The Furthest City Light (18 page)

Bravo, I thought, and rubbed my eyes. It was almost nine o’clock. The artichoke I’d been steaming was finally ready. I mixed some fresh cumin into a bowl of mayonnaise and then carried everything to the kitchen table. The light was better here anyway. I propped my pages against the bowl and resumed where I’d left off, right after the revolution. When the celebrations ended, the Sandinistas began implementing an ambitious program to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, which had been neglected or destroyed in the decades leading up to the revolution. After years of exploitation, the country was in terrible shape and the Sandinistas had to make a number of decisions benefiting the majority but alienating a percentage of the middle and upper classes, some of who had already fled to Miami along with the Somozas.

In the meantime, the United States leadership, headed now by Reagan after defeating Carter in 1980, disliked the Sandinistas who were admittedly brash and not respectful enough of their powerful northern neighbor. Worse, if left unchecked, the Sandinistas’ idealistic rhetoric might very well inspire other little countries in the region to overthrow their dictatorships as well. And so when a group of the losers—who came to be identified as the Contras—appealed to the United States for money and support, they were rewarded with both. With bases mostly in Honduras, the Contras were surprisingly effective. Increasingly, the Sandinistas were forced to spend the bulk of their time and resources fighting yet another war, necessitating greater and greater sacrifices from the population.

I was back on the couch and just beginning to read how various international brigades were forming to aid the Sandinistas when I heard the front door opening. Suddenly, I knew Vickie wouldn’t feel at all relieved that I’d decided to go to Nicaragua, that she’d be extremely upset instead.

“Hi honey,” I said, covering my reading material with one of the pillows I’d been lying on.

“Hey sweetie,” Vickie replied. “Anything happen today?” She crossed over to the couch and sat down next to me. She was dressed in a beige linen pantsuit that was wrinkled from a long day at work and then dinner with her friends. No matter how tired she was, she was always gorgeous, which mattered more to me than her. Vickie was a grown-up Girl Scout who valued less ephemeral things like integrity, truth, and kindness. So did I, although like most attorneys, the truth for me was much less static.

“Not much,” I said.

She shook her beautiful head. “You’re so full of shit, Rachel. I already know you’ve decided to take Maggie’s place on the brigade. Her friend told her sister who’s a nurse at the hospital. The nurse told Allison who, of course, told me.”

I threw my hands up in a gesture of disgust. “I hate living in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

“Go to hell!” And then she started to cry, which unnerved me more than any show of anger.

Immediately, I put my arms around her and pulled her close to me. “Please don’t cry,” I murmured. “I’ve been such a mess since losing Emily’s trial. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m ninety percent sure that quitting was the right thing to do, but parts of me don’t know it yet and they’re still freaking out. I’m really sorry, babe.”

Vickie wiped her face with the edge of my shirt. “Why didn’t you consult with me first?”

When a lawyer doesn’t have a good answer, she has to decide on the spot whether any answer is better than none. Vickie, however, put her fingers against my mouth. “We’ve been together nine years, Rachel. I thought we were partners.”

“We are.”

“You’re not acting like it.”

I sighed. “I may be a rat,” I said, recalling President Roosevelt’s famous quote, “but I’m your rat.”

Vickie must have understood what I was trying to say because she didn’t pull away. Or maybe she knew these were tricky times that called for tricky measures. Or maybe she just loved me and didn’t want to lose me.

Lying in bed that night with the ceiling fan whirring overhead, Vickie asked me a hundred questions about the situation in Nicaragua. I told her as much as I knew.

“And so where did the Contras come from?” she asked.

“They were National Guardsmen who fled the country after the revolution. The CIA trains and funds them to attack the country in an attempt to destabilize the Sandinista government.”

Vickie rolled on top of me and kissed me. “It sounds dangerous, Rachel. I’m scared you’ll get hurt.”

I shook my head and held her against the length of my body. “I’ll be fine. The Contras aren’t supposed to kill any North Americans. It’s bad for publicity. And the Sandinistas won’t let us go anywhere that’s under active attack.”

“Oh great.”

