A Flag for Sunrise (21 page)

Egan took his mother’s letter and set it beside him.

“It’s all been opened,” Justin told him. “Whether by Campos or by someone higher I’ve no idea.”

The priest shrugged and began to remove his stained shirt.

“What does the letter from the provincial say?”

As she was opening it, he stood up and began undoing his belt buckle. “Oh, hell, tell me later. I’ve got to clean up and get to work. Answer it in whatever manner you feel’s appropriate and I’ll sign it.”

While Father Egan carried on with his undressing, Justin went outside and read their letter from the Very Reverend Matthew J. Greene, to whose directives she and Charlie Egan were bound by sacred vow.

Monsignor Greene’s letter finally and unequivocally closed the mission. It contained airline ticket vouchers and orders for them to report, prior to the twentieth of February, to the Devotionist House of St. Peter Martyr in Metairie, Louisiana. They would have been informed by the mission country’s ecclesiastical authorities, the letter went on to say, that an intervenor had been appointed by the bishop of the diocese to take charge of the mission house grounds and supplies, and to supervise the property’s transfer to the Millimar Corporation of Boston, the parent company of International Fruit and Vegetable, to whose control it now reverted. They were reminded that funds to cover the last quarter of the mission’s expenses had been disbursed and that no further funds would be forthcoming.

“There is no reply to this one, Charles,” Justin said in the empty slatted hallway. Egan was in the shower. “This is the one.”

In fact, no one among the church authorities in Tecan had informed them of anything, nor had International Fruit, which had a large district office in Puerto Alvarado. It meant, Justin thought, either that the local diocese was simply proceeding in the Tecanecan style or that someone in the hierarchy was delaying the operation for unfathomable reasons.

As for IF&V, they must be simply waiting; in spite of rumors that Millimar was planning Tecan’s first Florida-style resort at French Harbor, they seemed content to let the church sort out its minor schisms before taking over. Eventually, of course, they could go to the government—the President was by way of being a junior partner in the firm—if they saw the need for any dispatch. Things worked better in Tecan if you were IF&V.

When she went back into Egan’s quarters the priest had changed and, red-eyed, was gathering up his books.

“You can read it, Charles. It’s a final notice. We’re not replying.”

“Fine,” Egan said. He picked up the provincial’s letter, wadded it and threw it in his wastepaper basket.

“Our ticket vouchers have arrived.”

“Really?” Father Egan asked. “They’ve sent us tickets before.
They must have forgotten. That’s the profligacy that goes with being tax-free. So now we’ve each got two tickets. If we hold out down here long enough maybe they’ll send more and we’ll take our entire flock to New Orleans with us.”

“We don’t have a flock anymore, Charles. Haven’t you noticed?”

“
I
have a flock,” Father Egan said.

“And the order’s dissolving. Tax-free or not, they’re really broke.”

Egan looked at her blankly. “I can hit Hughie up for a thousand dollars U.S. God knows whether it’ll get here and how long it will take.” Hughie was his younger brother, a former Devotionist seminarian, now a liquor wholesaler in Seattle. “But it’ll be the last grand I get from him.”

“Do it then,” Justin said.

“Personally I’m prepared to move to a hotel in town. Or I might try to trade those vouchers in and buy myself a little house inland. Don’t stay on my account, dear.”

“It’s not on your account, Father Egan.”

So it could go on awhile she thought. And they might yet be needed.

“What’s your citizenship?” she asked Egan, possessed of a sudden thought. “It’s U.S., isn’t it?”

“It’s U.S. For over thirty years. Since just before Pearl Harbor.”

“Right,” Justin said.

Just at the door, she stopped.

“You know what’s funny?” she said. “The rest of the team—I hardly remember any of them. I mean Mary Margaret Donahue was here for five years and I can’t remember what she looked like. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“Yes,” Egan said. “But it’s like you. Myself—I remember them all. I don’t forget people.”

