La Chiripa: The Widening Gyre, #2

By Kaimana Wolff

"A woman's murder is the essence of the mundane."

Vancouver lawyer Matt Wayne catches the story of a murdered Japanese tourist on the evening news and instantly knows one thing: he will hunt down the woman he hates in Todos Santos, high in the mountains of Guatemala.

Pira and her mother, Alma, keep quiet about their past, much as their Mayan neighbors, still in shock after four decades of La Violencia, now maintain El Silencio over an unspeakable history. But two aspiring journalists tell the sensational story their way, proving once again that lies uncover truth better than truth uncovers lies.

No one but the shaman Natalya, dreaming of the vengeful, mythic Anton Kristo, can foresee the resulting wave of new violence about to engulf Todos Santos. Pira is plunged into a fight for her life and Alma again faces a mother's sacrifice: to give up everything for a child.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stars Above, Stars Below Press
• Release date: May 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386351740

Kaimana Wolff

Kaimana Wolff, novelist, poet and playwright, survives in a small community on the coast of British Columbia with her friend, a beautiful soul housed in a wolfish body. Often Lord Tyee and Wolff can be heard devising new howls, songs and dances on the lawns, in the parks, and in glens of the great forests still permitted to stand.

Book preview

What was the motive? Why that torture, that evil in the hearts of men who also had a mother, a father, children, sisters? Who had perverted them and watered down their blood? Theirs was not blood of the race, nor of Christians, nor of poor people, the blood that ran through their veins. What rabid bitch had adopted them as sons and had turned their blood into orgeat instead of the crimson fluid of human beings?

…[T]hey found your silence insupportable. In essence you shit on them, because they would have wanted to make you suffer, to torture you slowly. But they couldn’t take it; for them silence is the worst offense. Something unforgivable. The worst offense is not to be afraid of them, to maintain composure even when they’re beating you with their rifle butt. The enemies of the people.

Manlio Argueta

One Day of Life

Muchas gracias…

Geoff Eagle-eye Ewing, Carla Soregaroli the fierce Boo-boo Catcher, critic Dawn Keer, creative genius Katje van Loon, American samurai Dave Robbins, Ozzie Sheepmaster Russell Walsh, Japanese psyche-explicator Marilyn Chiasson.

Carla Cofino, Carlos Coutino, Juan Carlos de Dardon, Ramon Stoop and family, and the beautiful people of Todos Santos Cuchumatan, Guatemala, for kindness, information, tolerance, and courage--I am yours, forever.

Table of Contents

The Cast

Part One - La Violencia

Makoto

Pira

Miguel

Pira

Carlos

Pira

Fernanda

Pira

Jesus

Pira

The Mayor

Pira

Erika

Pira

Isamu

Pira

Kazuo

Pira

Toyon

Pira

Rigoberto

Pira

Erika

Paul

Part Two - El Silencio

Matt

Mina

Matt

Natalya

Matt

Yuriko

Matt

Callixta

Matt

Simon

Matt

Benito

Matt

Roberto

Alma

Carlos

The Cast

The Canadians

Pira  Salvavida: feisty teenager who as a child came to Guatemala

Alma Salvavida: Pira’s mother

Mina van der Ziel, a.k.a. Oma: Pira’s grandmother and Alma’s mother

Toyon and Sila: wolf-dogs from northern Canada

Paul Georgos: a Vancouver lawyer, old friend of Alma

Elsie Halsteen, a.k.a. Number 5: Matt’s fifth wife

Julie, Will and Harley: Number 5’s three children in descending order of age

The Guatemalans

Benito Cifuentes: Pira’s best friend

Callixta Cifuentes: Benito’s mother and Alma’s good friend; survivor of 1982

Rigoberto Cifuentes: Benito’s father, a teacher, survivor of 1982

Don Simon de Bolivar: land owner living in San Diego; widower

Carlos: Simon’s brother-in-law; Alma’s friend; survivor of 1982; brujo

Joya: the baby girl so like Makoto’s own daughter, Hideko

Fernanda: Joya’s mother

Jesus: Joya’s father, Fernanda’s husband, and Makoto’s local guide

Natalya: Todos Santos shaman who speaks only Mam

The Mayor (Junio): of Todos Santos

Miguel: bus driver of the Queen of the Night

The Japanese

Makoto Matsumoto: tourist killed  in Todos Santos’ marketplace

Yuriko Matsumoto: Makoto’s estranged wife

Kazuo: guide for Makoto’s group of tourists

Erika Uehara: Kazuo’s niece, taking the tour to take the edge off depression

Isamu Yamada: TV anchor interested in Erika’s talents

The American

Matt Allan Wayne: Vancouver lawyer from Texas; claims to be Pira’s father

The European

Roberto: tour guide from Bologna, Italia; friend of Alma

PART ONE

La Violencia

MAKOTO

UNTIL NOW, LIFE has been quite good.

