MORONA-SANTIAGO PROVINCE, 1967
They woke Wright before sunlight one day to ask. Did he want to go to Quito? The bus left in an hour. Their minds were made up, his mother’s hair wet, her fingers pushing earrings through her earlobes as she spoke. She was happiest this way, about to leave, the kind of person with teeth marks on her passport, dark sunglasses that remarked to passersby she was on her way. Why now, he wanted to know. Would they spend the night. Finally he agreed, curiosity just outweighing his silver fear.
On the bus he had hoped to sleep but the blinking driver kept the radio on as they rose from the rain forest into the height of the cordillera, taking curves that sent leather purses and soda cans into the aisle. Fay and Randy sat ahead of him, whispering as though they were building something complicated in the dark. Finally he dipped into a nap, dreams as jerky and protean as the ride.
Walking on the cobblestones spaced wide and uneven, his thinking bleary and stunted by the sight of buildings so much larger than any he saw in his daily life, Wright followed his mother and Randy into the crowd of people without asking any questions. He assumed a festival, the birthday of someone famous, and soon they were immersed in it, a commotion without a center. Babies twirled at the top of the crowd, on shoulders, on the tops of their parents’ heads, the masses having bled from the sidewalk into the street. People weren’t moving anymore, but sound was, a knot of screaming that approached in flashes.
As the motorcade of astronauts approached, packing the mob tighter, Wright began to understand what they had not told him. His mother and Randy were part of a unit that was within the mass but apart from it. They were not, like the other people, bringing their mouths to their hands or pointing for the benefit of their children or wiping away tears. These would be the first men to orbit the moon, Bisson and Bailey and Slate, but Randy and Fay had not come to cheer. Their shoulders forward, their eyes cut straight through the hum of bodies to the men in the cars.
The astronauts wore white linen guayaberas and leis, and they waved in precise twists of the hand and torso, a paean to a kind of manhood he knew nothing about. He wanted to climb into their laps or inside their bodies, be the organs animating them or the pulse beating.
The group his mother belonged to, fifteen or so, began to separate and hand out the signs they had carried here, plant their feet in a way that signified an offensive. Some were professors, still wearing their teaching clothes, sweating dark ovals in the armpits of their white shirts, others students, bedraggled, their hair uncut, their postures uneven from the heavy book bags that hung from shoulders. Their expressions were like pools in deep shade, offering only the occasional reflection of the world around them. His mother and Randy and one other veteran—a man who wore an upside-down flag, and whose left sleeve was pinned up to where his arm would have started—were the only Americans. NO MORE BREAD AND CIRCUSES, said a sign. WE ARE NOT DISTRACTED BY YOUR SPECTACLE and HOW MANY CHILDREN WILL DIE ON THIS PLANET WHILE YOU COLONIZE ANOTHER?
“The crimes of America are not forgiven,” his mother chanted. “The crimes of America are not forgiven!”
Though the chain of cars tried to pick up speed, the crowd made acceleration impossible. The three men in the convertible, their abbreviated haircuts identical, their shoulders dusted with rice, stopped using their hands to wave, bringing them to their faces instead, ducking, kissing their knees. Bodyguards climbed from one car to the next, insects in tailored suits. Over the mass of people, through the air so thin it was named the cloud forest, flew spoiled tomatoes and week-old fish heads, the dead eyes engorged and fixed on the sky.