The Juror (36 page)

Again they shake their heads.

Oliver takes out his little dictionary and looks up the word for turtle. “
Tortuga?
” he tries.

“
Ah! Claro!
” Several at once: “
Tortuga!
”

The driver blasts the horn and comes breakneck into the village. A furry pig runs out of its pen and grunts at them. This
grunting gets pigs and dogs started up all over town.

The pickup stops at the village market and Juan Calmo and his mother volunteer to guide them down to the casa of El Tortuga.
Most of the others join the company. They walk down through cornfields, down narrow flowery lanes. Oliver’s suitcase bumps
against his leg. Now and then they pass a knot of T’ui Cuchians, a few words are exchanged and the company swells. Oliver
hears the words
novia
and
esposa
.

“Mom.”

“What?”

“They think you’re Turtle’s
wife
. I think.”

Oliver looks around and there must be thirty or forty T’ui Cuchians with them now, grinning and laughing.

They pass a waterfall and keep descending.

They come at last to a long squat building with a tin roof and a sign that says
Clínica
. Beside it there’s a little home with a garden and chickens.

Outside the door is a wooden turtle on a post.

“Tortuga!” the crowd cries. “Tortuga!”

And this guy comes out and Oliver for a moment is a little disappointed. Come all this way for this
dork?
Whose posture is even worse than Oliver’s, and who’s pig-eyed and balding up top and ponytailed and scraggly-bearded, and
who has repaired the broken earpiece of his glasses with a bit of electrical tape? Plus when he smiles at Mom it’s sort of
a horsey smile.

Is this the kind of guy you travel thousands of miles to see? Well, only if you’re on the run, like us, thinks Oliver. Only
if you’ve got no other choice.

S
ARI
’s in her office at the travel agency with the door shut, and locked, and Eben pushing her against it. Out there telephones
are chiming, ticket printers are clattering. But that’s somewhere else. Sari’s concern is this man’s lips, this man’s bothersome
shirt buttons.

He takes her hands and lifts them up and gently kisses them. It seems a subtle way to slow her down, to deflect her ardor.

“You don’t want to make love to me now?” she whispers. “You can make love to me right here, Eben, please.”

He doesn’t answer. He slides his fingertips along her arms, all the way up till he can stroke the undersides of her breasts
with his thumbs. But there’s something absent to his gaze.

“Eben?” she says. “Are you all right?”

“I just wanted to see you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s not, it’s. Well. Business…”

“Tell me.”

“I’m in trouble.”

“Darling, what?”

“Today one of my friends got a contract from Pemex to build a new pipeline out of Mexico. Pete Mordacai. Billion-and-a-half-dollar
contract from Pemex.”

“That sounds like
good
news.”

“It should be. Except yesterday this futures fund that I’ve been advising bought up a mess of West Texas Intermediate crude
futures.
Before
the announcement. The futures took a favorable tick, and we cashed in. Looks like insider trading, and I’m taking the heat.”

“
Was
it insider trading?”

“Not on my part. You ought to know by now, Sari, I’ve got insane scruples. But yes. I’m fairly sure that the manager of the
futures fund made a secret trip to Guatemala in the last few days. Some of the Pemex people were down there for the Americas
Fair. I think she had a secret meeting with them, made some payoffs and got the word.”

“So why are
you
in trouble?”

“I can’t prove it was she. If I, if I could even prove she went to Guatemala City, that’s all I’d need to clear my name. But
I can’t.”

“Wait. You need to find out if this woman went to Guatemala in the last few days?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how I’d do that.”

“Maybe I can help,” says Sari. “Let me make some calls.” She twists her monitor to face her. “What’s her name?”

“Annie Laird.”

“You know where she lives?”

“In Pharaoh. Seminary Lane.”

“Didn’t you call me from Pharaoh one night? You said you were on the road and—”

“Yes. That’s who I was meeting, Annie Laird. I thought she was just a client. I thought I could trust her. Now because of
her they’re going to break me into pieces.”

“No,” says Sari. “No, I won’t let them. But this could take a while. I’m going to have to call you.”

“Sari, you’re an angel.”