He began to type as she went out; she walked to the veranda and commenced pacing its length. The idleness was destroying her, she thought. Egan at least had his imaginary endless book; she had nothing. As she paced, she kept watch for the fish seller and for Epifanía to come with her basket to do the laundry. The laundry, especially Egan’s, was a rotten job, yet she half hoped that Epifanía would stay away like the rest, so that she herself would have labor for the afternoon. But if Epifanía too failed to come, their situation would be
even more grotesque. Pathetic as it was to have in the visits of a washing woman a last hold on duty and reason, if Epifanía and the fisherman stopped coming the place would be utterly shut off from the community of French Harbor, completely without intercourse, pastoral, social and even commercial. As though, she thought bitterly, they were there to buy fish and have their laundry done.

Then she thought she saw Epifanía walking along the beach road and even while she wondered why Epifanía was without her basket, she saw that it was not Epifanía at all, not a black offshore-island woman at all—but Father Schleicher’s friend, the community-planning trainee from Loyola, barefoot, her hair in braids and wearing a bright print dress. Almost, Justin thought, in disguise. She went down the steps and stood in the road until the woman came up to her.

“You look lovely,” Justin said. She did not try to smile. “Out for a walk?”

“To see you,” the girl said. She looked at Justin gravely, though she seemed to be mastering excitement. “I bring you a message from Xavier Godoy.”

Justin’s heart turned over.

“He says you must be ready for an action.”

And will I see him? she wanted to ask. But she asked simply: “What do we have to do?”

“You must have a place ready for men to go if they are hurt. Where they can hide until we get them out.”

“We have,” Justin said. “But there’ll be a risk if the place is really searched thoroughly.”

“We think it won’t be. Not everywhere.”

“Then,” Justin told her, “we have such a place.”

“We have to know if you have antibiotics and dressings. Also whether you yourself can treat the wounds of bullets.”

Justin pursed her lips to keep from trembling.

“We have all the medical equipment we need. I can treat a bullet wound—I can extract a bullet if the wound’s fairly superficial. I’ve done it. But I’m not a surgeon. With really deep bad wounds all I can do is try and stop the bleeding and the pain.”

The Tecanecan girl listened with her eyes closed. They were both visibly trembling now.

“At what time can I expect business?” Justin asked.

The girl shook her head quickly. “We here don’t know. We’ll be told.”

“O.K.,” Justin said.

“What about the old Father Egan? Will there be trouble because of him?”

“He’s ill,” Justin said. “And he’s not a bad man. He won’t be trouble, you can depend on that.”

“Well,” the girl said, “that’s it then.”

That’s it then, Justin thought. At last.

“Will I see Xavier?”

The young Tecanecan drew herself up at Justin’s naked breathless question. But suddenly she was smiling, a soft and kind smile.

“Maybe you will see him. I don’t know. Who can know in these things?”

“Of course,” Justin said, smiling back. And they were holding each other’s hands.

“But you mustn’t say anything to anyone. I know you understand that.”

“Good glory, yes.”

“Then good luck.”

“Good luck to you. And to those who fight.”

“To all of us,” the girl said. “To our Tecan.”

They embraced quickly, and the girl with a little curtsy that might have been nervousness or upbringing or a show for onlookers hurried along the sandy road toward town.

Justin ran up the steps and leaned panting in the doorway. She looked at her watch—it was nearly eleven. There was plenty of time—there was too much. If the fisherman failed to come she could drive into Puerto Alvarado and buy groceries from the Syrian, enough for extra mouths if necessary but not so much as to arouse suspicion.

When the prospect of the long afternoon’s waiting began to oppress her she remembered the laundry. Thank God for it! If Epifanía came she would give her some money and send her away.

Without a word, she gathered up the scattered dirty clothes from Egan’s rooom, then fetched her own laundry bag and set the load down by the kitchen sink. There was no need to tell Egan now; it was best that, if there were people to treat, he should know at the last minute. There was always the chance, she reminded herself, that
Godoy would not come, that she would not see him, that she would have to handle it all herself. It would be all right.

As she watched her scrub bucket fill with well water from the tap old prayers came to her mind. Justin drove them out, sorting the wash, lighting the stove.

