The sticky September air was deliciously humid, permeated with the sweet smell of anise. Together, Ozzie and his mother walked on the damp ground, sidestepping the three-foot high buckeye trees that had sprung up like root suckers and merged with other vegetation to create a dense forest understory.
Boom! Pow! Belch! Ozzie stopped suddenly and turned his head down the mountain in the direction of a faint sound.
“That’s strange for them to come at this time,” Isabella mumbled as her grin drained into a concerned frown. Ozzie picked up on the change in her demeanor and facial expression and moved closer. Isabella wondered if Eduardo was up and she glanced back home.
Home.
She couldn’t believe that’s what she called this ramshackle place where she was forced to sleep on the ground, without even a blanket to lie on. Just hard ground, so dusty when it was hot and dry, and so bone-chillingly cold when it was wet. Isabella got through most days by daydreaming about what had been, and what she feared in her heart would never be again.
Born near the ocean, she had lived with her parents and six brothers and sisters on a hacienda. Everyone knew and revered her parents, and that meant they would respect Isabella one day, too, since her Spanish ancestors had been there for centuries. To Isabella’s eyes, their hacienda was paradise and had everything a body could want. Sun-bathed sloping grounds that yielded bushels of grapes and berries. Land overflowing with food: potatoes, tomatoes, beans and peppers. Rolling hills, oak filled forests, beaches, and an ocean to cool off in or to gaze over.
It was on a nearby farm that she first saw Eduardo with his thick black hair and bulging shoulder muscles. He grew up among five brothers, having no trouble putting them in their place when they needed it, and defending them anytime someone other than he wanted to tussle with them. Isabella knew right away that he was her soul mate. Their courtship was brief as they were eager to have their own family. Steeped in tradition, they wanted nothing more than to live simply and freely, just as their parents and grandparents had done for centuries. Their dreams began to come true as first Felipe was born and then, shortly thereafter, her beloved Ozzie. Life was unfolding just the way nature intended.
And in an instant their freedom was taken from them.
Her face burned with bitterness and rage as she replayed the night they were captured. She could still conjure the disgusting smell of the sweaty, armed men and their trained dogs that had surrounded and jolted them awake in the middle of the night. A man brandishing a knife held Felipe and Ozzie to the ground while three others cornered Isabella and Eduardo. Then the man grabbed Ozzie, merely a baby then, and flung him and Felipe into the back of a covered truck. Flung them! The men knew that Isabella and Eduardo would put up little resistance boarding the truck to protect their babies.
They were smuggled into a small, dark cargo room aboard a boat. As the boat raced away, she feared she would never set foot on her homeland again. An hour later the boat stopped, and the men shoved them onto the back of a large truck. The men hauled them through the night to a remote mountainside, where they understood nothing. Not a word spoken, not why they were there, and most frightening, not what fate had in store for them.
As Isabella looked back to the shack she saw that Eduardo was just getting up, but Felipe still slept. No surprise there, but from the distance, her eyes softened as she watched Eduardo mope around the shack. Day by day, she watched as he grew more dejected, which made her sad and stressed. When they met he was so full of life, so vibrant. Even when they were first captured he had such a determination to free his family and get everyone back home safely. To protect his family from these vicious men. But escape was impossible, even for Eduardo. Isabella begrudgingly accepted that early on and turned her attention to her children. Eduardo refused to accept that reality and spent days and months planning, plotting, and testing ideas on how to escape. With only the tools God gave him, he exhaustively tried to tunnel under the high voltage fence. He made progress in the hard ground more than once, but never had time to break through before the captors returned. When they saw the evidence of his digging the first time the men beat him brutally. When they caught him a second time they beat both Eduardo and Felipe with a 2x4. Ultimately, Eduardo was forced to acknowledge that there was nothing he could do without endangering Isabella and the boys and that realization steadily sucked the life out of him. He seemed beaten, utterly dejected, and it broke Isabella’s heart.
Isabella couldn’t afford the luxury of giving up. She had to make life as safe and happy as she could for Felipe and Ozzie.
The black truck continued its ascent. Isabella knew that other prisoners would get their food first before the truck continued on the circular makeshift road, something of a rutted cul-de-sac in the wilderness, with her family its final stop. Then the truck would rev its engine and burp exhaust in her face, providing an all too vivid reminder that her life stank.
“Why didn’t they just leave food when they came a few hours ago?” Isabella asked rhetorically. Ozzie stood behind her.
The truck continued its rounds, sputtering and nearly dying every few minutes, stopping then pulling ahead, like a carrier delivering mail. A hooded man stood in the back of the truck and tossed bags of ready-to-eat food over the fence to a designated drop spot in each camp.
“Finally!” Ozzie softly whispered to his mother as the truck pulled up to its last stop. “I’m starving!”
Ozzie crouched behind his mother as she, too, hunkered down in the buckeye and privet understory, fifty yards from the drop zone. The truck cut its engine. Two men got out and walked to the rear. A third man in the back of the truck jumped the tailgate and landed in a mud puddle. The men surveyed the camp. Their eyes met Eduardo’s.
“That’s the one,” one of the men said very softly, the left half of his cheek ballooned out by a wad of chewing tobacco. “That big ole black sumbitch.” He spit a stream of tobacco juice in the puddle and wiped his lip.
They approached the thick steel gate, unlocked it, and walked inside a six by eight foot caged entrance they used for unloading newbies. They opened another gate that took them into Ozzie’s camp, placed the food ration in the drop zone, and motioned for Eduardo to come inspect it.
Eduardo had learned the hard way to do what the men asked. Hoping, praying that he if gave no trouble, no resistance, then maybe they’d leave his family alone. As he walked, he started to glance in Isabella’s direction and then thought better of it, not wanting to draw attention to her in case the men hadn’t seen her in the bushes. He ambled the twenty yards to the men and stared at the pouches as they opened them, feeling relief to see no surprises. Just the same flavorless, ready-to-eat meal as every other day.
The men turned away and Eduardo looked once more toward Isabella, catching her eyes and offering a reassuring, loving gaze. As he did, a thunderous boom echoed throughout the forest that prompted every living thing to cringe. Blood spewed from Eduardo’s mouth as his world plunged into total darkness. His eyes fixed on Isabella and Ozzie as his body crashed to the ground.
Isabella’s eyes grew wide, full of shock and fear as her heart hammered into her chest. Ozzie stood paralyzed, not feeling the warm urine seeping down his legs. Eduardo lay in the mud, blood oozing from the back of his head where the bullet penetrated, convulsing and gasping on the ground as life left him, choosing for him this remote, desolate prison in which to die. There would be no sympathy cards, no flowers, no mourners. His death would go unnoticed. He would never be free, never see his homeland again.
Adrenaline thrust Isabella from the privet as if hurled from a trebuchet, flailing wildly toward Eduardo. The forest echoed with her shrieking screams as the sound of the gunshot still rang in the ears of all prisoners. Their camps grew alive with consternation and alarm.