Life During Wartime

‘Yeah,’ Ruy was saying. ‘Don’t matter to me if the revolution’s dead. I start it all over myself if I have to, unnerstan’? And anyway’—he shook a finger at Debora—‘why you keep tellin’ me that shit ’bout it’s dead? You think that, why you goin’ to Panama? You runnin’? Naw, that’s not it! You and this Yankee come on board, act like you gonna kill this black man, and then the next minute you actin’ like old friends. It don’t make sense. You got some kinda plan. A fool can see that. And lately there’s been too many strange motherfuckers headin’ for Panama. Gotta be somethin’ big happenin’ down there.’

‘How you figure?’ Mingolla asked.

‘I told ya, lotsa strange fuckers travelin’ these days.’ Ruy fingered a cigarette from his shirt pocket ‘Wonder what’ goin’ on.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Debora. ‘People have been running to Panama since the war began.’

‘Not this kinda people.’ Ruy cupped a match, lit up. He threw back his head and blew smoke, affording Debora a view of his sharp profile.

With every gesture, he was—Mingolla thought—projecting the image of the Romantic Smuggler, layering it with his Zorro-like commitment. The pose was laughable, but Mingolla was coming to believe that Ruy knew this, that he was using the image to disguise a real commitment. He had been operating too long in dangerous waters to be the buffoon he pretended, and besides, Mingolla had a bad feeling about him, about his whole act.

‘Yeah,’ Ruy said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘I been smellin’ somethin’ funny for a while now. Been hearin’ things, too.’

‘You fulla shit, mon.’ Tully, perched on the rail, turned his head; the moonlight washed over half his face. ‘Ain’t nobody be tellin’ a chump like you nothin’.’

Ruy ignored him. ‘This one man I carry south, he don’t think mucha me. And that’s good, ’cause when a man don’t think mucha you, he ain’t cautious.’ He blew smoke toward Tully. ‘So he say to me, “Ruy, there’s more to this war than meets the eye.” And I say, “Yeah? What you mean?” I’m pretendin’ I ain’t really interested, y’know. “Well,” he says, “I probably shouldn’t be talkin’ on this, but the peace is comin’ soon, and Panama is where it’s comin’ from.” And I say, “Wow! Peace, man! That’s fuckin’ terrific!” And the man’s all puffed up ’cause of how he’s astoundin’ me, y’know. “Oh, yeah,” he say. “People I know, they workin’ on the peace right this second. Negotiatin’, y’understan’.”’

Ruy folded his arms, cocked his head, and from that pose, the pose of a bemused lecturer pausing to consider the effect of his words, Mingolla recognized the man of whom Ruy reminded him. It should, he thought, have been obvious to him from the beginning. All Ruy’s little clues had been designed to give himself away.

‘Anyhow,’ Ruy went on, ‘I start pressin’ this man… not so he’d notice, y’unnerstan’. Just workin’ on him. And he tells me that, yeah, dey workin’ on a peace in Panama, but dere’s fightin’ still. Armies in the streets. I ask him who’s fightin’, and he act like it’s a big secret, like he’s really doin’ me a favor by tellin’ me, y’know, and he say he ain’t clear on the whole story, but he give me a name and say this name got a lot to do with it.’ He put on a sly smile, swept all of them with a glance. ‘ “Sotomayor,” he say to me. “You ’member that name. Sotomayor. That name, it’s the key to everything.”’

Mingolla met his eyes, and though Ruy was not smiling, Mingolla could sense his secret amusement. He was about to call Ruy, to demand an accounting; but at that moment the engines stopped.

‘Fuck!’ Ruy threw down his cigarette, flung open the door to the wheelhouse. ‘What’d you do?’

‘Nothin’,’ said Corazon. ‘I don’t do nothin’. It just stop.’

Ruy stomped forward, heaved off the hatch of the engine compartment; he put his hands on his hips and stared down into the darkness. ‘Corazon!’ he bawled. ‘Bring the flashlight!’

Corazon went forward with a flashlight, and Ruy grabbed it, lowered himself into the compartment. The rest of them gathered around Corazon. Below, Ruy swept the beam across a maze of grease-smeared metal. He held the beam steady a second, then banged the side of the compartment. ‘Son of a bitch! Motherfucker!’

