Kilometer 99 (30 page)

Low as I can get without lying down on the board, I turn my eyes up toward the lip and watch the arc of dark water circle all the way across. It's bigger than the barrel I was in six months ago. I can stand straight up. Worried about going too deep, I take my arm out from the face and gain speed inside the tube. I reach up with one hand and touch the watery ceiling above me. Still shedding the effects of the Valium, I wonder if this isn't all some sublime dream.

Over the echoing rush of the barrel, a hooting human sound reaches my ears. I look out the almond-shaped door to this green-glowing room and see Ben there in the distance. He sits on his board, both fists held up in the air, howling like a jackal at the shack I'm in. That vision—of my lover happy and proud of me, surrounded on all sides by water and speed—is the most beautiful thing I can remember seeing. The tube is more like a centrifuge than a pedestal: a place where impurities are cast off by motion, and only the purest and most basic stuff remains.

The memory of my last tube—and the close-out that ended it—looms high in my mind. I pump my way out on the next section, and lose sight of Ben. On the messier inside bowls, I do a couple of big carves. The wave finally closes down. I turn and paddle back out.

The sets are so long and consistent that Ben and I see each other only in passing. Even when we're both on the outside, we find little to say.

Ben was right all along: Surfing is a way of life. The forsaken sport of my forsaken ancestors, it isn't something I could outgrow or get over. It's worth years of waiting to get a morning like this at a spot like the point. And that's the thing about surfing: You could lose your job, your money, your family, your home, all of your best-laid plans. Your world could crumble right before your eyes. But at the end of the day, a perfect wave is still perfect.

Every accomplishment in my life—my education, my hard work, my altruism—they're all like a currency that could supposedly be cashed in for pleasure, comfort, or security sometime in the future. Surfing isn't that way. In a world of paper and promises, surfing has real value. It's like gold.

We stay out for over three hours, until my arms hang limp at my sides. The sun rises and reflects off the water. The day's first onshore winds start to turn the surf messy. Ben holds up a single finger to indicate one more wave and we'd go in. I nod. We'll quit while we're ahead. Still, I cannot understand why none of the locals have paddled out by now, especially after such a long flat spell.

*   *   *

While we ride white water in on our bellies, it becomes clear that something is wrong. Clouds of dust and smoke rise from town. The Hotel Sandra along the waterfront is now renamed the Hot Sand. The other letters lie scattered upon the beach. The seaside restaurants, where the mariachi bands played during our sunset sessions, are in ruins. We leave the water and climb the stone stairs in front of the beach.

All of La Libertad—what's left of it—takes to the streets. Old women cry and pray. Young men argue over shovels and water. Bodies lie about, already dragged from the buildings. Some people are dead, others dying. Dust is everywhere. The people and their clothes are all shades of gray. Ben and I look ridiculous: baggy bright-colored shorts, neon triangles of spandex, wet hair, surfboards under our arms. The only things in the city not covered in that gray dust, we are like two cartoon characters walking down a real-life street.

“What happened?” I ask stupidly.

“C'mon,” Ben says.

La Posada is only half there. The more expensive strip of rooms, on the ocean side, still stands. The cheaper rooms, where we stay, are rubble. Our bedroom is nothing more than a mound of bricks and dust. Had it not been for our dawn patrol, Ben and I would be underneath it. This morning, surfing the point literally saved our lives.

The kitchen and dining room are rattled but not collapsed. Kristy's bedroom looks intact. The too-high stack of concrete bags fell straight into our Jeep. The windshield is shattered, the hood bent inward, the grille cracked and dangling. A high-pitched hissing sounds from the radiator. Inside, the cab is full of smashed glass, broken chrome, and cement dust.

From the kitchen, Kristy limps toward us, letting out violent screams. Mascara lines streak their way down her face. At what hour did she rise to apply her makeup? Something must've fallen on her foot. I can't make out what she says, but I figure it's more of the hurried and desperate prayers that I heard on the heels of the first earthquake.

“Where?” Ben shouts back at her. Kristy points toward the pile of rubble in the corner. Finally, her words arrange themselves into sense: Pelochucho. Ben and I look over at the ruins of Pelo's room. The sun rises a notch higher, clearing the hills in the distance and hitting us right in the eyes.