The first blow delivered a pain to my head, unlike any I have experienced.

The second blow, by another heavy stick, was equally painful. All the other blows of my life--my mother’s taps on my bottom, that single furious slap my wife wiped across my face last year--were mere teachings. Not like this. This is…I do not know what this is.

Barbarity.

I was holding the baby up. Up, as high as possible, or she might be struck. I wanted to hand her off to my guide, but Jesus had disappeared from my side. Fortunately, a tall woman snatched her from my hands, just as the villagers knocked me to the ground.

There is less pain lying down. It is a blessing to lie down as one dies.

I wrap my arms over my head and roll over to protect my gift for Yuriko. Between the sleeves of my new, black travel suit, between blows, I can still see. A little. In slow motion, a thunder of reddened sticks cudgels my body. Every blow brings my loins, my stomach, my heart closer to oneness with the street. The cobblestones have not yet been worn smooth enough. The stones dig deep into my flesh. The steel I built into my body in all those workouts now buckles and bends. I bulge, a black plastic bag of mush.

Is this what they desire? To turn a man into a puddle of blood? Do they imagine I will arise, afterwards, as in a cartoon? That I will stand up in one fluid metallic motion to fight again, like the silver enemy in the American terminator movies?

I cannot.

They are so angry with me. And afraid. Afraid of me, Makoto, ordinary accountant from Kyoto who has never hurt a soul.

Jesus has deserted me. It was bad luck to smile when he was introduced as my personal guide. It seemed ironic, that a simple man named after his own deity should be assigned to guide me, a sometime Buddhist, through this unlettered land.

I must have committed some terrible wrong against these people. I would apologise if I could speak Spanish. Too late. The faces show there is no turning back. They will finish the thing. The sticks are now red, bright red with blood that belonged to me just moments ago.

In a small town in remote Guatemala whose name means holy things, I will be over and done. This life ends here. After thirty-eight years of studying and working, loving and living, it is finished.

A blue wall brings the sky down to the ancient stones of the street. I focus on the wall, my sky, my blue, blue exit….

Someone will telephone the family. Yuriko, probably. My wife.

My ex-wife. I forgot to erase her from my address book. I did not want to erase her name. In truth, I wish there were time to go back a year. Just one year.

Life was quite good, until the last year. Too much working, and too little time for Yuriko and Hideko. Otherwise, I was fortunate in my family, my education, and my work.

That little one reminded me so much of Hideko, I could not resist picking her up. I wanted someone to take a picture of me with the baby, some proof that I am not the monster Yuriko says I am.

These villagers are ridding the world of your monster, Yuriko. I apologise, that I will not be there to support you and Hideko. Forgive me, my love…my loves…forgive me….

PIRA

RECORDED RESPONSES OF Pira Linda Salvavida in police custody, Todos Santos, May 17, 2000 

Your name: Pira Salvavida. I said that. Ask anybody. Ask the mayor. Everybody here has known me for years. I’m Pira Linda Salvavida. Who are you?

Your Age:  My age is none of your business. I don’t have to answer anything except my name.

Your Address: "You know where I live. Here. On the street to the ruins. The white house. Right--a bed-and-breakfast. Sometimes.

"Those gringos had no right to arrest me. And you have no right to keep me here! I haven’t done anything wrong. Why don’t you bring me home now?"

Your School: "I don’t go to that dumb school any more--my mother fixed that years ago. We have our own school, at home--you know that.

"Oh.  I’m not under arrest?  So, what am I doing here?  Hasta la vista, Baby!

"Ow! Stop it! Let me go!

My mother’ll kill you if you hurt me!

Senorita Salvavida was subdued on floor with hands behind her back.

"All right, all right! Let’s make a deal: I’ll answer your stupid questions if you take the cuffs off.  My mother will be very upset if you don’t take these things off me right away.

"What do you mean--she’s not coming? Why? Is she all right? Is something wrong? Tell me! Where’s my mother? Where’s my mother?"

Subject was subdued and cuffed again.

"Sorry. Lo siento. Sorry. It’s just…you know…so much death lately…it’s scary. We kids used to complain there was nothing going on here. Now everybody’s talking about robachicos and Todos Santos is Murder Central. It freaks us out. Who’s next? I mean, wasn’t the school closed again last week?

Just tell me my mother’s okay?

Your Relationship with Sr. de Alvorado: He’s my second cousin. Like an uncle. Uncle Simon. I’m not sure exactly how it goes. I think he and my mother are cousins, or married to their cousins or something. He helped her out since she was widowed.

Your mother was recently widowed? No, no, years ago. Before we lived here.

Your previous address: Before Todos Santos? San Diego. A long time ago. For years. What difference does it make?

Your relationship to Elsa Halsteen: Never heard of her.

Your relationship to Julie Halsteen: Or her, either.

