The Kingmaker

by Ryan, Kennedy

  Like vaccinations.

  “How’d the shots go today?” I ask Wallace.

  “Pretty good,” he says. “Costa Rica requires vaccines, but it’s harder to administer in some of these more remote places. Some people here have to walk hours to even reach a hospital. We’re coordinating with the Ministry of Health to get as many of these kids vaccinated as possible. I’m doing more tomorrow in another village not too far away.”

  “I’ll ask if they can spare me tomorrow so I can help you. I used to want to be a clown. That should count for something. I can distract them from the needles.”

  “Okay, Bozo. It’s a deal.” Wallace laughs and takes a sip of water. “So how’s your boyfriend doing?”

  I don’t stop my smile in time, and Wallace, who knows me so damn well, points at my dead-giveaway grin. “Lenny’s in love!”

  “Oh, good grief.” I try to erase the perma-smile that paints itself on my mouth every time I think of Maxim—of the night we had together and the morning after in Ohio. Of what we’ll have when I return. “It hasn’t even been that long since we started . . .”

  The word dating teeters on my lips, almost falling out. I’ve gone from avoiding Maxim, to tolerating him, to sleeping with him and missing his arms around me. I’m afraid to admit even to myself how deep my feelings for him run. I’m certainly not admitting anything to Wallace.

  “How’s Viv and the baby?” I ask, hoping Wallace will let me change the subject.

  He offers a you don’t fool me look, but launches into his latest tale from the uncle chronicles. The students and the rest of the team finishing up their dinner laugh louder the more animated Wallace becomes. Their good humor provides great cover for my less-than-happy thoughts. I miss Maxim. The little time we had before I left wasn’t enough. My body longs for him, but it’s not just my body. My heart aches and feels like it’s barely beating with him so far away. I open my hands in my lap and follow the invisible map he sketched across my palms so long ago.

  Now you have the whole world in your hands.

  I caress the compass charm dangling from my bracelet. I know it’s expensive and I should probably take it off while I’m working here. If I was smart, I would have left the obviously valuable jewelry at home. But there was no way that was happening. I needed this part of him with me.

  “You ready to turn in, ladies?” I ask the girls, noting the faint lines of weariness on their faces. “We all have a really early start tomorrow.”

  We cross the reserve, walking leisurely over the lush green grass, the palm leaves casting shadows in moonlight. We climb the few wooden steps into our thatch-roofed hut. Five of us share it, each having a mattress on the floor and mosquito netting.

  Once we’re in our pajamas and under our mosquito nets, the conversation starts. I love their questions about boys and college, love hearing their dreams and ambitions, and how they want to hold on to our culture, language and traditions even while navigating the world beyond the reservation. The same things I had to figure out.

  There is a unique duality to our experience that’s sometimes hard for others to understand. Living on patches of land when all of it, by rights, belonged to our ancestors. Living in, loving a nation professing freedom, liberty and justice for all, when our traditions were suppressed, and we were forced from our homes and endured unimaginable injustices. Things like Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, even Mt. Rushmore, which is built on our sacred grounds—all are symbols of American tradition, but also blaring examples of how we’ve been mistreated. Conquered. In America’s transition from annihilating our people to assimilating them, we lost so much. These young girls have to reconcile making peace with that truth enough to succeed here, but still agitating so we don’t lose any more of the traditions and culture our ancestors entrusted to us.

  If I wasn’t here, I’d be home, curled up by my fireplace in a cashmere robe, clinging to a wine glass filled with my favorite Bordeaux. Probably reviewing data and policy papers for Owen’s campaign. I love my life, and can’t imagine a path more suited to who I am and how I’m made. But these trips, these nights talking with girls like these about their dreams and how to hold onto and pass on our rich heritage—I wouldn’t trade this.

  “Can I ask you something, Ms. Hunter?” Anna asks after we’ve been talking for a while.

  “Sure.” I stifle a yawn and force myself to focus. “What’s up?”

