Diego's Pride Read online

  ‘Is our crop ready to harvest?’ Bonita asked. ‘We could sell it before they come here.’ Diego knew she was thinking of school.

  ‘We will have to work hard,’ Mr Ricardo said.

  ‘We’ll have to bring it in ourselves. All the families around here will be doing the same thing, so they will have no help to spare.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ Diego said.

  ‘Do you mind staying home from school for a few days?’ Mr Ricardo asked Bonita.

  ‘There’s a teachers’ strike,’ her mother said. ‘Perfect timing. We’ll all work.’

  Some of the worry left Mr Ricardo’s face.

  ‘We’ll start in the morning.’

  They had the anu root for supper, boiled up on the fire with purple potatoes and flavored with the mint marigold that grew wild around the house.

  The family had no electricity, and their supply of kerosene for the lamps had run out. When the sun went down, Bonita tried to read by the light of the dying cookfire but soon gave up.

  They all went to bed early. They would have a long day tomorrow.

  TWO

  Diego woke up with a start, breathing heavily and sweating as if he’d been running. He thought he had screamed, but maybe he hadn’t. Around him the Ricardo family slept undisturbed on their pallets. The scream must have been contained inside his head.

  Gently he slid out from the blanket he shared with Martino and Santo, crossed the small one-room hut and unlatched the door. He heard the guinea pigs shuffling around in their new pen.

  If only everything were that easy to fix.

  Diego stepped outside into the Bolivian night full of the sounds of insects and night birds. He wasn’t afraid of the dark. Bad things could just as easily happen when the sun shone. The sun had been shining when his parents were arrested. The sun had been shining when Mando was killed.

  The cool air calmed him. He walked to the animal pen. The llama turned away, but the donkey trotted up to say hello. Diego ran his hands through its mane and blew gently in its ears.

  He was fine now. He was alive and, thanks to the Ricardos, he was getting strong again. He’d find a way soon to make money – maybe in the village – and he would find some way to get home, with money in his pockets.

  With a final rub of the donkey’s ears, Diego turned around to go back to bed.

  Bonita was standing in his way.

  ‘Tell me now,’ she said. ‘What trouble are you bringing to my family?’

  Diego looked down and saw she was pointing that old rusty rifle of hers at him. She’d found it in the bush, dropped by some forgotten soldier during some forgotten war. Even if it could shoot, the family had no bullets.

  ‘What have you done?’ she said again. ‘What are you running from?’

  ‘I killed a man,’ Diego said, before he even knew he was going to say anything. ‘He was a gringo, responsible for the death of my friend. I left him to die alone in the jungle.’

  As he spoke the simple words of the awful story, Diego felt calm, as if he was giving a report in school.

  He didn’t tell her how frightened he’d been. He didn’t talk about how sad he felt whenever he thought of Mando. Bonita was smart. She’d know.

  She kept looking at him. ‘Is anyone after you now?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone else. His men probably think we’re both dead.’

  ‘More money for them,’ Bonita said. Diego was right. She was smart. She lowered the rifle, then raised it again. ‘What about the police? Or the army? Will they come after you?’

  ‘They were after Smith,’ Diego said. ‘I don’t think they’d care if they found out he’s dead.’

  ‘So, no reward for turning you in,’ Bonita said, lowering the rifle again and keeping it lowered this time. ‘I’m just thinking of my family. I don’t know you.’

  ‘You could get to know me,’ Diego suggested.

  ‘You won’t be here that long,’ said Bonita, as she turned away. ‘I’m going back to bed. Some of us have to work in the morning.’

  A moment later, Diego heard her screech.

  It made him laugh. Number twelve guinea pig had been found.

  Diego loved every minute of the next few days. The family had nearly a hectare of coca bushes. All the leaves had to be picked, spread out to dry, then bundled into sacks and taken to the market.

  Diego wore a long deep basket around his neck, handwoven by Mrs Ricardo from grasses and vines. He learned how to pick the little green leaves with both hands, plucking them from their stems and dropping them in the basket.

