Water from My Heart (17 page)

I
had just closed my eyes when Paulo woke me. He whispered, “
Vamonos, el doctor.
We go.”

I heard myself mumbling something about not actually being a doctor, but he was gone. I stood and pulled on my shoes, whereby my toes poked out the ends. When I exited my shed, he put his hand on my chest and motioned back in my tent.
“Agua.”

I grabbed the water jug, we refilled it, and then he handed me a long machete. I followed him out the yard and down the road beneath a dark sky. We walked in silence for almost thirty minutes, returning in the same direction we'd walked yesterday—uphill toward the volcano. When the sugarcane rose up on our right, he took a hard right turn and I followed him through the cane. We walked down long rows and were soon joined by other men, silently stepping through the night. Each carried a machete with the same ease that men carry umbrellas on Fifth Avenue.

It was still dark. Well before daylight and yet people were alive and awake and moving and working. Fires were lit, people were chatting, men were hurrying to work, and all before the first ray of sunshine had cracked the summit of Las Casitas or San Cristóbal. Unlike the world I came from, these people were on the earth's schedule—the earth was not on theirs.

We exited into a clearing where a large cart, about the size of a railroad car, sat empty. A man sat on the cart, waiting. Smoking a cigarette. When we appeared, he spoke in harsh and muffled tones to the men, pointing in various directions and splitting the men into teams. Paulo pointed his machete and directed me toward a row of cane. When we reached the beginning of the row, he walked in front of me and demonstrated how to grab the cane with my left hand, how to cut it low on the stalk with the machete in my right, and then how to throw it in parallel piles alongside us. He did this quickly and, despite his diminutive size, with great strength. I nodded. He stepped to the row beside me, motioned with his machete to my row, and then he began his assault. Only then did I notice how much larger his right forearm and biceps were than his left. Nearly half again as large.

We worked in tandem until daylight, when we stopped for about thirty seconds to swig from our water jugs. We worked in like fashion throughout the morning. He worked fast and with the strength of several men. I kept up as best I could. By midmorning, my hands had blistered, popped, and oozed. Raw like hamburger meat. Every pull on the sugarcane ripped more skin loose. If he noticed, he said nothing. Neither did I.

With an hour until noon, he had finished his row and returned to help me with mine. By noon, we came to the end of it, and that was good because I could barely swing the machete. He pointed with his machete again, and we walked down the same row we'd just cleared. When we reached the superintendent's cart, we found him where we'd left him with another cigarette in his mouth. I could not lift my arms above shoulder height. He surveyed our work with little interest, placed two bills into Paulo's hand, and we began walking home. Paulo turned to me and handed me one of the bills, but I declined, waving him off, and said, “No, no. You.”

He folded the money and said,
“Gracias.”

We took a different route home, swinging wide around the cluster of homes known as Valle Cruces. We came to a building and he pointed.
“Escuela.”

I didn't understand, so he folded his hands like he was reading a book.
“Escuela.”

“Oh, you mean school.”

We walked up next to the door and found Paulina teaching math to a classroom full of kids of various ages and sizes. Isabella sat in the front row, her heels tucked under her butt to lift her up to the level of the desk in front of her. She twirled her hair with her left hand. With her right, she scribbled on a sheet of paper. The chairs and desks were all handmade from the same wood used in the tenement dwellings up on the mountain. The seats and desktops were worn and oiled. The sides were unfinished and splintery.

When she saw me, Isabella hopped down out of her seat and danced toward us. The measured speed with which she gallivanted across the room told me that she wasn't so much glad to see me as she wanted to be recognized by the other kids that she—and not they—was on a first-name basis with the gringo. Moving slowly made her point all the more poignant. When all eyes noticed her familiarity with me, she returned to her seat. Sitting a little higher. Task accomplished. Paulo said something to Paulina, who then ended class. Isabella appeared at my side and slid her hand into mine. When she sensed the blisters and raw skin, she turned my hand over and eyed it with tenderness. She ran her fingers around the edges of the blisters that had popped. “Do they hurt?”

