33

I wake up late. Kristy boils water on Ben’s camp stove.

“Good morning,” I say.

“There are rumors.” She looks up. “They say the roads have been opened. Everybody’s heading down there to meet the relief trucks.”

“That’s good,” I say. “Let’s hope it’s true.”

I open the gate and walk toward the waterfront, as if to check the surf. Whether or not the roads have opened, people believe they have. In the street, everyone hurries about. Many carry bags. The people I pass are all on their way to the east end of town, where the trucks from San Salvador are meant to arrive.

On the beach, just beyond the stairs, two dogs have gotten stuck together while fucking. They stand ass-to-ass, stumbling in clumsy circles and trying to see each other’s eyes. Down the leg of one, a spray of blood is matted into the fur. The looks on their faces are confused more than anything—as if wondering whether it’s their own appetites or only nature that led to this predicament.

The swell is way down, barely rideable, even if I did still have a board. Farther out, to this side of the horizon, an iron ship heads right toward me. I watch as it rounds the pier and makes its way into the cove, closer than I’ve ever seen any vessel come to the point. Its hull is black and full of rust. A red-and-white flag flies from its bow, with the word Rescate written there under a cross.

A couple of Zodiacs embark from it, weighted down with about a dozen people, heading to the beach. Once they get to the shore, they all shout and point and then split up into three groups. One runs in the direction of the pier, another straight inland, and the last group comes toward my spot on the steps. I light one of the dead man’s last menthol cigarettes. The first two people to approach me are Salvadorans. Wearing orange life vests with the Red Cross logo, they ask in Spanish if I need medical attention. I tell them no.

The last person from their group, panting from the walk through the sand and pulling wet khakis away from his legs, is Alex.

“Malia! Oh my God!”

We embrace, our forearms pressing hard into each other’s backs. Then it suddenly becomes awkward and we let go.

He wears a baseball cap that reads EL SALVADOR, EARTHQUAKES, 2001.

“I was hoping to find you. I’m so glad that you’re all right.”

He’s the last person I expect to see today. “I’m glad that you’re all right, too.” It doesn’t sound stupid until the moment I say it.

“Listen. I’ve talked to my director. There’s a lot of money coming in for La Libertad right now. It’s become our number-one priority. I told him about your Peace Corps experience, your engineering background, your knowledge of the area. Anyways, he’s keen on hiring you. We’ll be working together!”

“I’m not interested, Alex.” I let out a mouthful of flavored smoke.

“What?”

“I think it’s time for me to leave this place. It’s well past time for me to go.”

“Malia, think about this. Think about your life for a second.”

“Chuck Norris is dead,” I tell him.

“The movie star?”

“No.” I have a hard time saying it out loud. “Ben. He was stabbed the night before last. And you know what? My life is, unfortunately, all I ever think about.” I take the hat off Alex and put it on my own head.

He doesn’t know what to say.

I kiss him on the lips, tell him good-bye, and return to La Posada.

*   *   *

As I’m about to enter the hotel, the sandal that Ben repaired finally breaks; its rubber sole dangles limp from the severed strap about my toes. I step out of both flip-flops, leave them there before the gate, and cross the courtyard in bare feet. I set about gathering spare clothes and other necessities from the back of the Jeep and the ruins of our room.

“Chinita?” The voice that calls my nickname is so sheepish and hesitant, I don’t recognize it as Kristy’s. “I have to speak to you.” She limps over from the kitchen area.

“Speak to me?” I’m so focused on getting out of here—finding a way to the embassy and persuading them to get me out of this country—that I don’t have the patience for a sentimental good-bye, even from her.

“Chinita, listen.” For some reason, she’s not wearing the heavy eye makeup that I’ve never seen her without. “I have something to tell you—something to give you, I suppose.” She looks down at the dirt of the courtyard.

My first thought is to try to say politely that I’m too busy. But when Kristy takes from behind her back a clear plastic bag with that tiny blue booklet inside, she has my full attention.

“My passport,” I say.

“I’m very sorry.” Her gaze goes back to the ground. “I thought you’d be able to get another one straight away. It wasn’t supposed to create a big problem.” She meets my eyes for a moment. Tears start down her cheeks. “I thought that we looked enough alike, I might not need a smuggler. I’m so sorry.”

