Paulo drove the speed limit while Paulina followed us. Isabella’s smile covered the entire inside of the helmet and Paulina’s spread nearly as wide. I sat up front in the truck with Paulo—in the cab with no air-conditioning. Where it was a hundred and twenty degrees if it was anything. My sweat—trickling down my face, neck, back, and calves—stuck me to the seat like honey while Paulo, seemingly unfazed, drove in relative comfort.
Halfway home, he pulled up near a roadside store advertising cell phones and prepaid cards. He motioned for me to follow. I did. When we reached the counter, he bought a new prepaid card for his own phone and then pointed at the phones in the counter. “You buy?”
He was right. A good idea. Paulo helped me negotiate with the man for a new phone and a calling card. After we’d paid, he dialed my number in his phone and watched as my phone rang. Knowing he could now get in touch with me, he nodded and waved me onward. “Vámonos.”
Paulina was right. If you needed something done, Paulo was your man.
Back in the truck, the heat returned and stuck my clothing to my skin beneath a layer of sweat. Paulo was growing more comfortable with me so every few minutes, he’d point through the windshield at something he wanted me to see or know or understand. And while I didn’t understand a word he said as he unconsciously rattled off in Spanish, I do know that the words he spoke were beautiful. Tender. Paulo was attempting to share his world with me.
Over the next thirty minutes, I kept an eye on the girls in the rearview, listened to Paulo, nodded as if I understood completely, and lost five pounds in sweat.
It was a great conversation.
* * *
After dinner, I used my new phone to call Colin’s house line. He picked up after the first ring. I said, “Ronnie?” and hung up.
Colin got a new SIM card every couple of days and nobody ever knew the number—because it wasn’t intended for incoming calls. If I needed to talk with him, I called his house number and said the name of any president and hung up. That left him to call the number on his caller ID. Which he did. We’d had a decade’s worth of practice. Seconds later, my phone rang and I answered. “How you guys getting along?”
“Better.” His voice sounded different. Even some levity. He also spoke softly, which led me to believe that someone was sleeping nearby. He was almost whispering. “Small progress, but it’s progress. Any luck?”
“Some.” I backed up and told him about León. About Isabella, Paulo, the coffee plantation, his truck, and then the beach resort. He was quiet when I finished.
He said, “Any idea what’s next?”
“Tomorrow I thought I’d get on the bike and ride up and down the coast. Surfers are particular about their waves so it shouldn’t be too tough. Find good waves and I should find some surfers. Provided he’s still with them.”
“You think he’s not?”
“I think Zaul will be of use to these guys as long as he has money. He’s lost his transportation and I’d bet he’s running low on money, so I’m guessing his usefulness is running out—if it hasn’t already.”
Colin mumbled in agreement. I tried to change the subject. “Any sign of Shelly?”
“She’s been to see Maria every day. The reconstruction of her face was nothing short of miraculous. She stops in on her way home.”
That sounded strange because Colin’s house wasn’t on Shelly’s way home. My silence told Colin I was trying to figure this out. He picked up on it. “She’s…spending some time with an orthopedist from the hospital. When I asked about him, she said, ‘He’s a safe bet.’ He’s got a place down on the canal.”
I did not see that one coming. “I hope she’s happy.”
Colin cleared his throat. “He heard she’d called off the wedding and showed up at her work. Took her to dinner. All the nurses say she seems happier.”
“I hope she is.”
“She looks different. Peaceful.”
I could hear a noise in the background. I was scratching my head when Colin said, “Hold on. Somebody wants to talk to you.”
He handed her the phone. Maria sounded sleepy. Her words sounded thick, like she’d just come from the dentist and the Novocain had yet to wear off. “Hey, Uncle Charlie. I miss you.”
“I miss you, pretty girl. How you feeling?”
“Okay. It hurts less. You find Zaul?”
“Not yet, but I’m looking. He was always pretty good at hide-and-go-seek.”
She chuckled. “I remember. Uncle Charlie?”
“Yeah, baby girl.”
“When you find him, hug him for me. We all miss him. Mom cries most of the time now.”
