The pages fell into her lap. "He doesn't know Walt is dead!" Somehow, she had expected news of her husband's accident to reach Santa Teresita the way word of her marriage had.
But let me get to the point. To my surprise, our old family friend, Pres. Montenegro--that's right, the president of Santo Sangre himself--invited me to come to the capital. Though I'm not enamored of him personally, he's been good to my mother and me since my father's death. Besides, how does a simple parish priest refuse an invitation from the leader of his country?
Leah wrinkled her nose at the thought of being anywhere near the Santo Sangrían president. His record of human rights violations, political imprisonments, and torture had become a cause for alarm within POCI, so much so that the Santo Sangrían regime had recently been the target of an international Immediate Action campaign. The final straw had been the arrest and torture of a popular university professor, who had committed no crime other than to suggest to his students that Santo Sangre's tenant farmers had a right to own the land they worked, land stolen from their fathers by the wealthy friends of former president, Vicente Ochóa y Chavez. Leah had coordinated the efforts of all POCI/USA Cells, raining air letters on Santa Catalina's main post office like a ticker tape parade. So, you're in bed with the enemy now? I never would've thought it possible. Leah's curiosity soared as she returned to the letter.
It seems Montenegro is upset with what he considers an unfair judgment against his government on the part of Prisoners of Conscience International.
"Good for old Raúl!" she said aloud, pleased that the letter-writing campaign had gotten Montenegro's attention.
"I hope he's upset as hell with us." Eager for more news of POCI's effect on the regime, she raced ahead, hoping Javier would report the release of Arturo Valdez.
He's sending me on a mission to personally represent him and our government. Imagine me a good-will ambassador! At first I was reluctant to leave my parish. It will be almost impossible to get a full-time replacement. (By the way, old Fr. Alejandro went to his eternal reward not long after you left here. I'm the pastor now. What do you think of that?)
"Bully for you, I suppose," Leah mumbled. Not being Catholic, it was no easier for her to penetrate the mystique of the priesthood now than it had been when she was twenty-three and . . . . It's okay. Say it, Leah, she assured herself. The words aren't going to bite you. She took a deep breath and whispered, "Twenty-three and in love." The emotional reaction to her admission was minimal. Too much time, too much life had gone by for one letter to stir up old passions.
The whole Catholic Church "thing" seemed silly to her. Not the faith part. People were free to believe whatever they wanted. Nor did she consider Jay's service to his people a waste of time. She had seen him in action too many times to denigrate either his dedication or his value to the villagers. The simple folk of Santa Teresita had sought him out for all kinds of help, just as they had come to her when she was with them.
As I said, I was reluctant to leave my parish. Then, the president's private secretary--I'm sure she's also his mistress and a force behind the throne--told me something that changed my mind. My assignment is to meet with the POCI directors in Rome, Amsterdam, and . . . yes, San Francisco! Can you believe it? The names of the first two directors meant absolutely nothing to me, but the third, Leah Sinclair Barton-- I had no idea you were involved with POCI. And a big shot, too! Trying not to seem too eager, I accepted the assignment.
"Oh, my God! He's coming here!" A wave of nameless feelings flooded her spirit, as she raced through the last page of Jay's letter.
Vander Hoorst and Pontieri have already agreed to meet with me. Please, consider this rather informal letter as official notification of my coming visit. I leave Santa Catalina November 3rd. I'll be in Rome for two weeks. (Montenegro insisted I spend some extra time vacationing in the Eternal City.) Then, on to Amsterdam for a few days. If my schedule holds up, I'll arrive in your beautiful city of San Francisco on the 19th, the weekend before your Thanksgiving holiday. I hope this schedule is agreeable. If it isn't, you can cable ahead to POCI World Headquarters in Amsterdam and leave a message for me. I have some leeway to make adjustments.
Leah, Montenegro may not be as clean and innocent as he claims, but he may not be as bad as POCI claims either. Let's talk with open minds. Perhaps I can do some good for everyone involved.
I EAGERLY look forward to meeting your husband--and children(?).
