“Whatever. But I’m starved and I gotta go.”
The little wooden structure that served as a store offered them gasoline in little cans and, hanging from small hooks and dangling over the counter, dried, spicy jerky, which they ate ravenously.
Starling almost cried when she saw the accommodations in the shed back behind the store—a hole in the ground, no sink, and a slab of old wood simply leaning in to the entrance to serve as a sort of door, pulled open by a broken piece of rope dangling from a nail. This was the lowest they had ever fallen. Basil shared her sentiment as he gaped mournfully at the broken, filthy porcelain tray in a small, door-less aperture around the far side of the same shed. Neither of them said anything afterwards as they shared a little towelette for cleaning hands that Star had in her purse.
Munching on the rest of the jerky and drinking sweet carbonated bottled drinks that together made their stomachs churn, they were still able to notice that the poor little country villages had begun to multiply. Maybe civilization, as they saw it, wasn’t too far away. . . .
The land was arid now, like a wilderness, but makeshift roadside stands had also begun to appear before the little wooden and sheet-metal houses. Beside them sat entire families, selling whatever was in season and watching what came by. Star waved at one little family knot and they broke into big smiles and waved back. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad, she thought. And she felt almost good about it when they reached the border road at Dajabon and with relief turned south at last.
But the border was another world than the mountains, empty and desolate. Both Star and Basil felt their spirits sinking again. And, as they traveled, the northwestern border villages all matched their mood—depressed little places with empty-eyed people who stared at them as they drove swiftly past—and on the edge of each town cemeteries with all the graves broken open. “This place gives me the creeps,” shuddered Starling over and over again as they hurried through town after town. Another stop and the sun was beating upon them as on a voodun drum.
Then about six o’clock in the afternoon, the road left the border and continued winding south, past villages with more encouraging names like “Happy Angel,” “Granada” (Star loved that song and began to hum it), and “The Pines.” Star’s spirits began lifting again. Both of them were feeling as if they were on the brink of some kind of deliverance when suddenly a little city aptly named Descubierta—the “Discovery”—hove into sight. This was a lovely little town with an “up and coming” appearance punctuated by motorcycles zipping by like so many new ideas.
Basil paused before the village square and studied the benches replete with lovers lost in their mutual attraction, the tables with old men playing dominos, and, specifically, a mature family threesome sitting next to the road to whom he asked the name of the town in his “get-by” version of Spanish, awkwardly leaning over Star to do so.
The grey-haired man in the center of the trio spread his hands in either direction, smiled, and announced with invitational pride, “La Descubierta—a gozar.”
“He wants us to enjoy ourselves!” Star marveled and beamed on them with her hundred-watt smile, calculated as it was to dazzle marks out of their hard-earned reserves, effective up to thirty paces. Nice little town, she was beaming, let’s turn it upside down and see what shakes out. But, to the pure, all things are pure, and the trio took her enthusiasm for face value. This was, after all, Descubierta—“the Discovery.” And they knew there was much to discover.
Gauging a similar response in Basil, so it was probably unnecessary—but, she knew, it never hurts—Star decided to wheedle in her most reasonable and ingratiating tone: “Look, it’s after seven o’clock. We put some real miles in today, Bo. This town looks big enough to give us a good meal and a cheap place to stay. Last night was awful—we had to sleep all cramped up. We gotta get a good night’s sleep, if we’re going to go on tomorrow. Besides, I need a shower—and you definitely need one!”
Basil chuckled. “You’re right there, Schweetheart,” he replied in his truly miserable Bogart imitation.
“So, let’s discover the good life of Descubierta,” urged Star.
“Great idea! I think we could enjoy this town,” agreed Basil, grinning at Star and then nodding at the patient threesome. “Un hotel?”
All three smiled even more broadly, if that were possible, and pointed beyond the other side of the square.
Basil carefully inserted the little truck in among the motorcycles, pulled off an awkward K-turn, and navigated his way back along the road until they had left the central park.
“This is pretty,” murmured Star, looking out her window at the far side of the road, where a small waterfall, flowing from the mountains, passed under the street and filled a little valley in which people were wading.
Back on the left, on the next corner just after the park, was the hotel, a small two-story structure with a little restaurant on its ground floor, balconies above them for the front two upper rooms, and yellow and red flowers filling the entrance. A tiny parking area separated the building from the road, and into this Basil squeezed the little truck.
The proprietor, a garrulous and prosperously portly man of middle age, appropriately named Señor Feliz, welcomed them in with an infectious air of contentment. In a mixture of seven-eighths Spanish and one-eighth English, he displayed the wonders of Descubierta before them, as innocently as did Hezekiah show his treasures before the reconnoitering Assyrians. Yes, it was a relatively poor town, but the people were proud of it and hoped someday to complete the construction of the road on the northern outskirts of town. The main attraction was the “little faces” of the Indians. “You must not leave the area until you see the ‘little faces,’” he urged them.
So the next morning, bright and early, about the crack of dawn for Basil and Star—that is to say, about eleven o’clock—they headed off on the only lead they presently had: to see the “little faces.” When one is out to exploit, no avenue should remain unexplored.
No sooner had they left the comfort of Descubierta, however, than they made an unpleasant discovery. The construction Innkeeper Feliz had assured them was “in process” proved to be a torn-up road with no one either working on it or having worked on it for obviously quite a while. They rattled for a space through broken concrete and clouds of dust thrown up by a huge tractor trailer thundering by them and kicking up stones until Star demanded they turn back. But Basil doggedly bumped “on and on,” as she had accurately complained in the mountains. This time, however, he was rewarded by a stretch of recently paved highway and a clear straight-away as a mountain rose up on Basil’s side to their left.
“Bo,” said Star presently, “there’s something happening on my side. I think it’s water—I can see it through the trees.”
“You mean like a river?”
“Uh, I’m not sure. It’s all among the trees. It was like far away at the edge, you know? But now it looks like it’s spreading out and getting closer.”
Basil tried to strain over her and get a glimpse of what lay beyond the foliage on the right, but it was hard with the occasional bus or tractor trailer that nearly blew them off into the trees as it hammered through.
“I can’t see it exactly.” He gave up and kept his eyes on the road.
In a few moments, she said, a little worried, “Basil—it’s big! I think it might be . . .”
“Wait!
