Water from My Heart (23 page)

We returned after lunch and met Paulo at the house. I was anxious to get back out on the road, but Paulina reminded me of my deal with Paulo. Paulina picked up on my anxiety. “Nothing happens in Nicaragua between lunch and dinner other than a bunch of naps. Besides—” She motioned to Paulo, who was holding three new coils of rope and a rather stout-looking harness. “
Jefe
, will you dig?”

I turned to Paulina.
“Jefe?”

“Boss.”

I pointed at the ropes. “He wants to drop me down in that hole, doesn't he?”

She nodded. “He thinks if he can show the people that you're not afraid to go down there—”

“Seeing as how I'm an ignorant gringo.”

“Pretty much. They'll have no reason to be afraid.”

“You mean, my corpse hanging on that rope will shame them into digging it out themselves.”

The purity in her laughter was unlike any I'd ever heard. “Yep. Something like that.” She shrugged. “You can say no.” A pause. “But…you can also say yes.”

“What happened to ‘nothing happens in this country after lunch'? I was thinking about a nap.”

“It's ninety-six degrees in that chicken coop. You think you can sleep in that?”

I fingered the ropes, as if I knew some way to test the strength. As if holding them would convince me that they were strong enough to hold me. Paulo stretched a length between two arms. “Strong. Very strong. No concern.” He grabbed my forearm with his hand, squeezing it. The effect was that my hand latched onto his forearm where the muscles rippled. He held it there. Popeye with skin. “I hold the rope.” He smacked his forearm with his other hand in order to bring attention to his strength.

I didn't take my eyes from his. “You hold the rope?”

“Sí.”

“Okay.”

He smiled, exposing his few white teeth.
“Vámonos.”
He shouted loudly and with growing excitement toward the house,
“Vámonos.”

T
he truck wouldn't make it up the mountain, but the bike would. Paulo hopped on back and we climbed our way up. Paulina and Isabella took the truck until the tires began slipping and then followed on foot. I told Paulina that I was okay and that there was no need, but she just shook her head. “Are you kidding? I'm not missing this.”

We stood next to the wellhead. Below me, the words were worn but I could still read them.
“Agua de mi corazón.”

The mudslide had removed the concrete cap and cracked the top of the well. Through the years, someone had bordered it or attempted to keep people from falling in by placing trees next to or over it. We cleared those. I stood over the dark hole and dropped a small rock. I did not hear it land below me. Next to me sat the dormant pump. It was a seesaw-looking apparatus about five feet long, a handle on either side, connected to a PVC pipe with a four-inch diameter. Paulo pointed. “This well one time flow over. Up. Out. Rise from ground. Then one day, mountain move—” His hand gestures suggested an earthquake. “Not so much water. Then more people live on mountain. More coffee plant in ground. More cows. Everyone use more water. Need more water. Put in pipe.” He imitated the motion of pushing down and pulling up on the arm of the pump. “We bring water up. Very good water.”

Around us, kids came out of the trees. First two, then three more. Pretty soon, a crowd had gathered, and they were whispering among themselves.

Maybe the most striking feature was not what lay below, but what grew above. The largest mango tree in Nicaragua had grown up around the well. Literally. It was ginormous. Paulo pointed to the treetops and then to the roots below our feet, leading my eye to how the roots had encircled the concrete cap of the well and grown over. He pointed to the corner of his eye, to his tear ducts. His English was broken, long vowels were short and short long. He sounded more American Indian than Spanish. “Long ago, tree cry in the water. Roots make many tears. Water taste like mango. Very very good. Very very sweet.” He made an aggressive blender motion with his hands. “Mango clean water. Good medicine. People walk long way drink here.”

At the moment, I didn't care too much about the water or how it tasted; I cared about the harness, so I pulled on the webbing and buckled myself in. Paulo tied the rope to the tether behind my shoulder blades and I pulled on his headlamp. Paulo held the rope and demonstrated, pulling on the rope twice: “I come up.” He pulled a single time: “Give loose.” Then he pulled for a prolonged time: “I come up right now fast.”