I swallowed hard. “You heal up. I’ll see you soon.”
“You bring me something?”
“You bet.”
She handed the phone back to her dad. Colin and I sat in silence. After a minute, I broke it. “That one’s special.”
He sniffled. Blew his nose. “I been thinking a lot lately and I can’t figure something.”
“What’s that?”
“Why was one like her given to someone like me?”
It was a good question, and I’d been wrestling with many of the same emotions. I had no answer for him. “I’ll call when I know more.”
I hung up, lay on my bed, and listened to the night. People talked in hushed tones in their homes around us. Dogs barked. Pigs grunted. A horse neighed in one direction and a noisy cat screeched in another. Every few moments, I heard a thud on the ground outside. Finally, I heard one on the tin roof of the chicken coop, which, when it landed, sounded like a bomb going off above my head and levitated me about four feet above the bed. I walked outside in the moonlight and stared up into the tree. A monkey was pulling on the mangoes and dropping them to the ground where several dogs had gathered. When I walked beneath the tree, he sat up straight, staring down at me. I picked through the mangoes, finding one that felt ripe, and washed it in the pila. After washing Paulina’s knife, I peeled it, placed the slices on my tongue, and let the taste swirl around, filling me. Between the aroma, the taste, the juice, the texture, it was an all-encompassing experience.
That mango was a mirror image of my last few days. Once beautiful, placed on display for all the world to see, it had been ripped from its perch, thrown to the ground, rolled in manure and squalor, and left to rot. While that might have bruised it and soiled its skin, it didn’t change its nature or what it freely offered, for once I peeled it back, an inexplicable sweetness was waiting to be discovered and tasted and consumed. There was just one catch—you had to be willing to get your hands dirty. Even sticky. To pick through it. Bathe it. Peel it back. And for so much of my life I had not.
The second train of thought coursing through my mind was a quiet nagging. Whether I found Zaul or not, what was I going to do? At some point, this search would end, and when it did, where would I go? What would I do? Who, if anyone, would I do it with? Hack was dead. Bimini held nothing for me. Miami had never been my home. While I’d been born there and while I still owned a house, Jacksonville wasn’t my home. I felt no tug anywhere in the States. No one was expecting me. No one was waiting by the phone. If I didn’t show up somewhere, no one would know or care.
The fruit of my life was that there was none.
I finished the mango; climbed up on the tin roof, which was still warm from the day’s heat; and lay down, staring at the stars and counting the satellites that screamed overhead.
An hour later, I climbed down, having never felt so full and so small at the same time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Monday morning daylight brought with it the glorious smell of coffee. I followed my nose and found Paulina and Paulo sitting on the back porch. The back porch was a compacted area of dirt next to the house where the tin roof had been extended like a stiff tent over two posts. It was both a shelter from the rain and half a hot box. While Isabella slept, they were talking about the day. She told me Paulo’s idea was that while Isabella was in school, we’d
break up into two “teams.” Divide and conquer. He’d take the truck and go one way; she and I would hop on the bike and go another. He felt we could cover more ground that way. We’d start at the northern end of the coast and move south, and he’d return to León, across to the coast, and then north. That way we could cover the entire coastline, and by the end of the week, we should meet somewhere in the middle. Granted, Zaul could move around and to places we’d already covered, but at least we could get some info from the locals who might have seen him.
Sounded good to me. I asked, “You don’t mind sitting on the back of a bike?”
She smiled. “I’m used to it. Or”—a shrug—“I used to be.”
Paulo asked, “We meet back here after noon. Then you help me?”
I wasn’t quite sure what he was asking. Paulina offered, “He wants to ask a favor of you.” She paused. “He’s hesitant because it’s different than working in the sugarcane.”
I turned to Paulo. “Sure. Anything.”
Paulo nodded and left while Paulina readied Isabella for school, which left me savoring my coffee. I’d had some good coffee in my life, and I’d often considered myself a connoisseur in much the same way people prefer wines, but as I sat there, the flavor of those beans and that resulting coffee struck me as possibly the best I’d ever had.
She smiled. “Good, isn’t it?”
I spoke staring at my mug. “Not sure I’ve ever had better.”