Affectionately, Jay
PS: Seeing your name on the list sent shivers through me. Aside from my business with POCI, I have a strong personal reason for seeing you. There's something I must tell you that you alone will understand.
Leah's first thought was to cable Willie Vander Hoorst in Amsterdam to the effect that no representative of President Raúl Montenegro would be welcome in her office. Then, a more rational thought pattern set in. "If Willie and Carlo have agreed to receive Jay, how can I refuse to do the same?"
She reread the postscript several times. It's just like Jay to leave the most important things unsaid. What does he mean, 'I have a strong personal reason for seeing you'? And, 'You alone will understand'? Why now? What do we have to talk about, other than POCI and that old fart masquerading as a statesman, Montenegro?
Leah switched off the lamp and pushed away her reservations about Jay's visit.
8
An hour later, still awake in the friendly darkness of her bedroom, Leah dove into an ocean of memories of a younger self, newly sprung from Berkeley and ready to save the world--albeit a small slice at a time. The first happened to be Santa Teresita. The tropical, mud-brick village looked up and down the verdant slope of the hibernating Chuchuán volcano. The mountain's conical rise from sea level to over five thousand feet dominated the island nation.
What Leah remembered most about the climate was the steamy jungle heat. It came from beneath her, from the ground through the soles of her sandals.
"You know, Señorita Sinclair," one toothless old woman announced on a particularly beastly day, "Chuchuán is not asleep at all. The fires of hell burn at the volcano's core and wait for the wicked."
"Oh, I see," Leah replied, without committing to belief or unbelief. Who was she, after all, a non-practicing Protestant, to argue theology with anyone?
Leah had been a volunteer with Project/SHARE, a non-profit, nonsectarian organization, dedicated to providing humanitarian service around the globe. P/SHARE, as it was called for short, operated a public health center in the village of Santa Teresita and provided an agricultural adviser for the region.
They assigned Leah to put her degree in public administration to work in the role of assistant to station Director Maggie Adams, a founding member of the Boston-based foundation. This meant doing a little of everything, including some simple nursing and keeping up the administrative end, while Maggie toured other P/SHARE stations.
POCI volunteers considered Santa Teresita a plum assignment, not for the place itself, but for the privilege working elbow-to-elbow with one of the organization's saints. Maggie was as revered among her recruits as Mother Theresa was among her sisters. While training at Boston University, Leah had met Maggie and hung on her every word both in formal lectures and in late-night bull sessions in the student union. The director was a strong, tough, wiry woman in her mid-fifties, quite beautiful without exactly being pretty. Her pure, direct gaze demanded straightforward exchanges, while at the same time encouraging personal sharing. She inspired trust. Any confidence committed to Maggie received a sentence of lifelong silence.
"Welcome to Santo Sangre," Maggie had said at the Capital Airport gate the day Leah arrived on the island.
"Thanks, Maggie." Leah made a wide full circle as she walked toward the outdoor baggage area. She wanted to take in everything at once, the colorful Southern Caribbean sights, the different tropical sounds, and the mostly Spanish chatter of arriving passengers. Fresh-fruit smells rode sea breezes that failed to soften the moist, hot air.
"It's great. Just great! I can't believe I'm here."
"We're the ones who're happiest about it." Maggie's welcome was as warm as Leah had expected it to be. "We've been short-handed for months."
Maggie drove slowly along Santa Catalina's wide, paved boulevards, giving Leah an opportunity to gawk at the giant plazas and the beautiful, golden-skinned people working at roadside stalls. It seemed that everything produced in the country could be bought in the open air, along with Japanese-made transistor radios and American clothing and cigarettes. Leah's first shock came when they left the city limits and started up Chuchuán's forested, ski-jump slope.
"Sorry," Maggie shouted, as their creaking, groaning Jeep slowed to take on rocky potholes one at a time.
"That's the end of the paved roads."
"Tell me you're kidding!"
