Paulina knelt next to him and slid her hand in his. The right side of his face twitched upward and held for a second. At one time, that would have made a smile. His clothing was dry. As was his skin. Without moving his head, he held up his right hand, beckoning her. She leaned in, placing her head on his chest, where he rested his hand on her head. The movement exhausted him, and he lay several minutes catching his breath. Finally, he whispered. Faint. She nodded. Crying but trying to smile. He whispered some more. She cried harder and the pain peeled the forced smile off her face entirely. Tears streaming, she lifted her head; he placed his right thumb on her forehead and crossed her. Three times. Sobbing, she held his emaciated head in her palms and kissed his forehead, then his cheek. When she kissed his cheek a final time, he relaxed, exhaled, and died—his hand inside hers.
She hugged him several minutes while the crowd continued to sing. Paulina knelt on the floor, buried her face in her hands, and cried. Out loud. The cries were deep, echoed across the room, and I had the feeling that more than the pain of Roberto’s death was leaving her body.
After several minutes, Paulo lifted her to her feet where she stood along with the rest and sang a quiet song. When the song finished, someone stretched a dirty, tattered sheet over Roberto, covering his body and face. Silently, each person filed out of Roberto’s cramped room and the hallway that led to it.
Outside, Paulo asked, “Mi hermano—” He searched for the words. “Please, may I drive?” He pointed at Paulina. “She asks you to walk.”
I gave Paulo the keys and followed Paulina off the mountain. She had wrapped her arms around herself as if cold in the hot night air. I walked alongside. Saying nothing. Stepping around the rocks, which were difficult to see in the darkness of the new moon. She was sweating and her soaked blouse stuck to her back. The first several miles, she said nothing. Halfway home, she stopped, stared up at me, then off toward Las Casitas in the distance. She stood, shaking her head. Tears drying on her face. Every few seconds, another would trickle down, hang on her chin or the side of her lips, before finishing its fall. Unaware, she didn’t bother with them.
Around us, swarming in the trees, parrots and howler monkeys lit the early morning in a cacophony of sound and prelight activity. Either unable or unwilling, she didn’t speak on the way home until just a few hundred yards from the house. Finally, after a silent six miles, she turned. Her face looked tortured. She said, “I wonder if I could trouble you.”
“Anything.”
“We need to build a coffin. This morning. Would you help Paulo?”
“Certainly.” A pause. “Anything else?”
“I—” She searched my face. “I’d like to…we used to…a funeral—”
I handed her two hundred-dollar bills. “What else can I do?”
She held the money in her hand and choked back a sob. Collecting herself, she said, “Thank you.”
* * *
When Paulo showed me his rudimentary tools and a coffin, which he had built months prior for a man who had yet to die, I asked if there was a hardware store close by. He said, “León.” We drove to León, I bought the tools we needed, and then Paulo led me to a lumberyard, where we bought planks of seasoned Nicaraguan hardwood. It was some of the most beautiful wood I’d ever seen, and Hack would have really appreciated it.
When we returned, Paulo clued in to the fact that I had some experience with wood, so without steamrolling him or making him feel like his coffin wasn’t good enough, he and I set out to build Roberto’s coffin. When I fashioned my first dovetail together with seamless edges, Paulo sat back and patted me on the shoulder. “You finish.”
By midafternoon, I’d finished the coffin. Paulo ran his fingers along the smooth edges, along the rounded corners, the cross that would rest above Roberto’s face and nodded. “Mi hermano, you honor us.”
The four of us drove up the mountain for the beginning of the procession. The women—each head covered—had prepared Roberto’s body, dressing him in a white dress shirt and pants, which Paulina had bought with some of the money I’d given her. Then they laid him on top of a thin mattress covered with a blanket hand knit by one of the older women in the plantation. When the women began singing, the procession of almost two hundred lifted Roberto onto their shoulders and began walking down a path that led toward the remains of the mudslide. The younger men carried Roberto, sharing the load, passing him from shoulder to shoulder. Other than the almost subaudible singing from the women, the procession walked silently. Stepping quietly. Reverently. While Paulina and Paulo walked up front, alongside Roberto, Isabella remained next to me and slipped her hand in mine.
When the path leveled out, we walked out from the trees and into a valley spiked with several dozen tall white crosses. A cluster of three sat off to one side, and alongside them, someone had dug a hole. When the young men reached the hole, they laid the coffin on top of the boards that crossed it. The soft-spoken preacher spoke several minutes, followed by Paulo, who said a few words. Finally, Paulina stepped forward, and without saying a word, she opened her mouth and sang a song I’d never heard but will never forget. It was beautiful, mournful, and the other women joined her in the chorus.
Without being instructed, the young men slowly lowered Roberto into the hole and, one by one, each individual in the crowd crossed themselves, whispered words I could not understand, and dropped a gentle handful of dirt onto Roberto’s coffin. When they’d finished, Paulo handed me a rudimentary wooden shovel, and I helped him fill the hole. When we’d finished, the crowd had filed out of the valley and back up the hillside. Silently.
When I turned around, Paulina, Isabella, and the rest of the crowd had disappeared while one older woman stood next to me. It was Anna Julia. She tugged on my shirtsleeve and looked up at me. Paulo listened as she spoke. When she’d finished, he nodded, and she turned and followed the others uphill. Then he turned to me. “It was the most beautiful coffin. She’s never seen its equal. She say God will surely accept him and the angels will be jealous.”
I didn’t know Roberto but evidently everyone else did, and the fact that he was beloved by young and old was evident by the reverence with which they handled him. Seldom, if ever, had I seen such tenderness toward the living or the dead.
When we returned uphill, we found the beginnings of a banquet in full force. Huge pots of steaming rice, beans, and hundreds of handmade tortillas lay mounded on tables. A rather large pig hung roasting over a spit, where four boys took turns turning it, and greasy, sweat-soaked women began pulling the meat off the bone.
The subdued party continued long into the night as everyone ate plate after plate. Isabella conscripted me to help her make coffee and stir the punch in coolers and then pour it into paper cups. Near midnight, I took a break from cleaning up, from carrying food, from pouring punch, from doing whatever was needed. When I stopped to drink some punch and wipe my head, Paulina appeared next to me. Dripping with sweat, her scarf soaked to her forehead, a satisfied and weary smile on her face, she hooked her arm inside mine, leaned on me, and said nothing as we stood staring at the party around us. Several older folks came up to her, speaking quietly, nodding, and holding both her hands in theirs. She spoke softly as well, nodding to each one and hugging several. When they’d left, she turned to me. “Thank you for this.”
I’d known beautiful women. But I’d never known a human being whose inward beauty had the effect Paulina’s had on all those around her. Her outward beauty was unequaled, but it was her inward beauty that left me speechless. I said nothing.
She waved her hand across the dwindling crowd. “They’ve not eaten like this…since my father. They were thanking me for that.” She turned to me. “So thank you.”
* * *
It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when we got home. Isabella had been asleep on Colin’s front seat for the better part of three hours. Paulo carried her to her bed. I stretched out in the chicken coop and was too tired to kick off my flip-flops.