The DMZ Read online

  Following Carlos over to the campfire, Julie took the seat he indicated on one of the logs. Lowering himself onto the log beside her, Carlos glanced over at Victor for approval before unslinging his assault rifle and laying it on the ground in front of him. On Julie’s other side, Enrique lay slouched up against the log, whittling idly at a chunk of wood. Beyond him, Marcela sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, her eyes following his movements wistfully, though Enrique showed no signs of noticing the teenager’s devotion.

  Across the fire, Linda was cuddled up against Julie’s stolid guard from that morning. The tall black man frowned as the guerrilla girl leaned across him to call out a laughing remark to the singer. His name was Jaime, Julie had learned over the hours of listening. The singer was Alberto, and the last man in the group was Rafael, a young man about Alberto’s age, but sullen instead of laughing, with the stocky build and oriental features of the mestizo.

  All in all, they might have been a student group on a hiking trip, Julie thought bemused, were it not for the uniforms and the weapons that lay within easy grasp of each guerrilla.

  Alberto broke off his song as Julie settled herself onto the log, the smile he flashed her direction as winning and confident as too much female attention had made it. “Bienvenida, Señorita Julia! Welcome! Come, please tell us about yourself. They say that you once lived in this area. Is this true?”

  His interest seemed genuine enough, and Julie saw no reason to discourage his friendliness, so in a few short sentences she explained how she had been raised in San Ignacio until her parents’ death seven years earlier. As she finished, Linda threw her a scornful look. “But that is silly. No one dies of the cholera anymore. You tell us they were doctors, yet they couldn’t heal even themselves? I say you are lying!”

  Her hostility was patent, and while Julie knew the guerrilla girl wouldn’t dare touch her without permission from the camp leader, her muscles tightened instinctively. She kept her voice even as she answered, “You’re right—no one dies of cholera anymore. That is, unless they can’t get medical supplies or care. Unfortunately, there were no more medical supplies and care in San Ignacio when my parents died. The FARC wouldn’t permit the Red Cross to send in supplies or bring them medical help. So,”—she swallowed to cover a catch in her voice—“they died. Just ask Carlos here if it isn’t true.”

  Beside her, Carlos shrugged. “She is telling the truth, as I have already told Comandante Aguilera. I was only a child when the cholera came to San Ignacio, but I remember it well. Others in the town died besides Don Ricardo and his wife, but not many. My father was one to whom the gringo doctor brought medicine so that he recovered. There were many with the disease, so when the gringos became sick themselves, there was no medicine left. But it was not Comandante Aguilera who kept the medicos from the outside from coming to save them. It was Comandante Orellana, who died in the attack on Los Pozos last year.”

  A brief silence followed his statement, and when Alberto spoke, it was with sympathy. “That is too bad, Señorita Julia. You must know, however, that the FARC is not really like that. We take good care of our hostages and the people for whom we fight as well. We have doctors in our cause, and we have brought much medical care to villages to which the government gave nothing. Still, sometimes there are commanders who do not follow the principles by which we are pledged to live.”

  “So!” The spite in Linda’s tone was in direct contrast to the singer’s amiability. “Is this why you chose to become a spy? Because you blame this comandante for the death of your parents? You came here for revenge?”

  The accusation was like a blow. Even the rank and file had heard that ridiculous story! Julie wanted to scream with frustration.

  “I am not a spy,” she said firmly. “Look, you have to believe me.” She felt Enrique’s gaze lift from his wood carving to give her a measuring look, his eyes hooded and dark in the flickering flames, and put all the sincerity she could into her tone. “Please believe me that there is no reason for America to spy on you. Why would we? This is not our fight. I’m just a reporter, I swear! In fact,” she added in a lighter tone, “if any of you are interested in a news interview, I’ll be happy to make sure your picture makes the front page. If you will let me go so I can get it into print, of course.”

  That brought a patter of laughter and an appreciative murmur, and Julie began to relax again.