“Got it.”

Paulo threw the rope over the rusty wheel above me and fed the rope through the grooves. Then he wrapped the rope once around a nearby tree to cause friction in my descent. He then handed me a five-gallon bucket and tethered it to my harness. He placed a notepad and pen in my hand and said, “For talking.” Last, he handed me a small trowel, or shovel, and a hammer and patted me on the back, followed by a not-so-gentle shove. “You go.”

I stood over the opening as he tightened the rope, pulling his end up close against his hip; the four hundred feet of rope was neatly coiled at his feet. As Paulina and Isabella cleared the crest of the hill, I spoke to Paulo. “You'll hold the rope. Right?”

He nodded. And eyed the hole. “You go.”

I sat in the harness, testing its ability to hold me, squatting over the hole. Then very gingerly, I pulled up one foot and then the other until I was suspended over the hole, sitting in my harness like a hammock. Holding my bucket, I nodded at Paulo and he slowly began lowering me into that hole. My last image of daylight was Paulina staring down on me. She spoke over me as the well covered me up. “I might have not been entirely truthful about people's reasons for not going down there.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yeah, we have these snakes up here that—”

“Don't. Just don't.”

“They like the cold.”

“You're serious, aren't you?”

I couldn't see her nodding, but her tone of voice told me that she was. “But don't worry. They're not poisonous.”

The hair rose on my neck and arms. “Now you tell me.”

I was thankful for the headlamp. As I descended, it showed the painstaking work that Paulina's father had done and what he'd had to cut through to put in this well—much of which was rock. Every foot or two, I found an indentation in the wall. Large enough for a man's hand or foot.

It took several minutes for Paulo to lower me to the ground floor—or what had become the ground floor after the mudslide and what had been thrown on top since. I had a feeling that the actual floor of the well was still another hundred or so feet. And to my great delight, before I set my feet down on the dried and hardened mud, I searched and found no snakes. Which was good because I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do had I found one.

I worked through the afternoon, sending up a bucket—on a second smaller line—every few minutes. Through the afternoon, we passed the bucket back and forth thirty or forty times. The mud was dense, full of rocks, and in many places, hard as rock. The moisture added with the pressure had turned volcanic mud into nearly impenetrable rock. I sent up a note, asking for something that I could work like a pick in such a small space. They sent down a dull hammer.

Breaking through that rock took a long time.

After about six hours, I was exhausted and the harness was cutting into my hips and armpits. I'd also lost count of the number of buckets I'd sent up. Toward what felt like dinnertime, I tugged on the rope twice and Paulo began the long pull upward. I did what I could to help by climbing up the small “steps” Paulina's father had chipped into the wall decades ago. When I reached the surface, a crowd of fifty or so people had gathered. Paulina covered her mouth and laughed at my appearance. I was covered in dirt from head to foot. Many of the kids laughed. A few ran away, afraid. One of them walked up to me and touched me—poking me as if to determine if I was truly a man or if the devil had stolen my soul.

Paulo asked, “Good?”

I nodded.

He patted my biceps. “You strong dig.
Bueno.
Much distance.”

Paulina appeared. “How you feeling?”

“Like a shower never sounded so good.”

She laughed at my appearance. “There are a lot of women who pay a lot of money for that kind of mud bath.”

I pointed at the rope. “How far down did I go?”

Paulo waved his hand side to side. “Two hundred.”

“How far did I dig?”

“Six. Maybe eight feet.”

That was discouraging. “Felt like fifty.”

Paulina rode Paulo and Isabella down the mountain on the bike to the truck. Then Paulo drove Isabella home and Paulina returned for me.

Back at the house, Paulo had filled two buckets of water for me behind the plastic curtain. Most “showers” require about half a bucket. I guess he was trying to tell me something. It took me twenty minutes to get clean. Staring down at the muddy water swirling the crude concrete drain, it struck me that more than volcanic mud was coming off.

I devoured my rice and beans and must have eaten a dozen tortillas followed by two plantains. I heard some rustling out back, and then Leena poked her head in the door and beckoned with a curled finger. When I walked outside, she was resting one hand on a hammock stretched between the mango tree and some other large hardwood. “You need to learn how to swing in a hammock.”

