wrapped instruments, a package of sterile gauze and a bottle of silver nitrate over to one of the several woven cotton hammocks that comprised the major furniture in the room. There was blessed little to do, but Acasia puttered around anyway, using up time, conscious every moment of its passing. Time itself didn’t matter, only its loss and the distance it put between herself and any possibility of sharing tonight with Cameron.
She was conscious, too, of the fact that Dominic would return for them when he discovered they were not in the south, but that didn’t bear wasting worry on… now.
Ritimi, the woman, moaned and grunted, and Acasia monitored her again, finding the babies’ progress satisfactory.
"Soon," she assured the young couple. "Soon."
She demonstrated the cleansing breaths she wanted Ritimi to use, and Ritimi laughed at her, forgetting her fears in her delight that this barren old woman–soldier could believe she knew how best to deliver a baby. Acasia laughed, too, ruefully understanding. She had experienced so much of her life as an active spectator—watching other people’s pain, other people’s fear, other people’s joy—that she was no longer always certain which pieces of memory were her own. Sometimes it seemed she was no more than a residue of midnight screams; sometimes she was fresh canvas awaiting the brush, the one Cameron wielded.
After giving Ritimi’s tummy a final pat, which also confirmed the babies’ positions, Acasia rejoined the dusk, taking advantage of the enfolding comfort of a jute–colored hammock. Palm leaves fringed her line of sight, melted into the forest and went up to join the sky. There was a peculiar sense of peace in waiting for life to be renewed—peace wrapped up in an expectation of life’s continuity and the possibility that with each new birth the world had a chance to get a little better. Birth bred hope.
There was a gasp of surprise, a strangled groan, and then it was time.
Excitement, razor–sharp, pricked Acasia’s nerves and washed over her in waves. This was what it was all about; this was the why of being: new life springing forth with intense relief and joy.
Sisiwe, the husband, held Ritimi from behind, supporting her while Acasia urged her to push. Acasia was ecstatic when the first infant’s warmth filled her arms and its shriek of outrage split the hut. She worked fast, laying the baby on Ritimi’s belly while she cut the cord and waited for the twin to follow. Ritimi glowed, holding the first of her babies, a daughter, joy completing the metamorphosis from pain to laughter.
Cam should be here, Acasia thought as she took the baby and carefully cleaned her. We should share this. I need to share this with him. I need him.
She didn’t even realize what she had thought, she was so wrapped up in the baby. Need was not something she allowed herself to fall prey to. Need was too much like love, was in fact the word the Indians used to express love.
Ritimi held out her arms, and Acasia returned the baby to her mother. Sisiwe watched his wife and baby with unabashed delight, and Acasia turned away quickly, imagining his face was Cam’s.
The second child seemed content to take its time arriving, so Acasia went outside again to wait. Dusk had gone; night had settled firmly into place. The pieces of sky that were visible above the forest canopy were streaked with purple and gray, mottled with restless clouds. Adventurous insects braved the shield of repellent Acasia had applied, settling lightly on her exposed skin. Sighing, she swatted them away and leaned back against an available roof support, using it to scratch her back. Outside the perimeter of Ritimi’s joy she felt unsettled. Disquiet lay over her like a shadow without a name, approaching, placing cold fingers on her neck.
She listened to each sound with suspicion, but she missed their footsteps anyway. There were five of them. They materialized around her, weapons slung carelessly, baseball caps fitted to their heads, faces half covered by bandannas.
"We heard you were here."
Acasia’s mouth tightened when she recognized the voice. The Zaragozan National Liberation Front called him Angelo, the angel; UPI referred to him as Lucifer, the angel of death.
"Bad news travels fast," she said grimly.
"Yes," Angelo agreed. "Your well–being has brought us much—" He searched for a word that pleased him. "Distress. Yes," he nodded, "much distress."
Suddenly cold, Acasia smiled. "Your son is well?" she asked softly, reminding him of who he had to thank for the boy’s safe entry into life.
"We did not take the man you rescued as we might have this afternoon," the freedom fighter snarled. "Be aware of that. I have not forgotten the debt I owed to you and your brother. I now consider us even."
Nausea swelled, but Acasia recovered quickly, because she had to. Here, mercy was as foreign as snow. Quietly she stared at Angelo, showing no emotion. The man lowered his bandanna and moved closer, but still she said nothing.
"Your well–being," Angelo said again, as much for himself as her, "has brought us trouble. Our president—" he spit the word scornfully into the dirt "—has sent a message to yours telling him we have Mr. Smith. You know this is a lie."
Inside the hut, Ritimi began to moan. Acasia’s attention slipped. "Get to the point."
"Still so impatient," Angelo murmured. "It is your greatest asset and your greatest fault." Acasia made a move to leave, and the dark man shrugged. "No more games. We need supplies."
"Tell the Red Cross," Acasia snapped. "I don’t run a freight service."
There was a sudden flash of teeth, and Angelo chuckled at some private joke. "These supplies are of a more delicate and explosive nature."
Acasia froze. That these men would even consider approaching her in this manner…
"Mr. Smith is wealthy, and he owes you his life. He could supply you with funds for us…"
"No," Acasia said evenly, finding her voice,
"…to help overthrow our president’s violent regime…"
"No."
"…and bring our more benevolent selves into power."
He smiled, enjoying himself, and Acasia stared at him, appalled. "¡Estas loco!" she said, forgetting all her deeply ingrained rules of coolheaded negotiation. "You’d be just like Sanchez—maybe worse."
"In the end," Angelo agreed calmly, as though this were not the middle of the rain forest but some academic round table discussion. "But it would be better for a while."
"No."