  Suddenly Rafael leaned forward. “I remember you—I know now who you are!” he announced abruptly, and his sneer was patent even in the flickering firelight. “And this misionero Ricardo Baker. He came to our village too, one day many years ago. Oh, yes, we did not live so far from San Ignacio. He came in his rich, capitalist plane to tell the elders of the village that they must allow him to give his shots to the children. Because my sister had the tuberculosis, the misionero insisted she must have more medicine than the others. To pay for it, my father took our cows into the big town and sold them.” The guerrilla’s mouth curled disagreeably as he added, “We went hungry many times afterward because of your father. And then the girl died anyway when we could no longer pay for her treatment.”

  Every eye now swiveled to Julie. Glancing around at their unforgiving faces, she protested, “But—that doesn’t make sense. My father gave medicine away to just about anyone who asked him.”

  “And we should stay in debt to a gringo?” Rafael retorted with total illogic. “Even then my father belonged to the Party—he knew who our true enemies were! The americanos as much as the fat politicos in Bogotá. The Comandante Orellana made no mistake in keeping the medicos from coming in to help the misioneros. If anything, he was too merciful! Are these misioneros any less dangerous because they invade our land with soft words of God and bribes of aid instead of helicopters and oil rigs? On the contrary, they are worse because they confuse the people with their opiate of religion so that they do not see the true revolution that alone can save us.”

  Rafael alone of the guerrillas still held a weapon—not his machine-gun, but a long-barreled pistol that he had been polishing with a piece of terrycloth toweling. Now he lifted it to eye level and sighted carefully along it.

  “No, if it were up to me, I would execute every gringo on Colombian soil, if only to teach the americanos that we will not tolerate their interference in our affairs any longer, telling us how we should live by their decadent philosophies of capitalism and democracy, as though their own society were without sin or injustice.”

  Giving the chamber a spin, ostensibly to check the bullets, he added insolently, “So, Señorita Baker, it would seem that the death of your parents has taught you this lesson at least. You do not come here like these others to feed our hungry and cure our sick as though we cannot handle our affairs without your help.”

  Rafael continued to sight along the pistol as he spoke, shifting his aim until the gun was lined up right on Julie’s head, and for one horrible moment, she thought he was planning to use it.

  “Enough!” Victor said sharply.

  With a sardonic bark of laughter, Rafael lowered the gun. Julie was at once so frightened and so furious she was actually shaking in the dark. To think she’d almost begun to see these guerrillas as … as people. Her jaw clenched with the effort not to respond when she saw that every head had again turned expectantly in her direction.

  They’re waiting for me to answer, she realized incredulously. They’re … they’re enjoying this—like some high school debate.

  The realization gave her the courage—or the recklessness—to clasp her hands tightly in her lap, straighten her back, and answer in a voice as tight and cold as though there were not a dozen loaded weapons only feet away.

  “Yes, you’re right, Rafael! I have learned my lesson. Americans don’t belong here. My parents didn’t belong here. They had no business building clinics and schools, or giving kids vaccinations so they would grow up and add to Colombia’s overpopulation. My parents’ interference, as you put it, in San Ignacio did no good either to th
is country or themselves. In fact, if they had stayed in their own country where they belonged, they would probably still be alive and certainly have a whole lot more of that capitalist wealth you keep talking about. So, yes, I agree! Colombia should be left to the Colombians. In fact, if you will just let me out of here, I will be happy to go back to my country and do just that.”

  Julie stood up abruptly, not caring whether they had grasped her sarcasm or were actually taking her “confession” at face value. “Now if you will excuse me, I am tired.”

  There were shrugs and exchanged glances, but no objections. With a wave of his hand, Victor ordered, “Carlos, go with her.”

