* * *
It was dark when we finally made it to the picnic. The people pulled her away and Leena danced and laughed and ate and laughed some more. Isabella ran between her mom and me and Zaul and Paulo. She was covered in food, and at about ten o’clock I took her to the pool where parents were washing their kids and just washed her off. She loved it.
I watched Leena, spying from a distance. I was falling further and further from my resolve to tell her about my role in the collapse of this place. What did it matter? Her parents had been found, people were happy. There had been closure. She knew she was loved. Was it selfish of me to want to tell her? Get it off my chest and dump it on hers under the guise of being truthful when in reality I just wanted to make myself feel better? I couldn’t answer that. All I knew was that I was carrying a weight and I wasn’t sure where it would land when I unloaded it or what damage it would cause.
But I knew better. For the first time in my life, the truth was eating me. Like gasoline in a Styrofoam cup, it was eating me from the inside out. Even Zaul picked up on it. “You okay, Uncle Charlie?”
As I watched Leena, I remembered the first time I’d seen her. The memory flashed.
It was here. On this mountain, on the road just below us. When I’d rented a motorcycle and ridden up here as everyone was walking down after we’d foreclosed. A woman was walking down, pregnant and alone. The emptiness on her face caught me then and returned now. It was Leena. I had watched her walk right past me. An enormous unseen millstone driving her like a piling into the earth. The pain pierced me as I remembered the empty, lifeless look in her eyes as she glanced at me. Seconds later and seemingly unaffected, I’d cranked the motorcycle and left that mountain and its people in my dust. I boarded Marshall’s plane and stared smugly down at this world from thirty-five thousand feet while that new-jet smell enveloped me, insulating me from the smoldering hell I’d just left, where Leena had just buried her husband. Buried everything.
Zaul nudged me, awaiting my response.
I brushed him off. “Yeah. I’m good.”
He knew better. My face betrayed me. I was a long way from good. Even an inexperienced player like Zaul could read that bluff. I had to tell her. If I wanted any relationship with Leena, I needed to open the door on the closet in me that held this secret. Watching her dance and twirl and sweat and sing, I realized how completely I’d fallen for Leena. Evidence to the depth of my fall was my 180-degree gut reaction, which was not to keep my life a secret, but to tell her everything. Tell her now so there’d be no chance that I couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt her later.
I made up my mind that when the right chance presented itself, I’d open the door and turn on the light. Tell her everything. And save her from the truth of me.
Problem was, I never got the chance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I’d often heard the warning but never really understood: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Valle Cruces was holding a funeral for one of Nicaragua’s most beloved farmers. Word spread. Carrying with it the news that two gringos—one young with tattoos, recovering from a beating—were on the mountain and had been instrumental in this. Evil men reacted to that news differently from the majority of the population. You’d think that after looking over my shoulder for more than a decade that I’d have thought about that, but I had not. It had never crossed my mind. And while the majority of Nicaraguans joined the party and filled themselves at the table and drank their fill and laughed and sang and danced, others were not quite so happy. And those select few hid beneath the mango trees.
I never saw them coming.
* * *
Paulo waved me toward the punch table, where they’d run out of punch. I grabbed two five-gallon buckets and headed to the well. Zaul followed a few steps behind. Just beyond the lights of the festivities, where the road narrowed and leveled out slightly, I heard a shuffling. I thought maybe Zaul had stumbled but he had not. When I turned around, he was smiling. Whistling even. Stepping from rock to rock in the moonlight. I thought it might be kids playing in the trees. It was not.
Three muscled bodies appeared in front of me, one on either side made five, each held something in his hands that looked like a stick of some sort. Maybe one carried a machete. Without so much as a sound, the guy in front of me—either the leader, the most brazen, or both—swung for the bleachers, threatening to send my head with it, but I ducked, turned, and told Zaul, “Run!” When I did, two more appeared behind me—their silhouettes suggested they were bigger. While the first guy had acted prematurely and mistimed his swing, they were patient and timed theirs perfectly. The next blow took me off my feet and I felt something break in my face. The pack quickly followed and pounced on me. I felt something slice the side of my head, then again on my face, followed by a third deeper cut above my eye. I tried to stand, to make an escape, but my eye had swollen shut so fast I couldn’t see. Something hard smashed down across my collarbone, snapping it and dislocating my shoulder. I rolled, pushed myself up on my good arm, but I couldn’t see out of either eye. They used my hesitation to their advantage, regrouped, and somebody struck me from behind.
