In one sense, it was magical, the way the market worked. But in another sense, the sense Father Iván had come to after years of documenting the wreckage—the murdered trade unionists, campesinos, human rights workers, and others—there had come to seem something sinister about it. Perhaps everything you buy ought to include a surcharge of a drop of blood. Or, depending on the product, an ounce.
“Hey, father.” Misael was looking upward, and Father Iván followed his gaze. High up in the branches was a metal box. Snaking upward from the box was a long antennae, hidden among the branches. Father Iván had never seen anything like it before. Military? Police? Military.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Misael, you must tell your nephew he needs to figure out what he wants right now. Because if he’s going to negotiate with Jefferson, it has to happen immediately.”
—
A crowd of children greeted Jefferson when he arrived at the hut, a rectangular bohío with crooked wooden planks and a thatched roof. The youngest were naked, the older ones in dirty pants, fading blouses. One girl of about eleven had a brightly colored beaded necklace, and eyes so dark they seemed to glow. She stared at him as if he were the strange and pitiful one, emerging from his Land Rover, pistol prominently tucked in his jeans, two men with assault rifles at his side, and a caravan of Jesúses in trucks pulling watch at every possible route of egress from the village.
Jefferson did not like children. They were what would last after his death. So he moved through the crowd and strode inside the hut, looking for the priest. Inside was dark and quiet. A shape floated before him. The shape moaned. His eyes adjusted, and the shape materialized into a naked woman, pregnant, massively pregnant, and floating in midair. Her feet hung a few inches off the ground, rope and some kind of leather harness around her upper torso and strung up to the crossbeam of the hut. It was a woman in labor, hung suspended so that gravity could help the baby out. Jefferson was familiar with the practice, but had never seen it before. Other women huddled around, nuns in dark habits. One of them lifted a hand and said, “Out! Out of here!” And she moved forward, as if ready to throw him outside herself.
The pregnant woman moaned. Jefferson felt his nausea returning. He stumbled backward, out to the crowd of children. He breathed once, twice. His guards followed awkwardly behind. A breeze carried the scent of animal shit. His men fingered their trigger guards.
He breathed again. He had been scolded like a child. It had happened in front of his men. He considered heading back in, but to do what? Beat her? That wouldn’t regain him any respect. Nuns have a power. And women giving birth, they also have a power. He’d never understood it. Even Javier, who took more pleasure in torture than in sex and food, had an odd thing for new mothers. Jefferson found it stupid, disquieting. But it was there.
So instead, he turned to his guards and said, “Indios are animals,” and they laughed. Fine.
Up the road, he saw a black cassock. Father Iván, presumably. Waving excitedly. A large cross hung from his neck, like a priest in an old movie.
“No, no,” Father Iván called out. “Not in there.”
Father Iván was tall and thin and covered in sweat. There were dark stains under his arms and across his stomach. His face shone with it. A droplet of sweat sat on the edge of his nose. Another moan came from inside the hut.
“Idiot! You told me . . .” Jefferson began, but then stopped as nausea rose up again.
“Yes, yes, sorry. But one of the women in the village,” Father Iván gestured to the bohío, “well, you saw.”
They both stared for a moment at the hut where the indio woman was hanging, giving birth.
“Maybe it’s a good omen,” the priest said. “A very powerful thing, what’s happening. Us men aren’t so impressive on a day like today, are we? We can’t start a life.”
“I’ve come in enough women to have started a few lives.”
The priest laughed. He motioned down toward the stream on the far side of the road. There was a man sitting there on a log next to a dirty white cooler.
“That’s Edilson,” he said.
“He’s the fool behind this?”
The priest sighed. “Please,” he said, “try to understand. These are very poor, very desperate people. Times have been very hard for them, and you have been very hard on them, too. They thought capturing a CIA agent would give them leverage.”
“A CIA agent?”
The priest began explaining a rather convoluted theory about Jefferson’s links to the foundation and the American journalist, who had suspiciously come here from Afghanistan.
“She’s just a stupid gringa,” Jefferson said. “Not CIA.” He was pretty sure.
“Oh.” The priest shook his head. “Well, they didn’t understand all the problems this would cause.”
What difference did it make, whether they understood or not? Jefferson started down toward the stream. “You coming?” he said.
“I . . . cannot.”
Of course. The priest wanted to keep his hands clean. Jefferson called out over his shoulder, “You know what my father told me when I was a child? He told me, ‘I’d rather slit my throat than have my son become a Conservative or a priest.’”
“My father told me the same thing,” Father Iván called back. That made Jefferson smile.
Edilson stood up as Jefferson approached. He was an unimpressive little man. Not very tall. Not much of a mustache. Who was this fool? Did he understand what he’d unleashed?
“The military is coming for you,” Jefferson said before Edilson could open his mouth. “They have spy planes up in the air. Have you noticed? Planes that fly low but don’t spray crops?”
Edilson looked up toward the road, then back at Jefferson. “We have demands,” he said.
“They’re coming to kill you,” Jefferson said. “I told them who you are.”
It was quiet. Edilson nodded, clearly