"Wish I were." Maggie explained that tourism was Santo Sangre's number one business. "The capital serves as a showplace. Luxury tour ships pull into port and rich Americans, Europeans, and Asians come ashore to shop, lie on the beaches, and gamble in world-class casinos. A few miles up the coast, there's some of the greatest snorkeling and scuba diving you'll ever find. In some places you can see forever straight down in the water." She swerved with the skill of an Indy driver to evade a deep hole. "The government wants everyone to have a good time so they'll come back. What do tourists care if the rest of the island has only unpaved roads and precious few other modern conveniences?"
Leah's teeth rattled as the Jeep pitched and yawed. "How far is Santa Teresita?"
"No one asks 'how far?' down here. It's like L.A. The relevant question is: how long will it take us to get there?"
"Okay. How long will it take?"
"Five hours."
Leah couldn't think of a response, humorous or otherwise. Her main concern was for her stomach. She hoped it would hold the breakfast served aboard her SSAir flight from Miami.
It started to rain when they reached the crude 10K sign, pointing in the general direction of their destination. Maggie stopped along the already soft and muddy roadside to pull the canvas top over the open Jeep.
"You a Catholic?" Leah's new boss asked, when they pulled back onto the one-lane path that served as the main road to the village.
Leah thought it an odd question. "No, why?"
Maggie glanced sideways at her rookie staff member.
"Then, I'd better clue you in about Father Javier."
"What do you mean?" Leah's mind dredged up horror stories passed down from her Baptist grandmother about Catholics. She was prepared to keep her distance from any priest, especially one with a reputation for being a dirty old man.
"He's off limits." Maggie never gave more information than she needed to in any one sentence.
"Guess I'm kind of dense. If there's something I should know about this man, I'd be grateful if you'd tell me everything. Is he dangerous?"
"Been known to be," Maggie said with a crooked smile, "but not the way you're thinking. Father Javier's a very good-looking man. Young, friendly . . . virile."
"Unmarried?"
"Quite," Maggie snapped. "That's what I need to warn you about. The last young woman who had your assignment was a devout Catholic. She understood. It wasn't a problem. Take my advice and keep your distance. Your minister at home was probably a married man, but Roman priests are different. They don't get involved with women. They don't date. And they do not get married."
"I guess I knew that, but thanks for the warning." Leah felt hurt that Maggie thought she needed this advice. "Believe me, I didn't come to Santo Sangre to find a husband."
"Word to the wise, that's all. Santa Teresita's a small world. You'll be working alongside Father Javier a lot." Maggie briefed Leah on the parish priest's Anglo-Hispanic background and his American seminary education. "On the surface, he seems Americanized. He sees himself as a pretty liberal guy. Don't be fooled. He's Latino through and through. Males of that species don't change their stripes, at least, not easily. Be friendly, of course, but be professional. Anything else and you might get hurt."
Maggie slowed the Jeep, until it almost stopped. She turned sideways in her seat and looked directly into Leah's eyes without a hint of scolding or mistrust. Leah felt the older woman's friend-to-friend, woman-to-woman concern. "I guarantee you, Leah. It's you that'll get hurt, not him." Maggie's face melted into a grin as she shoved the vehicle into gear, surging forward again toward the village. "Fortunately, he's too young for me, or I'd need the same advice myself."
"Oh, I don't know," Leah mused. "San Francisco's full of May-September romances."
"Santo Sangre's not," Maggie said with conversation-ending finality.
Leah took Maggie's words to heart. "I assure you, of all males on the planet, the least likely to turn my head is a Roman priest."
Maggie's raised eyebrow and pursed lips told Leah the jury would remain out on that boast.
* * *
Leah first saw Father Javier the next day in the clinic. He was making his rounds, visiting patients in the few beds pushed close together in one of the clinic's two wards. He bent over a shriveled human form, his left ear almost touching the old woman's cracked lips. His hair was as black as the lightless sky had been the night before, Leah's first in the village. When he turned and saw her watching him, he smiled. Leah found in his features a surprisingly subtle and harmonious blend of the two races. An upward slant of his full lips combined with an inviting clarity in his eyes to give his face a welcoming quality. It was the kind of face a woman could, yes, fall in love with. Leah was suddenly less confident in her boast and mentally thanked Maggie again for her advice.
Father Javier left the woman's bedside and came to her. "You must be Leah Sinclair." The accent was distinct, but not heavy.
