Dead I Well May Be (27 page)

How was I going to get to America, to carry out my plan?

How indeed? I was lost. I was sick. My leg ached. And most important, my mind was not clear. I tried to think, but everything inside my head was sluggish. Christ, was I really going mad?

I drove away the panic and breathed and tried to get some thoughts together. I could either stay here and hope someone came by, or I could go on and try to find help. If it meant giving myself up to the authorities, so be it. Surely that would be better than dying insane out here in the tropical rain forest.

I tried to get up, but it was impossible.

I found a stick. I heaved myself up and started walking, going a third the speed of previous days and looking always at the ground to make my way easier. I went half a day like this and collapsed, exhausted, drenched with sweat and bleeding from scrapes on my arms and feet. It rained that night and woke me, and I lay with my mouth open trying to drink a little.

In the morning, I couldn’t get up and I decided I would have to crawl. Crawling was a bit easier than walking, and I actually made better
progress. On my hands and knees I could negotiate better the fallen trees and vines. I went like this that day and into the next. To my surprise, the jungle began to thin a little and I could see huge patches of sky through the canopy.

That night I had terrible hallucinations about snakes biting at my ankles and trying to eat my leg whole. They were wrapped around me and suffocating me. I screamed the whole of the night and begged them to stop, but they only fled with the dawn.

In appalling fear, I crawled away from the place I’d slept. I moved blind now, for my eyes didn’t open. I crawled for hours, and I fell on my face and slept that way. During the night, I crawled again and I thought the end must be coming soon. I’m not overly defeatist, but I am a realist, and I could see that I was in trouble. I could see that I was in mortal shape. I crawled on, expecting, soon, paroxysm and death.

I was wrong, though. Old Atropos wasn’t hovering overhead that evening and wouldn’t be for some time to come. But it was night and the daughters of Nyx must have been guiding me, because if I’d turned a slightly different way to the left or right I would never have made it to the pig pen. I would have veered off into the jungle and died sometime in the next few days. But as I say, the Gods or the Fates or involved beings who’d heard about my story, about my narrative, about my plan, realized that to continue the show, they had to preserve me and so, out of the jungle, they made a pig pen with small, black, friendly pigs, and they allowed me to crawl up to it and stop and collapse and wait.

It wasn’t long. The pigs snuffed my face and licked it. There were children’s voices first, distracted, singing, and then silence for a while and whispers and then the sound of running. Not long after that, the voice of an older woman whispering at first too, and then barking instructions. And then arms, a dozen arms lifting me up. I was thinking that if this was another hallucination it was one I liked. Tiny arms lifting me, half-dragging me, not very far into darkness.

Water on my lips and questions in Spanish, many questions.

¿Quién es usted? ¿De dónde ha venido usted? ¿Qué sucedió a su pie?

More water, and then voices raised. A man arguing with two women, clearly about me. He was opposed to my presence, but I could
tell that his heart wasn’t in it. Someone began washing me and taking off my clothes and tiny fingers were picking the lice out of my hair. At the same time, a soothing voice fed me water and in the water there was ground maize. They cleaned me and put a blanket over me, and I shivered still and slept.

During the night I cried, and first the man and then the two women sat up with me, holding my hand, dripping water onto my lips.

Estamos consiguiendo a un buen hombre, él es médico
, the woman said. The word
médico
stuck in my head.

I need Bridget, I said, she’ll help me.

The woman talked to me in Spanish and sang to me a little, and I think I slept. In the morning there was another voice, stern and almost angry. He was talking to the women and the man. He asked me questions, but I could say nothing. Then suddenly, violently, he poked at my foot and I cried out. It seemed to confirm everything that he’d been saying, and he sighed and went outside.

Later, they fed me beans and water and milk and they bathed me again, wiping me down with wet rags and then wrapping me in a blanket. The woman spoke to me for hours, soothing me and comforting me, and then the angry man came back. He had brought other men with him. I was falling in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t see. The word
médico
came up again.

I want Bridget, she’s a good nurse, I want her. She’ll look after me. She looked after Andy. He’s in good shape. Get Bridget, please, please, I really want to see her. I want to see her.

The angry man came over, his voice mellow now, kind.

It is ok, he said in English.

I tried to open my eyes, and I did for a second or two, but everything was out of focus. I felt strong arms hold me down on the cot and then the blanket was removed. I was naked under the blanket and I was self-conscious. I tried to cover myself, but the arms held me by my side. Someone was pouring brandy into my mouth. I recognized it. How in the name of God had they gotten brandy? They forced a stick between my teeth and then I realized what it was they were about. I yelled and thrashed my arms, but they held me fast. I struggled for only about a minute and then I calmed my mind and resigned myself. The man holding my shoulders was the very first man. He kissed me
on the forehead and whispered things in my ear in Spanish: it would be ok, it would be ok. I would be brave and it would be ok. The angry man, too, soothed me in broken English.

Please not worry, it is fast.

Then in a soft voice the older woman explained in slow and simple Spanish how everything would go. I got none of it, but her demeanor helped quiet me further.

Sí, sí
, I said and nodded to show that I understood now. There were murmurs of approval. I was in a small hut and their breaths were close to mine. I bit down on the stick, and I was ready.

It was a hacksaw, but it had been sharpened. I felt it go in above my ankle and I was relieved, because I thought they might do it below my knee. The whole thing must have taken less than twenty minutes. The actual sawing under two. What he did down there, I don’t know, but he stopped the flow of blood and mended the wounds and halted the screaming of the nerve endings. They gave me a sweet drink and told me to sleep, and after a while I did.