I shook my head.

When we returned to the house, Paulina pointed to the sink and said, “Better wash those in the
pila
.”

“The what?”

She pronounced it more slowly. “
Pee-lah.
It's the name for that concrete sink. You don't want those getting infected.”

I did as instructed while the three of them loaded the truck.

I watched Paulo hand the two bills to Paulina, who placed them in her pocket. Quickly and showing no sign of fatigue, Paulo backed the truck up and began honking the horn, drawing Isabella and Paulina out of the house. Isabella climbed into the cab with Uncle Paulo while Paulina sat with me in the back. He eased off the clutch, which was slipping, and revved the engine, which blew white smoke out the exhaust, suggesting that it was burning nearly as much oil as gas. Grinding the gears, we eased out of Valle Cruces en route to León.

Paulina and I sat on the wheel wells as the heat and dust and humidity pressed against us at forty-five miles per hour. Along the roadside, all the brilliant Technicolor flags and homes and cars and people stood still as we sped by. Occasionally, I'd catch a glance of a vine-covered fountain or an old home or chapel or some prior remnant of beauty buried beneath a caked layer of dirt, exhaust, and disrepair. After a few minutes, she reached for my hand, turning it in her own, studying it. She offered softly, “My uncle says you work hard.”

“Twenty years older, he did twice as much work. Came back to help me when he finished.”

She laughed. “He said he kept waiting for you to fall over, but you never did.”

“I wanted to.”

“Well, thank you.”

“How much did we earn?”

“A hundred córdobas.”

I calculated. “Seems like a lot of work for three dollars and eighty cents.”

“It's twice what he normally makes.”

I spoke out loud to myself. “I spend more than that on a latte at Starbucks. There was a time in one of my former lives when I'd spend a hundred times that on a lunch and not think twice about it.”

She stared out in front of us as the wind tugged at her hair. She nodded but said nothing. We rode in silence. I turned to her. “How come you haven't asked me anything about me?”

She grinned and pointed to Isabella in the front seat. “I let her do my dirty work.”

“Seriously. I could be an escaped convict, and you wouldn't know it.”

She shrugged. “An escaped convict wouldn't have been found on the sidewalk covered in his own excrement.”

“Good point.”

“You did carry a ninety-pound backpack six miles up the side of a mountain.”

“You sure it wasn't heavier than that?”

She smiled, proving that Isabella had not fallen far from the tree. “Since you're offering, can I ask one favor of you?”

“Anything.”

“Pan y Paz is a bakery in León. Isabella's favorite. They make these chocolate croissants. Do you—?”

“Done. Anything else?”

“The bakery is plenty.”

I pressed her. “Are you one of those people who's good at offering help but not so good at accepting it?”

She nodded and tucked her skirt under her thighs as the wind pulled at it, momentarily exposing long, muscular quadriceps and toned, beautiful legs. Then she pulled the hair out of her face. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“What are you three doing for dinner?”

“Driving back.”

“Before you go, will you let me buy you dinner?”

She hesitated. “When I found you, you had nothing. And unless something's changed, you still have nothing.” She lowered her voice. “How're you going to buy dinner?”

“I left my money in the room.”

“Can you afford to buy us dinner?”

“Yes. Please. It's the least I can do.”

Paulina considered this. And the look on her face told me that she was not accustomed to accepting help. “As long as you let me pick the restaurant.”

We reached León and the Hotel Cardinal, where the young man was glad to see me and seemed proud that he'd guarded my room and everything was just as I'd left it. When he left, I turned to find Isabella staring at the peephole in the door. Paulina was smiling. “She's never seen one.”

I lifted her so she could press her eye against the door. Paulina stood outside the door and waved. Isabella jumped back in shock at her mother's distorted image, then giggled and tried to make sense of the illusion.

