Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

A short time after noon she was standing in the kitchen when she turned and saw the young Tecanecan woman to whom she had spoken on the beach the week before. The young woman had come up the front steps without a sound. Justin had never learned her name.

“I don’t think I can come here again,” the young woman said. “Only in emergencies.”

Justin led her into the kitchen.

“You’re right. You shouldn’t risk coming here. I sent you a note through the sexton.”

“I have an answer for you from those in charge,” the young woman said. “They agree that you can’t be involved further. They say only continue to leave the dock lights on, this is all they ask.”

“That’s not much to ask.”

“They say it’s well you’re preparing to leave. We’re all in great danger now. If things don’t happen soon we’ll have to go for the mountains.”

“Will it be soon?”

“I think so but I know very little. Only those in charge know.”

“Well,” Justin said, “I suppose I’m out of it now.”

“You’re out of it. But listen — when it starts, nobody is going to be safe. There are medical supplies here and they’ll be wanted.”

“When we go I’ll lock up as much as I can in the building. They’re at your disposal.”

“If it should be that you’re still here when it comes, you might be safer with us. You can make your own decision. I’ll try to get word to you beforehand but there may not be time.”

“Thank you,” Justin said. “I’ll be all right.”

“They also say thanks. Those in charge.”

“Yes,” Justin said.

As the girl was leaving, Justin went a step after her.

“How’s Father Godoy?”

“Gone,” the girl said. “Gone to the Montana.”

When the girl was gone, Justin felt desperate. Desperate to leave, to be gone — because their idleness and uselessness seemed more shameful than ever now that they could not actively help. Her work now would consist in persuading Charlie Egan to leave with her.

Thinking of Egan put her in mind of the man she had seen at Playa Tate and who was supposed to be taking the priest to dinner. He was a very self-confident man, very assured, rather arrogant. It seemed to her that she came very close to disliking him. For some reason, she did not altogether. It might be that he reminded her of someone, she thought.

Then the weight of things came down on her. The six years, everything that had happened since the day of the fiesta, Godoy, the child killings. A storm broke inside her, leaving her feeling for all the world as she had felt sometimes as a child — ashamed of her own triviality and insignificance, ashamed above all of her own body and its gross necessities, its rankness, its sinfulness, its carnality. She had stopped eating then, hoping to die. She found now that she couldn’t stay still, couldn’t put one thought in front of another, couldn’t cry. She stood in the kitchen staring through the open door at the rectangle of raw mindless sky and waiting, more alone — and more lonely — than she had ever been.

Holliwell had had a hard day and he spent a large part of it trying not to get drunk. Finless, he had been going back and forth between the hotel beach and his bungalow. The hotel was suddenly full of people who described themselves to each other as contractors, and although they reminded him in some ways of the contractors he had known in Vietnam, they seemed to him at once more sinister and less colorful. Pale and foul-mouthed, they were everywhere — drinking beer at the water’s edge, crowding the bar; they talked about Bogotà, Managua, Zihuatanejo and what they called Cancún City. Many of them seemed to be old acquaintances of Heath and Señor Soyer, the Cuban hardware man. Others were friends of Olga and Buddy. When they were quiet it meant they were on about coke or emeralds. It was as though there was some convocation of evil elements, a jar culture oozing out and discovering itself.

He parked his rented jeep beside the road, mounted the mission steps and walked straight into her in the kitchen. She looked ominously solemn.

“You know I don’t know your name?” Holliwell said.

“Justin Feeney,” she said. Perplexed, he thought, and weary.

“Is Father Egan around?”

She shook her head.

“He’s back in the ruins. I’m sure he forgot about dinner with you. I should have told you he would.”

“Maybe I should go back and talk to him.”

“It’s too far,” she said. “It’ll get dark and you’ll lose your way. And he won’t go with you. He’s out of it.”

Holliwell turned to look at the sky’s light.

“He’s in a bad way,” Justin Feeney told him.

“So be it,” Holliwell said. “I sure would like a look at those ruins once.”

“How’s your leg?”

“Fine,” he said. He looked at her; it seemed she had not moved at all since his coming in.

“You must have rented that jeep and everything,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

“Nothing to be done, I guess.”

“Do you like brandy?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She went into the dispensary wing and came out with a small bottle of medicinal brandy and a bottle of agua mineral .

“You have some,” Holliwell said, when she had opened them. She seemed not to hear.

“I’d take you back to the ruins myself if there was time,” she said. “But there isn’t. It’ll be too dark to see anything.”

“Another time.” He felt her eyes on his face as he drank.

“Listen,” he said when he had finished the brandy, “how about you coming in to town with me? I’d just as soon not go back to the Paradise.”

“No,” she said, and laughed nervously. “No, it’s not possible.”

“Sure?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Not possible.”

“O.K.,” Holliwell said. He wanted not to leave. “Do you suppose I could have another brandy?”

“You shouldn’t,” she told him. “Your system’s been poisoned.”

“My leg’s fine. The rest of me could use a little bracing.”

“You shouldn’t,” she told him.

“Well, hell,” Holliwell said. “Checked at every turn.”

“All right,” Justin said. She went back into the dispensary and when she came out she had two bottles of brandy, together with the bottled water. When she poured his, she poured one for herself.

“Is something wrong?” Holliwell asked, seeing her.

“I’d like to go into town for dinner,” Justin told him. “I will.”

“You will?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, please.”

Holliwell was smiling uncertainly.

“Fine,” he said after a moment.

“We could go,” the nun said, “to the Chinese restaurant in town. It’s not too bad.”

“That’s fine,” he said.

There was something wrong, he decided. It was not the bad atmosphere he had brought from the hotel, or his disorientation or the pain in his knee, which burned now with the liquor. The woman was on wires, her eyes were wide open and staring, her mouth slightly open as though she had received a blow. She had the most beautiful eyes, he thought.

“Why don’t I drive in,” Justin said. “You can leave your jeep here if you like.”

“You’re afraid I’ll pass out at the wheel?”

“You might well,” she said. “But I just thought you’d be more comfortable.”

“That’s kind of you,” he said. “I would be.”

She was trying very hard to be cool, he thought, enjoying herself a little; she seemed to really want to come along with him. But she could not quite get it together. She was up to something. Drinking his drink, watching her, he felt a certain regret at having come. He was thinking that there was going to be trouble and that she knew it and was afraid. And although he was certainly neither a spy nor an informer, although his visit was an innocent one — he was not the company she should be keeping.