  ‘Don’t take the tiny ones,’ Mrs Ricardo said. ‘Give them a chance to grow. Pick only what’s ready.’

  Diego worked hard, and he worked fast. He and Bonita were in an undeclared race to see who could fill the most baskets.

  ‘I want to keep picking,’ Bonita called back when her mother called her to help prepare a meal. Mrs Ricardo brought food out to them. Bonita and Diego ate while standing, shoving in cold potatoes and cornmeal and swallowing it all down with cold coca tea. They eyed each other through the branches to make sure one didn’t start working before the other.

  Mrs Ricardo watched them for a few moments, rolled her eyes, shook her head and took their tea mugs back to the house.

  Martino was picking leaves with Mr Ricardo. He was still too young to really understand what was going on, except that he was being made to waste a perfectly good teachers’ strike with days full of work.

  Even Santo was pressed into work, helping Mrs Ricardo spread the picked leaves on the drying sheets.

  ‘Our coca goes to the market, for use by campesinos who don’t grow their own,’ Mr Ricardo said. ‘We don’t sell it to the people who turn it into that white powder, that stuff they burn their brains with up north. Our coca is much too good for that.’ They were sitting by the fire eating vegetable stew left over from the previous night.

  ‘Maybe some of it will end up in the prisons where my mother and father live,’ Diego said. ‘There are women there who sell coca to the other prisoners. Maybe my mother and father will chew some of this coca.’

  Hearing the words come out of his mouth made him sad and homesick, even for the prison. He threw some dried grass on to the fire and watched it flame up in the embers.

  ‘You need to get back to your family,’ Mr Ricardo said. ‘You work so hard, we will be sad to see you go, but you don’t belong to us. We will give you the money from the sale of two sacks of coca. That should help you get back to your parents.’

  Diego’s jaw dropped. Just like that, he had his way home. He tried to say thank you, but his eyes began to tear up, and he couldn’t find the words.

  Bonita made a funny noise – it was her school money Diego was taking – but she said nothing. Her parents had made a decision and that was that.

  Diego wondered how much a bus ticket to Cochabamba would cost. Maybe he could hitch a ride – or several rides – instead, and save the coca money to give to his mother to pay for the fines she’d been given because of his carelessness. He pictured himself alone at the side of the road, waving at cars, hoping they’d give him a ride. It made him feel lonely. He picked up Santo and tried not to think about having to leave.

  The next three days were more of the same, although it was difficult to keep up the pace he and Bonita had started. One day was especially hot, and Mrs Ricardo insisted they take a break.

  ‘Take the little ones for a swim,’ she said. ‘They’re getting bored and cranky.’

  Not far up the hill, the stream widened into a deep pool.

  ‘Papa and I spent last summer digging this out,’ Bonita said. ‘You’re lucky we’re letting you use it.’

  They stripped to their underclothes. Bonita went in first, hitting the surface of the water with a fistful of branches.

  ‘To scare away the snakes,’ she said.

  Diego felt that a dangerous sort of job like that should really be his, but Bonita wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘You would
n’t do it right,’ she said, even though the job, as far as Diego could see, was just a matter of making as much noise in the water as possible.

  Bonita just likes knowing things that I don’t, he thought, and he left her to it.

  The water was cold and refreshing, tumbling down from the mountains. Diego put Santo on his shoulders, dipping down lower and lower as the little boy squealed and screeched. Martino found a stick and they played stick-toss in the water, each one trying to make the stick land with as much splash as possible.

  ‘Corina would love it here,’ Diego said, holding Santo by the stomach so he could kick his legs and pretend to swim. ‘She was born in the prison. I take her out to the square where there are gardens and fountains, but it’s not like this.’

  ‘I can’t imagine being locked up,’ Bonita said. ‘There are things I can’t do, but there are reasons, like we don’t have the money or I’m not old enough. I can’t imagine having to do what someone tells me to, just because they’re a guard and I have to obey them.’

  ‘I wasn’t really a prisoner,’ Diego tried to explain. ‘My mother is, and my father, but not me.’