  Carlos followed silently at Julie’s heels as she walked rapidly back to her sleeping shelter. She wasn’t at all sleepy—too much adrenaline was pumping through her veins for that—and once she had crawled under the mosquito net and tucked it in, she sat up on her pallet, drawing her knees up to her chin. Carlos took up his guard position outside, but instead of pacing as he usually did or even making himself comfortable on the upturned stump, he hunkered down on his heels just outside the shelter, his machine gun balanced across his thighs. He glanced at the campfire as Alberto burst out into another ballad, then turned his head to look at Julie.

  “Señorita Julia,” he said softly. “Please, you must not give attention to what Rafael says nor Comandante Aguilera. They do not know Don Ricardo and Doña Elizabet as I did, and so they do not understand. Please do not think that your parents should not have come to San Ignacio. They were good people, and they taught good things and helped many people. We were all very happy that they were there. You know that. Surely … surely you cannot truly wish that you had never come!”

  His young voice sounded almost pleading in the dark, and Julie’s heart lost a little of its soreness even as she answered, “But it didn’t do any good, Carlos, that’s the point! Look at San Ignacio. The church and clinic shut down. The pastors all gone. The guerrillas running everything. We might as well never have been there for all the lasting good we did.”

  Carlos shook his head vehemently, his boyish features earnest in the scant light that reached them from the campfire and Coleman lantern, and Julie was reminded again of how young he was, though he stood a head taller than her and was sturdy and muscled from the outdoor life he led.

  “The people who live today because of the medicine of your parents would not agree with you. Without Don Ricardo, how many children in San Ignacio would have died as they do in so many other places? And the things that your family taught us—about God, about Jesucristo His Son. Can you not see, Señorita Julia? Perhaps the churches are gone and the people scattered far away. But the teachings still go with us in our hearts. You must not think that they have been forgotten only because you cannot see them on the outside.”

  Julie looked with despair at the boy squatted down outside her shelter. It was as though his hard young face—his defection to a cause, a way of life she found despicable—summed up all the waste that had been the lives of Richard and Elizabeth Baker. “How can you say that, Carlos? Look at you! You were in my Sunday school class. Your sister was one of my best friends. And now—you’re a terrorist, a guerrilla, a murderer! What would your family say if they could see you now with an assault rifle in your hand, holding me a prisoner?”

  The look on his face cut through her outburst like a knife.

  “What is it, Carlos?” she said sharply. More quietly, she added, “You said last night they were dead. What happened?”

  Carlos dropped his eyes to the weapon across his thighs, struggling to compose his features into an expression that was as adult and indifferent as that of Victor or Jaime or Enrique but failing miserably, and the desolation that won out hurt Julie unbearably. “It was the paramilitares‚” he muttered. He swallowed convulsively before raising his head to look at Julie.

  “Señorita Julia, I am truly sorry about your parents. I grieved when they died. All of San Ignacio did. But … but you must understand how it was afterward. Don Ricardo was not there anymore, and … with the guerrillas it was not all bad. If they were harsh, they brought law as the government had not cared to do so. As even Don Ricardo was not able to do. You remember Don Martin?”

  The old fisherman had been a notorious town drunkard and thief.

  “The guerrillas caught him robbing my tio Simon’s catch. They took away his boat and put him to cleaning the marketplace. And if they confiscated the church because it was tainted with americano money, they did not prohibit those who wished from coming together to pray and worship God. Not then. Not … not until the paramilitares came.”

  His young voice thickened, and tears stung suddenly at the back of Julie’s nostrils as though she already knew what was coming. “It was never found out who called the paramilitares. Perhaps Don Martin because he was angry at the guerrillas and at the town, and after that day he was never seen again. They came when the guerrillas had left San Ignacio to fight. The mayor—he … he called the militares when it was seen that they were coming. On your father’s radio. He begged for their help. But the militares never came, though we waited and hoped. And the paramilitares—there were many of them. Hundreds. They gathered everyone in the town and lined them up in the plaza. They asked who had invited la guerrilla to San Ignacio, and they said that the penalty for sympathizing with the guerrillas was death. Then they … they butchered every man of age to fight.