A
NNIE
wakes up in the middle of the night at the crowing of a cock. At first she’s terrified. But then she remembers where she
is. Turtle’s cottage. Guatemala, far away, safe. She gets her breath back, and her composure, and finally she’s glad for the
interruption.

In her dream she was a UPS driver, making pickups at hospitals, taking in cratefuls of broken glass.

This moonlight is much better than her dream.

The lace shadows of leaves. A night bird starts singing and it sounds like water pouring through rocks. She sits up a little
so she can look across the room to where her child is sleeping. Not much to see. A curved ridge of lumps on that far bed.
The shiny knoll is likely an elbow. She waits to see him breathe.

He does, the mound stirs a little.

Then Turtle, lying beside her, whispers, “Annie?”

He looks better like this, with his hair loose. With his lips puffy from sleep.

“I’m OK,” she tells him. “Hold me.”

He lifts his arm out from under the blanket and draws her to him. Her cheek on his. Smell of his hair, familiar Turtle smell.
But his hand keeps moving. Slipping around on her back. Dropping down her spine, on some kind of expedition. “No, please,”
she says.

“OK.”

He relaxes. They lie there, and finally she hears his breathing deepen again, and she thinks, This is all right, just like
this. Lie here and listen. What’s the point of dreading the morning? It’s not morning yet. Listen to Oliver’s breathing and
Turtle’s breathing and that water bird, and let this night go on and on.

But the sun comes up in a rush.

Turtle makes them huevos rancheros and a paste of black frijoles. An old woman brings them a basket of warm weighty tortillas,
corn-yellow.

Juan Calmo comes by and he takes Oliver out to show him around.

Then Annie and Turtle walk on down through pear orchards and through open fields to a hidden stream-gorge, a waterfall. The
sunlight is blinding, the sky is an immaculate blue and so dark it wouldn’t surprise her to find stars in it, broad-day constellations.

They sit on a mossy rock by the stream and he says, “Well, now will you tell me?”

She tells him.

She tells him everything—but it’s all
one
thing. It’s all about the Teacher. It’s everything she’s managed to glean or guess about his workings. How he seduces. How
he overwhelms. How he always gets there before you, how you can never know how far he’ll go.

By the time she’s done, it’s nearly noon. The sky is no longer quite so blue. The mist is starting to flow down from the mountains.

“So no one knows you’re here?” says Turtle.

“Not yet. I don’t think.”

He considers a moment. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Get the hell out of there, that’s what you should have done
from the start. You’re safe here, Annie. This is about as far away from Westchester as you can get. The people here are my
friends.”

“I know,” she says.

“Most of the men have fought in the army, or against the army. Or both. They have rifles. They don’t mind using them. It’d
be harder than hell for anyone to get in here and hurt you.”

“OK.”

“You’ll like it here. I’ll take you up tomorrow and show you the mountaintops. There are Mayan altars on all the mountaintops.”

She smiles. “I wish I had more time.”

“More time? God, Annie, listen, you can stay here as long as you—”

Then he catches her drift. “Hold it. You
can’t
—”

“I have to, Turtle. I have to go back. But I need you to take care of Oliver. There’s no one else in the world I’d trust.”

“Annie, wait a minute.”

“If he comes back with me, that man will kill him. You’ve got to take him.”

“No. Wait. You’re not leaving! No way I’m letting you go back!”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Annie.”

“That’s not your choice. Your choice is, you can take care of Oliver, or you can send him home with me to be killed. I’m asking
you to take care of him.”

“For how long?”

“Till it’s finished.”

“What do you mean, till it’s finished? Jesus, what are you asking me, Annie?”

“I’m asking you to raise my child. Keep him healthy, he doesn’t have to be a big success or anything. Just give him whatever
you can. I don’t care if he’s an artist, I don’t care if he goes to college, I don’t care if he stays here and raises sheep
for the rest of his life, just tell him every night how much I love him, that’s all you have to do. I know how much I’m asking.
I know it’s
too
much. But there’s no one else, there’s nobody else I can go to.”

“But why do you want to go back there?”

She stares at the waterfall. “I need to.”

“Is there something you don’t have? Something you forgot, what? If there’s anything—”

“I need to go back.”

“
Why?
To see that man again?”

“Yes.”

