If We Survive

  She was sitting beside me on the edge of the bed. I turned to her, to her profile. She wasn’t looking at Pastor Ron. She was looking past him, at the balcony, at Palmer.

  “Palmer,” she said.

  He turned to look at her over his shoulder.

  “You think they’re going to kill us, don’t you?”

  He nodded slowly. “Seems the most likely outcome, yeah.”

  “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who’s just going to stand by and wait for that to happen.”

  He turned around, leaning back against the balcony railing. He gave an easy, casual smile. “Well, now, that’s interesting. Just what sort of man do I strike you as?”

  There was a long silence. I watched Meredith as she studied him. But she didn’t answer. She shifted her gaze instead to Pastor Ron.

  “I think it might be best to wait, Pastor.”

  Pastor Ron lifted his hands from his sides. “Wait for what? Listen to them. Listen to what’s happening out there.”

  As I sat watching her, I saw Meredith’s eyes shift—from Pastor Ron to Palmer on the balcony and back to Pastor Ron again.

  “If these men are as sadistic and murderous as Palmer says they are—”

  “They’re not,” Jim insisted.

  “If they are, trying to reason with them would be the worst thing you could do.”

  The pastor seemed confused by this. “How can it ever be wrong to try to reason with people, Meredith?”

  “It’s just human nature,” she said. “When people are full of that sort of anger and”—she searched for the word—“wickedness, the sound of reason strikes them as an accusation. You’ll only make Mendoza angrier still—especially if he’s been drinking.”

  “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous,” said Jim. “I’m telling you, if you’d read Cobar’s book as I have . . .”

  “Well then, why don’t you go?” I said to him. I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut. But, to be honest, Jim was beginning to annoy me. I’d seen Mendoza—we’d all seen him with our own eyes. Murdering Carlos in cold blood. Abusing Meredith. Threatening everyone. Maybe it was true there’d been injustice in his country—I didn’t know. Maybe his friend Cobar wrote great articles in the newspaper. I hadn’t read them. All I knew for sure was what I’d seen for myself—and if Mendoza was some kind of rebel saint, well, I was Spider-Man. “If you’re so sure Mendoza’s a freedom fighter who’ll listen to reason, why don’t you be the one to go talk to him?” I said to Jim.

  Jim’s mouth opened and closed once or twice before he answered me. But then he said, “All right, I will. I will.”

  But—lucky for him—before he could even take a step to the door, Pastor Ron put a hand on his arm to stop him.

  “No,” he said. “That’s absurd. Jim’s sixteen. I’m responsible here. I’m responsible for all of you. I’ll go.”

  “Pastor . . . ,” said Meredith.

  “I’ll just . . . I’ll just talk to him, that’s all. I promise I won’t make him angry, Meredith. I’ll just explain that we’re not his enemies and that, you know, if he lets us go, it’ll show everyone how merciful and just he is. It will help the rebel cause.”

  Behind him, I saw Palmer shake his head and turn around, back toward the balcony rail. He had stopped paying attention to us and was studying the plaza again.

  Pastor Ron stood where he was another second. He looked around at all of us—as if he was hoping maybe one of us would talk him out of his idea. No one did. Finally, he walked to the door.

  Meredith stood up and watched him go. “Pastor Ron— really—Palmer’s right—don’t,” she said.

  “C’mon, Pastor,” I said. “Really. We saw what Mendoza did. These guys are nuts. It’s too dangerous.”

  “They’re not nuts,” Jim said grumpily.

  But Pastor Ron didn’t respond to any of us. He took a deep breath, gathering his courage. Then he knocked on the door. A gruff voice barked at him from the other side. Pastor Ron murmured softly through the door in Spanish.

  Meredith looked back at Palmer on the balcony. “Palmer,” she said. “Don’t let him do this. Stop him.”

  Palmer didn’t even turn around, didn’t even look at her. Just went on doing what he was doing, namely, looking down over the railing.

  There was another burst of gunfire out there.