You know all those movies where the outnumbered and overmatched underdog gets hit from behind and then manages some Herculean return to stand back up, fend off, and conquer the marauding horde? As if the head-splitting concussions and consequent beating only served to make him more mad, more dangerous, and finally release the superhuman character that’s resided in his soul his entire life? Well, forget that. There’s a reason Hollywood deals in make-believe and all the fight scenes are staged. I didn’t know much about my present situation, but I did know that there were too many. They were too strong. And they’d gotten the jump on me. A quick inventory told me that I wanted no part of them. Further, following the skull-splitting pain from my shoulders up, all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and pull the covers over my eyes.
Then they hit me again, and I didn’t have much choice.
* * *
When I woke, people were screaming and I had a sense that lights were shining on me, but when I tried to focus, to open my eyes, I could not. I could move my fingers and toes, but my head was splitting and I could not stay conscious. I kept fading in and out. Someone was cradling me, screaming incoherently, holding my head while someone else was putting pressure on my face. In the background, I heard a truck engine. Leena’s voice sounded close in my ear. She was saying, “Stay with me,” but I had no control over my ability to do so. My mind was a fog. Her voice was cracking, and I felt like someone was pouring warm water over my head. Finally, I heard Zaul. He was screaming. Crying.
I reached out a hand, and somewhere in the dark, he took it. He couldn’t stop apologizing. I tried to quiet him but he was inconsolable. Finally, I pulled him to me, put my hand on his head, and pulled his hair, bringing his face inches from mine. “Zaul!”
“Uncle Charlie, look what they—”
Leena was whispering to someone over my shoulder. I think it was Paulo. She was in midsentence. “…die in Managua. They’re not qualified to—” Some screaming drowned them out. “…bleed to death on the way there.”
Chaos had set in all around us. “Zaul….Call your dad. Send the jet.” Blood puddled in my mouth, making it difficult to talk. “Land it”—I pointed west—“on the highway.” I spat. I meant to say “Get me to Miami,” but the only word that actually made it out of my mouth was “Miami.”
Leena understood that I was actually making pretty good sense. If he made the call, I could be in Miami in three hours, and if we started driving now, we wouldn’t be in Managua for almost four with no guarantee that they’d admit me or even be able to see me when I got there. Knowing what I was trying to do, she turned her attention to him.
“Zaul, call your dad.”
I turned toward Leena’s voice. Something was choking me so I again said one word, “Miami?”
She was crying now, too, and shaking her head, “Charl
ie, I don’t—”
I heard a ruckus a few hundred yards off. It sounded like a lot of men hollering in very loud voices. In a few short minutes, I’d lost a lot of blood. I pressed her hand against my face. “Just keep me—”
“I don’t—” She wasn’t making much sense, either. No one was making sense.
I was growing dizzy, and it was getting more and more difficult to focus. I reached in my pocket, fumbled for my phone, and offered it to whomever. A hand took it from me. Leena’s, I think. And I tried to recite Colin’s number.
I passed out shortly thereafter.
Details are sketchy after that. I remember a bumpy ride in a truck and something cold on my head and face. I remember Leena wrapping my head in something. I remember Isabella crying and I remember the sound of Paulo’s voice, but I couldn’t hear what he said. I remember bright lights, the feeling of being cradled in someone’s arms, my head pressed to their chest, and the sound of their heart pounding real fast in my ear. I remember a voice whispering to me, but I couldn’t understand what it said and I’m not sure I could make out who the voice belonged to—though it seemed familiar. Then I remember the feeling of being carried, lying down flat, and then the floor tilting up and my being pressed back hard against the floor. Leena was crying, pleading with anybody who would listen, and her voice was cracking. Urgency rippled through the air like electricity.
