inside a wax paper. The boy squatted next to us and choked down the steaming plantains from the greasy folds; he didn’t take his eyes off of us.
Manuel asked him where he had come from, before Cali. “My village,” the boy said, between licking his fingers. “We all left.”
“Your whole village—why?”
“A pipe blew up.” The boy raised his arms above him in a circle, his eyes wide. “Big. The kind the oil runs through. All the buildings, smashed. Like this.” He crushed the corner of the wax paper.
Manuel frowned. “Guerillas,” he said, and handed the boy a napkin. “Right?”
The boy nodded vigorously, plantain juice bathing his chin.
Soon after, I climbed into the car, breathless and tousled. The locks sounded. Fidel eyed me in the mirror. “No bags?” he said.
“What?” I said, taken aback.
“From shopping?”
“Oh, with Ana,” I said quickly. “She had an errand, not me.”
He scoffed as we jutted into the traffic. “I have never seen a girl go shopping and come back empty-handed.”
I didn’t answer but knew that I’d been caught in a lie. I prayed that he said nothing to Papi. We scooted around a city bus, its tailpipe billowing a black cloud of diesel fumes. The handgun jutted out from beneath his daily paper.
When we turned onto the road for home, I saw the remaining cane had been cut, the landscape oddly bare, like the first sight of a shorn alpaca. At our gate, two dozen men in faded clothing loitered, pacing. A small gang of children lingered to jab sticks and stones in the mud. The jefe Luis pranced on horseback among the mob. He and several field hands yelled for the desplazados to let us through, to leave; Fidel blasted the horn and inched the car ahead. Vincente thumbed the pistol in his holster.
“What do they want?” I asked, the window cool against my forehead. The sunken eyes of one of the displaced stared back at me. I thought him old at first, then realized he was much younger—his cheeks so thin that the jaw line jutted out.
“Work, what do you think?” Fidel said. “But we have nothing for them now.” The gate opened, and we zipped through.
That afternoon Papi’s brow was creased with worry, even after I approached his chair from behind and hugged him hello. In one hand, he crushed his purple bandanna. The living room sat silent, the stereo dark. “What’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed at his lack of attention.
“Did you see all the poor outside the gate? Because of the guerillas, they become my problem. They want land to farm, and I can’t give it to them. Not even to rent.”
“Don’t we have a lot of land?” I stepped over to the window.
“There’s not enough to go around, princesa.” He jumped up from his seat, pulled his hair with one hand, and paced. Shaka, the ridgeback, approached him with a ball and whined.
But Papi kept his cigar between his fingertips, and Shaka slumped into her place by his chair.
I fetched Manuel’s album, said, “Listen to this, and tell me what you think.” The guitars and voices soared. Papi strolled to the great windows. A breeze cut through the smoke. I doubted he was listening until he said, “Pretty good, this. Who is it?”
“This is who I’d like to have over for dinner one night soon. He played at Ana’s party. We’ve been hanging out. I want you to meet him.”
“You like this boy?” Angel, the three-legged mutt, hopped over. Papi rubbed her head. “A boyfriend—are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“Why not? As long as we like each other.” I spun the globe, my eyes following the pale golden peninsula of Florida sticking out into the Caribbean green. I hugged Shaka, avoiding the prickly ridge along her spine. Underneath me she felt warm, solid. “Will you come and visit me at boarding school?” I asked.
His calloused hands petted the mutt. “You’ll come back for vacations. You know I can’t leave the farm for that long.” Then he reached over and mussed my hair. His cigar sprouted from his wide-lipped grin.
The evening began politely enough. Having spent nearly every afternoon with Manuel for more than a week, his meeting my father felt like a necessary formality and inevitable next step. We sat in the living room, Manuel and Papi discussing Andrés Segovia and other famous guitarists. Papi shoved Manuel’s album into the player, and I reclined, listening. “A rare talent you’ve got,” Papi said. He nodded and pointed at Manuel with the CD case. “You’d better pursue it.”
Manuel stood squarely, scratched his head. “That’s a great compliment, coming from such a classical aficionado as you, sir. I certainly intend to.” He and I exchanged a heartened look.
Luis rapped at the sliding door. Papi invited him to eat with us, and I shuffled the CDs in the rack to hide my grimace. When Vincente and Guillermo, who oversaw the coffee farm, horses, and alpaca station, joined us for meals, they spoke little. When they did, the conversation revolved around livestock and the weather. They kept to themselves and their quarters, away from our house. But Luis left his shirt open in the fields with his hairy stomach bulging over his pants. Tonight Papi ordered wine to be brought up from the cellar. Both their tongues would be loose. Worse, Inez plunked down sopa de guineo—pork, potato and guineo infused with the savory smells of cilantro and onion, which I liked. But hardly the exotic dish I’d hoped for. Maybe this was her way of voicing disapproval over a boy; by her brisk demeanor as she served, I couldn’t tell. Surely my mother would not have let me down.
Luis rambled for most of dinner about the guerrillas in the southern mountain passes. They were running more peasants from villages—extended families, their whole lives, from pots and pans to sacks of rice, strapped to the backs of donkeys, begging for work. “But I don’t have the time to deal with it,” he said. “Eventually, it gets easier to turn them away.” He addressed Papi, ignoring Manuel and me.
“Easier?” Manuel asked. “What happens to them?”
Luis took a gulp of wine and shrugged. “If I give jobs to ten men, there’re ten more behind them, and a dozen more down the road besides, on and on. They can’t read or write, can’t get better jobs in the cities, so they beg out here. Am I Mother Teresa?”
I pushed at the steaming guineo on my plate. The boy who had scarfed down the plantains had told the same story of carnage in the south.
“That’s the trouble with the poor,” Papi said. He removed two cigars from the humidor, handed one to Luis. The lid clapped shut. “The poor breed more poor, while the rich feed them.”
“True,” Luis said, and lit the cigars.
“It’s become more desperate recently, no doubt.” Manuel petted the mutts under the table. “Maybe even the dogs are affected.” He cracked a grin. Papi and Luis chuckled, eyes dancing over their cigars as they puffed. Manuel said, “We all must choose where we place our energies, sooner than later. Understand we’re contributing to the good. If we’re not, well—”
“Contribute to the good, exactly,” Papi interrupted. “Each man must do as he sees fit.” He reached in the humidor, offered Manuel a cigar.