  Then the door opened. A gunman—a guard—was there. He reached in and grabbed Pastor Ron roughly by the arm, dragged him out into the hall, and shut the door behind him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The sound of the door locking was loud in the silent room. I looked at Meredith where she stood. I could see how worried she was.

  “He’ll be all right,” I said to her.

  I heard Palmer snort out on the balcony.

  Meredith took a deep breath. She tried to smile at me, without much success. “I hope so,” she said.

  “They won’t kill him, will they?” asked Nicki, in tears. She had lifted her head from the back of the chair. She was looking around as if she’d just woken up from a deep sleep. She looked awful. All her glamour and prettiness were gone. Her face was bloated and streaked, covered with makeup stains. “They won’t kill Pastor Ron, will they?” And she started to cry again, putting her face in her hands. “I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand it.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Jim—but he didn’t sound as confident as he did before when he was talking politics. He kept watching the door through which Pastor Ron had gone. Staring at it, as if he could see through it to what was happening.

  Meredith turned around and faced the balcony. “Palmer,” she said.

  He glanced back at her. “What did you want me to do?” he asked her. “Knock him down? The man’s an adult. He makes his own decisions.”

  Meredith didn’t respond to this at all. She just asked him: “What are you going to do now?”

  Palmer drew a hand along his stubbly jaw, as though he were considering her question. He came inside. There was a small wooden desk against one wall, a wooden chair in front of it. He grabbed the chair, turned it around backward, and straddled it. He gave Meredith a comical look, closing one eye and squinting up at her through the other.

  “Who says I’m going to do anything?” he asked.

  Meredith didn’t answer and Palmer didn’t seem to expect her to, because he just went on.

  “I can’t see my van from here,” he told her. “It’s old—it doesn’t like coming up these hills—so I parked it down in the dirt at the bottom of the road. I can’t see it—but I think I’d be able to see the smoke if they’d set it on fire, so I’m thinking it may still be there, may still be in one piece . . .”

  “You’re going to go get it,” said Meredith.

  “I’m going to try. If I can get out of here, if I can get to my plane, I might be able to fly across the border before the whole country goes up in smoke.”

  Meredith nodded slowly. “And what about the rest of us?” she asked.

  Palmer gave another one of his ironic shrugs. “Well, I guess the rest of you will all be set free after the padre talks sweet reason to the freedom fighter for justice, right?”

  “Stop it,” said Meredith softly.

  Palmer gave a half smile, but he dropped the sarcasm. “I’m not responsible for the rest of you, lady,” he said. “You make your own decisions. Do what you want. I’m not waiting around for you to make up your minds.”

  I saw a tinge of red come into Meredith’s cheeks. “What can we do? We can’t come with you. We couldn’t keep up. Nicki couldn’t . . .” She didn’t finish, only gestured toward where Nicki sat, limp and exhausted with her face buried in her hands.

  Palmer gave Nicki a long, slow look before he turned back to Meredith. “Just as well,” he said. “I’m a lot more likely to slip past these clowns on my own.”

  “Then what?” I asked. I was only beginning to comprehend what Palmer was saying. As I did, I felt another flash of anger in me. I stoo
d up off the bed. “Then you—what?—just drive off and get in your airplane and fly for the border?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And leave us here alone? Just leave us here?”

  I felt something clutch in my stomach when Palmer’s eyes met mine. I saw nothing but laughter in them.

  “You’re not my problem, kid,” he said. “I’m just the pilot.”

  I tried to answer him, but I was so appalled, nothing would come out. I just stood there spluttering like an idiot. “I . . . I . . . I . . .” I looked to Meredith for help, but she went on watching Palmer, her lips pressed tightly together, her cheeks pink. “I can’t believe this!” I finally managed to say.

  I stalked out onto the balcony. I needed some air. I needed to get away from that room. It felt like a death trap. Because I guess that’s exactly what it was.