“Seriously?”

She smiled. “Park it, Charlie.”

All I wanted to do was climb in my bed, but I straddled the hammock, sat, and then lay back. She was right. Everything about it was divine. She sat next to me in a plastic chair, gently rocking me back and forth, and as she did, every pain and weight lifted off me with the gentle sway of the canvas hammock.

I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I had a feeling there were dishes to do or clothes to wash or some responsibility I was shirking. I offered, “Aren't we supposed to be doing something?”

She propped her feet up on the end of the hammock and chuckled. “We're doing it.”

I doubt I'd ever been that tired. And it'd been a long time since I'd felt that good.

P
aulina woke me with a steaming mug beneath my nose, then set it on the table next to me. She said, “Paulo's already gone and Isabella's at school. We should get moving.” I glanced at my watch. It was already eight o'clock. I'd slept ten hours.

We piled onto the bike and resumed our search, starting where we'd left off yesterday. My hands and forearms were sore from digging, as was most everything else in my body. Our path paralleled the coast, and much of the time was spent rolling down dirt roads just inside the dunes with the sound of the waves on the other side. We stopped in several gas stations, places to eat, bars, anyplace where someone might have reason to stop. No one recognized his picture. At noon, Paulo called. He said he'd talked to a manager at a seaside hotel who had kicked out five guys who trashed two of his rooms and broke a bunch of bottles on his pool deck. He said they were traveling in an old Chevrolet convertible. He also said one of them had been pretty busted up, one eye was swollen shut. When asked what he looked like, the man described Zaul.

Paulina and I shared lunch on the dunes beneath a mango tree that had been picked clean except for the shade. The breeze felt good and I actually dozed. When I woke, I found Paulina walking in the waves, a faraway look in her eyes. She said nothing to me upon her return. I got the feeling it'd been a long time since she'd done anything like that. That in itself got me thinking. As did the fact that Isabella couldn't swim.

Other than a single necklace, Paulina didn't wear jewelry. Few women around here did. Granted, it cost money, which was in short supply, but I got the feeling it was more cultural. The necklace she wore was a long chain, which seldom showed unless you were looking. And I admit, when it came to Leena, I found myself looking more often than not. She also let her hair grow—as did every other woman. While they wore their hair all rolled up in a bun, none cut it. Most hung at waist length when they let it down, which was usually after a shower or when they brushed it just before going to bed.

She sat down next to me beneath the mango tree, and I asked about it. “Why do you keep your hair so long?”

“It is believed here that a woman's hair is her crown. Where God bestows his glory.”

“Then why do all of you pull it up in tight buns that pin your ears back?”

She laughed. “'Cause it's hot and all that hair on your neck only makes it worse.”

“All function. No form.”

More laughter. “Something like that.”

“What about jewelry? No one here wears any.”

“We are taught not to bring unnatural attention to ourselves. To let our natural beauty do that. To not attempt to improve on what God made perfect.”

I pointed at her necklace. “And that?”

She smiled. “That is the exception.”

“I noticed.”

She placed the polished and worn stone that hung on the chain in her palm. “One evening, when my father was at the bottom of his well and had been digging for months, thinking he'd never strike water, he found two polished stones. When he picked them up, water began seeping in from the edges. To anyone but us, the stones are worthless, but he had them made like this; the chains are made of Nicaraguan gold. He gave one to my mother, one to me. In over thirty years, I've never taken it off. My mother did the same. Worth nothing, yet to me, it's priceless.” She crossed her legs and her face turned curious. “Tell me more about you. How you got here. Your work. What you do when you're not here.”

“In college, I spent some time playing poker for a living, but I realized there were people better than me so I cashed in my chips.”

“Smart.”

“Doing so caught the attention of a man who ran a venture capital firm. So I spent some time in the financial world but was fired when I didn't want to play ball with my boss.”

“Why?”

“Let's just say he wanted to own more than just my time.”