In a final moment of lucidity, aided by what was probably my last shot of adrenaline, I placed my finger on her lips to quiet her. Leena pressed her face close to mine and held both my cheeks in her hands. I felt her breath on my face. She was shaking and her hands were slippery. “Sometimes, we pay for our sins.”
She was screaming when the world went silent.
* * *
Somewhere above forty thousand feet traveling close to Mach 1, beneath screams and radio traffic and requesting clearance for landing and something about “B positive on hand,” the slide show played across my mind’s eye. I’ve always liked movies so I enjoyed watching one about me. I wasn’t expecting that. I saw my mom; caught a rare glimpse of my dad in his cab and for once he was smiling, saw myself surfing and delivering pizzas, watched a wrestling match in high school, hovered over the finish line in several track meets, visited classrooms in Boston, played poker with the big boys where I won a car, landing in London, meeting Amanda on a midnight run, dinner with her parents, Marshall, Brendan, watching through the window as Amanda opened the envelope and screamed at Marshall, watching her disappear in the rearview mirror, rebuilding my hurricane shack in Bimini, bumping into Hack in the hardware store, watching him chain-smoke while I nursed a cup of coffee, building a skiff, fishing the flats for bonefish, Colin giving me a tour of his boathouse and looking down on the world he’d created but had little interest in, Marguerite, Maria singing, Zaul driving the boat, tripping over a mound of cash in my shack and hiding it on the island, hearing Hack’s cough, my first glimpse of Shelly, late night deliveries in Miami, fast boats, Agents Spangler and Beckwith, Shelly as she placed my watch in my hand, Maria’s mummified face in the hospital, Colin hanging his head in his hands, skirting Cuba in the Bertram, the Panama Canal, the swimming pool in the living room of the house, Isabella pulling back my eyelid and saying “borracho,” Paulina, the chicken coop, mango juice dripping drown my chin, the oscillating lion breathing on my face, Paulo’s forearms as he swung a machete and stacked sugarcane, pulling teeth and the smell of pus, “el doctor,” Leena’s arms wrapped around me as we rode dirt roads on a motorcycle, the best coffee I’d ever had in my life, the biggest mango tree in Nicaragua, Isabella slipping her hand in mine, descending the well shaft, white bones sticking out of the rock, swinging a hammer in the dark, a trickle of water on my neck, cold water swallowing me, the sound of laughter, Paulo’s bloody hands, a long-sleeved white dress shirt, the smell of campfires, and the way the light reflected off Leena’s sweaty face as she danced and twirled, campfires across the mountainside showering sparks like fireflies.
The last image that played itself across my mind’s eye was something that happened when I was young. Maybe seven. Possibly eight. I’d been surfing. Or trying to. Just getting the hang of it. My mom was sunbathing, and rubbing sun tan oil on a guy I didn’t know and didn’t like. Gorilla hair covered his chest and back. His toupee sat canted at an angle, making me want to tug on one side to straighten it. He wore several thick gold chains, and a Speedo two sizes too small. But my mom was broken and blind. Had been. She was looking for a Band-Aid. I was, too. Only problem was this poseur lying next to her. When she finished greasing him up, he returned the favor and made a real show of it. I’d taken a spill in the surf and was walking up the beach dragging the two halves of my board. My head hurt. Blood ran down my leg. Mom saw me coming and waved me off. Attention elsewhere. “Go wash it off.” Standing there on the edge of that giant ocean, dizzy, the salt stinging my cut, holding two jagged pieces that would never again comprise a whole, an emotion pierced me. While the water around my shins turned red, and my broken board slipped from my fingers and drifted away, I whispered, “Charlie, you are alone and always will be.” Right there, nothing but a kid bleeding on the beach, life stained my soul.
The lights of the plane dimmed and I felt someone’s face close to mine. Tears dripped onto my cheeks. Lips pressed against mine. Breath forced into my lungs. Chest expanding. Somewhere in between this world and the next, I saw how the Loneliness had colored my DNA. Of all the days in my life, that day on the beach was the one day I wanted back. I wanted to grab that kid, wrap him in my arms, doctor his leg, wipe the tears and snot off his face, buy him a shiny new board, and cradle his very soul.
