The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories (17 page)

He was a
mescla
—a mixed-blood kid at the bottom of the social ladder. His hair was kind of a bronze color, the way hair sometimes is from Brazil and the Azores. My friend in the third grade was from the Azores. This boy in Zaquitos had light brown eyes just like my friend. His skin was dark, but he had that bronze hair and, believe it or not, a couple of freckles on his nose, too. There’d been a lot of Irish and Germans in that country in the beginning and they’d mixed and maybe it was Irish blood coming through in this kid. 

He lived on a famous dump in Zaquitos—the dump I’d gone to, to write a story about. I was there to write a story about how terrible conditions were for the people in that country’s north. They’d left the drought-stricken countryside and ended up in the
favelas,
the slums, and that wasn’t any better. It was worse, in fact, and that’s what I was writing about. I was a reporter for a liberal English-language paper out of the capital city; that’s what I was supposedly doing there. The agency had figured out how to use my writing skills and that was my—as they say—cover. I’d been interviewed by the newspaper the way any applicant would and I’d been hired the way anyone would be. At least that’s how it looked. A paper trail in case one was needed. I wasn’t comfortable with the job. I didn’t talk leftist jargon well enough to feel comfortable when I met other leftist journalists, but my case agent said, “Don’t worry. They can’t fire you.” The newspaper, it turned out, was funded by the Agency. Some of the editors worked for the Agency and could pipeline agents like me, and the other editors just didn’t know. That’s how it was in those days. It’s an old story now and pretty boring; but for two missions that was my cover, and it was a good one because I got to be alone a lot of the time. 

I had to make myself step up close to the boy—the one I’m talking about in the dump. Stepping up to him was hard to do because I wasn’t supposed to do that with anyone I cared about. But I did it and I asked him in Spanish if I could take his picture. Some of you know Spanish, I’m sure. I said,
“Puedo fotografiarte?”
and he cocked his head, and for a moment I was back in the third grade and my friend Keith was looking at me. I jumped back and nearly tripped on the garbage. I wanted to run. But in that moment I was also myself twenty years in the future looking down at my own son and feeling a love I’d never felt before. No one, especially guys, ever feels a love like that—for children, I mean—when they’re twenty-two. It’s just not what life is like when you’re twenty-two—unless you’re a father already. But that’s what I felt and that’s what kept me from running away. 

There were dirty streaks on the boy’s neck from all that sweat and dirt. His ears were dirty and all he wanted to do when he saw me was beg. He kept shaking his head and putting out his hand and saying in English,
“Very poor! Very poor!”
He’d try to touch me—my camera, my sleeve—and I’d step back, shaking my head, too, because I was terrified. But I made myself do it. I gave him what I had—some coins and some bills. I was shaking like crazy because I was
touching
the money—
touching it and then giving it to him
—and as I did it I could see him dying right before me. But he didn’t die, so I asked him again:
“Can I photograph you?”
 

“Yes!” he said, happy now, the coins and bills in his hands.
“Foto! Foto!”
He’d gotten what he wanted and now I could snap his picture, just like any tourist would. 

I took his picture and went back to my hotel downtown. Even though I didn’t have the roll of film I’d taken at the dump processed, I didn’t need to. I could see his face as I fell asleep. I dreamed about him; and I could see his face as I woke up and got ready to go back to the dump, where I was supposed to start the “distraction”—that’s what we called it—that morning. The
favelas
were a logical place for it—with all the urban rats and the incredible transiency. Everyone in that country and in bordering countries and at WHO and the UN were waiting for some epidemic to start in that country. It was a time bomb. Cholera, typhoid, something. But if we—if the Agency—could get a big enough one going, there was a ninety percent chance that the government of—the government of that country—would topple. The military was ready for a coup. It had already tried once. 