I open up the bag. Along with my passport, there’s the woven wallet, the card for the bank account I’d assumed was emptied, and that Red Cross business card that Alex handed me at the Peace Corps office less than two weeks prior, when things were so different.

“What about the envelope of money? Do you have that as well?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “The real mañoso took that. I heard him leave, chased him away, really. But I saw your passport left inside the wallet. I thought it was an opportunity, especially with Pelochucho back in my life.”

I open up the cover and have a look at my smiling image from a few years back. It was a decent plan Kristy had. We do look alike, especially without the eye makeup. She probably would’ve passed through immigration.

A part of me wants to scream, to tell her that she should’ve come clean days ago. It might’ve saved me a world of trouble. But instead, I say, “I forgive you.”

She doesn’t look satisfied, expects more anger, perhaps. “But I must also apologize about all of this, about Chuck Norris as well.”

“How do you mean?”

“Had I not taken the passport”—she uses her lips to point at it—“you two might have been gone before the earthquake.”

A dozen thoughts tumble through my mind. Where might I be if my passport had never gone missing? Ben and I could’ve made it to Nicaragua or Panama by the time the quake hit. Maybe to the South American continent by now. Ben might still be alive. But what am I supposed to do? Blame her?

“It’s okay,” I say. “You had no way of guessing what might happen. I forgive you for all that as well.”

“Thank you.” She nods, then walks away.

“Kristy!” I say. “Wait a second.”

She turns and steps back toward me.

“Do you want it?” I hold the passport out toward her. “I can get an emergency version from the embassy; it would allow me to travel home. You might make it to the north, without a smuggler.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “That’s generous of you. But I’m not interested. This is my home. I’ve never truly wanted to live in your country. It was only for him.” She gestures in the direction of Pelochucho’s former room. “I didn’t care about where so much. I simply wanted the two of us to be together.”

“I see.” I nod, then look down at the passport inside my hand. It suddenly seems a silly offer. Why would anyone pretend to be me?

I lace up my boots and dust off my backpack. I dig out Ben’s passport from the Jeep’s glove compartment. I fix Alex’s Red Cross cap atop my hair. With an old rag, I force the sharp blade of Ben’s multitool to stay partly open—for quick access in case of trouble—and put it into the front pocket of my baggy jeans.

“Kristy,” I say, handing her the key that she insisted I hold on to the other day, “I don’t need this anymore. I’m leaving El Salvador.”

“Of course,” she says. “Your family must be worried about you.”

“Will you be all right, by yourself?”

“Things should improve now that the aid workers are here. I’ll go stay with relatives in San Salvador once I get a chance.”

“Thanks for everything,” I tell her.

“Thanks to you,” she says. “Take care of yourself.” Though I know it’s only an expression, it sounds more like a good piece of advice that I’ll have a hard time following.

*   *   *

Once, only a few days ago, it was still possible to tell the crackheads from the rest of La Libertad’s population. Now, all the young males wear the crackheads’ look: gaunt and dirty, dressed in rags, desperate for and yet disinterested in things like food and sleep. As I walk around the streets for the last time, we all scramble like ants from a busted-open colony. I come across an empty lot where the Red Cross has set up a station. The workers offer rehydration fluid and medicine. There is no rhyme or reason to how they distribute. Soon, fights break out over unidentified bottles of pills. A glass jar full of suero shatters upon the ground.

The young relief workers look a little terrified, and I can’t help but hold their hubris against them—their self-righteous notion that they’re somehow capable of answering to or undoing the very motions of the earth.

I make my way to La Libertad’s one ATM, double-checking for my newly returned bank card through the fabric of my jeans. For the first time in several days, I’ll need money, and I’m curious to check the balance. I have the card, all right, but when I come to the cash machine, it’s in pieces. The screen is charred and black, as if somebody tried to burn it or blow it up. It lets off a piercing beep. There’s no way I’m putting my card inside.

As I walk away, a young man squats down on the step in front of the unopened bank. I do a double take. He puts his face in his hands, then turns it up again, his eyelids half-open.

“Weefer?” I’m staring at Ben’s killer.

