J. Kerley - The Death Box

But he’d been revealed in the village and could never return.

Good decisions, Amili learned, came from the head and not the heart. The heart dealt with the moment. A decision had to be made for tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, all the way to the horizon. It could seem harsh, but decisions made from a soft heart often went wrong. One always had to look at what decisions did for the tomorrows.

Her hardest decision had come one month ago, when Miguel Tolandoro drove into the village in a truck as bright as silver, scattering dust and chickens. His belly was big and heavy and when he held it in his hands and shook it, he told of how much food there was in America. “ Everywhere you look ,” he told the astonished faces, “ there is food .” Tolandoro’s smiling mouth told shining tales about how one brave person could lift a family from the dirt. He had spoken directly to Amili, holding her hands and looking into her eyes.

“You have been learning English, Amili Zelaya. You speak it well. Why?”

“I suppose I am good in school, Señor Tolandoro.”

“I’ve also heard of your prowess with the mathematics and studies in accounting. Perhaps you yearn for another future, no?”

“I have thought that … maybe in a few years. When my family can—”

“Do it today, Amili. Start the flow of munificence to your family. Or do they not need money?”

Amili was frightened of the US, of its distance and strange customs. But her head saw the tomorrows and tomorrows and knew the only escape from barren lives came with money. Amili swallowed hard and told the smiling man she would make the trip.

“I work six months to pay off the travel?”

“You’ll still have much to send home, sweet Amili.”

“What if I am unhappy there?”

“Say the word and you’ll come back to your village.”

“How many times does that happen?”

“I’ve never seen anyone return.”

Amili startled to a tremendous banging. After a distant scream of machines and the rattle of cables the container began to lift. The metal box seemed to sway in the wind and then drop. Another fierce slam from below as the module jolted violently to a standstill. Amili realized the container had been moved to a truck.

“Hang on, Lucia. Soon we’ll be safe and we can—” Amili held her tongue as she heard dockworkers speaking English outside.

“Is this the one, Joleo?”

“Lock it down fast. We’ve got two minutes before Customs comes by this section.”

Amili felt motion and heard the grinding of gears. She drifted into unconsciousness again, awakened by a shiver in the container. The movement had stopped.

“Lucia?”

Amili patted for her friend’s hand, squeezed it. The squeeze returned, almost imperceptible. “Hang on, Lucia. Soon we’ll have the agua . And our freedom.”

Amili heard gringo voices from outside.

“I hate this part, opening the shit-stinking containers. They ought to make the monkeys not eat for a couple days before they get packed up.”

“Come on, Ivy. How about you work instead of complaining?”

“I smell it from fifty feet away. Get ready to herd them to the Quonset hut.”

Light poured into the box, so bright it stole Amili’s vision. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Okay, monkeys, welcome to the fuckin’ U S of – Jesus … The smell … I think I’m gonna puke. Come here, Joleo … something’s bad wrong.”

“I smelled that in Iraq. It’s death. Orzibel’s on his way. He’ll know what to do.”

Amili tried to move her head from the floor but it weighed a thousand kilos. She put her effort into moving her hand, lifting …

“I saw one move. Back in the corner. Go get it.”

“It stinks to hell in there, Joleo. And I ain’t gonna walk over all those—”

“Pull your shirt over your nose. Get it, dammit.”

Amili felt hands pull her to her feet and tried to turn back to Lucia. “Wait,” she mumbled. “ Mi amiga Lucia está vivo. ”

“What’s she saying?”

“Who cares? Haul her out before Orzibel gets here.”

“Orzibel’s crazy. He’ll gut us.”

“Christ, Ivy, it ain’t our fault. We just grab ’em off the dock.”

Amili felt herself thrown atop a shoulder. She grabbed at the body below, trying to make the man see that Lucia was still breathing. The effort was too much and the corners of the box began to spin like a top and Amili collapsed toward an enveloping darkness. Just before her senses spun away, ten final words registered in Amili’s fading mind.

“ Oh shit, Joleo, my feet just sunk into a body. ”

One year later

It seemed like my world had flipped over. Standing on the deck of my previous home on Alabama’s Dauphin Island, the dawn sun rose from the left. My new digs on Florida’s Upper Matecumbe Key faced north, the sun rising from the opposite direction. It would take some getting used to.

On Dauphin Island the morning sun lit a rippled green sea broken only by faint outlines of gas rigs on the horizon. Here I looked out on a small half-moon cove ringed with white sand, the turquoise water punctuated by sandy hummocks and small, flat islands coated with greenery. Like most water surrounding the Keys, it was shallow. I could walk out a hundred yards before it reached my belly.

Which seemed a pleasant way to greet the morning. I set my coffee cup on the deck rail and took the steps to the ground, walking two dozen feet of slatted boardwalk to the shoreline. There were no other houses near and if there had been I wouldn’t have seen them, the land around my rented home a subtropical explosion of wide-frond palms strung with vines, gnarly trees dense with leaves and all interspersed with towering stands of bamboo. It resembled a miniature Eden, complete with lime trees, lemons, mangoes and Barbados cherries. After a rain, the moist and scented air seemed like an intoxicant.

At water’s edge I kicked off my moccasins and stepped into the Gulf, bathtub-warm in August. The sand felt delicious against my soles, conforming to my steps, familiar and assuring. I seemed to smell cigar smoke and scanned the dawn-brightening shoreline, spying only two cakewalking herons pecking for baitfish. Neither was puffing a cigar. I put my hands in the pockets of my cargo shorts and splashed through knee-deep water toward the reeded point marking one horn of the crescent cove, revisiting the conversation that had led me so swiftly and surprisingly to Florida.

“Hello, Carson? This is Roy McDermott. Last time we talked, I mentioned changes in the Florida Center for Law Enforcement. We’re creating a team of consulting specialists.”

“Good for you, Roy.”

“Why I’m calling, Carson … We want you on the team.”