  “Your, um . . . your first time,” she says in a rush and with a deep breath like she’s diving underwater. “Did you, well, did you love him?”

  The question takes me by surprise. We’ve talked about boys, sure, and crushes, but I didn’t expect this. Anna’s sixteen, so I guess that’s about right. Most girls don’t seem to wait quite as long as I did, but most girls don’t have Maxim Cade as their first. A reminiscent smile curves my lips in the dark. God, he was so careful with me, but then, so completely out of control, like he couldn’t get inside fast enough and wanted to stay there forever. I didn’t have words that night for what I felt when he initiated me not just into sex, but into this world that is just ours. Just our two bodies, sun and moon, just our souls, earth and water. We are the sky and the sea, and the horizon is where our hearts meet. Every part of that world is made by and from and for just us two. I couldn’t articulate it then, but now I have no choice.

  “Yeah, I loved him,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, the hot emotion in my throat nearly melting the words.

  I don’t have time to process those words and their meaning before the girls dig deeper and for more. More questions, harder answers. Finally the girls’ words start slurring, and my eyes grow heavy. The stirring breeze through the open window keeps us awake a few moments longer, and then we sleep.

  Morning comes quickly. It feels like I’ve barely closed my eyes before Wallace is gently shaking my shoulder, asking if I still want to go with him to the village. The sun isn’t even up. The girls have another hour or so to sleep, so I dress as quietly as I can. I join Wallace and Paco at a Jeep that has seen better days, climb into the back seat, and rest my head against the window.

  “At least we get to ride,” Wallace says wryly. “The village is about ten miles away. That would have been a long walk.”

  “Promise me I won’t have to stick a needle in some poor, unsuspecting kid,” I say on a yawn.

  “Just be my clown, Lenny.”

  He reaches back to give one of my two braids an affectionate tug. We share a smile, and then lapse into silence. For once Wallace doesn’t keep up a running commentary about everything we see, but allows me to appreciate it. It’s hard to believe that a mere five hours away, there’s an airport and a bustling city. Here on the fringe of it lies this wild, untamed jungle, the narrow road carved into the side of a mountain the only concession to progress. Paco is carefully negotiating the road, and I can’t help but risk a glance over the side, the precipitous height making my belly dive and flop.

  The Jeep screeches to a halt and jerks my attention forward. A small camouflage-spotted truck with a canvas-covered bed blocks our way forward on the narrow strip of road.

  “What the hell?” Wallace asks, peering through the windshield.

  A round of gunshots blast into the air, staccato and strident. My heart seizes, clamoring against my ribs at the violent sound. Wallace reaches to the back seat and shoves me to the floor.

  “Stay down,” he whispers. The flattened panic in his voice is only outdone by the terror. A half-formed scream jams in my throat. A flurry of Spanish words fly past my ears faster than I can process or translate. I force my body as low to the floorboard as possible, keeping my head down.

  Paco’s door is yanked open. I hear him begging, a series of por favors and confused pleas. I brace myself for the sound of the shot that could end his life, but it doesn’t come. I bite my lip against a cry. I’m completely blind to what’s happening. My fear has no shape or form—only sound.

  To my right, I hear Wallace’s door jerked open too, h
is body dragged out.

  “This one,” a man says in heavily accented English. “He the one.”

  “What?” Wallace asks, his voice slightly higher and confused. “No. There’s been a mistake. El error. Vaccuna.”

  “Si, si,” the man replies, satisfaction in the words. “Vaccuna. Come. He the one.”

  There’s no way I’m hunching down in the back seat like some timid rabbit while God knows who drags off my best friend. I’ve never been more frightened, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something. If I didn’t try. I’ve heard of tourists being kidnapped by extremists or mercenaries. This overgrown paradise will swallow any trace of Wallace, and I might never find him. That’s not happening to me again. I can’t lose anyone else that way. I’m working up the nerve to get out and do something, try something, when the back door rips open, and my choice is taken away.

