fear. She looked around for the mother of the child, who had disappeared in the darkness; but there was no one on the street to tell them which door she had entered.
“George, you carry him to the car.” Sarah’s father didn’t respond, so her mother picked the child up herself. He was heavy for her. He was bleeding badly, and blood had soaked through Mary’s sweater and blouse and moistened her shoulder. “Can you drive?” George nodded and followed his wife blindly, almost staggering, as the older child had followed the mother across the street. “George, can you drive? Answer me.”
“Sí.” They got into the car, where the motor had been left running. Mary took off her scarf and tied it tightly around the child’s shoulder and cuddled his head on her bosom. George seemed to be heading down his usual route toward the South Highway.
“No, George. To the hospital.”
“El Retiro?”
“No, Baptist. The Baptist Hospital, George. Hospital Bautista.” He still seemed to be driving toward the site of the public hospital, El Retiro. “No, no, George. The Baptist Hospital.” He didn’t seem to respond to English. “El Hospital Bautista, Jorge. A la Clínica Bautista.”
When they reached the hospital, George carried the child inside; and Sarah followed them without receiving any protests or instructions from her parents. Mary knew some of the missionary nurses and communicated the situation to them immediately. Even though the child had lost a large amount of blood, the wound didn’t seem to be critical, and Mary’s scarf had stanched the flow of blood to some extent. A Nicaraguan doctor thought that the little boy would survive and recover. Mary told him that they would return soon to see about the child and promised to cover all his expenses. They would try to locate his mother tomorrow, if the shooting and violence had ceased in the besieged barrio (neighborhood).
“Let’s go home now, George.” He was silent. His terror had passed. Now he was silent out of shame. He was pulling at his fingers, popping the joints.
Sarah had never seen her father behave in such a frightened way before, and it terrified her more than the gunfire.
Mary turned toward George on the long, silent drive to Quinta Louisa. Once she reached out to him but withdrew her hand just inches before her fingertips touched his arm. “It’s all right, dear. It’s all right. Everything will be fine.” The whispered words were intended as much for Sarah as for her father, but Sarah didn’t believe anything would ever be all right again, and nothing would ever be fine for her in Nicaragua again.
Sarah’s mother tucked her into bed late that night, but for the first time in her life Sarah’s father didn’t come to give her a goodnight kiss; and his absence frightened her even more than seeing the wounds of the injured child, more than the bloodstains on the street and on her mother’s blouse, more than the words of her mother and the silence of her father in the car on the way home to Quinta Louisa.
Because Armando and Beatriz Chulteco lived in the center of Managua, in one of the old homes just off Roosevelt Avenue, Sarah’s parents invited them to spend several days at Quinta Louisa until order was restored in the city. Although a few shots were fired back and forth on Monday, the Nicaraguan army had established complete control by Tuesday morning; but with stores still shuttered and tensions high, Mary and George believed their friends would probably be safer and would certainly be calmer on the finca (farm) with them.
The newspapers reported fewer than twenty people killed, but family members of coffee workers from the village counted almost sixty friends and acquaintances known to be slain, and the count must surely have been even higher. Sarah sat with rapt attention listening to her parents and the Chultecos narrate the facts and rumors about what had happened.
Both political parties customarily rounded up campesinos (peasants) from the rural villages during the election campaigns and brought them into the city on big trucks and offered them a drink and a sweet. The outing was a rare and coveted celebration for the peasant laborers, who paid little attention to which political party was sponsoring the rally.
Now at the peak of the cotton harvest, trailers of raw cotton packed outlying streets on the weekend, waiting to be the first in line to be drawn into the gins on Monday morning. Underneath the cotton, rifles had been hidden; and communist guerrillas from Colombia retrieved the guns and stationed snipers on the roofs of some of the taller buildings along Roosevelt Avenue. They set cars on fire along some of the side streets. The snipers then fired into the crowd of campesinos from both directions, so that they were trapped in panic on the central street.
Some of the leaders of the Conservative Party were arrested and jailed, although Armando swore that they had played no part in the riot and had no knowledge of the plot by a few Nicaraguan communist sympathizers and foreign terrorists to destabilize the country. Some Conservative Party leaders had rushed into the Gran Hotel and held the guests hostage at the dinner party to which the Rutledges had been invited but had declined to attend. The hostages were confined until the opposition political officials were assured that they would not be executed by the Somoza regime. Anastazio Somoza, the younger brother of the former President and now a candidate for the Presidency himself, was the Chief of the Nicaraguan army. He surrounded the hotel with tanks whose cannons were trained on the entrances.
“He would have blown the building down in a quick moment if his older brother had not been more level headed.” Sarah looked at Don Armando with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
“Really?”
“Sin duda (without doubt), Sarita. Most certainly.”
“Tachito is an evil man.” Everyone called Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Tachito or little Tacho. His father, the first dictator of the Somoza regime, was called Tacho, which was a word for a large kettle used for boiling cane to make sugar, although no one knew how the General got that nickname.
“One of my friends at school told me he had his soldiers throw some men who were saying bad things about him into the Masaya volcano.”
“Sush! Do not say such things out loud, Sarita.” Doña Beatriz held her long thin fingers with their four bejeweled rings across her lips. “You must not say such things except to friends you trust absolutamente (absolutely). Who knows what the servants may hear and repeat, or some of the coffee pickers that may be communists . . . ?” Doña Beatriz’s eyes were wide with fear. “Especially for you as a foreigner.”
“We’ve been here for four generations, Beatriz. This is our country, too.” Armando’s and Beatriz’s faces reflected the fear that was present on Sarah’s father’s face in the barrio on Sunday night, but now George Rutledge looked calm, even brave. “We belong here.”
“Don’t be too sure who belongs here. If there’s a revolution, I’m not sure even Beatriz and I would belong. At least you have to give the Somozas credit for maintaining order for four decades.” Now Don Armando looked more sad than frightened to Sarah.
“This is all very tedious, and you’re scaring Sarah. We’ve never had any trouble here on the finca. The people who work for us, the people in the village, would protect us from any danger. They always have. They always will. They love us, and we love them.” Mary Rutledge stood and smoothed her skirts to show her objection to their conversation.
“Nevertheless, my dear, we walk a narrow line. Armando is right. We are foreigners, even after four generations. This is the only country Sarah has ever known, the only one I’ve ever called home for that matter. But we must be careful never to take sides . . . or undue risks.” Sarah’s father now looked as sad and serious as Don Armando.
“Sometimes