Your relationship to Harley Halsteen: What’s with the cow people? I like sheep, myself. Sorry, never heard of the motorcycle cow, either.

Your relationship with Jillian Wayne: Enough with these people I’ve never heard of, okay? Who wants to know?

Have you had any other names? How many times do I have to say it? I’m Pira Linda Salvavida. Only child of Alma Salvavida. A widow.

Who is your father? "I don’t have a father. Never did. The dude who made my mother a widow wasn’t my father.

Just wait’ll my mother gets here. You’ll be sorry you treated a kid like a criminal.

There’s a man outside claiming to be your father? What do you say? "You mean that gringo robachico? I’d say we need a mental hospital in this town."

This man says you are his daughter and he has a court order to take you: I don’t care what he says. I won’t see him. You can’t make me. I’m Pira Salvavida. I belong here. Like lots of Todos Santerans, I don’t have a father. I don’t want one.

MIGUEL

I QUIT DRIVING for Siete Estrellas purely for personal reasons. You know, more time with the family. The first of May seemed as good a time as any to make a change. The kids would soon be released for summer break, that kind of thing.

I do have a family. Right, I’m divorced--but I still have family.

I admit the job wasn’t going so well once they started giving me those Japanese tours. At first, I really loved the job--almost nothing but Europeans, one day a camioneta full of yappy Italians, the next, full of rollicking Dutch. Even a van-load of snooty, unshaven French I didn’t mind. Or Germans. Hah! Their language sounds like potato soup! But they’re nice, in a careful, distant sort of way, as if they’re still apologising for World War II. Germans are always delighted to find out how German our history is in Guatemala. They’ll talk about the land reforms President Arbenz installed in the Fifties as if it was their own idea.

Some great idea that was! Forty-six years later, what have we got to show for it? A mountain of corpses. Villages wrecked for tourism. Yah. Great idea.

I like the British, too. Always ready to give me an opportunity to practise my English. It’s easier with English English than with American English. Americans are nearer the bottom of my list. Not that they aren’t nice--they are the friendliest, if clumsiest, travelers you would ever meet--but half of what comes out of their mouths, I do not recognize as belonging to any language.

I should have stayed in school, maybe. More English. That’s why I’m just the bus driver. Well, it was good while it lasted. Don’t know what I’ll do now.

Do I know any Canadians? Sure. Canadians are like Europeans. They speak English or French, but they always try to say everything in Spanish first. Very polite people. They get along with any kind of people. Yes, there were a few Canadians in Todos Santos, as I remember. A couple of ladies started a language school there, and some Canadians were involved with a weaving cooperative. As a matter of fact, I think it was a Canadian lady who helped me get the police chief back on the scene during that…incident. After his men fled the square the first time.

Yes. The unfortunate occurrence on my last trip to that benighted town. That’s what you want to ask me about, no?

I don’t mind. I don’t have anything to hide. To tell the truth, I need to talk about it. I need some therapy, myself. It was weeks ago, but I’m still in shock.

I do miss driving. I miss the contact with people from all over the planet. Not that guiding was officially part of my job, but somehow I became involved with translating Guatemala for them. Into a form they could understand. I felt involved in something important. You know--trading information about our homelands. To me, my tourists are not just rich vacationers pleasuring themselves. I always treat them as serious travelers, not just tourists. Pilgrims on a quest for something they can’t get in their own country--even though the poorest of them is ten times richer than I am.

Especially when driving them to these crazy, backward little towns, where people don’t even speak proper Spanish, for God’s sake!--I make the extra effort to tell their guides about the customs and superstitions. Then it’s the guide’s job to transmit my information to the group. That’s why I’m in such high demand as a driver--the guides all know, I’ll help them do their job.

So much depends on good translation.

I truly did not want those Japanese jobs. I don’t speak Japanese. Sure, the bus was bigger, with more travelers, meaning more money for me. Probably a bigger tip, too. But, in the first place, the road down La Ventosa is half dirt, half pothole, descending in more hairpins than you can count, fifteen hundred meters down from the Altiplano. That’s no joke in a bus that is actually longer than some of the straight sections of the road.

Then there’s Todos Santos to consider. One narrow, cobbled street, with nowhere to park so much as a camioneta, never mind a vehicle the size of an airplane. What they call a square in that town is really a tiny triangle of pavement set above the pavement in front of the church, a pavement covered over solid with booths on market day--no parking there, thank you, town fathers! No parqueo, no bus station. No estacionar signs on every corner. Todos Santos hasn’t come to terms with the Age of the Internal Combustion Engine yet. I have to cheat-park somewhere on a deserted steep street, all the brakes cranked to the max, and rocks behind the wheels, just in case.

