Blog 35-Haunting

The boys now men left early in the morning after sleeping less than two hours. Julia went to the Comedor with Taina. I took a walk along the beach, away from the Camp, on the firm, wet sand along the wilderness of seagrapes and seapines. I stood for awhile and watched the strong wiry woman who did yoga hand balances on the beach and never responded when I waved hello. I found my way to the Fabrica through the maze of tents and shacks. Only Guille was there in his usual spot wearing his usual threadbare linen guayabera and his flat straw hat, facing the path to the beach, writing one of his theoretical discursos on his enormous, archaic laptop, muttering the words softly to himself as he pecked at the keyboard with his index fingers. He waved me over. I stood as he spoke. “They're announcing a hurricane. Marta, it's called, like my first wife. Have you heard? Last night los muchachos started rolling out the dome and setting up las Señoras' emergency kitchens in the shelters and the dome. I am writing my blog on Palenque's emergency preparedness. We do better than even the Base. We protect the infirmary, the communications, the children, the elders..under the storm dome, and the rest of us pile into the caves. Most of our lean-tos and scrap shelters can be rebuilt in a day. We are ecological essentialists. We have only what is essential.” He stopped to look at me. “Don't be afraid. There are several hurricanes every season and we weather them like the trees in El Pico, bending to the wind.”
I sat at my usual spot, on a straw mat on the concrete floor, used one of the low benches for a table, plugged in my laptop, and faced my favorite palm. I forced my mind to focus on the screen, forget my terror of the wind. Through the window of the kitchen of El Comedor a few yards behind the Fabrica the hoarse voice of Violeta Silva, screamed at her absent lover, "Me abandonaste, traidor." She played the lead in the radio novela, La Desaparecida. She'd been almost our neighbor in our barrio when I briefly lived with Adela. She was our celebrity. Adela's aunt and uncle were thrilled when they caught sight of her. If she was in Karaya and not at her beach house or her apartment in Old Town, Violeta was driven through Adela's neighborhood on the way to her gated mansion on the high hill that overlooked our barrio.
The mansion had belonged to her wealthy parents (pro-independence rum distillers) and was built long before our beehive of houses was developed further down the slope by Adela's contractor uncle. Violeta sightings were especially exciting because she made no secret of her pro-independence views. The women in El Comedor listened every morning for what they believed were coded subversive messages in the radio novela, as they chopped vegetables and built casseroles of plantain and ground beef, and filled pots of sancocho with tubers and bits of meat. Each day's cliffhanger suggested a different answer to where La Desaparecida had gone, kidnapped for ransom, detained for political activities that were barely suggested (sometimes it was hinted she might have been renditioned to the Camp.) Or had she disappeared herself to get away from her domineering older husband? Or to punish her treacherous lover?
I reread my last entry, Lost Boys on the Train, searched in the flashdrive for what came next in the story..David Walks Through the Glass. I couldn't figure out what my tile would be for this new childpage so I made a placeholder gray square. Some of my attention was on the flash drive as I readied myself to enter the text. Most of my mind was on the hurricane. I kept asking myself where were the boys, men, right now? When they left in the mornings they never said where they were going.
I'd just found the file on the tiny drive when I heard a roar of voices coming from the path. I saw Taina run from the Comedor toward the voices, toward the path, the old path, still paved with stones, from when Palenque had been an ecopreserve. When I saw Julia follow Taina I ran after them toward the noise.
A short white skinned man with a thin, well trimmed mustache, in a uniform of green leaf patterned camouflage cloth took quick short steps up the path. He was surrounded by three men, taller, younger, leaning into him with arms spread to block the crowd that pressed against him, calling out, “Vende Patria, Vende Patria, Traidor.” I was pretty sure I recognized the man I'd seen at the security monitors the night Franz and I breached the Base. I spotted my boys. For one moment Machi and David were right on the man, their faces in his face, until one of the guards pushed into David and he fell into the crowd and Machi fell with him. Taina saw this and screamed and somehow David heard his daughter's voice in all that roaring and screaming. He pulled himself and Machi away from the crowd still haunting and taunting the man and came to us.
I looked puzzled and David said, “That's the Camp liaison with the Encampment. He likes to drop in on us, do what he calls 'listening tours' where he does all the talking.” Machi cut in. “He likes to think he's one of us, like us. He grew up in Coral. We've been haunting him to tell us how Pa's doing with the hunger strike. He's fucking got to know.” Machi threw himself by the fire and stretched his legs. “I'm wiped out. We only slept a couple of hours this morning.”
I wanted to ask what they were doing but didn't dare and David took the conversation someplace else. “I'd like to figure out a way to make that little Captain Ojeda....”
“Capitan Jodido,” Machi broke in. David laughed and went on. “I'd like to make our Capitan Jodido or Jodon, or Jodeda realize what exactly it is he's doing...Make him know who's side he needs to be on.” They left toward our shelter before I could tell them I was pretty sure I'd seen him when I breached the Camp with Franz. Tell them to ask Franz if Jodeda was actually a guata, on our side. Maybe it was the hauntings that kept him honest. Taina went with them so maybe they wouldn't smoke, maybe they'd fall asleep the way nature intended. (What way to sleep might that be?) I returned to my flash drive. But I had taken a phone photo of Capitan Jodido as he strode past and knew what my tile needed to be.