“Hey, don’t worry. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” My God, I was a talking Hallmark card and I couldn’t stop.

So Vickie kissed me hard and then we held on to each other as tightly as two people can in a world where strong swirling currents are always ripping things apart.

A few days before I left Colorado, Maggie warned me that Managua would be hot. When the airplane hatch finally opened, I thought I would be ready, but if this was hot, then a ninety-five degree day in the Rockies was downright chilly. No, the word “hot” (three little letters, barely a syllable) was entirely inadequate to describe how it felt as I stood in line to exit the plane. It was almost six in the afternoon. Within seconds, I was sweating profusely and beginning to feeling trapped, as if I’d stepped into a steaming sauna and someone had locked the door behind me.

As the line moved forward, I watched each passenger in front of me pause in breathless surprise before descending the portable metal staircase to the ground. The low white buildings in the distance looked too far away; we’d die of heat prostration before we got there. Halfway across the tarmac, I wondered whether lobsters really died or lost consciousness after being dropped into a pot of boiling water, or if people just hoped they did. This trip might have been a mistake—okay fine, it probably was—but it was too late now.

For the past couple of weeks, I’d spent most of my time getting ready: booking last-minute flights through Dallas and El Salvador, buying what I hoped would be appropriate clothes and sandals, borrowing a duffel bag from Maggie, getting vaccinated against diseases I’d never heard of, reviewing my high school Spanish textbooks, and reading every article I could find about Nicaragua in back issues of
The Nation
. I was a lawyer; lawyers hate being unprepared.

One of the things I hadn’t been able to do was meet the other members of the brigade who would be arriving together a few hours after me. Maggie, however, assured me they were all regular people (with differing levels of political sophistication) and that I would have no trouble relating to them. Over the past six months, there had been only three or four meetings, which a number of people had missed. Eventually, the organizers had assembled a packet of information and sent it to each participant. If I read that, Maggie said, I’d be up to speed.

On the flights from Dallas and El Salvador, I’d sat with a brigade from Seattle, most of them teachers who planned to spend the summer volunteering in the national literacy campaign. They all seemed kind and decent. In El Salvador, we picked up a group of male Cuban doctors who were a bit too flirtatious but still very nice. They’d been sent by Castro to help out in the rural areas where medical personnel were being targeted by the Contras. Mixed in with all us do-gooders were well-dressed Nicaraguans returning from the States, their children lugging huge stuffed animals and various souvenirs from Disneyland. The rowdy drinkers in first-class were all reporters who had obviously been to Nicaragua many times before; as the day wore on, they got louder and more outrageous, sounding just like old-time public defenders slugging shots of tequila at the annual public defender conference. Which was, until recently, how I’d always imagined I would end up.

As soon as they’d heard my plans, everyone at the office, especially Ray and Donald, had tried to convince me to take a vacation instead of joining a brigade to Nicaragua. As I headed for what I hoped was an air-conditioned building, I considered the distinct possibility they’d all been right. But gorging myself on guacamole and chips and then snorkeling around the bay in Zihuatanejo chasing schools of brightly colored fish seemed so purposeless, which I suppose was the point, except I’d already attained that state and was hoping to find another.

By the time I reached the doors to the nearest building, my clothes looked as if I’d worn them in the shower. The sudden air conditioning was almost as shocking as the heat. After a few minutes inside the terminal, I wondered how I’d ever force myself to leave again. Truth is, I’d have to tell my friends, I never made it past the airport; I spent the entire six weeks browsing through magazines and eating pretzels and Hershey bars from the snack machines. Very restful. Speaking of snack machines, however, I didn’t see any, just a long, slow-moving line to get through customs.

Two young men in khaki uniforms were painstakingly searching every piece of luggage for contraband and weapons.
Bienvenidos a Nicaragua
,
Welcome to Nicaragua,
a country the size of Connecticut, at war with the United States. With the barest of sighs, I shouldered my duffel bag and joined the line.

After a couple of minutes, the man standing in front of me asked, “Did you know it would be this hot?” He’d arrived on the same plane as me but hadn’t been part of the Seattle group.