The next day I could open my eyes, and I saw that I was in a hut with a thatched roof and a hard dirt floor. It was swept and clean but hardly hygienic and not the place I would have chosen to recover from major surgery. I had the will to survive but will can’t do everything, will can’t do the job of antibiotics; just ask any of those prematurely dead Christian Scientists.

Still, if kindness counted for anything, I was way ahead.

The old woman was very ugly and the young woman was her daughter and the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. They were so caring that I loved them both and the man too. They told me things about themselves and the place I was in and they asked me questions, so many questions, but I couldn’t understand. I told them my name and they told me theirs, Pedro and María and then the old woman’s name, which was Jacinta.

When the children came to see me, they taught me to count, first to twenty and then to a hundred. We played a game in which I taught them the English word for things and they taught me the Spanish and we argued over which was right. Every day, when the pain started to get bad, the woman knocked me out with a milky white juice that first numbed me and then drifted me off to sleep.

I had been a week in the hut when out of the blue one morning, Pedro helped me dress and got me out of bed. He was explaining something very important and serious. I nodded and tried to get it, but I couldn’t follow him. María wrapped my stump in cotton bandages and then pinned my trouser leg up over it. Both María and her mother had skillfully repaired my jeans. They had patched them with heavy cotton that they had dyed light blue. When I arrived, they had been cut to shreds and more hole than fabric. I told them that now some hippie chick from NYU would have coughed up a hundred bucks for them. Pedro had made me a beautifully worked crutch that fitted well under my arm. It was carved with leaves and simple patterns and there were three little figures at the top, which were obviously him and his family. I choked up when I saw it. He helped me walk out of the hut into the village square: half a dozen huts, children, women, goats, and little brown dogs with long tails. The jungle on three sides and a clearing and a dirt path on the other.

Pedro had watched me walk and wasn’t happy with his crutch and took it off me to shorten. He ran back inside while I leaned on María and her mother. It was to be a departure, as waiting out there in the clearing for me was a Volkswagen Beetle, a red one in reasonable condition. The driver came and tried to help me over to the car, but I shook my head. I wanted to say something first. I turned to the little assembled crowd and cleared my throat.

I just want to say thank you very much for looking after me. You have been so kind,
muchas gracias, muchas gracias
.

There was a smattering of quiet, sincere talk and some applause and María kissed me on the cheek. Pedro came back with the crutch and it worked even better now. Before I got in the car, I saw a man jogging through the jungle towards us, a huge, fat man with a beard, blue shirt, white cotton slacks. He didn’t look at all as Indian as the people in the clearing. He was puffing, and his face was red. I knew he was the angry man who had been my surgeon.

He came over to me.

I want to see you before you go, he said.

Yes, I said, I remember you.

My English, I cannot talk.

No, your English is good, I said.

No, very badly, he said, and his eyes met mine.

The children have taught me to count to one hundred in Spanish, I said.

He smiled.

I do not want to miss you, he said.

Look, I want to thank—I began, but he interrupted.

Listen, please. I know who you are. You are American. Not safe anymore for here. We take to you somewhere else. The border. There you are safe. They are good men, but not everyone keeps, uh, keeps quiet when he is. Tell no one about where you are from, say that you are in trouble over girl if you say anything.

It seemed a bit hokey, but he was serious and his face was grave. I looked at him; his eyes were old and very blue.

All of you, and you in particular, you saved my life. I don’t know your name.

He offered his hand and I shook it.

Príncipe, he said. You know that there is no choice, we know we cannot take you to hospital, you are famous gringo escape. Murderer. Famous.

They said I was a murderer?

Rapist, murderer, such things we hear.

It’s lies.

Príncipe shook his head, as if I didn’t even need to say it. The cops wanted me and that was good enough for them. For all of them.

Thank you, Príncipe, I said.

You are welcome. Thank also
la Virgen nuestra, nuestra madre, que se echa la culpa de nuestros pecados
. Now, my friend, you will go.

Ok.

He helped me into the car. I wound the window down and thanked Pedro, María, and the mother. I got in the VW and we headed off. I turned to wave, and they were all waving back. I was crying. I wiped away the tears and looked out after them for a long time.

The driver of the VW didn’t speak to me but was friendly enough and offered me cigarettes. We smoked and listened to godawful mariachi and Mexican rock music on the radio. The little Beetle was not in as great shape as I had thought and the exhaust seeped into the car from the backseat. The engine was loud and throaty and it seemed impossible that so great a rupture of sound could be coming from so wee a vehicle. The road was good for a long time, but then he turned off it and the new road was immediately terrible, and the car shook and made dreadful crashing noises over every pothole. I was feeling extremely sick from the fumes, and we had to stop every half hour or so for me to get a breath. When we got going again, I tried to focus on the horizon. I stared at the fields and occasional plantations, but my attention always wandered down to my left ankle. The horror of it got me every time. Jesus Christ. María had given me roots to chew on for the pain, and they’d dug up some white pills from somewhere. The root really helped, but whether through placebo or some natural emollient, I don’t know.

When it was getting dark and we had climbed a little and it was colder, we stopped at a village and the driver helped me out. He led me to a hut and told me to use the roll mat on the ground. I lay down and he went back to the car and drove off. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, and it wasn’t from the vermin everywhere. My heart was pounding again in my ears, not from fever this time, but from something else. Nerves, panic. Was this the start of it? My breakdown? I calmed myself very deliberately and lay awake until just before dawn, when men came for me in a jeep. They laughed and slapped my back and said things in Spanish. We drove through a town called Tenosique de Pino Suárez, and then up into mountains. When it got cold, one of the men gave me a parka and I wrapped myself in it.