The last and worst part of the Todos Santos trip is the weather. That’s why it’s the least desirable trip my boss offers. Remember, that’s mountain country, almost three thousand meters up. Every afternoon, clouds build up. Even if you leave town by three-thirty, that hellacious road back up La Ventosa is just a layer of gray above a layer of brown. Fog--over mud. By the time we’re back in Huehuetenango, it’s always dark, I’m exhausted, and my beautiful new bus is a mess. Add to that, a bunch of bewildered Japanese whose guide doesn’t really understand a word I say, and you’ve got the trip from hell. To hell, actually. Hell and back. Give me a van-load of Europeans and North Americans any day.

Okay, I admit the Japanese were a factor in my quitting the job. You’re our best driver. We need you for this deluxe job. The Japanese market is the only sector of the tourist market that’s still growing. Blah, blah, blah. The boss even gave me a raise, twice in two weeks, to keep me on this Japanese gig. But after the incident on April 29, I told him, life’s too short.

I don’t know which group is more thickheaded--those superstitious hill people or the picture-snapping Japanese. To know all is to forgive all, don’t they say? I guess I don’t know all, ’cause thickheadedness I find hard to forgive.

I did my job. I did one hundred per cent of my job, and more.

I had let them all off the bus right at the square, after not one, not two, but three admonitions from me to their guide to be very careful about taking pictures. I told him, These people in Todos Santos don’t even speak Spanish as their first language; they speak Mam, and they might not understand what you think you’re saying in Spanish.

There’s an understatement for you--no one in the world could understand what these Japanese folks thought they were saying in Spanish.

I told him that Todos Santos people are very religious, in their own tribal ways; so, avoid taking pictures in the church or even directly of any individual. I told him, and then I told the group at large. I told them exactly what words to say to ask permission to take a picture. I made Kazuo, their guide, repeat it. I wanted them all to repeat it, but they only smiled, bowed, and repeated Arigato! Maddening!

I let them out of the bus with a Con cuidado and a small groan of frustration; then went about the arduous task of parking my behemoth bus somewhere for a couple of hours. Already, I could have used a nice, stiff drink.

Can’t you get your people to wear something that isn’t black? I complained to Kazuo as they carefully stepped off the bus, as uniform as a tribe of penguins.

Something is wrong with black?

Well, you know. I had instructions from head office to avoid alarming our guests unnecessarily with tales of maras or robachicos. That’s what gang members wear. Criminals.

Kazuo looked puzzled, one foot already on the pavement to herd his generally obedient flock. We resemble criminals?

The idea did seem ludicrous. Nah, forget it. I gave him a reassuring smile. They look great. Just keep them away from the children, okay? These are simple people. Superstitious.

The night before, there had been a little trouble in Huehuetenango. Nothing serious, but it pointed up the need to tell this bunch of tourists everything several times. I had warned them that Huehue is basically a frontier town, teeming with wild and crazy characters as much as plain old peasants. The only thing you can depend on, in Huehue, is that everyone you meet, from the five-year-old boy shining shoes in the square to the old man selling cigarettes three at a time, has had a good education--on the street.

Kazuo laughed politely and bowed slightly at my little joke.

So, I had cautioned them, don’t buy food on the street, don’t take pictures of anyone without permission, don’t go too far without a stash of toilet paper--I waved the emergency roll from the bus at them and they giggled a bit, all shy and flustered--and don’t forget to bargain for anything you buy. Capische?

Kazuo translated it all to them--I think. I counted three phrases, but hadn’t I said four? Did he spare them the bit about the toilet paper, or the sermon on bargaining?

It wouldn’t have made much difference, though: they’re not the haggling kind, especially Makoto, the guy who started the feeding frenzy. It seems he saw a cute little embroidered dress he wanted for his baby daughter at home in Japan. With gestures, he asked the price. The seller knew a sucker when he saw one and quoted a whopping two hundred Q. Before you could say Huehuetenango, Makoto whipped out ten tattered twenties and forked them over.

Well, as you may imagine, the place went nuts. Everyone wanted to sell this chump something. From across the square, I heard a commotion at the stalls on the busy Friday-night square, where I’d seen Makoto browsing only minutes before. I grabbed a corner cop by the shoulder and headed for the middle of the square, where an eager pack of entrepreneurs was mauling poor old Makoto, forcing on him everything from snake-headed masks to Peruvian-tree-bark love potions. The cop and I elbowed everybody aside, shouting threats of jail and police justice. Crowds part pretty quickly when they hear those words.

When we reached a shaken but still smiling Makoto, my cop, holding up the baby dress in one ham-sized hand, demanded to know who the initial seller was. Of course, nobody answered.

I sighed, weary to my bones. It had been a long day, and the next day’s trip to Todos Santos loomed. Kazuo, I said, get this guy back on the bus, would you? Don’t let him out of your sight again. I need a drink.