I shook my head. “Lucifer mentioned it, but I didn’t believe him.”

The man stared at me uncomprehending, then burst out laughing. “Me neither.” He pulled out a red handkerchief from his bag and wiped the back of his neck. “Oh well, I suppose we’ll get used to it.” He looked about my age and was wearing brand-new tan-colored pants and a matching vest with dozens of pockets. A week ago, I’d resisted buying the exact same tropical outfit from a yuppie boutique called Travel Incorporated, opting righteously for cheap cotton clothes at K-Mart.

“I’m David Kramer,” he said, offering me his hand.

I shook it. “Rachel Stein.”

“Where are you from, Rachel?”

“Boulder, Colorado. What about you?”

“Des Moines.” He paused. “Are you a sandalista or a journalist? You don’t look like the CIA, but maybe they’re getting sneakier.”

I smiled. “What’s a sandalista?”

He looked pleased to know anything in a foreign country that someone else—even if it was only another North American—didn’t. “It’s what the people here call the internationals who come to support the Sandinistas.”

“It sounds faintly derogatory,” I said, ever the cautious lawyer.

He looked surprised. “I—I don’t think so. I think it’s affectionate.” But now that I’d planted the seed, he looked a little confused. Here for only ten minutes and already I was making a difference.

“Well,” I said, “in any event, since I’m not a journalist and I’m not the CIA in disguise, I must be a sandalista.” I lifted one of my feet and showed him my new leather sandal.

He laughed again, deciding to trust me after all. “Me too,” he confided. “I’m headed to Esteli to join a coffee harvesting brigade. My wife is very worried. She’s a kindergarten teacher. She thinks I’ll get shot or kidnapped but I had to come. It makes me so mad what we’re doing to this country.”

I nodded, wondered again if I’d made a terrible mistake coming here. I was feeling guilty. It wasn’t the Nicaraguan people’s fault I needed a cause—they had enough problems—why take it out on them? But I didn’t really believe that I couldn’t be of use, even if my heart was a little opaque around the edges. I could still lift a hammer.

“What about you?” David asked.

I shrugged. “A few weeks ago, I upped and joined the Boulder-Jalapa friendship brigade.” Boy did that sound weird. For twelve years, I’d been a stable, middle-class attorney and now I was someone who’d suddenly joined a “brigade.”

“Jalapa? Wow, my wife would have had a heart attack if she thought I was going up there. What’s your group going to do?”

Christ, was it that dangerous? “Help rebuild a clinic that the Contras burned down last summer.”

“That’s great.” He hesitated. “You’re not going up there by yourself, are you?”

I shook my head. His concern was genuine, but it wasn’t helpful. “No, I’m supposed to meet everyone here in the next few hours.”

He glanced at his watch. “Well I hope they get here soon. I’ve heard it’s dangerous to travel at night up near the border.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said, “but we’re spending the next two weeks attending a language school in Managua before we leave.”

“Oh, then you’ll be fine.” He smiled reassuringly. The line inched forward. “So,” he said, “are you ready to answer the one question every Nicaraguan is going to ask you?”

I hated quizzes and was growing tired of my companion, but what the hell. I had a lot to learn here, and not much time. “What’s the question?”

Again, that pleased look. “Will the United States invade or not?”

Thank God I’d studied up as much as I had. But even if I hadn’t, as a criminal defense attorney I’d been trained to express an opinion whether I knew anything about a subject or not. Standing silent in a courtroom was something you did rarely and always as a tactic, not because you didn’t know the answer.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” I said, “I don’t think so. An invasion here wouldn’t be as easy as invading Grenada. The people would actually fight back. We might as well just keep squeezing the country economically with the embargo and let the Contras do the rest.”

He nodded. “I totally agree.”

“On the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past us either.”

He nodded in agreement with that as well. So there we were, two sandalistas having just arrived in the Augusto C. Sandino International Airport discussing the political situation in Nicaragua. I was doing fine, I told myself, everything would be okay. All I needed was a fan, a good night’s sleep and a bathroom. I looked around until I spotted the women’s
baño
. David promised to save my place while I hurried over to it.