over a decade, we think he pays people off to keep quiet. Or receives illegal payments himself for the same reason. To which organization, we’re not sure. Silence commands a hefty price.”
“No one knows for sure,” Manuel added. He cupped the back of my neck gently; his hand felt cold. “We’re trying to find evidence that proves the current connection. Your father has been a person of interest to the Colombian and American authorities, and to activist groups, for a long time.”
“But this isn’t just some rumor,” I said. My stomach had become granite. “Father Juan’s not some employee, upset because my father fired him. And you’re telling me he’s still involved somehow—Diego?” How desperately I wanted it not to be true. His name on my tongue, those three syllables I wasn’t used to uttering. Another name, another life.
Men with automatic rifles had once stood watch from towers across our property and patrolled at night. The ninjas, I’d called them—stone-faced young men, their snug black T-shirts and camouflaged pants showing off trim physiques. I had darted behind the fountain whenever they crossed the courtyard in jaunty strides, throwing the caps of their Coca-Colas onto the stonework. Their Adam’s apples jutted toward the sky as they tipped the bottles upward and guzzled. Their shoulders rippled beneath the rifles strapped to their backs. After the cartels, the violence had waned for a time. The posts they’d occupied had long since gone deserted, my ninjas happily forgotten, and Papi allowed both displaced and tenants to dismantle the towers for firewood and building materials. A guard still kept watch twenty-four hours, in the small room over the main gate, roughly a hundred meters from the main house—a fixture at the large haciendas. “It’s a big farm, you know,” I said quietly.
“He provides a lot of jobs, it’s true,” Emilio said. “We’re convinced that individually, he’s not a threat—not anymore. But he still contributes to the larger problem of doling out payoffs for protection. And that’s a very big deal.”
A gust lifted the tent flap, the light bulbs swaying overhead. We were the only three left. I clung to Manuel’s shoulder as we arose. Speckles, gray and white, dotted the Virgin’s face in the streetlight; the water streamed in its silvery arc, but I couldn’t hear it. Dizzy, I collapsed into Manuel. He led me to a bench, waved his brother away.
“What do I do now?” I cried softly. “What do I do?”
Manuel didn’t speak, just stroked my hair. His eyes had momentarily lost their liveliness; I could tell he felt sorry for me. The pungent fragrance of roses mixed with the odor of cooked meat from a street cart, and my stomach turned. Children milled around the cart, eating chorizo on a stick. “I can’t have girls sleep over, but in this case my parents would let you stay with us,” he said, and after a pause, “Do you want to go back?”
I wanted to see his house, meet his parents—but like this? I shook my head. The lights of the bus flashed at the crest of the hill.
“Look, you’re not taking the bus. Hop on my bike.”
“If Papi sees you—”
“So what?”
He removed his jacket and I wriggled into the sleeves. The leather was warm, the rest of me numb.
Moments later, we whipped down the autopista. I had never ridden a moto before, and as I clung to Manuel, his T-shirt billowing white in the moonlight, I thought: this is what it means to be free, to never die. We were going fast, but I wanted it. The world revealed itself in a new way, more alive. Low overhead, a passenger jet roared in ascent from the nearby Cali airport, heading north out of the valley. What power airplanes possessed, to remove people from one place, to deliver them into a new life. No doubt it was headed for another country, perhaps even the U.S. One day soon I might board one of those flights, either on my way to study in an oddly named state of snow, or to work in a uniform, dress shoes, and pantyhose, wheeling a suitcase.
We swooped down the exit ramp, through the outlying towns that led to the hacienda. The one- and two-story pulperías and shops loomed like gravestones, their fronts shuttered, graffiti splashed over the corrugated metal. Inside a well-lit market, men and boys played pool, the music pulsating through me. I shivered, my legs cold; Manuel must have been freezing in his thin shirt. A skinny, filthy man warbled and staggered along the crumbling sidewalk, one of Cali’s many crack heads. The street reeked of trash and old rainwater. We turned at the zapateria where Papi and the hired men had their boots and holsters made. Tonight no boots or belts hung outside on display, but the small shop stared back, shadowed and asleep.
Cali lay beneath us as we hugged the winding hillside, the city ablaze like the candles lit by parishioners. We passed the turn where the bus had been robbed, but I felt safe. Then we descended down a side road spotted with boxy middle-class homes, the cars squeezed in short driveways behind locked gates, one after another like rows of prison cells. The scent of earth and cows replaced the city stench, and then the flat road to the plantation, muddy from the recent rains, with Papi’s fields stretching out on either side as far as one could see to the tree line of the jungle and the slopes where the coffee grew wild. At last the hacienda came into view.
Manuel dropped me off a few dozen meters away. I pushed the button on my keychain to open the gate, the barbed wire on top glinting in the moonlight. On the concrete walls the wire was partially hidden by the purple bougainvillea that grew over the top, but here and there the metal still shone. One of the ridgebacks, Zulu, jumped to her feet and growled low as I passed until I called her name and reached to pet her. The stereo glowed on the mantle, the dinner dishes dried in the rack. I shut the door behind me, but inside appeared different, altered: Papi was watching a news bulletin and drinking beer from a sweating bottle, both unusual activities for him. As soon as I walked in, he muted the TV and bolted to his feet.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said.
“Where have you been all evening, eh?” He clamped a hand on my shoulder, steered me to the couch, and sat us both down. Before I could wriggle aside, I caught his scent and cologne, and trembled.
The Papi you know is different than the man Emilio talked about, I told myself, breathing long and slow. Right now it’s just you and Papi.
“I went to church,” I finally said. After the long ride home I had figured that Manuel’s idea to tell the truth—or at least the part I was able to tell—was better than a lie. I said, “I took the bus because I was afraid to tell you.”
“To church?” He brushed his palms on his jeans and stood up. “That’s one thing. Taking the bus is another. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry works nicely until you’re dead. Then it’s harder to say.”
“I hear you, Papi!”
He bumped the coffee table, knocking a magazine to the floor. He didn’t bother to pick it up. “Listen, with this boy business, I don’t want any sneaking around. From now on, we must be honest with one another. That’s all I ask, okay? Now which church was it?”
“You didn’t need to worry. I was in the nice part of town.”
“Which church?”
“La Maria, where Ana goes.”
He set down the beer hard, drew back and began to rub his temple—then shot forward and swatted the bottle, knocking it to the floor. Beer trickled out as it rolled, hollow against the tile. The dogs scattered from their places, skirting the spilled contents. “Very