The air in Huehue jittered. The church was as close to packed as I’d ever seen it, and when people emerged they darted suspicious glances at every non-local person, even me, the guy who is obviously one hundred per cent ordinary working stiff. I mean, if anybody in the world looks like a bus driver, it’s me, isn’t it, paunch and all? But the old women were stealing glances at me as if I would grab their grandbabies and make a run for it in the next instant. Come to think of it, there wasn’t a kid in sight that night, other than the shoeshine boys. Those kids fear nothing, and nobody gives a damn about them anyway.

I heard the schools had been closed that day, while the parents and teachers met to discuss the latest stupid rumors of child robbers nearing the city. Already in the city, said one woman--hadn’t I heard about the fifteen-year-olds raped and strangled and left in the cemetery? Yeah, I’d heard that urban legend at least forty times, I told her. Well, it was in the paper, she said, so it must be true.

One more thing to be said for little towns like Todos Santos--they don’t bother much with newspapers.

Maybe I overreacted a bit to the little ruckus Makoto started in Huehue. It was a relief to find out the whole thing was built on no more than a typical tourist error. All we needed to do was apply a little cultural empathy, and bingo! No more problem.

The next morning I asked Kazuo if Makoto understood his mistake. Did the group realize that families around here bring in about a hundred dollars US per month if they’re all working, five per cent or less of what one guy like Makoto would make in Japan? Not bargaining is like throwing the disparity in the locals’ faces. No wonder they want to sell Makoto everything at ridiculous prices.

Of course, said Kazuo, he had explained it all very carefully. From now on, all his group members would bargain. At least, they would try. Not to worry.

Not to worry. I’d heard that before. I reminded Kazuo it would be market day in Todos Santos. There would be thousands of people in town from up and down the valley, people even poorer and less educated than the Friday-night crowd in Huehue’s square the night before. He’d better keep a close eye on his troop as they blundered around on the cobblestones with their cameras and sunglasses and Spanish phrase books. As for Makoto, I didn’t want that guy out there in Todos Santos on his own: Kazuo had better get a local guide to accompany him, or I wasn’t about to let that little trouble magnet off the bus.

Kazuo assured me they would be very careful. He would find Makoto his very own guide and caution him strongly about pictures. He’d given the group the bargaining lecture and the picture-taking lecture again this morning in addition to--here he smiled with that irritating look of satisfaction at including something I had forgotten to mention--the sunscreen lecture he always gave at these altitudes. Everything would be fine.

So. Fear of cancer was the explanation for the smears of color on several Japanese faces that morning. A couple of Kazuo’s group had even put together face masks, white cloths attached to the lower rims of their sunglasses. Come to think of it, they had all been pretty well covered up that morning. Not that they were the kinds to flaunt their tans or bikini lines even in the hottest weather. I was willing to bet that they would regret those long sleeves and long pants by about eleven thirty that morning, though. Those polite dark overcoats would hang over their arms, neatly folded.

I parked my Queen of the Night in the muddy marge of the first precipitous cornfield below downtown and huffed my way back uphill on foot to Casa Familiar, where my groups meet for lunch. I wanted an espresso so badly, my kidneys ached. At Casa Familiar the service was always sweet but slow, and the espresso, when it finally came, was laced with just the right amount of cardamom. Heaven on earth in a tiny cup, right here in Todos Santos. Roberto was there, with another bunch of his noisy Italians, and he seized the opportunity to join me.

Too noisy, he complained. He ordered his second espresso, iced.

I waved a hand discreetly in the direction of his group. Your people are about six times noisier than my Japanese.

Last bunch of Italians I ever take anywhere, he complained. Always wanting something different. So demanding.

Could be worse, I said, and related the previous night’s little caper in Huehue. You’ll never quit. What would they do without you? Who else speaks Italian?

Someone’ll turn up. He sighed. I’m tired of always being on the road. Maybe I’ll settle down and start a Spanish school or something.

Here? In Todos Santos? I was incredulous. How could this backwater hold the erudite, worldly Roberto? Roberto the ladies’ man? Roberto the artist?

He shrugged as if he’d already given away too much. Maybe. It’s not a bad little town, in its backward little way.

Aha! I pounced. So who is she? Anyone I know?

I swear, there was a faint blush at the roots of Roberto’s shaggy mop of grey curls. He’d already had two wives, but he just could not leave the ladies alone, nor they him, apparently. Come on, I pressed. What’s she like? Italian?

No! He shuddered in mock horror and crossed himself briefly. "Canadiense, he half whispered. Intelligente. Creativa." He kissed his fingertips and smiled with delight.

Invite me to the wedding, will you? I growled in mock jealousy, just as our prepubescent waitress collided with our table to inform us that unfortunately the espresso machine was having a minor meltdown--again--and it would be a while before we got our next coffee. I can’t wait, I grumbled. Want to go next door? Just below the Casa, the new little pink hotel promised slightly better standards than here, and it looked nice and quiet, too.