Ben moves chunks of roof and wall with his hands. I follow. Kristy collapses against one of the Jeep's wheels. We pick through the mud and concrete. Rebar and chicken wire hold together some of the bigger pieces. I notice that the walls on this part of the hotel weren't made out of bricks or concrete blocks at all. It's adobe, just covered over with a cosmetic layer of cement
repello
—like so many of the recently fallen structures in this country. The ceiling, on the other hand, is poured concrete. The building behind it, which butts up against our fallen wing, is three stories, and casts a shadow over the ruins as we excavate them. I wonder if another tremor isn't on its way, and if those brick walls might cover up Ben and me, in another layer above Pelochucho.

Kristy sets her injured ankle in her lap and prods it with her hands. I find an electrical cord and pull. Once it goes taut, I tug a bit harder. A ceiling fan with lighting fixtures breaks free of the pile. I lift it by the busted-up blades and toss it to one side.

“There,” Ben says. “There he is.”

On first glance, I don't notice, not with all the dust discoloring everything. But it's the small of Pelo's back, the gray seam of the board shorts he slept in. There is no chance of survival. A piece of the ceiling—concrete and rebar, half a foot thick and a yard wide—covers his upper body. Pelochucho is dead several times over.

I stand and stare at the ash-colored section of flesh that we've unearthed. Kristy whispers curses at the cheapskate builder of La Posada—I think she means Don Adán, or maybe his father—and the manner in which this part was constructed. She's right. Ben picks the pieces from Pelochucho's legs. I see his small feet. His limbs are crooked and limp, in unnatural postures—so many broken bones.

“A little help,” Ben says. He wants to move the section of ceiling off the head and torso. Still in bare feet, we struggle to stand amid the shards and chunks of glass and mud. Ben counts to three and we both lift. Once we have it up at waist level, we switch our grip and flip the whole piece over.

There lies Pelochucho's head. It is a cone of flesh containing the ingredients that might've made up a face: some teeth, an ear, the hair that earned him his nickname, the eye that we all worried over. I take a few steps back and turn away. Ben kicks off the smaller pieces from around the torso. I fold my arms on one side of the Jeep's dark rear window and rest my head there. This is too much. Somebody needs to pull out the power cord and reboot my life.

Ben stumbles forward through the rubble. He gets sick along the brick wall of the adjacent three-story building. With one forearm, he wipes his face, then turns straight back to the body. With the sheets from Pelochucho's bed, Ben wraps up the dusty corpse. He lifts the bottom sheet by its corners and ties them into a knot above the ankles. He does the same under the neck. Ben finds a wool blanket—which wouldn't have been used on a night so hot—and wraps it around Pelochucho's head.

Still limping, Kristy brings a ball of twine from the kitchen. With his teeth, Ben rips the twine into pieces and ties up the bundle that he's made of Pelochucho's remains. It's as if Ben has done this before.

My body slumps down along the side of the Jeep. Before I know it, my elbows rest on my knees and my ass is on the dirt of the courtyard.

Once Ben has the shroud tied to his satisfaction, he comes over to the Jeep. He finds his hiking boots in the back and laces them up.

With a closed-eyed groan, he tries to hoist the blanketed bundle up onto one shoulder. Pelochucho's body looks shorter than normal, his small feet sticking out one side of the wrap like a sick joke.

“Ben.” I point to one corner of the ruins of Pelo's room, indicating the wheeled hard-shell surfboard case we failed to notice. “The coffin.”

Ben nods and then pulls it free from the rubble. He lays the case open beside the body. I lift the feet. It's a perfect fit. Ben closes Pelo inside, then lifts one end of the case and rolls it along. The coffin's wheels bump and wobble upon the uneven dirt of the courtyard, but Ben doesn't mind. As he disappears out the gate, I wonder where he's going, why I'm not going with him, and when he'll be back.

I reach around the wreck of the passenger-side window and manage to turn on the Jeep's radio. A newsman says what we could've guessed: An earthquake even stronger than the first has hit, with an epicenter located somewhere inland from La Libertad. Landslides have closed all incoming roads. It's one month, to the day, since the first earthquake. The exact date of the Monkey-Faced Baby's prophecy.

