The Accidental Native (11 page)

I nodded and looked down. All I could say was “bendición.” “Dios te bendiga,” they both responded, tired and despondent.

The older professors, the seasoned veterans with thirty years or more, tell me how little faculty members know about each other, even in a college where a tour of the campus takes less than fifteen minutes. How few friends they make in the course of an academic career. They become obsessed with work, with the petty, departmental dramas that lead to breaks from colleagues. The jaded college professor looks out of windows, isolated in the ivory tower of his or her own making. Too tired to extend a hand, too busy to notice or care about their struggling brethren, to chat with anyone other than a fellow committee member out of obligation and necessity.

I was a bit disappointed at their attitude, but I'd been there only a couple of months and that's how I felt sometimes. I knew few people other than those in my department, and even then, only a handful that I spoke to.

“Circulate, network,” Julia would tell me. “You don't go out enough.” A new worry for her: that I was becoming a recluse.

But the college was not conducive to socializing. Many professors taught and went home—all we needed to complete the factory feeling of the place was a punch clock. When news came about someone from another department who had cancer, it was like news from another front, or some foreign country.

“Migdalia Rosalbán,” Micco said, “over in Business—breast.”

Micco threw himself into his office chair. He was bothered in that half-agitated, frustrated way. Knowing Micco, he was not so much worried about poor Migdalia, but about being the next cancer victim.

“Don't drink the water,” he said. I looked at him, surprised.

“I mean it,” he added.

I recalled what Stiegler had told me, and I asked if that had any bearing on what he was saying.

“Buried ammunitions—toxic shit—before the Army left,” he said.

“Buried? Like right here on campus?”

“We might be sitting on top of it.” Both eyebrows arched.

“Why would they do that?”

“What normal person understands the minds of fucking militarists?” he said with a smirk.

With that, he gathered his classroom materials and scooted out the office, leaving me bewildered and a bit worried. He popped his head back in.

“Are we still on for lunch?”

I stared at him and nodded, remembering that Micco had agreed to drive me around to car dealerships. I had accepted that in PR a car's a necessity, at times wishing I had taken up Julia's offer to buy me a car. So I asked for Micco's help, and he agreed if I bought him lunch.

Having lost my parents to fanatics with explosives, Micco's information did not set well with me. Could any of that stuff explode? Maybe it was an idle rumor, propagated by the island's anti-militarists. You could not deny the unusual number of cancer cases on campus, though. I remembered Stiegler's breakdown of cases. Was Stiegler right? Were we all breathing or drinking some carcinogen?

I peered out the window, down to the cemented walkways and barriers in front of the Nameless Academic Building. And then farther south to the distant parrot green mini-mountains forming part of the Cordillera Central, the Picos de Baná, flashing behind the foamy clouds. Seeing this vegetation, in all its tropical wonder, made it hard to believe that dangerous environmental risks lurked so close by.

Owning a car would make me see the gradual degradation of the landscape. Traveling the curving two-lane highways would bring me closer to pollution, discarded refrigerators and stoves, soiled Pampers and beer cans tossed by the roadside. I understood
that the greenness of the island, like so many other things in Puerto Rico, gave the people cover for destructive habits. Everyone on the island was bewitched, under a spell of ignorance and denial.

When I went with Micco to buy a car, these were not my thoughts, of course. I needed to get around, and the rickety buses spewing Co2 would not cut it for me. I once took the bus to Caguas—to transfer my driver's license—and the trip took forever and involved more chattering among passengers than I cared to eavesdrop on. I took the local bus rather than the express, which ran down the autopista, the three-lane superhighway. I got the panoramic route that gives you the shits every time the wobbly bus swerves around a mountain. That was enough to make me want a car.

After receiving my first paycheck, I decided to find a car. Micco volunteered to drive me around, promising to steer me away from shady dealers. We drove out to Caguas, the dealerships in Baná not worth it, according to him. Later I found out he took me to a cousin, who kept referring to each car I scoped as a definite “tumba-panty.” In other words, a vehicle that would make the ladies drop their drawers. I ended up with a black, manual Civic—not high on the list of tumba-panties, but okay for my needs and budget.

Micco was unimpressed with my choice. He tried to convince me that women liked a man with a muscle car. This, from a short man with receding salt-and-pepper hair who happened to own a red sports car. In my new car, I followed Micco to the restaurant he had selected, an obviously upscale Italian restaurant in Caguas. It was an enjoyable meal, and I savored the food and the wine, even with the conversation about toxic poisons hidden under our feet.

With the rush to move from army base to college, no one had thought about any lingering explosives. The U.S. Army certainly did not inform anyone of any possible danger. And all the politicians wanted the afterglow of accomplishment and progress attached to a new college; they buried the facts about the ordnance. Stiegler had done some internet research and found some information on it. He handed Micco a file full of documents downloaded from government websites.

“The Army isn't hiding anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fort McKenna is part of the FUDS program.”

“Fort McKenna? FUDS?”

Micco sighed and wiped his mouth, impatient in having to bring me up to speed.

“Before the college, there was Fort McKenna, you know that, right?”

I nodded, although I hadn't known the name.

“Well, the Army still refers to it as Fort McKenna and it's on the FUDS list—Formerly Used Defense Sites. It's the Army's responsibility to clean up after themselves, and that program does it.”

“Stiegler got this from the Army website?”

“U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—look it up,” he said, pointing his fork at me.

“Holy shit. Why don't they tell people?”

“Puerto Ricans don't like knowing the truth—don't you know?”

“I'm beginning to see that.”

“Well, it's not something you want to shout from the rooftops—who knows, maybe we never got the memo.” He speared a clam and slurped it into his mouth, washed it down with wine.