  “Ah ha ha,” a man drawls. “What do we have here?”

  His voice is so neutral it sounds like he ruthlessly scrubbed anything that could trace its owner from it. When I glance up in centimeters of trepidation, the mask covering the man’s face matches the anonymity of his voice. It’s a mask of Abraham Lincoln, incongruously comical, like a child would wear for trick or treat. He’s heavily muscled, broad and tall, maybe six foot five, with blond hair rioting around his head in a cloud of paradoxically cherubic curls. A Kurt Cobain T-shirt tops his camouflage pants.

  “Hi,” he says, his tone infuriatingly calm for a man with a semi-automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. “Care to join the party?”

  He orders me out with a curt flick of his head. My teeth grit around a torrent of curses and demands as his flippancy finally roots out the fury buried beneath my fear.

  I uncoil from my hiding place behind the front seat and climb out. Several dark-haired men, apparently locals, stand behind him, armed and grim-faced. Paco huddles in the truck bed, his wrists trapped in plastic cuffs. Wallace stands on the barrel side of a gun aimed at his head.

  “Who’s this?” another voice asks from just beyond Abe’s shoulder. A man, roughly Abe’s height, maybe a few inches shorter, with hair not quite as blond, curls not quite as cherubic, and an accent firmly from the Midwest, walks toward us, wearing a Richard Nixon mask.

  “We don’t know yet,” Abe replies.

  “Can I keep her?” Nixon asks, and even behind the slits of his mask I feel his eyes crawling over my body in my fitted T-shirt and jeans.

  “We may need to dispose of her, brother,” Abe says, apology in his tone.

  Fear weakens my knees and I struggle to stay on my feet. My chest goes so tight, every breath is torture. The threat of his words finds its mark in my racing heart.

  Abe grabs my arm and drags me forward. “What a shame that would be. She’s a pretty little thing, but I need the good doctor here, not stowaways. Can’t afford dead weight, even if it is lightweight.”

  “Well, let’s see who she is,” Nixon says, grabbing my backpack from the back seat and rummaging through it. He pulls out my passport. “Lennix Moon Hunter. What kind of name is that? What are you? Mexican or some kind of Puerto Rican?”

  “Yavapai-Apache,” I answer, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “What do you want with us?”

  “Oh, I don’t want anything with you,” Abe assures me, his voice soothing. “I’m probably tossing you off the side of this mountain in few seconds.”

  Oh, God. An ear-splitting scream is trapped inside my head, desperate to get out. I’m not sure I could even run. Terror weights my body and nails my feet to the path.

  Abe tips his golden head toward Wallace. “He’s the one I want.”

  “Me?” Wallace touches his chest. “Wh—I don’t—why? I’m a biochemist administering vaccines. There’s been a mistake.”

  “I know who you are,” Abe says, a grin tipping his mask to the side, “but thank you for confirming you’re exactly who I’ve been looking for. You’re gonna make me lots of money, Doctor Murrow.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wallace says, his words and eyes frantic. “But Lennix has nothing to do with this. Let her go. She hasn’t seen your face and—”

  Abe cuts Wallace’s words short with a backhanded slap. Even in the first morning sun’s heat, coldness emanates from Abe’s arctic blue eyes behind the mask.

  “This is my operation, Doctor Murrow,” he says as if he hasn’t just drawn blood from Wallace’s lip. “I’ll tell you what I need from you, and I’ll decide if Lennix Moon Hunter lives or dies.”

  He issues a low stream of Spanish commands, and two of the armed men grab Wallace by the arms, then shove him into the covered bed of the truck.

  “No!” I surge forward, my fright for Wallace overcoming the fear for myself. Abe blocks me with the butt of his gun under my chin.

  “You’re not invited. Yet,” he says, his voice harsh and pleasant. “I need to figure out who you are before I let you in the clubhouse.”

  “I’ve seen her before,” Nixon says, studying me, his eyes narrowed in the mask’s slits.