While the blood trickled out, staining the new carpet in that $7 million plane, the truth flooded in and laid bare the wound. The simplicity struck me. I’d spent my life medicating that wound. Since that moment, I’d bought into the idea that isolation would ease my pain and indifference was the remedy for rejection.
Clarity was quick in coming. Isolation is a prison and indifference is a lie. Neither work.
As the breath exited my lungs and the screams and cries faded above me like a passing siren, the video of my life ended with a sequence of sepia-colored slides. The first depicted me standing on the shore as that broken and bleeding kid, sun-bleached hair, bronzed skin, with the beginnings of hardened muscles in my back. I was climbing into the skiff Hack and I built and paddling out through the waves and onto open water. But as I tried to paddle out, all stoic and self-reliant, Leena held on to the stern, pulling back, digging her heels into the sand. She was shaking her head. “Don’t…” But she was no match for the current of my life so I slipped from her fingers. Out beyond the breakers, I turned back. Her mouth was moving but the pounding waves between us garbled her words. When I reached the horizon where the ocean fell off the side of the earth, I turned and found her still standing there. A dot on the shoreline. Hand shading her eyes. Beneath me, the boat jolted, rocking side to side, balancing on the same knife’s edge where I once so confidently and coldly held my life and those I valued. Straining to see her, I teetered on the same precipice where I’d once been so willing to nudge others if circumstances arose contrary to my freedom. As if they didn’t matter. She beckoned, “Charlie…Please—”
The bow dipped and the stern rose, blocking my view of the beach. The world had gone black but her breath washed my face. Charlie, let me give you me.
Two hands violently jerked my head toward Leena while powerful, stinging blows pounded my chest. I turned and readied myself for the frothy death by drowning on the rocks below when Hack appeared in my boat. Legs crossed. Not a care in the world. His hair had grown. Gone was the yellowed cigarette stain. Regal white had taken its place. His skin looked younger. No wrinkles. No crow’s-feet. He dipped Alejandro’s well bucket in the water and held it sloshing over my head. “Charlie, lonely washes off.” He waved his hand across the sea. “It’s why God made the water.” He laughed deep and long as he turned that bu
cket upside down. I expected hot and salty. What I got was cold, sweet, and tasted like mango. At first, the water that ran out of me was India-ink black. Just what I expected. Undeterred, Hack kept pouring. Flushing out the stain. Soon, the color changed, and as it did, the pain eased. When the color turned red, the pain was gone altogether.
Finished, he handed me the bucket and patted me on the shoulder, chuckling. He glanced at Leena on the beach and raised an eyebrow just slightly. “We’re made to walk ‘with.’ Not ‘without.’” Glancing over the side of the boat and down into precipice, he cocked his head at an angle and asked, “What’s that in your hand?”
So I started paddling back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’d always thought that when you died and came back that you were supposed to see people dressed in white and hear angels singing the “Hallelujah!” chorus. Not so. I couldn’t see a thing and the only thing I heard was hospital bells and alarms and a blood pressure cuff on my right arm. I woke to complete and total darkness. Not a ray of light touched my eyes. Despite that, I knew that I was holding a hand in each of my right and left hands.
Over me, to my left, I heard the whisper, “He’s awake.” Then I heard a bunch of shuffling and talking and it seemed like the room filled with people.
In my right ear, I heard Leena’s voice. “Charlie, can you hear me?” When she spoke, someone squeezed my right hand, causing me to think that she was holding my right hand. And in my left ear, I heard Shelly say again, “He’s awake.” When she said this, I felt someone both squeeze and pat my left hand. One minute I was paddling, rain on my face, and the next I was waking up with Shelly in one hand and Leena in the other.
Weird.
Somewhere beyond my feet, I heard the voices of Colin, Marguerite, Zaul, and then in my left ear, I heard the angelic whisper of Maria. “Uncle Charlie, Aunt Shelly says we’re twins now.”