Later, she asked the dairy farmer about this story and he laughed and told her that young palm trees don’t produce oil, and don’t have a trunk you could crucify a peasant on. “Even a very small campesino,” he laughed, “and campesinos are often very small.” These were just rumors that floated around, he said, probably from the Jesúses themselves, since having people believe in murders was easier than murdering, and these groups were full of lazies. “This is the problem in this country. People believe in easy money.” He kicked at a pile of dirt, as if to say, What I do here is not easy.
On the way back, thinking of Diego and his statistics, she asked him if life was better with the Jesúses, and he said, Yes. More money, more businesses, less fear. Then she asked if people out in the countryside felt the same, and he said people in the countryside always complained, but they had reason, because their lives were hard and the troubles always fell on them first.
As they made their way through the main streets of La Vigia, he passed by the central square and Lisette saw two naked women with brooms in their hands, sweeping from one corner to the other. The farmer tensed and drove past, stopping outside the foundation as if he hadn’t seen anything.
Around the square, some people gawked, some people studiously avoided looking toward the square, and one imperious-looking man sat on a horse, surveying the scene. “Who’s that?” she asked, and the farmer sighed.
“Javier Ocasio,” he said. “He has done this before.” He gestured to the naked women. “This is how he likes to punish women who don’t follow the rules.”
“What rules?”
“The Jesúses have a lot of rules,” he said. “Don’t look at him. Just go into the offices and stay inside.”
Lisette was used to men trying to “protect” her by not letting her do her job. She left the car and walked over to the square while the farmer watched. The air was warm and dry, she felt a lightness as she made her way to the figure on the horse, a lean, severe-looking man with scars on the left side of his face.
Javier Ocasio tugged the reins of the horse slightly and the animal reared, its front two hooves going up, striking the earth and then resettling, the animal slowly shifting sideways so that now he was facing her, his eyes trained on her, and she felt even lighter as she walked forward, unafraid and self-conscious of her lack of fear, pleased with it and, as she approached, even a little self-congratulatory about where it was bringing her. Finally, she thought, a man who knows what’s actually going on.
—
The farmer watched the gringa journalist make her way to Javier and then, remarkably, he saw Javier smile. The naked women in the square, guilty of who knows what infraction against morality, against the duties of women and mothers toward their families and toward God and toward Colombia, kept sweeping, heads down, seemingly immune to humiliation. The gringa reached up, her hand extending to Javier, passing him something. A card of some kind.
God. Jesus. He set the truck in gear and rolled forward. What a fool he’d been. Luisa had told him not to trust the gringa. He’d thought she was being surly. Being Luisa. So he’d spoken openly of the Jesúses to her. He’d taken her to his farm. And worse. Unforgivable. He’d introduced her to his men. Mother of God. Son of a whore. It had been too long since there were murders in La Vigia, and he had gotten too rich. His instincts for avoiding trouble had dulled.
He sped through the city streets and then out of La Vigia. The muddy river at the side of the town curved away from him, and ordered fields flew past, followed by plots of palm trees, and then he made a turn sharp enough that he had to lean into it, his body weight balancing against the force pulling him leftward, and then he was up into the mountains, passing a tall, yellow guayacan tree, barreling forward and only breathing easier as the trees became sparse and the road dipped and he saw his farm before him.
Admitting his stupidity to everyone was not possible, so when he got there he simply asked the worker who’d talked about the Jesúses to help him load milk jugs into the back of the truck, and then asked him to join him on the trip.
“I need an extra pair of hands today,” he said.
As they left the farm, though, he turned right, not left.
“We’re going north,” the worker said.
And that is when the farmer told Aníbal that he should spend a few days with his family. That he should let them know, and the rest of their family in the ACCV, the coca growers’ union, that there was a gringa journalist who claimed to be working with Luisa’s foundation but wasn’t.
The worker looked at him strangely, and the farmer suddenly felt foolish. Paranoid.
“Who is she working for?”
The farmer had no idea. All he knew was that Luisa didn’t trust her, and that she had walked right up to Javier Ocasio as if she knew him.
“The Jesúses,” he said.
It was a tentative conclusion, but it was one that would soon become gospel truth in the north, where coca prices were low, discontent was high, and resistance had already been growing for months.
4
Before coming to La Vigia, the only women Valencia regularly saw who looked like Luisa were homeless indio women, begging on the streets or selling trinkets, women Valencia had sometimes given food to when she was on charity missions with the nuns at her school. “Victims of