  I stood out there on the narrow platform, my hands on the railing. I was looking down at a broad alley between the hotel and the church. The sun was coming down on me from an angle as it sank toward the blue, misty mountains, which I could just make out at the alley’s end to my left. I couldn’t see the end of the alley to my right, but I knew it led into the coffee fields and the jungle beyond. Directly across from me was the white wall of the church, its narrow windows, its open Spanish-style bell tower with the cross on top. There were two men standing against the wall—two men in fatigues with machine guns strapped over their shoulders. They were passing a bottle of some kind of liquor back and forth between them.

  I jerked back a little as another blast of gunfire went off on the street. From where I was standing, I could just see a small portion of the plaza. Now and again, someone would pass through my field of vision. Once I saw a woman clutching a child—she ran by in terror. Then there was a soldier, brandishing his weapon and stumbling along with a wide drunken strut.

  When I looked in the other direction, I could see smoke— black smoke—rising into a sky that was already turning gray in preparation for the afternoon thunderstorms. I realized the smoke had to be coming from the nearby coffee plantation. I guessed Mendoza and his men had set the big house on fire. Probably killed the family that owned the land. Justice. Progress.

  I looked down—down at the two men drinking in the alley below me—down and over at the turmoil that appeared to me in brief glimpses in the square. I didn’t see how Palmer thought he was going to get down there, get past all the gunmen to his van. I knew I couldn’t do it. And I knew he was right—he couldn’t do it with us in tow. If he was going to have any chance of escape, he’d have to go alone.

  But I didn’t care if he was right or not. I was angry at him for talking about abandoning us. Just leaving us here to die at Mendoza’s hands.

  “If you’re going,” I heard Meredith say behind me, “I think you should go.”

  She was talking to Palmer—and now I heard his answer.

  “No. It’s too soon. They’re not drunk enough yet. There must be thirty of them out there—thirty men with machine guns. One of me—and I’m unarmed. They’re going to have to be awfully smashed for me to make any kind of a run for it at all.”

  Meredith answered. Her voice was still steady, but I could hear the urgency in it. “I think we both know that Pastor Ron doesn’t have much time, Palmer.”

  “That doesn’t change the facts. If I go out there now, I’ll be killed.”

  “If you don’t, you won’t be in time to help him.”

  “Who said I was going to help him?”

  There was a long silence between them. I stood on the balcony, my back to the room. I watched the two gunmen drinking, chatting, and laughing below me. One was leaning drunkenly against the church wall. The other wiped his mouth with his hand and staggered. He looked unsteady on his feet, like he might topple over any second.

  “A moment ago,” Meredith said behind me, “you asked me what sort of man I thought you were. Did you really want to know?”

  “Sure,” said Palmer ironically. “It’d pass the time.”

  “I think you’re an exceptional man. I think you’re a hero.”

  Palmer laughed—but Meredith went right on speaking over his laughter.

  “Something’s happened that made you bitter—I see that. And I see that you think you can get back at the world for whatever it is, that you’re telling the world to go hang itself. And I can see it confuses you how that just makes your bitterness worse and worse.”

  I kept staring out over the balcony, but I wasn’t seeing anything now. I was just listening—listening to Meredith’s voice. The stuff she was saying to Palmer—it made me feel— I don’t know—bad somehow. Maybe jealous is the word I want. I couldn’t imagine her ever telling me that I was exceptional. A hero . . .

  But Palmer only laughed at her again. “Wow,” he said. “You sure have a lot to say on a lot of subjects. Are you gonna spit in my eye now too?”

  “No,” said Meredith. “But I am going to tell you one more thing.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “I’m going to tell you that you’re about to do something very dangerous.”

  “Oh, I think I figured that out all by myself.”

  “I don’t mean that,” said Meredith. “I don’t mean just getting shot.”

  “That sounds dangerous enough for me.”

  “I mean if you reach your van—if you reach your plane— if you get away from here, get out of this country—and if you leave us to die because you think the world has mistreated you and it can go hang—you’re going to lose the man you were made to be. Not just misplace him, as you have now, Palmer. But I mean lose him, really, forever.”