  ‘You lived in the prison. You had to obey the guards. What else is a prisoner? After being free, how could you go back in there again?’

  That was one question Diego tried hard to avoid thinking about. He’d been out in the world now for many weeks, sleeping under the canopy of the jungle, seeing the sky, dealing with criminals and being scared and hungry, but also doing good work and being his own man.

  Could he go back to sharing a narrow bed with his mother and sister in the dingy, tiny cell? Using the stinking toilets? Lining up for the morning count? Scrambling with the other boys for the good taxi jobs, the ones that paid two bolivianos instead of just one?

  ‘But that’s where my family is,’ Diego said. ‘Could you leave your family?’

  ‘You already left yours,’ she said. ‘My family wouldn’t want me to live in a prison.’

  Diego was so angry he almost dropped Santo right in the water.

  ‘My parents didn’t want me to live in prison. How can you think they did? They were put in prison for smuggling coca paste, something they didn’t do! You think you know everything, but you don’t know anything.’

  Diego stomped out of the pond – hard to do, since water is not made for stomping – taking Santo out with him. Santo was crying because of the shouting and because he didn’t want to leave the water and because he was too small to do anything about it. Diego was going to leave him on the mud bank, but he wouldn’t have done that to Corina, so he scooped up the little boy’s clothes and carried him back to the coca bushes. He plopped the red-faced Santo into Mrs Ricardo’s arms and went back to work, too angry to explain.

  How could he be angry at his own parents? They’d never been to school, had to scramble for every centavo just to live. There was no money to pay a lawyer to fight the charges. They did their best for him, made sure he ate and behaved and went to school. How could he be angry with them?

  And yet he was. He thought of those high walls of the prison, and his anger made him work harder, even when he knew that his hard work was making his return to that prison all the more possible.

  Bonita was soon back picking coca leaves, too, but she chose a bush far away from him.

  Mrs Ricardo saw both of them, rolled her eyes, shook her head again and went back to work.

  THREE

  The harvest was in.

  Some of it was bagged and ready to transport. Most was still drying, spread out on big sheets of plastic.

  If even a tiny bit of moisture remained in the leaves, they would go moldy when they were bundled up. Every now and then, Martino or Santo would shuffle through the leaves, whooshing them around with their feet to make sure the sun reached every leaf. Diego thought he’d like to make that whooshing sound, too, but he couldn’t, not in front of Bonita. After all, he was a serious working man.

  While they waited for the crop to dry, the family and Diego stood on the edge of the sheets of leaves and said out loud what they saw in their dreams.

  ‘A real football,’ said Martino.

  ‘School,’ said Bonita.

  ‘New shoes for all of you,’ said Mrs Ricardo.

  ‘New farm tools,’ Mr Ricardo said. ‘Lumber to repair the house and the animal pens.’

  ‘Home,’ said Diego. This time he didn’t see the prison walls, or the cramped cell, or the angry guards. He only saw his mother and his father and his little sister – and himself, returning home triumphantly with his pockets full of money.

  ‘Staring at these leaves won’t make them dry any faster,’ Mrs Ricardo said suddenly, waving her family into action. ‘Did everyone suddenly run out of chores to do? Would you like me to find you some?’

  There was always something to do on the farm. Diego fetched water for the animals and helped Mr Ricardo muck out the stalls.

  He was giving Martino a ride on the donkey when Bonita called up, ‘If you’ve finished playing, I could use your help in the house.’

  Martino made fun of her all the way back down to the hut. Diego tried hard not to laugh as the little boy mimicked his big sister’s walk and the way she tossed her head when she was impatient.

  ‘We need to sweep the walls,’ she said, handing Diego a broom. ‘To make sure there are no kissing bugs.’

  Martino giggled and started to make loud kissing noises at Bonita.

  His sister tried to ignore him. ‘It’s a beetle that can give you chagas disease. It lives in thatched roofs like ours. My parents keep saying they’ll get a tin roof but there’s never enough money – especially since we keep taking in strays.’ She gave Diego a glare that told him to get busy.