“You must mean it. That’s the second time you’ve said that.” We walked Isabella to school and then stood in the backyard staring up at the mountain several miles in the distance. She pointed. “You see that dark spot below the crater. Where it’s real lush?”
I nodded.
She shaded her eyes. “My father was walking up there forty years ago and discovered that the lake atop the crater spilled into that area. Natural irrigation that deposited all those minerals into the soil. He also found wild coffee. The land wasn’t very valuable; no one wanted it because no one believed you could do anything with it, but he felt differently, so he bought that plateau with his life savings and then cultivated the coffee. He felt there was something special in the combination of that volcanic water, the shade from those ancient trees, and that soil. I was born a few years later, and by then we had coffee plants popping up out of every thing or container that wasn’t nailed down.” She shook her head. “I have walked up that mountain a thousand times and planted ten thousand coffee plants myself. By hand.” A pause. “What you are drinking comes from some of those original plants.” A smile. “Provided you know where to look and do so when others are not.”
“You stole these beans?”
She considered this. “How could I steal what was given to me?” She pulled on my helmet and began buckling the strap. Then pulled on a backpack filled with a few snacks and water. “My father was very successful. Bought more land. Planted more coffee. And employed hundreds of people in this valley, but the economy he created affected thousands. If the head of household makes money, the community grows, and the men walk with their heads high because their family eats at night. At one time, he was the largest grower and supplier of coffee in the northern half of Nicaragua. We shipped all around the world. Europe. Africa. North America. There were larger farms who produced more, but they weren’t family owned.” She smiled. Her eyes glistened. “My father paid good wages, gave hand over fist, created good working conditions, shared profits, started a school and taught the kids for free, brought in doctors and provided health care.” She laughed. “He even helped birth a few babies, and there are more boys and men in this valley named Alejandro than anywhere. My father was unlike anything these people had ever seen. His goodness shocked them because for so long they’d been beat down so far that they’d lost everything. What’s worse, they’d lost the most important thing and he gave it back to them. He loved this country, he loved these people, and he loved my mom and he loved me, but that didn’t earn him his legacy. He is still talked about today because he gave these people something no one had ever offered before. No government. No military. No warlord. No rebellion.” A nod. “He gave them hope—the currency of love—and they loved him for it.” She shook her head, laughing. “He had this crazy idea that mangoes and coffee, if planted together, shared their taste with one another. So he planted hundreds of mango trees across this mountainside and then, as they grew, thousands of coffee plants beneath them. Oddly, he was right. Add to that the rich volcanic soil, natural irrigation from the crater lake, and our coffee has a hint of mango in it and our mangoes have a hint of coffee in them. Only place in the world. And my uneducated father, who quit school the third day of second grade, figured that out.”
My voice stuttered when I asked, “What happened?”
“Two things: First, an American company wanted to buy my father’s business for pennies on the dollar, and when he wouldn’t sell, our guess—and we don’t know this for sure—is that they bought the competition and unloaded the coffee at ridiculous prices, bloating the market with cheap coffee with which we could not compete. They couldn’t have us, so they destroyed us, giving it away in order to bankrupt my father. It worked. Feeling indebted to his workers, he borrowed to the hilt and mortgaged his mountain to pay and feed his people. Then, when every ounce had been squeezed out of him and he’d lost forty pounds working his fingers to the bone, trying to resurrect something from nothing, Carlos happened.”
