I returned to Paulina. “I feel a bit guilty sitting here doing nothing when it looks like you’ve been working since you got up. Can I help?”
She pursed her lips and the space between her eyes narrowed as she considered this. She looked at Isabella, who was smiling and nodding. “You think he should go with us?” Armed with the ability to determine the course of the day, Isabella raised an eyebrow and considered me. Finally, having given it enough time, she nodded. Paulina pressed her nose to Isabella’s. “He could carry the backpack.”
Isabella laughed an easy laugh.
Paulina looked at me. “If you feel up to it.”
“Seems the least I can do.”
“It’s a long day, and in all fairness to you, it’s a lot of work for a guy who’s been as sick as you. If you go, you need to let me know how you’re feeling. Okay?”
“Deal.”
She filled a gallon jug with water, poured a few drops of bleach into it, and set it in front of me. She walked to a plant, twisted off a few stems, and shoved them into the water. “You need to drink most of this before we go. I doubt you’ll get your strength back for several days, but this will help. You took four bags of IV fluid, but I doubt that was enough.” When I lifted it to my lips, the water smelled of mint. “We’ll leave soon as you’re ready.”
* * *
The sun was rising and I was already sweating. I drank the entire jug, which seemed to make her happy and did not make me need to pee, which told me that I really needed it. We refilled it, and she began shoving medical supplies and food into two large backpacks plus a third, which was much smaller. She handed me a worn-out baseball cap and said, “You’ll want this in a few hours. The midday sun around here will bore a hole in your head if you let it.” She also handed me an old pair of tennis shoes. They were too small, but the ends had busted open, allowing my toes to stick out the front. “Where we’re going, those will be better than flip-flops.”
I shouldered the backpack, which felt heavy, and we began walking. Isabella hopped along in front of us. Her backpack was loaded with a bottle of water and a bag of candy. Both Paulina’s bag and mine had been loaded with medical supplies, medicines, rice, beans, and oil. My bag might have weighed ninety pounds. Eyeing the mountain in the distance, I shifted under the weight of the straps, knowing that in about two hours ninety pounds was going to feel like two hundred.
Paulina put her hand on the pack. “Is it too much? We can leave some here.”
I ran my thumbs below the straps that were knifing into my shoulders. “No, I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“No worries.” In truth, it was pile-driving me into the earth, but this lady had just nursed me back from the dead. What else was I going to say?
She smiled and walked on ahead of me, her skirt waving in the hot breeze.
Walking out of the yard, Isabella routed us past the corner of the chicken coop. She leaned over and stared into a small area protected by chicken wire. Inside sat a duck, staring quietly up at us. Isabella poked it with her finger, prompting the comfortable duck to exit her perch and waddle a few steps away, revealing the four eggs beneath. Satisfied, Isabella shouldered her pack and continued walking. I had never seen anyone raise ducks, so I asked, “You guys raising ducks?”
Leena spoke over her shoulder. “No. They’re chicken eggs. We’re just using the duck to hatch them.”
That prompted the next obvious question. “Isn’t that confusing to the chicken?”
She laughed at me. “The duck doesn’t know the difference.”
“Whose duck?”
She pointed to a house on her left without looking. “Neighbor’s. It’s on loan.”
I wasn’t prepared to argue this. “What happened to the chicken?”
A shrug. “Don’t know. Woke up, found four eggs in the nest and a bunch of feathers out here in the yard. Haven’t seen the chicken since.”
“What will you do with the chickens?”
“Hopefully produce more eggs. Isabella likes them scrambled.”
The simplicity and matter-of-factness of life around here was striking.
* * *
The road wound along a riverbed. A man, woman, and two kids passed us riding a motorcycle, as did several pickup trucks overloaded with people. Most of the trucks were Toyotas. Older versions of the one Zaul took from his father. The cabs were loaded with six or eight people, and the beds were filled with fifteen to twenty each. Most were headed up the mountain. A few were headed down. Young barefoot boys, wearing tattered straw hats and riding horses, whistled and herded their cows along the road, most of which was lined with thick rows of sugarcane almost fifteen feet tall. As we walked, crosses—the size of a man—rose up out of the earth and dotted the woods on either side of us. There seemed to be no pattern. But we couldn’t walk fifty yards without seeing another cross. Some were next to the road. A few were nailed to trees. Many had been stuck in the mud of the riverbed and surrounded by rocks. Most were in clumps. Three or four together. In one spot, I counted nineteen. Singles spread out like bread crumbs. I pointed and the tone of my voice asked the question. “Valle Cruces?”
She nodded and felt no need to explain. A few steps later, she turned to me. “Charlie?”
“Yes.”
She waved her hand across the road and kept walking. “You might want to use another name.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s English for Carlos, and that name isn’t real popular around here.”
A young boy, maybe five, wearing only underwear, ran barefoot up to Paulina. His face and hair were filthy. As was his entire body. His nose was running and the snot trickled down his lip. His right ear was crusted with yellow dried wax and a dark ooze. He held out his hands to Paulina. “Buenos días.”
He responded with a muffled “buenos días.”
She reached in her bag and handed him a banana, which he gladly took. Then he turned to me, held out both hands, and bowed like Isabella had. I took both his in mine and said, “Good morning.”
Feeling released, he turned and took off running back toward a plastic-wrapped structure beyond the trees. A man in a hammock waved at Paulina as we passed. She returned the wave. She spoke to me while looking at the man. “Don’t touch your mouth with your hands until you’ve washed them.” Her eyes followed the boy. “People around here don’t have toilet paper.”
I tried to make conversation. “How often do you make this trek?”
“Every Wednesday. Sometimes on the weekends.”
“How long is it?”
“Six miles.”
“Up and back?”
She shook her head once. “One way.”
I considered this. “Why all the crosses?”
She spoke without looking at me. “Something happened. Years ago.” She lifted her head and spoke while surveying the landscape. Her voice betrayed a sadness. “And it is happening still.”
We walked in the quiet—the river slipping silently on one side, and on the other, sugarcane groves that exploded in tight clumps like giant porcupine quills. Soon the landscape shifted, turned uphill slightly, and the trees returned. Tall trees, some nearly eighty or ninety feet tall, grew up and covered the road. Other trees, mostly fruit, filled in the shady space beneath. On a slight incline and bend in the road, Leena reached up, grabbed the low-hanging fruit with one hand and with the other she unsheathed a machete from her pack. The machete had been sharpened many times, and the rounded blade had been replaced with a long stiletto. She placed the fruit on a rock. Isabella waited patiently. Paulina reached in her pack and then squirted hand sanitizer into my hands. Isabella held out her hands, and she did likewise. Then Paulina cut the fruit, which was about the size of a football. The inside was a deep purple and orange and looked like a distant cousin to a cantaloupe. She sliced the fruit, then stabbed it, and, careful not to touch it with her hands, she gave it first to Isabella and then to me by holding out the flattened machete blade, which acted as a skewer.