"Yes, Father."
"Welcome to our mission." He offered a large, callused hand and a firm, amiable handshake. Leah's skin responded to his touch and felt deprived when he released her. His jaw was square, his forehead high. His clean-shaven face wore a late-afternoon shadow. "We don't have many creature comforts here, but Maggie'll tell you we have our share of fun. I hope you'll enjoy being with us."
"So far, so good." She had never met a priest before and grinned like a dumbstruck schoolgirl.
"How are you getting along with the language?"
"That's another story!" Leah put a hand to her forehead in exasperation. "It's like I never studied Spanish before. Why don't they teach the language the way the natives speak it?"
Father Javier flashed an encouraging smile. "I'm sure you'll catch on to our dialect soon enough."
Leah enjoyed sparring conversations. "You could help by speaking to me in Spanish, instead of English."
"If you prefer." He rattled off a string of syllables, sounding like bursts from a semi-automatic weapon.
"!Lentamente, por favor!" she pleaded. "Take it easy."
"Okay," he laughed. "Just whistle or something, if I start going too fast for you."
* * *
In the days that followed, Maggie's admonition only heightened the mystery of this man of God. It was as if Father Javier de Córdova was something other than a normal male. Rather a phantom of some kind, a superhuman being, disguised as a mortal for the benefit of those who communicated with him about things so private that no ordinary man or woman deserved to be privy to them. Maggie was absolutely right, Leah concluded. The local priest is out of my league.
9
By the middle of her first summer in Santa Teresita, Leah felt like a native. The slow pace of life, the villagers' closeness to the earth, and their constant struggle to procure the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing made a deep impression on her.
Far away was the whole Berkeley scene. She didn't miss its superficial scruffiness, which was the uniform-of-the-day even for non-struggling students like herself whose checking accounts magically replenished on the first of each month, fed by hard-working capitalist parents
. Out of mind, too, were the strident anti-war protests she had once considered a matter of life and death. The vision of fuzz-faced National Guardsmen swarming the campus armed with rifles they had never learned to handle faded, too, as did the stinging bite of tear gas clouds over Sproul Plaza. P/SHARE had plunked her into a different world altogether. To her surprise, she had found peace and a home.
The Fourth of July arrived without any of the usual parties and fireworks Leah had been used to at home. However, the day wasn't without excitement. She was produce shopping in the outdoor market off the central plaza, when a police vehicle careened around a corner frightening a farmer's horse. The animal bolted off in the direction of nine-year-old Alicia Gomez, who was jumping rope with her friends in the street. The last one to see the horse was Alicia.
"Look out!" Leah screamed, hers one of many voices crying out warnings.
The shouts caught the child's attention, but too late. Terror turned her feet to lead, as the charging animal bore down on her. It might have been better if she hadn't heard the shouts. The look on Alicia's face when she realized there was no escape burned an indelible imprint on Leah's brain. In the seconds before the first powerful hoof struck Alicia's forehead, Leah watched the girl's expression change from puzzlement to recognition of her fate, then to horror and resignation. The child's lips formed the words, "Why me?"
The bedside vigil lasted through the evening and into the post-midnight hours. Leah volunteered for the overnight shift in the clinic office, so she could keep vigil with Dr. Ed Wright, Father Javier, and the child's parents. The stifling, foul-smelling ward trapped the summer heat despite the effort of a ceiling fan to circulate air.
"It's over," Father Javier whispered to Julio and Esperanza Gomez.
Leah folded the sheet over little Alicia's bloodied, swollen face.
The priest took the stunned parents in his arms and let them weep against his chest. "She's better off now," he consoled. "No more pain . . . only the joy of being with the good Lord and his blessed mother."
No words of spiritual consolation could quiet the storm of their grief. "Alicia," Julio moaned, "our baby! Why? You know God's secrets, Father. Why our Alicia?" The grieving parents searched their priest's eyes for some explanation that might help them make sense of this latest in the world's incessant string of senseless deaths. Leah, too, needed Father Javier to give this tragedy some sort of human or spiritual perspective.