  Diego ran the broom over the clay walls and wooden rafters, then helped Martino carry the rag rugs into the yard to shake.

  ‘Martino!’ Bonita yelled from inside. She rushed out holding a little cardboard box.

  ‘Those are mine!’ Martino said, leaping up. Bonita held it out of his reach.

  ‘He’s been collecting the bugs we’re trying to get rid of,’ she told Diego. ‘Look!’

  Diego peered at the dozen or so bugs scrambling around inside.

  ‘They’re mine!’ Martino said. ‘I’m going to race them!’

  ‘How many times do we have to tell you?’ Bonita tossed the beetles into the smoldering cookfire, then tossed the empty box on the coals, too. It started to smoke, then flamed up.

  Diego gave the rugs a vigorous shake. Chagas was dangerous, he remembered from science class. Martino needed to find something safer to play with.

  He was about to move on to the pillows and blankets when a soft thump-thump sound reached his ears. It took him a moment to identify it. Then, as it came closer and became louder, he knew.

  Only one thing could make such a noise.

  No, he thought. No.

  And then the helicopter was upon them, giant and green, propellers thumping as it hovered over the small farm.

  The little ones screamed and started to run. Mrs Ricardo snatched them up in her arms so they wouldn’t run off into the forest. She went down on her knees and turned their wailing faces to her chest to shield them from the flying debris stirred up by the propellers. Diego watched helplessly as the drying coca leaves took to the air like butterflies and scattered to the four winds.

  The helicopter landed in the family’s yard. At the same time, pick-up trucks sped up the dirt road. Soldiers spilled out, pointing their weapons and trampling the vegetable gardens under their heavy boots. The propellers slowed to a halt, and for a moment there was silence in the clearing as the soldiers and the family stared at each other.

  Then there was a horrible yell, and Diego saw Bonita run out of the hut, her old useless rifle pointed at the soldiers around the helicopter. Diego heard the soldiers step forward, heard them raise their rifles to firing position.

  Then he heard another yell, this one rising from his own throat.

>   ‘NOOOOO!’

  With great leaps he crossed the yard, slammed into Bonita and knocked her to the ground. The rusty rifle spun away. He lay down hard while she tried to fight him off.

  ‘Lower your guns. She’s just a child,’ a man said.

  Diego heard the soldiers relax, returning their rifles to their shoulders. A sergeant was taking charge.

  ‘We are under orders to take your coca,’ he told the Ricardos, ‘and that’s what we’re going to do.’

  ‘You have no right!’ Mr Ricardo said, stomping up to them, only to be held back by the point of a gun. ‘You wait until we do all the work of harvesting. Then you come and take what we’ve worked for.’

  ‘Grow food,’ the sergeant said. ‘Grow vegetables.’

  ‘We grow vegetables,’ Mrs Ricardo said, the children still crying in her arms. ‘You’re standing in our onion patch. But we can’t wear onions. We can’t pay for school books with onions.’

  Bonita stopped fighting him, so Diego let her up. She punched him hard before taking Santo from her mother. Diego understood. He’d seen plenty of prisoners hit each other because it was too dangerous to hit a guard.

  The soldiers were loading the sacks of coca on to the back of the pick-up truck. Others went over the farm with axes and shovels, cutting down and digging up the coca bushes the family had carefully grown and tended. They trampled on the sweet potato plants and broke down the stalks of growing corn. They went inside the small stone hut, and Diego heard the sounds of crashing and banging.

  ‘There are no coca bushes growing inside our home!’ Mr Ricardo shouted. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Maybe you are hiding coca paste in there,’ the sergeant said. ‘Maybe you even have cocaine.’

  ‘We just have things we need to live,’ cried Mrs Ricardo. ‘Don’t you have families? Don’t you have shame?’

  ‘Stay back and we’ll get this done,’ said the sergeant.

  The Ricardo farm was small. Destroying it didn’t take long. Soon the trucks were heaped with hacked-up coca bushes and sacks of dried leaves.

  Bonita’s school, Martino’s football, the repairs on the farm – and Diego’s ticket home – all disappeared.