I had fallen asleep to the gentle hum of the bus’ tires. But it was different now. We were stopped, the engine idling as best it could. My eyes shot open. I was awake, but had yet to move and so remained scrunched down in my seat. Static electricity gave my hair the courage to peek up over the green vinyl seat. Something I was afraid to do. Buses in Guatemala are seldom still, and never this empty. Where was everyone? I could see no one in the seats around me. Something had gone terribly wrong, I thought. But what? Had there been an accident? Surely, I would have woken up if that had happened. The bus was not turned over on its side. There’d been no screeching tires, no terrible thump. No screams that I could recall. The sun was shining. For a long moment I watched the tall grass outside the window, swaying in the breeze like a thousand arms urging me to stay hidden, to run.
I popped my head up over the seat. We must have pulled off onto the shoulder because cars continued to careen by on the left, heedless of our distress. Or perhaps I’d been dreaming. There was no cause for alarm. Smoke did not rise from the engine. There was only silence. Nothing wrong with that, right? Yet I couldn’t figure out why I was the only one on the bus. We obviously had not reached Antigua.
At a cough from the engine, I sat up further. I was indeed the only one aboard. Not even the driver remained. I could just make out the folding door cranked open, the little steps leading toward the pavement. Sensibly, I got up and walked down the aisle. I was practically in the street before I remembered my knapsack. I went back for it.
Halfway down the aisle, I froze. On the side of the road, not one hundred meters behind the bus were the rest of the passengers. I even recognized the old woman that had been next to me by the red-and-purple-patterned shawl of her village. They were, all of them, kneeling motionless in the gravel atop of the large ditch that ran along that side of the highway. That in itself was strange enough to be frightening, but the three men behind them with automatic weapons took my breath away. Instinctively, I crouched lower. My head ticked sideways. My ears felt hot, and my chest pinched violently with the onslaught of what felt like a massive case of heartburn. Cars continued to jet by as if what was happening there beside the freeway was nothing outside the norm here in Guatemala. Then the thought occurred to me that this was indeed far from normal and that no one was stopping because the impending violence was not to be stopped by a simple inquiry.
The line of kneeling passengers was perhaps fifty people long. I hadn’t noticed this before, but many of them were barefoot. The three men standing were dressed from head to toe in black. Their hair twisted involuntarily in the wind. The two taller ones stood behind and to either side of the line, as if to keep the prisoners corralled. The other – the leader? – walked the distance between the other two, lecturing or reciting or proclaiming a mass sentence to the backs of those on the ground before him. I couldn’t hear him, but he was clearly talking.
Wait, I screamed, but I don’t think he heard me. As I ran from the bus, the echo of my feet on the gravel seemed deafening.
WAIT, I hollered once more, holding my left hand aloft as if blinded by bright sunshine, only this time I wasn’t shielding my eyes from the glare but from the hollow mouth of an AK-47. I was closer now. You can’t do this, I said.
Why can’t we, replied the head man in Spanish. He had an evil scar on the side of his face that criss-crossed a more evil mustache.
The entire world seemed to slow just then. The man’s mouth twisted several more times but I couldn’t make out what he said. Just past him, in the center of the line, the old woman who’d been seated next to me on our ride up from the capital, caught my eye and shook her head imploringly, the gray braid of her hair wagging back and forth like a finger.
This doesn’t involve you, the lead man said. Sound again rushed back to fill the hollow my fear had created. Perhaps it was because he’d pushed me, the physicality of it, but a hyperawareness overcame me then. I could feel even the little hairs above my knees pressing against the weave of my blue jeans. Several crows shifted and resettled on the telephone wire high above the ditch. Get back on back on the bus, he shouted, cuffing me hard with the butt of his rifle. I fell back, catching myself with one hand while feeling for blood on my lip with the other.
One of the henchmen stepped closer and brought his gun to his shoulder. Did he want me to join the others? Or was he going to shoot me right here in front of the bus and fifty witnesses? Then it occurred to me that those witnesses might not be able to speak after long.