Roberto demurred. Couldn’t leave the Casa Familiar staff to the mercies of his untranslatable charges. So off I went, following my paunch down the precipitous street, a sharp right, and then up the steep stairs into the establishment immediately below. If there is a rule in Todos Santos, it is this: you cannot reach any destination in a straight line. You have to clamber up and down and around the crazy streets to get to the place right next door, all of which is great, no doubt, for the heart and lungs, but a bit confusing for the visitor.

So now you realise why some people said I wasn’t where I was supposed to be at the critical moment. But actually, I was right there--from the restaurant in the Hotelito I could hear entire conversations on the deck of Casa Familiar. Poor Kazuo simply was not used to finding his way around in Todos Santos.

Hotelito was quiet. A woman and a teenaged girl occupied one table; that was it. "Hola!" they greeted me with courteous smiles before resuming their conversation, something about the girl’s schoolwork. Not in the mood for chitchat with strangers, evidently. They spoke in lightly accented Spanish, although I could have sworn I had heard English as I entered the place. Locals, then? They both wore Todos Santos huipiles and dark skirts, but the faces under the headdresses were anything but Mayan. Rather attractive, the incongruity. I wondered idly if the woman could be Roberto’s Canadiense, gone native. Not bad looking. Shining black hair, blue-gray eyes, nice figure--what you can see of any woman’s figure under a huipil. A bit skinny, especially next to the round-fleshed daughter. There were sad lines around the eyes, framing a brave intelligence looking out on the world. Somewhere along the way, this lady had had a rough time.

When the Mayan kid finally came for my order, I asked him if he knew who the ladies were. He didn’t know them, he said a little too quickly. He retreated to the kitchen, presumably to make my espresso. Not a minute later the young girl excused herself and left, following him into the kitchen. I could sense, rather than hear, a whispered, brief conversation between them. He was warning her about my questions. Sweet.

He doesn’t know them, huh? Well, if they have something to hide, far be it from me in this rotting world to unearth it. Everyone has a right to a personal life, I figure.

I was halfway through the world’s best espresso when Kazuo clattered up the stairs and burst in upon us, jabbering, throwing up his hands, and, so help me, crying. I’d never seen a Japanese person cry before. I couldn’t understand a word, and I couldn’t get him to slow down, either. It was the odd woman, the gringa in the huipil, who stood up to save the day. She rubbed a hand on his back and spoke to him--in English--in a low tone, and he responded as if she were his mother. He actually turned his face into her shoulder and he was sobbing. By this time everyone in Hotelito had gathered, as she repeated the words she was able to pick out of his babbling. "Fight…in--no, near the square. Peasants, his people, are falling…dying? That can’t be right. No, that is it: his friends are falling…."

Christ on a bike and God on a Harley! I thought. If I don’t have all the luck! I didn’t hesitate. Call the police, I said.

They all jumped as if electrocuted, the strange woman, the girl, the Mayan kid, the proprietor behind the kid. No police, said the hotelier decisively.

Let’s see what’s happening, first, the woman suggested.

Her daughter and the Mayan kid were out the door, running, before Kazuo could even get out, No time!  No time! He jabbered something about the police escaping, and a fire, gesticulating nonstop towards the square. I could barely recognize in him the calm, smiling, unflappable Kazuo of an hour before. Kazuo of the slight bow, the tiny gesture, the soundless step. This Kazuo was noisy, desperate as a trapped child.

We were still trying to calm him down to get some sense out of him when the two teenagers returned, skidding to a halt at the top of the stairs from the street.

Mom! It’s serious! They’re beating the hell out of these tourists! gasped the daughter. In perfect English, as far as I could tell.

The Mayan kid rattled away breathlessly to the hotel proprietor, obviously his dad, in Mam. I didn’t understand a word of that. His dad translated for us. "A storekeeper is yelling for people to kill the Satanicos. There’s a commotion over some strangers knocked down in the street. And a fire in the square. The tourists are hiding in the church. The mob is looking for the bus driver and whoever helps the Satanicos. The police have already run away."

There was a moment, then, when the sun stood still. All we could hear was the rush of oxygen into our anxious lungs; all we could sense was the inflation and deflation of our chests, slowing, slowing, while each of the six hearts in that room sounded in all our ears more and more like a gong. You could probably hear our hearts bonging from across the valley.

We were powerless, incompetent to decode the racket of the street below, unwilling to live through the next moments, helpless against the awful tide of history rising to flood that quiet room. Not one of us wanted to do what had to be done next.

The Mayan kid and his dad exchanged looks with the gringuitas, a look so despairing and long that for once I trembled not only for myself--that was bad enough--but for all the Todos Santerans. God knows, they’ve suffered enough.

I remembered that Todos Santos had one of the highest widow counts in Guatemala. From La Violencia, in the Eighties, you know. The massacre nobody talks about. So I understood the reluctance to use official channels. But I wasn’t about to stand by, let my passengers get savaged by the locals, only to get myself blamed for it.