“Stiegler told me the cleanup is supposed to have started a few years ago, but either they're doing it real secret like, or they're just bullshitting us, because I haven't seen any kind of movement in that direction.” He paused for a minute, lost in thought. “Unless all that infrastructure construction they keep talking about isn't about replacing pipes.”

“What are they cleaning?” I asked, drinking the last drop of wine in my glass.

“HTRW, hazardous, toxic and radioactive waste.” Micco stopped cutting his veal and looked at me.

I stared at him.

“I'm not kidding—it's all there, check it out.”

The bill arrived. More sticker shock looking at it than the prices of the cars I had checked out. I just gave it a tarjetazo—which in the local vernacular means paying it with plastic and adding to your debt.

The next morning I found Stiegler's folder on my desk. It was all true. And, worse, the “relative risk” level of the Fort McKenna site
was deemed “high.” How was it that no one knew about this stuff? Or if they did, no one cared enough to make a stink about it? But, then, what could one demand when the U.S. government was officially doing something about it? An article in the folder reported government agencies searching the waters off the coast of Oahu for hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride and mustard bombs dumped there in 1944. A congressman said no one knew where exactly these munitions were and what their impact on health and the environment would be. Great, I thought. And that's Hawaii, a state.

Other articles and newspaper clips about contamination in Vieques—another mess. On one of our trips, Julia took me to “La Isla Nena,” the popular nickname of the smaller island.

“The Navy would bomb targets on the island,” she explained, “without any concern for the people or the fishermen, or the high incidence of cancer in Vieques.”

I glanced at the placid turquoise water, trying to imagine it with destroyers blasting the beachhead.

“Then that stray bomb killed David Sanes, a civilian working for the Navy,” she continued. “And ignited the national outcry that led to the closing of the base. Some of us had been working decades to close it down, or at least trying to get the Navy to stop their bombing exercises.”

The Navy had resisted until the uproar escalated into persistent protests and media attention. They left but all the contaminants remained, along with the health risks and rising cases of cancer and other illnesses.

Marisol stepped into the office, holding student papers, a roll book and a textbook close to her chest. Today, she had put on less make-up, had her hair back to its natural color, up, and the effect was pleasing. Simple suited her, but she didn't know it.

“Listen, I have tickets to see Fiel a la Vega.”

“Feel a whatsis?”

“Fiel a la Vega—a rock band. I was going with my friend, but she cancelled out on me. Wanna go?”

For some reason, I didn't believe this friend existed. I was not in the mood, but she gave me a pout and a few c'mons.

“Okay, why not? Hey, I got my new car. I'll pick you up.”

“Let's do dinner before. I know a whole bunch of nice places.”

“Sure, great.”

She exited and I closed Stiegler's folder, which was marked with the radioactive symbol. On a Post-It, he had scribbled and underlined three times, “We are all fucked.”

Working in the middle of a possible cancer cluster was worrisome, not what I signed up for, and I grew angry at the silence of the university's administration. I wanted to talk to the Rector, organize a group of faculty and students to get answers. These thoughts quickly dissolved. Squatters occupied my house, and I didn't have a clue how to get them out. The college, hospitable but alarmed at my lengthy stay in the “guest house,” informed me that they could give me until the end of year, and then I had to find another place. Micco told me house rentals in Baná were hard to come by, apartments scarcer. I tried talking to the Riveras but to no avail. They liked the house, they said, and had no intention of moving out. They insisted they were being wronged.

It had taken me weeks to gather the necessary information requested in the grievance form. I called a lawyer and set up a meeting, and he agreed to meet me for lunch. I made sure it was in a fast food place. By now, I had become hip to the concept of cachetear, or “getting over.” People seemed to glorify in getting something for nothing. No act of charity or favor seemed free; people always expected something. It would be rude to ask for this something—you had to know what you should offer if you were the recipient of the favor. If Micco drove me around to car dealers, then lunch was thrown in the mix, and from his perspective, it was almost a given that he would choose a pricey restaurant. Cacheteando. If this lawyer were to take his valuable time to see me—a client—I would pay for lunch. But he would eat hamburgers and french fries.

We met in a Fuddruckers, one of the fast food chains sprouting like weeds throughout the island. Licenciado Martirio Ledesma was waiting for me at the front entrance, as we had arranged. He was a squat man with a big gut, a barrigón, as they say around here; he had attached earlobes and thin, almost feminine, lips. Ledesma wore a plain, starched, white guayabera. No mustache—
and I immediately liked that. Micco had recommended him. He represented many of the faculty, having taught as an adjunct with the college before starting his practice. Micco mentioned that his English was impeccable, and that's what sold me. He extended a delicate hand, unusual for someone of his girth, I thought.

Seated in front of a turkey burger and onion rings snuggled in a plastic meshed basket, I skidded the manila envelope with the papers across the greasy table. Ledesma took a hearty bite from his Boricua Burger and dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin.

“What's that?” he asked.

“The official complaint.”

He slid it back. “Hold on to it. We're not even close to that yet.”

He smiled when he saw the puzzled look on my face.

“Sorry, my friend. But we must legally transfer the property to you first.”

“And how long will that take?” He chewed and stared at me with a perplexed expression, a cross between impatience and surprise.

“Professor Falto,” he dabbed his little fingertips on the napkin as he talked. “If we are going to make this work, you must be patient. These things take time; it's complicated.”

“You don't understand. I'm living on campus and paying rent, and these … these lowlifes are living in my parents' house for free.”

“They have rights, too,” he said.

Again, the righteous, offended look of the insider, pitying me, the estranged one, who had lost his humanity as a Puerto Rican—how can you want to throw these poor people out on the street? What's wrong with you?

“Look, you can't go into a court in Puerto Rico with that attitude. The judge will not tolerate it.”

“Well, maybe I should squat on the judge's property and see how he likes it.”