‘Can’t you fix it?’ Debora asked.

Ruy banged the wall again, hauled himself back onto the deck. ‘Take parts to fix this cunt! And I ain’t got no parts.’ He looked as if he were about to throw the flashlight, but only smacked it against his hip. ‘Man, this some real fuckin’ shit!’

‘Look like we gonna have to put into port,’ said Tully.

Ruy’s face was wild, the muscles knotting at the corner of his mouth. ‘I told ya, I’m illegal ’round here. They blow my fuckin’ head off if they catch me.’

‘Run up the sail,’ Mingolla suggested.

‘Sure, man! That way we be right off Truxillo come daybreak, and that son of a bitch Dominguez, he be smilin’ ear to ear when he see the Ensorcelita. Shit!’ Ruy clutched his forehead. ‘What the fuck am I gonna do?’

‘You can’t fix it for sure?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Ain’t you listenin’, man?’ Ruy spun around to face him, his fists balled.

‘Den we got no choice but to ’bandon dis washtub,’ said Tully. ‘I go look fah somethin’ to wrap de guns.’

Ruy shoved him. ‘We ain’t abandonin’ shit, man!’

Tully knocked him against the side of the wheelhouse and engulfed his throat in a one-handed chokehold. ‘Don’t be ’busin’ me, mon. Got dat?’ He gave Ruy a squeeze, and Ruy’s eyes bugged. ‘Now you wanna stay wit’ de ship, dat’s fine. We don’t need you.’

Mingolla looked at the shore, at the shadowed hills rising inland. ‘What’s out there?’

‘Too many fuckin’ soldiers,’ said Ruy, massaging his throat ‘That’s what.’

‘Olancho,’ said Tully. ‘Mountains, jungle. Dat’s where de war begin, but dene’s no fightin’ now. Hard to say what’s out dere.’

‘Maybe there’s a way,’ said Ruy. ‘If we can get past the checkpoints, then maybe I can get you to Panama. And maybe I can get financin’ for another boat.’

‘We do fine by ourselves, mon,’ Tully said.

‘Fuck you will!’ But Ruy moved away from him. ‘You be lost ’fore you go ten miles. But there’s ways I know. Military roads, old contra trails. ’Fore I got the Ensorcelita I used to travel that route.’

Mingolla stared out at the coast, then at Ruy. It might be best, he thought, to hold back on calling Ruy, see what he had in mind. ‘Are those ways still open?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Ruy. ‘But we need a truck or somethin’. Maybe one of them off-road vehicles. Won’t be hard to find somethin’. Lotsa these farmers ’round here, they fix up their trucks with extra gas tanks so they can go huntin’ in the hills.’

‘How long will it take?’ Debora asked.

‘Depends what we get into,’ Ruy said, sidling up to her, solicitous. ‘But I tell ya one thing. Time we come to Panama, we gonna have a few stories to tell.’

Two miles from where they came ashore, tucked in among the ranks of coconut palms, stood a copra plantation: tall wooden racks for drying coconut fiber; three tin-roofed sheds in which the product was stored; and a long ranch-style building of whitewashed stone with a red tile roof. This last served as living quarters and office for the owner, Don Julio Saldivar. Parked around the corner of the building was a venerable Ford Bronco with an auxiliary gas tank welded into the luggage compartment. Don Julio met them at the door with an automatic pistol in hand, but Mingolla persuaded him to amiability and generosity, telling him that they were government agents on secret assignment. The plantation owner offered him use of the Bronco, camping equipment, and offered Debora, whose clothes had been lost during the swim to shore—no lifeboat on the Ensorcelita – the old clothes belonging to his daughter who was off at the university in San Pedro Sula. Mingolla had Ruy and Tully check out the Bronco, and sat with Don Julio in the kitchen, a cramped room with an old-fashioned gas stove and a motel icebox and photographs of Don Julio standing over a variety of slaughtered game animals decorating the pebbled white walls. Don Julio set about drawing a map of the coastal hills, tracing the roads that would lead them away from the checkpoints.

‘What’s here?’ Mingolla asked, indicating a section on the map where the roads vanished. ‘You haven’t marked anything down.’