“What'd you do for him?”

“Traveled a lot. I evaluated companies. Tried to figure out which were worth keeping and which were worth breaking up into small pieces. Depended on which made him more money.”

“Did it pay well?”

“Could have, but he kept it all when I left.”

“Sounds like a story there.”

“Just a bit.”

“You ever work outside the States?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Europe. The islands. Asia. Some in Central America.”

“Ever come here? To Nicaragua?”

I casually looked away. “No.”

“How'd you get to Bimini?”

“When I left, I wandered some. Eventually, I found myself on a shrimp boat headed for Bimini, where I gutted a hurricane shack and began working with an old man to make specialized wooden skiffs. We built about two a year.”

“You work with wood?”

A nod. “I do seem to possess some talent there.”

“Well, aren't you just a Renaissance man.”

“Not too sure about that.” I wasn't comfortable talking about me, so I tried to speed the conversation along. “From there, I began guiding people fishing for—”

“You're also a fishing guide?”

“It's not too difficult in Bimini. The fish are rather predictable.”

“You're starting to get interesting.”

“I met my current business partner when he came to fish. He told me his family owned an import business, and if I ever wanted or needed a job, he'd put me to work. So Colin put me in charge of import logistics and transport. Primarily acquisition and delivery.”

“Wow, listen to you with the big words.” She was smiling now. “What did you import?”

“Primarily wine and spirits. Lately, he's been moving into olive oil.”

“Ever been married?”

“No.”

“Why?” She smiled. Playing with me. Growing more comfortable. “You seem likable enough. You wear deodorant, trim your fingernails, not too much stuff hanging from your teeth.”

I rubbed my front teeth on my shirt. “Can we talk about you a while?”

“But you were just starting to get interesting.”

“I'm afraid the interesting part is over.”

“And your friend, Zaul?”

There was more to her question. “What about him?”

“What kind of kid is he?”

“He's had a cell phone and a credit card since he could crawl. His parents have, admittedly, enabled him so he knows next to nothing about responsibility. He's also grown up around the überwealthy and social elite so he has a skewed view of reality.”

“Sounds like a bad recipe.”

I pointed at San Cristóbal smoking in the distance. “Yep.”

“Why'd he come here?”

“I'm not sure, other than they own a home in Costa Rica and he knows the surf.”

“Why'd they send you? Why not his dad?”

“You sure do ask a lot of questions.”

She smiled. Beautiful white teeth that filtered laughter with nothing to hold it down. The tension here was to satisfy her without giving up too much or getting too close to the truth. “When he left, his sister, Maria, was in the hospital. He feels responsible for her being there. He thinks his parents feel that way, too.”

“Is he?”

“Ultimately, no. But that's why I'm here, because his father wouldn't be able to convince him of that.”

“Can you?”

A shrug. “Don't know, but my chances are better than Colin's. If anyone has Zaul's ear, it's me, but that's a big if.”

“One more question?”

“Sure. You seem to be on a roll.”

I had a feeling she'd been baiting me, asking me a bunch of questions until she got to the one that mattered—the one she'd been wanting to ask me for a few days. Her eyes told me this was it. “When you find him, how do you know he's going to let you take him home?”

It was a good question and I'd been asking it myself. “I don't.”

Her eyes didn't change. “And yet you're here anyway.”

It was a question posed as a statement. “Yes.”

“What motivates a man to do something when he knows he's got almost zero chance of succeeding?”

I answered, hoping she accepted it. “I love the kid.” She did not.

“I bet his dad does, too.” She paused. Considering me. “If I knew you better, I'd say there was something you're not telling me.”

She was a good reader of people, and she was reading me like a book. There was a tenderness to her that drew me. More than that, I liked being
known
, and for the first time in my life, I was
known
by another. I'm not saying I liked what she knew about me, not proud of the bits and pieces, but somehow she was standing inside my skin and yet I didn't experience shame at her reflection. I feigned. “Have to try.”

I don't know if I satisfied her or gave rise to more questions, but for the rest of the ride back, she eyed me, studying my face and saying nothing more.