So I stood on the dump—in all that stink and garbage—and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it with the boy there somewhere—a boy who looked like my friend and a boy who was someone’s kid—so I went looking for him, and it took an hour, but I found him. He was with his father and brothers, and I said,
“Debe llevarse a su familia ad otra ciudad—ahora! Cosas malas llegan!”
That meant:
You’ve got to move your family to another city—right now! Bad things are coming!
They looked at me like I was crazy, so I said it again and I got out the five hundred American dollars I’d had my department wire me.
Living expenses,
I’d explained, and that was fine with them. I said in Spanish, “I want you to be safe. You need to leave this place immediately. Do the boys have a mother?” No, she’d died, the father said. “I will give you five hundred American dollars if you will leave today—if you will leave now!” 

The father looked at me and I knew damn well what he was thinking:
Crazy American.
The kind that tries to “save you.” That sends money to your country because of a television show and if it gets to you it’s a penny rather than a dollar. 

He was willing to take the money, but you could tell he wasn’t going to pack up and move—not today, maybe not ever. They had friends here, other families. You don’t give that up even for five years of income, do you? 

I looked at them and waited and finally I said, “If you don’t go today, I’ll take my money back. I’ll call the police and tell them you robbed me, and I’ll take my money back.” 

When he got the point, when he saw I was dead serious, he led me to the shack they lived in—the cardboard and corrugated metal shack that had no running water or sewage—and helped his boys get things together. I just stood there. I couldn’t touch anything—anything they were going to bring. I wanted to put on rubber gloves so I could help them, but I couldn’t do that either. They’d be insulted, and I didn’t want to insult them. The boys gathered up six toy soldiers—two apiece—hammered from tin cans, a broken plastic gun, and two big balls of twine, and the father gathered up four dirty blankets, a can opener that looked bent, two pairs of pants for each of them, and a bag filled with socks, shoes, plastic plates, and cups. That’s what they had. They’d slept on the dirt floor on those blankets. I’d never really thought of how people like this lived, and here it was. How do you live like that and not stop caring? I don’t know. 

I waited for them, and when they were ready we trudged back across the refuse and smells of the dump to the first paved road, where I took the bus with them to Parelo, where they said they had family in the
favela
there. They did. I paid for a taxi for us, sat in the front seat by myself, and dropped them off with the father’s sister, who didn’t look happy until she saw how much money it was. The
favela
wasn’t much better than the dump, but it was two hundred miles away from where the epidemic would start, and it was a lot of money. 

It was a dangerous thing for me to do—being that visible—but I didn’t have any choice. I knew that if I didn’t do it I’d see the boy’s face forever, like a photograph in my head. I wasn’t acting very normally then—I couldn’t touch people—I started shaking even when I thought of touching anyone—but I knew I had to try to save this one kid. If anyone was following me, they’d wonder what the hell I was doing. That much money. A dump family. Getting them out of town and spending eleven hours on the bus with them. They might put two and two together later—someone might—but in a country this poor who’d be watching me? I was a leftist journalist and the regime was leftist. Who’d be watching a leftist reporter? And once the epidemic started, who’d be free to watch me? 

I was much more worried about what my case agent and his boss and the DDP would say. “You did what?” they’d say. How do you tell someone? 

I returned to Zaquitos—which took me a day. 

The next morning I went back to the dump and started it. I bit down, heard the little crack, coughed into my hand, and began touching things when I got to the cemetery and crematorium, and the cars and little stores after that. 

I tried not to look at anyone as I did it, especially anyone old or a woman or kids. Those were the ones who bothered me most. It was hard not to look, because you wanted to know, but I’d had a lot of practice not looking by then.
Just don’t look,
a voice would say to me and I wouldn’t. 

The next day I took the train to the next two decent-sized cities; when I was through with both of them, I stopped, cracked the other fillings, went to the capital, and flew back to the States before the quarantines could even get started. 

I kept seeing the boy’s face, sure, but it made me happy. 

