Blog 34-Was One of These Men Ori?

Digging
Today Machi and David slept in and played with Taina on the beach before they left for the work, whatever it was, they did at night. Digging, Patria had said. How odd this was, to be sitting by a dying fire plugging my flash drive into my tiny laptop. Anacaona just shoved a copy of VERDAD into my
hands. I wanted to tell her that when I worked for the City Edition years ago I seldom got to sell or distribute the paper. We were given the weekend off after staying up all night putting the paper to bed. But she was gone, moving fast among the tarp lean-tos. On the front cover was a photo of the Wade In, the large banner on the front, Sueltenlos Ya!, held up by laughing children up to their waists in the surf
of Playa Coral. Above the photo was a banner headline Calling for the GRITO Day Camp Invasion. The photograph on page 3 made me close the paper and fold it up. Three emaciated men inside a metal pen like a dog kennel, lay on stretchers with iv's in their arms attached to sacks of fluids. The photo was blurry, blown up from one taken by a cellphone. The caption seared into my mind's eye: Hunger Strikers Force-fed. This was what the Camp called medical treatment. Was one of those men Ori? I opened the paper and studied the photograph again. I was almost positive the man in the cot to the right was Ori. I wondered whether or not to show Machi when (if) he came home.