There might have been another fight if it weren’t for that strange woman, the first of us to move. She grasped my shoulder, about a foot higher than hers. Where’s your bus? she almost shouted, as if I were deaf. I motioned with one shoulder in the general direction of my cheat-parking. Get it, she ordered, and bring it to the church door. We will see you there! We’re going for the doctor and the ambulance. We’ll need the mayor, too. And don’t worry, she added with a brief but sort of sweet smile, we’ll bring the police chief back. Good luck!

Then again, for what seemed forever, we all simply stood, frozen and silent, our thoughts on the future, visualising broken bodies, reputations and jobs, and endless days in court. I remember thinking how a person can’t stop the future, and about how much blame would devolve on me if this thing was swept under the carpet as a minor local incident. The Mayan guys looked scared nerveless, probably remembering the bad old days when shots rang out in these very streets every week, the years that left all the old women begging on the streets, too old or too helpless to sell their handiwork or produce in the marketplace.

Yeah, I felt for them, but police protection, however skimpy, was something I wanted pretty badly before venturing into the streets. I don’t carry a gun myself. Not only the danger worried me, but I wanted a police report in my hot little hand before reporting back to Dispatch, the consequences to these crazy Todos Santerans be damned. I’m a good guy--but no martyr.

The woman broke the spell again. She looked at me hard and spoke the same way. It’s not safe for you even in here. They’re looking for you! Count on us--you’ll get your police chief! Now, don’t you think you’re going to need that bus to get yourself and your people out of there? We’ll meet you there!

She was right, but I felt like a little boy ordered to do his mother’s errand. An errand he wasn’t ready for. At least I could pass for a Guatemalteco. Poor old Kazuo looked terrified. How on earth were we going to get him out of here?

Mom! Red pants! the daughter gestured swiftly to Kazuo and me, and turned to the hotelier. Don’t you have some?

No slouch, that girl. The hotelier nodded, understanding instantly, and his kid disappeared into the kitchen to get us some Todos Santos red-striped pants. I guess traje would have made me safer, too, but something about the idea of wearing somebody else’s well worn pants, no doubt several sizes too small for me in the leg and in front, repelled me. No, thanks, I told them. I’m okay like this. Good idea for him, though. Got a shirt and hat?

The girl nodded. We’ll get him to the church. Five minutes!

Dismissed, I clumped and bumped my way down the back street like a rolling rock, avoiding the square. My nose and my ears told me I didn’t want to see it until I had to. The extra block it took to steer clear of that mess was worth it, and besides, it was all downhill and took hardly two minutes more.

Yes, a precious bit of lost time. Had I gone through the square, though, someone would have tagged me as the driver for sure, and my life wouldn’t have been worth a quetzal.

Revving the engine was soothing, a reminder of my power in this dark beauty. The Queen of Darkness, I sometimes called her, for her darkened windows and her sleek, curved body that seemed to part the winds. Sleek or not, she was a hard one to get turned around on Todos Santos streets. When I finally hove into view of the square, I had to blat her horn almost steadily to part the crowd. The first people to spot my Queen began yelling, and I knew I had big trouble on my hands.

All my training urged me to slow for pedestrians, but all my instincts screamed for the accelerator. Instinct won in a heartbeat. The Queen of Darkness roared up into the square, past the first market stalls.

The scene that lay before me at the end of the square, I’ll never be able to put out of my mind as long as I live.

People shouted and gesticulated everywhere, swirling around a fire at the bottom end of the square. Some of them were beating wildly with sticks at the fire, or at a form that lay in the middle of it. Mayans streamed towards the fire, rocks and sticks in hand. Even over the roar of my Queen, I could make out screams of "Demonios! Satanicos! Nuestros ninos! and a whole bunch of stuff, probably in Mam, that I couldn’t understand. Catching sight of the Queen, some people turned to chase her. It was a good hundred meters to the nearest point to the church door. Let me tell you, I was sweating little silver bullets by then. Those people had clearly gone crazy. Nothing would stop them, certainly not a smile and a bow and an Arigato."

I spotted a burly man officiously trying to order people around near the church door. That, I assumed, must be the police chief. No uniform. Oka-a-ay! What a town! On second thought, maybe this was the mayor the woman had mentioned. Behind him cowered Kazuo, alternately shielding himself behind the burly one and beckoning the terrified members of his group to venture from their sanctuary in the church. One Japanese lady caught sight of my bus, and then there was no holding them: they mobbed the Queen as she screeched to an ear-splitting stop half a meter short of the church wall. The doors won’t open unless the brake is on, or I would have opened the doors even sooner. As it was, they had to file around the front of the bus to the door. As the first of my passengers passed in front of the Queen’s nose, the first rock hit the driver window. That one didn’t break the window--the second rock did. I was now officially a target. Me, Miguel the suspected robachico. I was too mad to be scared. These ignorant fools! If only the Japanese didn’t freak out and run back into the church!