You don’t pray to that God, she thought, that God of meaningless battles, of unconsoled poverty and petty injunctions. Perhaps Egan was right when he said that they had it wrong—wrongly written down. It was superior and uncharitable of her to be such bad company, to ignore him so. Perhaps his thinking was closer to hers than she imagined.

When the bucket was full, she went off to look for soap.

So, she thought, let God be in those children on their carousel, in Godoy, in these people proud and starving. Because if not there, then where would He be and to what purpose and what would it matter?

She put the steel bucket on the stove and opened a fresh white bar of soap.

A violent red sunrise assaulted Holliwell’s eyes as he awakened. He had not drawn the curtains and his room was bathed in its light—the tiles of the floor, the dressing-table mirror, the sheets of his bed stained a color like blood and water. Outside, the sun was rising into smoky rain cloud over Misericordia, the eastward peak. He eased his feet onto the tiles. It was the dry season, he thought. The rain clouds had no business in that sky.

During the night, there had been three calls, each promising him a painful death forthwith. Each time it had been a different voice, once it had been a woman’s. He had not neglected to call the switchboard before collapsing into bed; he had asked them not to put calls through. But the calls had come.

He stood up and in the next moment he was sick, on his knees over the toilet fixture, gripping the sleek rounded edges of it—his body running sweat, his hair plastered to his skull in the faint breeze of the bathroom ventilator. For a few moments he thought he would die there.

Presently, however, he was upright; he showered and brushed his
teeth. As he cleaned up, the events of the previous night came back to him in small paroxysms, each jab of memory occasioning him a minor convulsion.

The red glow had not softened when, wrapped in a towel, he went back into his bedroom. He walked to the window and saw the sun higher but still fixed in its prism of rain cloud and smoke from Santiago. Its broken light dyed the still surface of the pool below, was reflected on the waxy surface of the leaves of the trees along the hotel’s wall and on the whitewashed walls of the city beyond them. Blood red were the tin roofs of the shacks on the lower slopes, the chrome and windshields of the cars on the highway that led to the airport. He drew the curtains, dressed, and pouring himself a drink, drank the straight scotch in cautious sips until it was down and easing him.

His watch read seven-thirty, local time; the daily plane for Miami left at eleven. He spent the next hour and a half in chill combat with the switchboard until he had determined that there was no one at Aerochac to take a reservation. Between calls he drank and paced the floor, smoking his duty-free Kents one after another. The flights were almost always filled the day before departure, and as for standbys—there were always enough people crowding the Aerochac desk at the earliest possible hour, ready to slip some clerk a five for such cancellations as might occur. If he had troubled to make the reservation the day before there would have been no difficulty, he could even have done it through the hotel. But he had not planned to leave so soon.

More and more frequently as he paced his curtained room, the thought of calling Tom Zecca came to him. With the thought came the recollection of a poem he had once heard read, about a mouse so frightened it went to the cat for love. But he was not a mouse—he had always been good at taking care of himself. He was neither a coward nor a small animal. The fact was that in spite of what he might tell himself or others, he simply did not have enough direct knowledge of present conditions in Compostela to be able to interpret the degree of danger his threatening calls represented. There had been killings, there was no question of that. And he no longer trusted Oscar Ocampo enough to accept his reassurances.

His confidence rose and fell irrationally. He became drunker.
Shortly before ten he made contact with Aerochac—there was nothing. Standbys? Standbys were being turned away.

If at sunrise, he thought, he had summoned the presence of mind to go straight to the airport he could probably have bought someone’s seat from under them. It was too late for that now. Grimly, he made a reservation for the following day.

It was not going to be a pleasant twenty-four hours. There would be more calls. He would be confined to the hotel, messengers of death would pursue him through its grounds. Oscar would importune him.

Soothed by the whiskey, he thought further of the ride to Tecan. He put the card with Tom Zecca’s number on it beside the phone. It was almost ten-thirty; if he did anything, it must be soon.

He knew shortly that he would go to Tecan. There was every reason for it now. He could not face flying home as he was, to the safety of white winter, terrorized, more crippled than when he had come. He had business down there. On the coast near Puerto Alvarado were things to be seen that it was his business to see, his secret business, the business of his dry spirit. He refused to be frightened away.