MOVE, shouted the other as if through a megaphone, and I did as I was told. I ran back toward the bus, thinking maybe I’d try to stop one of the passing cars that were so quick to shift into the far lane as they came up the slope. But as I stepped onto the bus’ first step, something strange happened. There was a loud pop, and a jolt. It’s starting, I thought. And then my mind cleared. Tires squealed. I was awake finally. The woman next to me smiled awkwardly and rose from her seat. Had it all been a dream? Several minutes passed before I limped to the side of the road and stood alongside the ditch with the other passengers to wait for the next ride to Antigua.
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SADLY, THAT was not the end of it. That night I went out for a drink with some of the other students from the Spanish language school.
Is it just me, I asked, or do things feel off tonight?
It is eerie, Victor commented. Victor was a med student at NYU scheduled to intern in the Dominican Republic the following semester. He was an easy-going, slow-moving fellow, rotund, but not tall. His only shoes were a pair of black Converse high-tops. This street doesn’t help much, he said, nodding toward the gate of the cemetery. A full October moon was just rising above a line of poplars just inside the walls. I was living with a Guatemalan family. Their house was across the street from Antigua’s largest graveyard. It was creepy. A low wind shifted about our feet as we walked, blowing the yellow autumn leaves and the red leftover bits of firecrackers into motion before us. A car passed slowly, winking its brights on and off as it crept to the edge of the avenue and turned out of sight. The only sound then was of our rubber soles padding quietly on the cobblestones.
We continued on in silence for a time until Victor said something that brought back the painful heartburn-sensation of earlier that day. Victor said: Did you hear they were pulling buses off the road today? He stopped after a few steps, realizing that I’d fallen behind.
What do you mean they were pulling buses off the road? Who? Where?
The militia, he replied. They were stopping buses from the capital.
I asked why.
My guess, looking for guerillas, he said. We were both still, but I must have had a funny look on my face because Victor asked why, what’s wrong?
I rode up from the capital today.
Did you get pulled over?
No, but I had a dream that I did?
Now he had a funny look on his face. He asked me if this was the first
I’d heard of it.
Yes.
By this time the moon had cleared the trees to my left. My shadow stretched skinny-like away from me. Victor’s too, I guess.
Freaky, Victor said, but I’m thirsty. Tell me about it over a drink.
Half an hour later, we’d forgotten the whole thing. Other students
from the school joined us. We spoke in English because it was easier.
I’d been in Guatemala six weeks and was still avoiding the central
issue of why I’d come, which wasn’t to learn Spanish. Learning
Spanish was just the excuse. I’d been to Guatemala before. This is
how I knew about the language schools. But three years ago something happened.
Nothing big, nothing ominous like the events of my dream. A small thing
occurred that would hardly be worth writing about except for the fact
that it inadvertently changed my life. This, of course, means precious
little to anyone other than me. I realize that. Three years ago I’d
come down here on holiday. I toured around. I met a girl. We spoke only
a few words. There was no romance, no exchange at all really except for
a few coins. I was not in love. She was only twelve after all, maybe thirteen.
Her name, she said, was Reina. She ferried me across a river in a dugout
canoe. I never saw her again. Yet it was the way she appeared that stuck
with me because at the time it was happening, as I turned in the bright
southern sun, the world slowed to a near standstill and I was able to
step outside myself and whisper in my own ear, so it seemed, that I was
never going to forget this, so pay attention. The only other time something
like this happened was the night I met the woman I was to marry. But that’s
another story all together.
What I didn’t know that day, standing there in the hot sand on the edge of the Caribbean sea, was that a year later I would begin writing a novel about this girl, and that three years later I would find myself back in Guatemala learning Spanish so that I talk to her, assuming I could find her again.
To echo Victor’s earlier pronouncement: freaky.