Kazuo was stuck outside, standing there counting terrified tourists in his Todos Santeran outfit; so I jammed on the brake and stood up to help them in, yanking them up the step and flinging them towards the back. They stumbled, whimpering, even crying, moving as far to the back of the bus as possible. The rocks were coming thick and fast now, and not just at my window. Get down! I yelled at them in Spanish and in English. Get down! We’re outta here!

The line-up from the church ended. I counted swiftly: six empty seats, but I couldn’t be sure because they were huddled on the floor and between the seats. I knew we didn’t have them all, but if we waited any longer we were going to have a busload of dead tourists. Not to mention a dead driver.

In the split second I hesitated to yell Are you coming or not? to Kazuo through the broken window, a man rushed up to the Queen and smashed her face in with a huge branch. The right side of her windscreen crumpled in a rain of small glass, a sound I’ll never stop hearing.

I’m going! I screamed at Kazuo. He shook his head, his face white, indicating the fire on the cobblestones behind me, shouting back something about the ambulance and the police.

Frantically drawing a picture in the air with my hands, I told him to bring the police report along when he came. He nodded as if for once he understood me completely right away. I slammed the door shut just as a new batch of frenzied Mayan men reached the Queen. Two tried prying the door open, a third smacked the windows of the door with a rock. I heard her eyes go out as I put her in gear and stepped on the accelerator. Now or never--two guys with flaming torches from that little bonfire of theirs were heading for the Queen’s gas tank, on the run. There was not a second to spare if I wanted to save our lives.

I prayed hard that not one of those madmen had a gun, as the Queen thundered into the umbilical street to La Ventosa. The Queen could do a lot of things, but running on flat tires was not one of them. Driving without headlights and glass in the windows was going to be hard enough. I added to my frantic prayers: no rain, please. Just this once, no rain.

Not sixty meters down the street, between the blue wall of the store and my ragged driver’s window, a Japanese tourist lay face up on the stones, eyes closed to heaven. It was, of course, Makoto.

There wasn’t a Mayan in sight. The street had emptied like a cup of spilled wine. Someone had placed a folded blanket under Makoto’s smashed head, and a wool poncho, the kind the hill people make, over the bottom half of his body. Blood smeared the stones red and spattered the blue wall. No point in stopping. If he was still alive, he wouldn’t live long.

Wouldn’t you know it? It had to be Makoto who sparked this thing! What an idiot! The three or four Japanese I was apparently leaving behind could blame him for this mess. I was concerned about those empty six seats, but maybe I miscounted in all the confusion. If there is one thing I’m sure of, it is the fact that I could not have waited a microsecond longer before taking the Queen out of there without risking everybody’s life.

It turned out fine. Two of the missing were Kazuo and Makoto, of course. Kazuo was brought to Huehue later that night, in somebody’s car. He was still in shock, but at least he got the police report done. He took a lot of the blame on himself, more than he needed to, it seems to me.

The pair I suspect were secret lovers weren’t in the square or the church. There wasn’t a thing I could do about that. Those two got back to Huehue all right. They just missed their luggage for a couple of nights. Siete Estrellas reimbursed them the total cost of their trip, and for that, they’ll have a story to tell for the rest of their lives, how they narrowly missed death in Todos Santos, Guatemala. As for the other two, anybody might have miscounted in that situation--it turns out I did.

So now you know why I quit. I couldn’t go back there. No, I don’t feel guilty. Those people are too crazy. Say Todos Santos to me and I start hearing breaking glass and seeing bodies in the street.

I don’t know what happened to Roberto. I haven’t run into him again. I’m out of the loop.

The gringa? She wasn't in the square. No, not her daughter, either. Yes, I can swear to it, but why? What’s so important about them?

No. I never saw her again. Or the daughter.

PIRA

I’M NOT GOING to tell you anything until a lawyer’s here. You can ask all you want. Name, rank, and serial number is all you get. You think I’m just a kid, but I know that much. I have a right to a lawyer. You haven’t even charged me with a crime.

What death? Oh, the Japanese guy. Yeah, well, of course I know what everybody knows about that. And poor Jesus…. That was the worst day Todos Santos ever had. Except, maybe, the day of the massacre.

Yeah, right. Even I know about the massacre. What massacre? you say. That’s what people in charge always say. When are people going to face up to it? El Silencio. Keep your mouth shut, kids, or it’ll happen again. Duck fat! Talking’s not a crime. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words’ll never hurt me--remember that? So shove your silence--

What are you talking about? What incident?

Wait a minute--after Jesus and the Japanese guy died? You’re kidding, right? It happened again?

How would I know? Everybody’s been holed up inside the house for a whole month--and now I’ve been cooped up with you for two days. Remember?

Whew! Thank Goddess for that! Are you guys trying to get me mixed up or something? Sure,