Paulo was a quiet man. Few words. He watched, listened, and was purposeful in all he did—wasting no movement. I attributed it to years of conserving his energy for whatever unknown came next. His unwritten response to life was one of crisis management. While Isabella entertained herself with the peephole, he waited quietly in a chair just outside the door.

We left the hotel on foot, following Paulina's finger, and arrived at Meson Real fifteen minutes later. It was a “locals” joint and the smell coming from the kitchen was divine.

The waitress came and took our orders, and given that the menu was written on the wall—in Spanish—Paulina asked, “Want some help?”

I tried to make sense of the wall. “Yes.”

“You want real Nicaraguan or tourist stuff?”

“Real.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Might be kind of spicy.”

“I'm game.”

While we waited on our food, I tried not to pepper Paulo with too many questions. He told me he had been born just a mile or so from where he now lives, but he had traveled a good bit to find work in both cane and coffee plantations.

When he said he'd worked in coffee, I began listening a little more attentively. “You've worked coffee?”

“Sí.”

“Where?”

“Honduras. Costa Rica.” He tapped the table. “Nicaragua.”

“Where in Nicaragua?”

He pointed west. “Las Casitas. Near
mi casa
.”

“Any one place in particular?”

He shook his head. “No understand.”

“What plantation?”

“Jus' one.” When he said it, there was a sense of warmth and affection I'd not heard before. “Cinco Padres Café Compañía.”

I swallowed hard. “What'd you do there?”

He made a circle around the table. “Manage workers.” He tapped himself on the chest and smiled.
“El jefe.”

I shook my head and was in the process of saying I didn't understand when Paulina put her hand on mine and said, “He managed all the workers. The plantation. Everything.”

“He was the foreman?”

“Before this foreman…yes, that was
part
of his job.”

“Why did you leave?”

He paused. “Jus' too many events.”

I pointed at Paulina, acting as if I didn't know. “Was it the hurricane you mentioned?”

He sliced his hand across the table in a level motion. “Hurricane Carlos bad. Very bad. Kill many. Kill my brothers. Their wives. My wife. Many family, but…” He shook his head. “We survived Carlos.”

My voice quivered. “What…happened?”

Paulo paused, crossed his hands, and then spoke, almost in reverence. “American company.” Paulo made a fist as if he were crushing a cracker. “They squeeze us…require us to pay back loan. Have no way to pay. But after Carlos, we has nothing. All gone. So, when we no pay, American company take.”

Something about my complexion must have startled Paulina because she put her hand on my forearm. “You okay? You're doing that thing again.” Her index finger rolled around the underside of my wrist and landed on my pulse where she held it.

“No, I'm good.” I wiped the cold sweat off my face. “What'd you do?”

He shrugged. “Many empty homes in Valle Cruces. We move in. I return to sugarcane.”

“Do you rent?”

He shook his head. “No one to pay rent.”

“Who owns it?”

“My cousin.” He said the name proudly. As if he were honoring it. “Saulicio Mares Estevez.”

“Where is he?”

“Beneath the mud.”

“I'm sorry?”

Paulina spoke. “His family in Managua lets us live in it.”

The pieces of this puzzle were floating around my brain, and I was having a tough time putting them together. I scratched my head. “Where were you living?”

He looked at me, surprise covering his face. He pointed at Paulina.
“El casa.”

I turned to Paulina. “Whose house?”

She brushed the hair out of Isabella's face. “My father's.” She turned to me, and for the first time, she fingered a polished stone hanging around her neck. She said his name slowly and with great affection. The words swam around my head, finally settling on the memories attached to them: “Alejandro Santiago Martinez.”

I swallowed hard.

“He, along with four other men, started Cinco Padres.” She pointed across the table at Paulo. “Paulo married my father's sister. So while he wasn't one of his brothers, they trusted him. My father was the businessman. Dealt with the banks. The buyers. Paulo was the people's man.” She smiled at Paulo. “He kept everybody happy. And”—she laughed—“he kept everything working. Tractors. Trucks. Conveyor belts. Even delivered babies. Didn't you?”