He looks over. He doesn’t recognize me, but he seems to understand that I’m not from here. “Hello, my friend!” he mutters in broken English. “Give me a small gift, won’t you, please?” He holds up his empty palm, expecting a coin.

It would be so easy for me to kill him. Even without the knife that my fingers now squeeze, I could choke him to death with a strap from my backpack, crush his head with a rock. I could do it in front of a crowd of people and nobody would look twice or cause me any consequences at all. The strange thing is, I don’t feel anger toward him. I still want Ben back, but I can’t be bothered with any sort of revenge. I feel a little sorry for Weefer, but mostly, I feel like I understand him, understand what it means to need your fix—a fix that makes no sense to most of the world. In the end, I leave him there with his glassy eyes and his open hand.

A little farther down the road, workers at another relief station give out blankets and mattresses, with as much disorder. I wonder how soon they’ll start cutting the mattresses in half, how many blankets will simply be used to wrap up the dead.

Near the end of town, I spot a Salvadoran man in uniform starting an empty pickup truck with a Red Cross insignia, preparing to leave. I whistle and beg a ride. Thanks to my stolen cap, the driver allows me to hop in the back.

“Chinita!” I hear the shout as I turn for my final look at Puerto La Libertad. I turn to see who called to me. The sight of him almost makes me fall down there in the pickup; it’s Peseta. His T-shirt is held out in front of him, its little cloth hammock filled with jars of free medication. Somehow, he’s managed to stay one step ahead of the gangsters, the drug dealers, the falling walls. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. I hold up a hand—finger and pinkie extended—and give Peseta a shaka. Of all the labels that have been slapped on him over the years—surfer, addict, runner, hustler, urchin—none of them quite does him justice. What Peseta is most thoroughly is a survivor. He smiles and holds up two fingers on his free hand, making a peace sign with supreme confidence, as if he is mayor of this chaos, the president of this small apocalypse.

The pickup clears the excavated landslides. I ask to be let out before it turns inland toward San Salvador to resupply. From there, I cross the desvío and flag down one of the big sugarcane trucks. The cab is full, but they let me ride atop the rolling two-story pile of charred stalks with the rest of the laborers. I feel a kinship with them. If not for all the noise, I’d explain that I, too, am descended from sugar-plantation workers, a part of their clan. We gnaw the syrupy juice from out of the blackened lengths of cane as the driver passes carelessly on the Litoral’s blind curves. Trees, fields, and the textile sweatshops whiz by at ninety miles an hour, until all of El Salvador is nothing more than a sweet and blinding blur of nature and injustice.

At the turnoff for the airport, I tap on the cab and the truck stops. I give the Red Cross baseball cap to one of the workers. After thanking the driver, I cross the parking lot to the terminal. My clothes and backpack are now black from the soot of the cane stalks, but at least that covers up the stubborn bloodstains on my jeans.

The smell of fried chicken inside the airport is overwhelming; everyone carries on boxes of Pollo Campero for their relatives in the States. I find an ATM and a TACA counter, and within minutes I have a one-way ticket for Los Angeles.

On the other side of the security barrier, I buy some chicken and a Coke and sit watching the planes take off. I think briefly of the families in that hamlet on the hill above Kilometer 99. I hope they get to keep both their land and the money Pelo paid them for it. Perhaps that can be one small crumb of justice to fall from this tragedy. Maybe they understood the deal better than I did, knew something about the nature of fortune that I never quite grasped.

The boarding call begins for my flight, and I can almost feel Honolulu’s trade winds, smell the old wood of my father’s house. Suddenly, I wonder: What will El Salvador look like from the air? Will it be a mess of collapsed buildings and muddy landslides? Will I see Cara Sucia from up there? Could my mark on this country—a few lines of useless silver among the endless greens and browns—be seen from such heights?

The other L.A.-bound passengers stand and line up at the gate, chicken boxes in their hands. The voice crackling across the loudspeaker is incomprehensible, but I know that it’s my section being called. Something comes over me. I rise up and turn away from the Jetway. Before I know it, I’m running out of the terminal, past security and the baggage claim and out to the street. I have to hold up a hand to shield my eyes from the afternoon sun as it beats down so hard upon this, a world that never asked me to save it.