  “We don’t know each other,” I say carefully, the butt of the gun digging into my neck. “I’d remember a face like that.”

  Abe’s laughter booms through the trees, bouncing off mountains and scurrying birds from their branches.

  “Oh, I get it. Because of the mask.” He gestures to his covered face. “Clever little squaw, aren’t you? Lucky for you I like my women feisty and foreign.”

  “I’m an American,” I reply, tensing at the insult, “like you.”

  The cheeks of his mask drop with his disappearing smile. “You don’t know what I am, who I am, and if you’re a smart bitch, you’ll make sure it stays that way.”

  “I got it,” Nixon says, his voice eager. He shifts his weapon on his shoulder. “That political show Beltway. That’s where I saw her. She was talking about her book.”

  Abe tilts his head, the blue eyes narrowing with interest and speculation.

  “Politics, Ms. Moon?” Abe asks, I’m sure deliberately misnaming me. “The plot does thicken.”

  I wish he’d stop toying with his food and just bite so I can know what I’m dealing with. “Let him go,” I say.

  Before I can draw my next breath, he grabs me by the neck, lifts me clear off the ground and with a few powerful strides, takes me to the edge of the road. He dangles me over the side of the mountain by one strong hand. Hundreds of feet sprawl beneath my frantically kicking legs. Lush jungle, the curvature of a rushing river with rocks like fangs jutting from the water sprawls so far below they look like game-board pieces. Breathing is impossible, not just because of the huge hand cutting off my air supply, but because of the helplessness and fear scrambling up from my belly, anaerobic and nauseating.

  “Stop!” Wallace shouts from the back of the truck. “You’ll drop her!”

  He’s silenced. I can’t tell by what or whom, but his raised voice is swallowed in abrupt quiet.

  “I don’t care if she falls,” Abe says, the cheeks of his mask lifting with a smile that infects his blue eyes with a diabolical gleam. “I’ll hold her here until she learns who’s in control, or dies.”

  This is power at its worst. A madman who, by loosening his fingers, could end my life, hurling me to certain death. By tightening them, he could do the same, choking the very breath from me.

  He squeezes, sick pleasure flooding his bluebell eyes. The irrepressible sound of me fighting for air, for life, fills my own ears. My hands fly to his arms involuntarily, even though if he drops me, I’m dead. I can’t stop them from begging for relief from the iron manacling my neck.

  I’m going to die.

  The thought sprints through my head so fast I can barely catch it. I envision him dropping me, and my belly hollows out like I’m already falling.

  The thick muscles of his arm bulge and strain with the effort of keeping me suspended. Despite his obvious strength, he’s struggling to hold my weight and I feel his fingers on my neck s
lipping. His skin peels under my clawing nails. Tears fall over my cheeks, my body’s desperate response to the torturous grip at my throat.

  His face wavers as my strength fails and my arms drop. Thoughts, images flood my mind. My father bent over his papers, glancing up, love in his eyes, to find me standing at his office door. Mena sprinkling sacred pollen across my cheeks and plunging me into the cold, cleansing river. Kimba and Vivienne, stretched out under spring sunshine, our laughter floating over the Amstel river.

  Maxim.

  Oh, God, Maxim.

  “Doc.”

  His name sputters over my lips on a choking moan. Sobs rack my thrashing, gasping body dangling over a fatal fall. The tangled brush of the landscape below tilts as my consciousness surrenders. Behind my eyes dawns an unlit sky, a blanket of darkness that smothers all sight and every sound. A thousand images my mind and heart have hoarded tattoo themselves behind my eyelids as they fall closed.

  Meeting Maxim for the first time amid a spray of rubber bullets in the Arizona desert. Finding him again on a moonlit night in Amsterdam. Lost with him, found with him in a labyrinth of hedges, rediscovering us after years apart. A squandered decade. Will I ever get to make up for lost time? To tell him I love him? God, I love him so much and he doesn’t even know.

  And now . . . now it’s too late.