  “It took a long time. There were many in the fields, on the roads, who escaped. But … my father, my older brother—they were spared by the cholera but not by the paramilitares. My mother—she tried to save them, and they shot her too. They … they were laughing!”

  His low-voiced recital was a flat monotone, but the anguish of his memories was in his face, his eyes wide open and blank like a child still caught in the horror of a nightmare. “There were other women who tried to intervene. They shot them too, and the young women—they took them away. My sister Gabriela—I learned that she died before the paramilitares were done with her. I … I was but twelve and poorly grown. They came to me and put a gun to my head. But one laughed and said I was but a child—to let the chick grow into a rooster first.”

  Tears poured down Julie’s cheeks, and she found that her fingernails were digging into the palms of her hands. No wonder there had been no men that she recognized among the villagers. Those she knew were probably all dead. The laborers at the airport were from new families the guerrillas had moved into San Ignacio.

  “The guerrillas returned when we were burying the dead. I had no place to go, but Comandante Aguilera—he had come to replace Orellana—he gave me a place with his battalion, a chance to fight those who killed my family. I … Señorita Julia, you must understand! I let my family die because I was too afraid that day to fight. But someday—someday I will see those who killed my family, who took away my sister, down the barrel of my AK-47, and then you will see what I am brave enough to do.”

  The hatred was back in his voice, the fury and bitterness too. Some of it welled up inside Julie as well, for a people she had loved and a young life shattered in an instant. For the first time she understood the impulse to take up arms and lash back out of rage and despair and hate. If she’d had those men within reach right then and a gun in her hands, she wasn’t sure what she herself would have done. She couldn’t imagine the trauma of such an experience to a boy of twelve.

  She had to swallow hard to speak. “Carlos, you can’t blame yourself for your family. If you had fought, they would have just killed you too.”

  At some distant edge of her consciousness, Julie registered that the campfire sing was breaking up, Alberto’s voice falling quiet so that only the radio continued its crooning. The guerrillas were scattering to the latrine, the river, their shelters. All except for Enrique and Victor, who were striding in their direction. Grabbing her blanket to wipe the tell-tale moisture from her face, Julie whispered urgently, “Carlos, you won’t get in trouble for telling me all this
, will you?”

  Carlos looked surprised. “Oh, no! The comandante likes us to tell our stories. It brings sympathy to our cause. More martyrs to the cause. I have even been chosen to tell my story for a reporter. They have told me it was put in the newspapers in another country.”

  Julie stifled a sigh. What could she say? It was that age-old cry—why did bad things happen to good people? And she had no answers for it. What words of wisdom am I supposed to give him, God? I … I don’t even have answers to my own questions! But she couldn’t just turn away from the chilly resolve that had replaced desolation in the boy’s black eyes, the hardened, cynical lines that had settled again over his young face.

  “Carlos, I … I can’t blame you for losing your faith in God. I don’t understand why He let the paramilitaries butcher your family anymore than I understand my own parents’ death or all the other bad things we see happen in this world. And if the other guerrillas have gone through experiences like that, I can understand why they’d choose to turn their backs on God and pretend He doesn’t exist. But you must believe, Carlos, that God—”

  “Oh, but I believe in God, Señorita Julia.”

  The simple statement startled Julie, and she broke off to blink at Carlos in astonishment. “But I thought—”

  “We with la guerrilla are not all godless men, Señorita Julia. Oh yes, Alberto and Rafael, they are followers of Karl Marx. They believe in nothing that they cannot see. They believe that religion is but an ‘opiate for the masses’ and that religious teachers like your parents should be destroyed. We too are communists. We believe that the land, the wealth of our country, should be returned to its people. But that there is a God—yes, I believe and so do many others. It is not He who is evil. No, it is the government, the paramilitares …” Carlos raised his head as Victor and Enrique strode by the shelter.