You’re wondering why they let me talk about all of this—“top-secret your-eyes-only” kinds of things. The kinds of things that in the movies, if someone tells you, it gets you killed, right? They let me talk not only because they’re not worried—how much damage can one guy who’s not very credible, who’s had mental problems, do?—but also, and this is the other half of it, because it’s
old news.
It’s actually there in the
Pentagon Papers
—that old book—if you look closely enough, and it’s even mentioned—indirectly, of course—in Richard Nixon’s autobiography, along with the planned use of a single-k nuclear device to end the war in Vietnam. It’s old news and I get to talk about it now because it doesn’t matter anymore. I guess that’s what I’m saying. No one really cares. Vietnam doesn’t care whether we were planning to detonate a nuclear device to flood Hanoi—they just want favored trade status now—and those countries in South America have each had half a dozen governments since then, and they want to forget, too. Ancient history. Besides, the Agency has better things to do. They’ve got covert economic programs you wouldn’t believe and designer diseases they haven’t even used yet. This is the new war. The Army’s got mines that can weigh you—tell you how much you weigh—and whether you’re an adult or a child and whether you’re carrying a gun. Other mines that land and become dozens of little mobile mines that go out looking for you instead of waiting for you to come to them. They’ve got suits that, if you’re a soldier and wounded, will give you an antibiotic, or if you’re poisoned, give you the antidote, or if you’re out of water it will recycle your urine for you. You don’t have to think. The suit thinks for you. They’ve got these things and they’re using them. This is what warfare is now, so how important is a guy who can break a filling in his tooth and start some plague from the Middle Ages—something that crude and messy? 

That’s how they’re thinking, believe me. 

I did catch hell from my boss and his boss and the DDP when they found out what I’d done with the boy. I said, “That should tell you something. It should tell you that you don’t really want me to do this for you anymore.” 

They actually let me quit. That surprised me. I didn’t think you could quit. I’d seen too many movies, I guess, where no one could quit the Agency, like no one could quit the Mafia. They said they didn’t really want me if my heart wasn’t in it. But I don’t think that was the real reason. I think it was that they just didn’t need the program anymore. They were getting better programs. 

They made me sign papers promising for twenty-five years not to write about what I’d done—what they’d had me do for my country—or talk about it publicly or to anyone who’d make it public—and then they let me leave. I had all these interpersonal problems, as I’ve been saying, but I did go back to school and, I’m proud to say, got my MBA. I wanted to get a degree I could use anywhere. I started out as a manager of a drug store, but that was because of the interpersonal problems; when I could finally go to company meetings and not act strange, I started moving up the ladder. In three years I was in management at corporate headquarters, and that’s where I met my wife. It took a few more years of therapy—of Agency shrinks at the VA hospital actually—to get over it enough to really function. The toothbrushes, the not touching people you loved, the nightmares and the flashbacks—all those things I needed to work through. My wife hung in there with me throughout it all—that I’ll be forever grateful for—and we’ve got two kids almost grown now, both of them boys. 

I don’t know where that boy from Zaquitos is now, or if he’s still alive. You don’t live long in those countries. The
Luz de Muerte
paramilitary units—the ones that could make you “disappear”—started up under the military regime after I did what I was sent there to do. The new government was tied to a group called The Society for Church, Family, and Tradition, and those units were operating there for ten years at least. If the boy had any leftist leanings, he might not have made it through that. Or he could have been killed for no reason. Or, if he didn’t get out of the
favelas,
he might have died of typhus or cholera or dengue fever. You lose a lot of Third World people to those diseases even now, and they’re natural ones. 

I think about that boy a lot. What if someone started a plague in the U.S., maybe at the White House in a tour group, or maybe in a big airport like LAX—to turn the tables, to “destabilize”
us?
I think about that. I think of my own boys dying, no one around to save them the way I saved that boy and his brothers and father. One family’s not very much, but it’s something. That’s what I tell myself anyway.