“
Why?
”

“Turtle, tell Oliver about Juliet. Tell him what happened. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye, but I can’t. If I tried
to say goodbye, I wouldn’t—how could I do that? Say
goodbye?
Don’t ask me that. Don’t ask me, don’t. I’m not strong enough. He’d talk me into staying. Or you would. And then sooner or
later the Teacher would find us here.”

“No he won’t, Annie. He’ll quit looking.”

“He’ll never quit looking.”

“How do you know that? You don’t know that.”

“He’ll never leave us. Turtle, what we’ve been through together? The Teacher and I? It’s like some kind of marriage.”

O
LIVER
and Juan Calmo are up in the old ruined church. A narrow stone gallery wraps around and overlooks what used to be the nave—but
now the roof is gone and the pews are gone and what’s down there is a sort of ragged sun-washed courtyard. There
is
a gnarled makeshift cross. And an old man kneeling before it, chanting. A fire smoulders around the base of the cross. The
old man has a live turkey in his hands, and he holds it aloft. The turkey is struggling to get away, craning its neck, its
wattle shivering. Oliver and Juan Calmo watch from the gallery. They crouch behind the stone railing and peek over it. They
see the old man slash the turkey’s throat and shake the blood into the fire. Long rips of smoke issuing.

“Whoa,” Oliver whispers.

A small whisper. But the ruins pick it up and toss it about, and the old man hears.

He raises his eyes to the boys.

They duck and giggle. Juan Calmo, still in a crouch, shuffles down the gallery and Oliver follows.

They take a left and break into a run, skimming along the top of what used to be the wall of some side building. Stunning
view of T’ui Cuch and of the mountains around it. At the wall’s end they come to a flight of rough white stairs. Juan Calmo
holds up. He sits on the stairs. He pulls a couple of pearlike fruits from his pocket, and offers one to Oliver. Bitter—his
face shrivels, and Juan Calmo grins at him. The crackling sunlight everywhere. Music coming up from the village. Oliver can
look down and see a marimba band playing in the little square. Gearing up for some sort of festival they’re supposed to be
having soon, something about All Saints’ Day. And also in the square, not far from where the band is playing, he spots that
battered pickup, the one he rode in on. It’s full of T’ui Cuchians, waiting for the ride down to Huehuetenango. The pickup’s
engine is running, little clumps of black smoke. Delicious, to sprawl back on these steps in this thick light and suck this
impossible fruit and watch the day go by down there—

There’s a woman and a man approaching the pickup. The woman is carrying a suitcase.

It’s Mom.

She’s leaving. She’s leaving him here.

Oliver rises from the steps. Rises slowly. He can’t believe this. He stares. He doesn’t move. He watches her lug that suitcase.
The driver of the pickup takes it from her and hefts it to some T’ui Cuch men in the back. Hands reach out to help her up.
Oliver’s watching all this unfold as though he has no presence here, no power other than the power to witness.

And then Juan Calmo says, “
Qué pasa?
” and Oliver remembers that he has a voice too. He shouts:

“Mom!”

But with that music and the sputtering wind and the distance no one can hear him. Nobody even glances up to these ruins.

He starts down the steps. Three steps at a time, then down the slope of the hill, taking huge risky strides. Down a narrow
beanpatch lane with goats squinting and dogs yapping at his passage. He slips in the mud and almost wipes out, but he does
a wild dance, his feet falling all around him, and somehow he keeps his balance, he keeps running. A knot of chickens, a donkey
laden with corn shuck. Then a stretch of open road, then a sharp turn, then he blasts into the square.

Turtle. The marimba band, the crowd.

But the pickup is driving away.

One last glimpse of her.

“MOM! MOM! MOM!”

She’s looking back, and though she doesn’t acknowledge him, he knows that she sees him.

His breath is raw in his lungs, sandpapery. He casts one look of bewildered fury at Turtle and keeps running. Hopeless because
he’ll never catch the pickup now, but how could she do this, leave him here? He keeps after her. Even after the pickup vanishes
he keeps running. Dogs at his heels, children staring, can’t even hear the pickup’s engine now, just his own gasping and the
marimba. The pig that barked at them yesterday comes out and barks at him now.