Understandably, I hadn’t divulged any of this to my new friends at the bar. It wasn’t exactly something I told people about, even those closest to me. When they asked why I was here, I lied, sort of. What could I say? Me? Well, I’ve been writing this fantasy novel about a thirteen-year-old girl I met here three years ago and I’ve come back to find her. Yes, that’s why I’m learning Spanish. No, we didn’t sleep together. It’s not like that. I hardly even know her name. Believe me I had issues with what I was doing as well. It felt wrong to be writing about her. Perhaps because she was a real girl – and I’d taken her life, of which I knew nothing about, stood it on its head and shook a new life out of her shell – but it felt somehow like a violation. You don’t do that to strangers. Or do you? Isn’t that what fiction is all about, creating new lives for people? Spinning stories out of the bits and pieces you’ve overheard? I was honest in my intentions, so what was there to worry about? She might even be flattered. Yet if it wasn’t such a big deal, then why was I putting off seeing her? But I wasn’t just putting it off, I had already decided that I would not go to Lívingston this trip, that after my eight weeks of language training, I would not seek her out as I had planned but would return stateside. That was my new plan. I had only two weeks left.
I hadn’t been paying attention to what anyone around me was saying, but when a large school bus skidded to a stop outside the tavern’s window I ceased listening all together. Three jeeps pulled up behind the bus, their brakes screeching above the sound of the music in the bar. The doors were flung open then and the place flooded with militia. They were very young, boys really dressed in combat fatigues. They all had guns. Those of us that didn’t rise were yanked out of our seats. I would have screamed but I was afraid of drawing their attention. They lined us all up and pointed guns in our faces and led us out into the night and onto the bus. None of us had a clue as to what was going on or where they were taking us. We were ordered to sit down and keep quiet. Understandably, my heart was thumping up near my Adam’s apple, yet strangely my mind was lucid enough to notice that we’d boarded a Bluebird, the same type I’d ridden to school on everyday of my youth. Perhaps this is how they pay Americans back for getting our crappy hammy downs. The third world was always getting screwed with the garbage we no longer wanted.
There was suddenly a loud disturbance outside the bus. Ruth, a woman from Germany who was also a student at my school, was refusing to get on the bus.
NO, she kept shouting, I WILL NOT, I WILL NOT. If they pointed a gun at her, she pushed it aside. If they grabbed her arms, she violently shook herself free.
I was terrified that she would run. These kids were already rattled. They hadn’t expected resistance such as Ruth’s and the fact that many looked no older than sixteen only made the situation all the more extreme. Guatemala, as far as I knew, didn’t have a draft. These boys were not conscripted, most volunteered because they were poor and they were hungry. They were given large guns. They weren’t exactly trained. Ruth refused to get on the bus, so they lowered their guns. When she pushed those aside, they grabbed her. Then she shook free and was now yelling at them in a language they could not understand. I was anguished by the look on her face.
PLEASE, RUTH, I screamed silently. DON’T DO THIS. JUST GET ON THE BUS.
Eventually, we just left her there, surrounded by the remaining four or five militia. I forced myself to turn away, afraid of what I might see witness.
We bumped along cobbled streets for a time, turning this way and that until I lost my bearings. Victor must have too because he kept twisting his head this way and that in an effort to catch a familiar street sign. But after a while, even he became still. Everyone was silent, and everyone, I assumed, was thinking the same thing: that this was it, we were being driven to a remote location where we’d be forced kneel alongside a shallow ditch that would soon be our grave. Why had we come to Guatemala again? Where were they taking us?
--------------
WELL, NOTHING tragic happened. No one shat themselves. In fact the worst injury that I knew of was due to my own clumsiness. When the bus pulled up in front of the central police station in Antigua, I was so overjoyed to recognize where we were, to be amongst witnesses, that I fell getting off the bus and bruised my leg. Even Ruth was ok. She’d confounded and bullied her captors for so long that they eventually walked off, leaving her quaking in the middle of the street. The rest of us were merely thrown in jail until enough money had been extorted from us to satisfy the captain.
Things did change for us after that, however. Ruth it turns out married
a Guatemalan man and has remained in Central America campaigning for the
rights of women. Victor eventually quit medical school and is now teaching
English in Japan. And me? I went to Lívingston after all.