  It was weird. I felt a real tightness in my throat as I listened to her. I’d never heard anyone talk like that before. So simple, so straightforward, so sure of herself like that, so sure of what she knew. And again, in a weird way, I sort of wished it was me she was talking to . . .

  But Palmer answered in his sarcastic drawl, “Wow! Lady Liberty! What a piece of work you are. That’s a lot of fancy talk just to get a man to risk his life for you.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Oh no! Sure. Not you. You don’t care about yourself at all. You’re not even afraid, right?”

  “Look at me, Palmer,” Meredith answered in her calm, quiet voice. “Do I look afraid?”

  There was silence. I couldn’t believe it: it sounded as if Palmer was finally lost for a smart reply. Out on the balcony, I found I had been holding my breath the last few seconds. I let it out now.

  “Whatever,” Palmer said then. “All I know is that those guys out there aren’t drunk enough yet or distracted enough for me to make my move. And if you’ll forgive me, I don’t feel like getting riddled with machine-gun bullets for the sake of your high principles. And even if you won’t forgive me.”

  I waited for Meredith to answer, but it seemed the conversation was over. I started to turn away from the railing, to head back into the room. But before I could, I saw something so horrible it froze me to the spot.

  “Oh,” I heard myself say. “Oh no.”

  A chair scraped in the hotel room. A second later Palmer was standing at my shoulder right behind me. Then Meredith was at my other shoulder. Jim and Nicki were there too, pressing in to get a glimpse.

  We all stood together and stared down into the alley. What we saw made me feel as if my heart had turned to ashes.

  Two rebels, machine guns strapped over their shoulders, came marching into the alley. They were dragging Pastor Ron between them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Pastor Ron had been beaten badly. His glasses were gone. His eyes were dull. His mouth hung open. His face was covered in blood and bruises. He couldn’t walk on his own anymore—that’s why the gunmen were dragging him. His feet went out behind him weakly as they hauled him down the alley. He wasn’t even trying to move on his own steam. He was barely conscious.

  Nicki screamed, “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!”

  At the sound of her vo
ice, one of the two rebels glanced up at us on the balcony. He smiled. It was a grim, terrible smile. I knew in my heart that we were finished. All of us.

  Her voice high and thin and filled with tears, Nicki cried, “They’re not going to kill him, are they? Are they? They can’t just kill him.”

  “No, no, they won’t do that,” said Jim.

  Palmer looked around, looked at Meredith. I saw their eyes meet and I could almost hear the ideas passing silently between them. Of course they were going to kill him. That’s exactly what they were going to do. And once Mendoza had shed blood, once he’d killed one of us—and a clergyman, no less—he would have to kill us all. He had nothing to gain by keeping the rest of us alive to bear witness to what he had done.

  Desperately, without thinking, I shouted at Palmer, “Do something! You have to do something!”

  Palmer only sneered at me as if that were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. I wanted to slug him.

  But Meredith said softly, “There’s nothing he can do, Will. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

  Whatever I was going to shout next died on my tongue. I knew if Meredith said this, it was true.

  Nothing we can do. The idea was horrible to me.

  I turned and looked down helplessly into the alley.

  The soldiers dragged Pastor Ron directly under us. One of them barked orders to the two gunmen who were drinking against the wall. The drunken gunmen snapped to unsteady attention. The one with the bottle tossed it into the dust. Then both men fell in step with the other two rebels. All four of them continued to march Pastor Ron toward the alley’s far end.

  Nicki kept screaming and crying, “What are they going to do? What are they going to do?”

  Jim kept saying, “They can’t . . . They won’t . . . They can’t just . . .”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything anymore. I felt as if there were a rock in the middle of my throat. Pastor Ron had come to our church about six years ago, when I was ten. I remembered him visiting the Sunday school to tell us Bible stories. He was always really nice and funny with little kids and we loved him. I remembered him shaking my hand on the receiving line after the service and telling me how much I’d grown. I remembered him saying the prayers at my grandfather’s funeral . . .