Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

Then she thought she saw Epifanía walking along the beach road and even while she wondered why Epifanía was without her basket, she saw that it was not Epifanía at all, not a black offshore-island woman at all — but Father Schleicher’s friend, the community-planning trainee from Loyola, barefoot, her hair in braids and wearing a bright print dress. Almost, Justin thought, in disguise. She went down the steps and stood in the road until the woman came up to her.

“You look lovely,” Justin said. She did not try to smile. “Out for a walk?”

“To see you,” the girl said. She looked at Justin gravely, though she seemed to be mastering excitement. “I bring you a message from Xavier Godoy.”

Justin’s heart turned over.

“He says you must be ready for an action.”

And will I see him? she wanted to ask. But she asked simply: “What do we have to do?”

“You must have a place ready for men to go if they are hurt. Where they can hide until we get them out.”

“We have,” Justin said. “But there’ll be a risk if the place is really searched thoroughly.”

“We think it won’t be. Not everywhere.”

“Then,” Justin told her, “we have such a place.”

“We have to know if you have antibiotics and dressings. Also whether you yourself can treat the wounds of bullets.”

Justin pursed her lips to keep from trembling.

“We have all the medical equipment we need. I can treat a bullet wound — I can extract a bullet if the wound’s fairly superficial. I’ve done it. But I’m not a surgeon. With really deep bad wounds all I can do is try and stop the bleeding and the pain.”

The Tecanecan girl listened with her eyes closed. They were both visibly trembling now.

“At what time can I expect business?” Justin asked.

The girl shook her head quickly. “We here don’t know. We’ll be told.”

“O.K.,” Justin said.

“What about the old Father Egan? Will there be trouble because of him?”

“He’s ill,” Justin said. “And he’s not a bad man. He won’t be trouble, you can depend on that.”

“Well,” the girl said, “that’s it then.”

That’s it then, Justin thought. At last.

“Will I see Xavier?”

The young Tecanecan drew herself up at Justin’s naked breathless question. But suddenly she was smiling, a soft and kind smile.

“Maybe you will see him. I don’t know. Who can know in these things?”

“Of course,” Justin said, smiling back. And they were holding each other’s hands.

“But you mustn’t say anything to anyone. I know you understand that.”

“Good glory, yes.”

“Then good luck.”

“Good luck to you. And to those who fight.”

“To all of us,” the girl said. “To our Tecan.”

They embraced quickly, and the girl with a little curtsy that might have been nervousness or upbringing or a show for onlookers hurried along the sandy road toward town.

Justin ran up the steps and leaned panting in the doorway. She looked at her watch — it was nearly eleven. There was plenty of time — there was too much. If the fisherman failed to come she could drive into Puerto Alvarado and buy groceries from the Syrian, enough for extra mouths if necessary but not so much as to arouse suspicion.

When the prospect of the long afternoon’s waiting began to oppress her she remembered the laundry. Thank God for it! If Epifanía came she would give her some money and send her away.

Without a word, she gathered up the scattered dirty clothes from Egan’s rooom, then fetched her own laundry bag and set the load down by the kitchen sink. There was no need to tell Egan now; it was best that, if there were people to treat, he should know at the last minute. There was always the chance, she reminded herself, that Godoy would not come, that she would not see him, that she would have to handle it all herself. It would be all right.

As she watched her scrub bucket fill with well water from the tap old prayers came to her mind. Justin drove them out, sorting the wash, lighting the stove.

You don’t pray to that God, she thought, that God of meaningless battles, of unconsoled poverty and petty injunctions. Perhaps Egan was right when he said that they had it wrong — wrongly written down. It was superior and uncharitable of her to be such bad company, to ignore him so. Perhaps his thinking was closer to hers than she imagined.

When the bucket was full, she went off to look for soap.

So, she thought, let God be in those children on their carousel, in Godoy, in these people proud and starving. Because if not there, then where would He be and to what purpose and what would it matter?

She put the steel bucket on the stove and opened a fresh white bar of soap.

A violent red sunrise assaulted Holliwell’s eyes as he awakened. He had not drawn the curtains and his room was bathed in its light — the tiles of the floor, the dressing-table mirror, the sheets of his bed stained a color like blood and water. Outside, the sun was rising into smoky rain cloud over Misericordia, the eastward peak. He eased his feet onto the tiles. It was the dry season, he thought. The rain clouds had no business in that sky.

During the night, there had been three calls, each promising him a painful death forthwith. Each time it had been a different voice, once it had been a woman’s. He had not neglected to call the switchboard before collapsing into bed; he had asked them not to put calls through. But the calls had come.

He stood up and in the next moment he was sick, on his knees over the toilet fixture, gripping the sleek rounded edges of it — his body running sweat, his hair plastered to his skull in the faint breeze of the bathroom ventilator. For a few moments he thought he would die there.

Presently, however, he was upright; he showered and brushed his teeth. As he cleaned up, the events of the previous night came back to him in small paroxysms, each jab of memory occasioning him a minor convulsion.

The red glow had not softened when, wrapped in a towel, he went back into his bedroom. He walked to the window and saw the sun higher but still fixed in its prism of rain cloud and smoke from Santiago. Its broken light dyed the still surface of the pool below, was reflected on the waxy surface of the leaves of the trees along the hotel’s wall and on the whitewashed walls of the city beyond them. Blood red were the tin roofs of the shacks on the lower slopes, the chrome and windshields of the cars on the highway that led to the airport. He drew the curtains, dressed, and pouring himself a drink, drank the straight scotch in cautious sips until it was down and easing him.

His watch read seven-thirty, local time; the daily plane for Miami left at eleven. He spent the next hour and a half in chill combat with the switchboard until he had determined that there was no one at Aerochac to take a reservation. Between calls he drank and paced the floor, smoking his duty-free Kents one after another. The flights were almost always filled the day before departure, and as for standbys — there were always enough people crowding the Aerochac desk at the earliest possible hour, ready to slip some clerk a five for such cancellations as might occur. If he had troubled to make the reservation the day before there would have been no difficulty, he could even have done it through the hotel. But he had not planned to leave so soon.

More and more frequently as he paced his curtained room, the thought of calling Tom Zecca came to him. With the thought came the recollection of a poem he had once heard read, about a mouse so frightened it went to the cat for love. But he was not a mouse — he had always been good at taking care of himself. He was neither a coward nor a small animal. The fact was that in spite of what he might tell himself or others, he simply did not have enough direct knowledge of present conditions in Compostela to be able to interpret the degree of danger his threatening calls represented. There had been killings, there was no question of that. And he no longer trusted Oscar Ocampo enough to accept his reassurances.