Suddenly Mingolla wanted Tully to pull the trigger, to end the suspense. ‘What was I s’posed to do?’ he yelled, ‘let her kill me? Let you get all fucking soulful ’bout me dead? This is crap, man! You wanna kill me, go ahead! Go on! Pull the fucking trigger! Maybe somebody put something in your goddamn head, told you to do it. Maybe this whole fucking shuck ’bout Tres Santos is just more Sotomayor bullshit!’ He pushed his chest to the window, puffed it out, daring Tully. ‘C’mon, man!’
‘You t’ink I won’t?’ said Tully. ‘Ain’t but one t’ing holdin’ me back, and dat’s de knowin’ how I helped make you dis way.’
Instead of Tully, Mingolla saw a big black shadow, a creature of blackness, empty, hateful, a nothing with muscles and a sweaty forehead and bloodshot eyes. ‘Fuck you, Tully,’ he said, and focused his anger in a stream of poisonous energy that sent Tully reeling. Tully’s gun discharged. Wild misses aimed at the ceiling, the walls, the floor. He tried to bring the gun to bear on the window, dropped it, clutched his head, letting out a hiss that turned into a scream. Then he fell across the bed, twisted onto his side, his fingers shaking at his temples as if trying to push thoughts back inside, thoughts crowded out by the anger roiling in his skull. And then he was gone. Winked out, truly empty, his blind eyes staring at a cross of black wood on the wall, like an incision into a region of darkness.
Mingolla was crying. He knew it by the wetness on his face and by no other sign, because he felt almost nothing. The tears might have merely been an excess, as if he had been filled to overflowing and was experiencing a necessary spillage. He turned from the window, and the bandy-legged little men moved back from him, staring incuriously, betraying neither fear nor any sort of strong emotion. They had, he realized, seen nothing out of the ordinary. Tears and violent death were part of their millieu, and though they might not comprehend the specifics of the situation, they understood that it was none of their business; they already had a sufficiency of tears and death, and had no interest in sharing the grief of strangers or involving themselves in moral judgments. All this he saw in their faces, all this he perceived as admirable and right.
From the bank of a narrow stream at the base of the hill, Mingolla could look back and see the edge of the village less than a hundred yards away. He could see all its sweetness, the bougainvillea in window planters, smoke curling from a jointed tin chimney, an old man picking his way among the ruts. The view was unobstructed, but Mingolla knew this was an illusion. Doors had been closed, and there was no going back. He looked up at the hill, its green slope as imposing as the hill of the Ant Farm. But this hill was even more menacing. Its blank, silent enormity presaged the grimness of a five-year-plan with no joyful goal at the end, and Mingolla was reluctant to set foot upon it.
‘Are you thinking about Tully?’ Debora asked.
‘No,’ he said.
She looked surprised.
‘I don’t know why,’ he said. ‘The thoughts just aren’t coming.’
‘I know how it is… sometimes you can’t think about important things right away. You have to let them diminish.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t important.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You don’t know what I’m feeling.’
‘Yes, I do.’ Her eyes were wide, her mouth tight, as if she was trying to hide some emotion. ‘I know exactly how you feel.’
They sat awhile on a boulder by the stream, gathering themselves for the climb. The stream was the only thing of energy in the entire landscape. Its tea-colored water raced over a stony bottom, foaming at the breaks into lacy white threads; orange iron-bearing rocks thrust up from the surface, and midges danced above them. Clumps of small flowers fringed the bank, the blossoms a pale creamy yellow with a magenta splash at the center, the stems furred with dark filaments. Wherever Mingolla turned, his eye met with an infinity of detail, with complicated mosaics of life, with patterns too intricate to unravel, and this complexity afflicted his sense of competence, made him aware of the ineptitude of his judgments, the fallibility of his hates and loves. It might be best just to sit there, he thought, and wait for the ones who soon would be hunting them. The sun’s light came grayish white and watery through a rift in the clouds, and seemed to search out all the fine stems and tendrils and cottony fibers, to course along them and fill the air with a single disturbance, a constant fluctuation of pressure and heat that unsettled Mingolla as might have a background of slow shadows or shouts in many languages. Nothing was clear, not even the urge to sit and wait. But at last he was moved by some vague impulse to stand and begin the climb.
The hill was slow going. They tripped and stumbled as if their many uncertainties were posing an impediment. But on reaching the top and gazing out over the mountains of Darién, jungleshrouded and rumpled to the horizon, it seemed they had come to one of the strange green places of God where the structural immensity of life was made plain, all paths delineated. The low sun had broken clear in the west, and its heavy golden light, reflecting off ridges of state-gray cloud, mined a mineral brilliance from every color. The slopes were a luminous green, the air held a shine in every quarter, and the view was so intricate yet at the same time so comprehensible, it offered a promise of hope and magical possibility. Above one hill a rainbow arched into oblivion; a hawk circled another, and dark slants of rain stroked the summit of a third. Like signals, portents. As if each green dome were a separate identity with its own character and values. The sight boosted Mingolla’s spirits, and as they started downhill, his confidence returned. They walked swiftly, stealthily, twitching branches aside with their rifle barrels, moving with an efficiency that comes only with a surety of purpose, and it seemed to Mingolla that he was growing lighter, the past falling away with every step… and it was, he realized. The past was becoming weightless, frail, and they were leaving behind everything familiar, leaving friends and enemies…
…David…
…yes…
…you’re going too fast…
…it’s easy downhill… make time…
…it only feels easy, downhill’s harder on your legs than uphill… you’ll start to feel it soon…
…okay…
…leaving behind memories and attachments, honesty and duplicity…
…look, David… that bird…
… yeah, weird…
… did you see the tail, the ruby, feathers on the breast… it was a quetzal…
… so…
… they’re very rare… it’s good luck to see one…
… luck… yeah, sure…
… don’t make fun of luck… we’ve been lucky…
… Tully… luck?… Panama… luck?…
… luckier than most…
…leaving behind the fear of death and the desire for life, leaving hope and hopelessness…
…when I first joined the movement…
…I don’t wanna hear this crap, Debora…
…no, you listen… when I was first in the movement, about thirty of us spent the rainy season in the Petén… it was awful, we lived like amphibious animals, our shelters rotting, our clothes mildewing… we caught fevers, dysentery… some of us had leishmaniasis…
…leaving behind the usual, the expected…