Her voice fell quiet and soft. A long pause. “We were all gathered in the house together, and Papi said he needed to take food to the people down the mountain. To the few that remained. He knew they were wet and hungry and afraid. Mami went with him. I remember staring down after them, watching them walk away. And I knew that the food in his backpack meant that he would not eat for a week. He reached for her, grabbed her hand as they walked in the rain. Happy.” A nod. “I remember that despite hardship untold, they were happy.” She shook her head once. “They walked down the mountain in the rain on the road that passed the well, and I never saw them again. Next thing I knew, we heard a noise like helicopters and then…all the world changed. Mudslide. In the months that followed, my husband, Paulo, and I tried to resurrect what we could, but so many people died. Ninety percent of our workforce had been killed. My husband was a doctor, so he and I spent weeks tending to the sick and wounded. Paulo began building coffins and he quit counting at two hundred. Coffee production came to a standstill. We had no thought of producing coffee when we were trying so hard just to survive and help others do the same. There was”—she wiped her hands in a large swath across the entire valley between us and the mountain—“death everywhere. The smell of it lasted for weeks. At one point, it was so bad we just had to stack and burn the bodies of both people and livestock to kill and stop the spread of disease. These people who worked for us weren’t just paid workers. They were family. We paid for more than two hundred funerals and paid to help rebuild Valle Cruces. So the remaining families had a roof and a place to live. Because my father would have wanted it this way, we gave what amounted to life insurance policies to the families who lost anyone.” She shook her head. “How do you value a human life?”
Another long pause. She continued. “Somewhere in there I got pregnant. My husband, Gabriel, wanted to name her Isabella because it means ‘devoted to God.’ I remember him standing not too far from here up on a shoulder of the mountain, staring at a wall of mud one mile wide and thirty miles long, stretching to the ocean, and saying that something or someone in the midst of this hell needed to be devoted to God because nothing else had been. We worked around the clock. He went for days without sleep. With a weakened system, he contracted the virus that attacked the lining of his heart. We buried him six months later. One more death amid a sea of others. I was pregnant and brokenhearted, I tried to pick up the pieces. I went to the bank, took out one more loan—basically on my father’s good name because we had nothing left except the homestead—and in so doing leveraged what had once been
the heart of Alejandro’s Mango Café and Cinco Padres Café Compañía. While I have my father’s heart for these people, I don’t have his business savvy. I was desperate, didn’t read the fine print, and then the bank sold and the new owner”—she held up her fingers like quotation marks—“called in the loan. When the bank called to tell me, I had to ask. I had no idea you could ‘call in a loan.’” A painful shrug. “The foreclosure was quick and decisive. We walked down that mountain three weeks later having lost everything. If it hadn’t been for Paulo, I’m not sure where I’d be. He’s…special to me. To Isabella.”
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole.
She continued, “Losing my father’s mountain was tough at first, but it’s been a decade so sometimes my life there seems like a distant memory.”
“Why did you stay? Why not move? Start over someplace else?”
“I love these people. Losing the farm changed how I do that. Not the fact that I do.” She pointed to a small rise on the lush plateau once purchased by her father. “The well that my father dug is there. He dug it when I was just a kid. Younger than Isabella. He would be digging by an oil lamp, some three hundred feet down, and sending up buckets of dirt that hung suspended over his head. Which is why you need to trust the man holding the rope. Anyway, he’d be down there all day, digging, sending up buckets, and I’d pull one off the rope, drag it to the garden, and by the time I got back, Paulo would have lifted another for me. Late in the afternoons, when I got tired and wanted to play with my friends or do something, anything, other than haul a five-gallon bucket of dirt over my shoulder to some hot garden, he would write a note and attach it to the bucket. I’d read it when it came up.”
“What’d the note say?”
“Este es el amor con las piernas.” She then translated without being asked. “‘This is love with legs.’ My father used to say that you can tell someone you love them until you’re blue in the face, but until they see that walked out, they have no idea what it means. Hence, ‘love with legs.’” A wide smile spread across her face. “Every day he’d climb out of that hole covered in mud from head to foot. The only thing you could see were the whites of his eyes. When he finally hit water, Paulo pulled him up, and my father stood under the wellhead while Paulo showered him. The water was muddy and brown at first, but the more he pumped, the more pure and clear it became. Finishing the well, with a concrete cap and hand pump, he was so proud. While the concrete was still wet, he took a stick and carved deep into the side, “Agua de mi corazón.” She pointed with her toe. “It means, ‘Water from my heart.’” A warm breeze washed across us and cooled the sweat trickling down my back. “Whenever he would walk me to school, we’d pass by that well, and he’d hold my hand and point with an ear-to-ear grin. ‘That’s love with legs. That’s love with legs.’ My father was proud of many things, but he was especially proud of that well.”