Kristy resumes her sobbing. She wobbles over to me and lays her head in my lap. I wonder if she quarreled with Pelochucho last night. Did she sleep in his room? How many hours had she been up and out of the bed before the chunks of concrete rained down? I imagine the swirling hurricane of second guesses that must now wreak havoc through her mind—the list of things she might've done or not done last night and this morning to bring him out of that bedroom.

I stroke her hair and whisper in English, “I'm sorry.” The Spanish version of this phrase translates literally to “I feel it,” and that seems disingenuous; I can't comprehend what she is feeling.

The voice on the radio goes on to say that relief boats are at the ready but that “large and violent seas” are preventing them from being launched. After an hour or two, the battery runs out of juice and the radio goes dead.

*   *   *

Ben is gone for hours. I set up a couple of chairs for Kristy—one for her to sit in, another to elevate her ankle. From the freezer, I salvage ice. It melts quickly in the hot sun. Once that's gone, I use orange Popsicles. This causes a sticky puddle of syrup and artificial coloring, which is instantly teemed by hundreds of small black ants.

Fingers spread wide, I place my hand in the center of the sweet orange-and-black puddle. My handprint exists there for a few seconds after I pull the hand away, outlined by the little black bodies. Then it fades once the ants resume their feeding.

After a while, I get the feeling that Kristy is humoring me. It's only an insignificant sprained ankle within a swarming scene of death and destruction, but that's all I can handle.

The sun sets and Ben still has not returned. I take out the tent from our Jeep and set it up there in the courtyard of La Posada, out of the range of any falling walls. Amid the ruins of our hotel room, I find most of the contents from our bedside table—my Valium, a gallon of drinking water, the faded surf magazine we'd all read too many times, the pages of Pelo's hotel contract, which now might be useful only as kindling.

I wipe the dust from off the top of the water bottle, then use it to wash down two of the Valium. That's the only way I'll get any sleep tonight.

 

29

How could it be that only one year ago my life was so different? I rose before dawn and put on jeans and boots. I stuffed a water bottle, my pager, and the altimeter lent to me by one of the NGO facilitators into my day pack.

Cocks crowed as I made my way up the darkened center of Cara Sucia. Niña Tere made me coffee as she did each morning. Nora and I sat sipping together at the table. She was wearing her starched school uniform. I had on my filthy work clothes.

Niña Tere prepared plastic bags full of food for both of us. The first northbound bus of the day rumbled uphill, audible for miles at that hour. A few dogs howled as it came. Rambo rose and wagged his tail. Nora kissed her mother, said good-bye to me, and went off to school.

Niña Tere poured me another cup of sugary coffee and brought out a couple of rolls stuffed with refried beans. We sat eating.

“Going to be hot today,” Niña Tere said.

“Yes.” From outside, I heard a few men milling about at our meeting spot along the road. “I should get going.”

Niña Tere nodded.

Out on the street, I put on a more serious face.

“Don Mauricio.” I reached out my hand.

“
Ingeniera
.” He smiled and shook it. Mauricio was a young member of the village council, and he'd taken the lead with organization. On a computer at the Peace Corps office, I'd made a spreadsheet of names and dates for him. Each morning he checked off the workers as they earned the right to their household water.

The men themselves were a mix of older patriarchs, wearing collared shirts and straw hats, and teenagers in T-shirts and baseball caps. Young Felix was there every day, yawning and complaining about the early hour, his grandmother's screams still sounding from their little house.

Once the sun had risen higher, we started on our long commute, Mauricio and I in the lead. Many of the men carried picks and shovels over their backs. Others carried only the iron implements and a machete, hoping to hew wooden handles from tree branches once the tools were needed.

Though much of the village complained about the long walk to reach the spring, I'd come to enjoy it. These hours of the morning were the most pleasant in El Salvador: the air still cool from the previous night, no diesel exhaust yet belched out by the buses, a low-angle sun casting dramatic shadows off all the trees and houses. Even the village drunks had found their beds and not yet started on another bender.