Where Fires Are to Burn, page 29
She recounted the words of the letter to her son.
In that place, there is the grandest of ceiba trees, much like the one your grandfather cherished so dearly. I will sit under it until you are there.
As she took the path, overgrown with all plantlife, dead leaves carpeting the small white stones of the walkway, mosquitoes swarmed around her and bugs in every tree chirped and small birds hopped secretly between branches.
She had taken no more than ten steps into the park when she stopped.
It was directly in front of her, greeting her as it had greeted all others, the towering whitened trunk of the majestic ceiba.
Its bows stretched endlessly out of sight, over all the bushes and trees which grew there, twisted and old and ribbed with thorns.
“The tree sees”, she heard her father say.
The tree her father grew had been huge, imposing, and always kept from her touch as though laying a hand on it took some of its magic. Its stature had been undeniable, but only as she stood there before that ceiba did she feel, flowing through her, the true energy of the ancient thing.
She felt her father, and she felt all who had come before him and she felt again the warmth of her family and of Mia and Ryan.
She stood mesmerised for some time as the sun danced down through the canopy of huge leaves.
She was broken from the trance by a coati who walked brazenly towards her along the old rugged pathway. Its nose to the ground and long tail swinging behind it like the rudder of a boat, it approached. It saw her and looked up and she did not move and it watched her for a second and no more before returning its attention to the ground, and on it walked.
She looked back to the tree.
She had made it.
It was there and it was standing and it was where her father had always described it to be. The tree of life.
The sacred tree of the Olmecs.
The grandfather of every tree, as he called it, including his very own.
She sat down and waited and she sat there as the sun slowly dropped away. She knew that there was very little chance of her son arriving that day or the next or the one that followed, and she was entirely prepared to have to wait there in that spot for a week or more. Though, at the same time, she had walked so far, through so much, at such pains, to sit in that spot that she felt scared to leave again in search of food and water, should something occur to prevent her from returning.
But she knew she had to eat, though she had come to care little as to what. Leaves, grasses, fruits or berries at best, the deer meat a rare exception.
She walked the park, overgrown as it had become and drank from the waters of Laguna de las Ilusiones. The water there was not clean but it was water nonetheless and it was better than not drinking at all. The cages and pens and pits in the rear section of the park where animals had once been on show, were long vacated and the place was filthy and old and rotten.
That evening she ate from the trees there and drank from the lagoon and found a place near the entrance, within sight of the great ceiba, where she made her camp for the night, wrapped in the coat with the two loaded pistols in her hands.
On the second day, the security guards with the blue shirts came to her and asked her why she was still there and she told them again that she was waiting for somebody and they asked her to move on.
She told them that she would not, and that she was waiting for her son and they had agreed that very place to meet, and that she was doing no harm and valued and cherished the place with the love it deserved. She said that, if anything, she would protect the history of it and not the opposite.
They shrugged and called her crazy and let her be.
She waited for seven days, walking slow laps around the park and standing at each of the stone monoliths and observing them in detail, clearing from them the fallen leaves and the green residue of the encroaching trees. She repeated her route throughout the day until she knew well the locations of each of the trees bearing fruit or berries and which of the leaves not to eat.
Another week passed. As she walked the pathways, once lined with little white stones, she pulled away the overgrowing vines and kicking away the leaves. The security guards would come and go and they would ask her why she was walking circles around the park, clearing it as though she were the caretaker and she would reply that, for the short time being, she was.
She knew well each of the statues and the altars and assigned each of the great carved heads a character and spoke to them playfully, for she had little else.
The guards would ask her, mockingly, when she was meeting her son there and they would laugh to each other, regardless of her response.
Occasionally there would be other travellers, men and women who would visit that place and would walk slowly and contemplatively around the ancient artefacts and they would nod and smile to her and move on.
She sat each night under the canopy of the ceiba and thought about her life and about her parents and about her children. She remembered every good time they had spent together and she remembered things that she had not remembered in many years which she believed forgotten to time and she smiled at each of them.
Another week passed by as the nights became lighter and the air warmed and the berries on the trees dwindled in number.
One afternoon, a security guard who she had come to know better than the others, came to her alone in the park.
“Hola” he called.
She smiled.
“Listen señora, I think is time for you to move on from here. Your son, he is, maybe not coming here”
She shook her head.
“He is”
The man sighed and shook his head very gently in reflection.
He sat on the stone wall and looked down at his feet and turned a stone around in his hand.
“You have been here, you know, a long time now. You should find some place to go. I know people here in the city who could help you, they have food. Good people”
She smiled.
“You’re kind. But I don’t need help, I will wait here until my son arrives. Then we will go. Thank you”
He nodded and sighed again and stood, and took a moment as though he may say something more or protest to her further, but eventually he just said ok and waved and left.
She went on, slowly clearing and cleaning the park for there was nothing more for her to do, eating the leaves and the fruits and drinking from the lagoon and spending each night camped by the tree of life, dreaming all there was to dream and waiting with the patience of a mother.
On the beginning of the fifth week, the security guard brought her bread and a cup of tequila and sat with her.
“Thank you” she said to him, “very much”
He smiled.
“Yesterday it is my birthday. My wife left the city to a farm she knows, and they have made bread. I want you also to eat”
“That’s incredibly thoughtful. Happy birthday, really. Bless you”
She raised the cup to him and he nodded and she sipped the tequila and passed it to him and he drank.
“To your son”
He passed it back.
She smiled and drank.
“Who employs you?” she asked.
The guard cocked his head and his brow furrowed.
“Employ me?” he asked, his translation not exact.
“Here. Who employs you to work here, as a security guard?”
“Ah” he said, “here. Nobody does. I, we, all, we work here as security guard before. So we still do it”
“Just for the love of it?”
He nodded and looked at her as though her question were foolish.
“For this”, he said, passing his hand across the park, “the Olmec history, the heads, the altars, the statues. Is our history. It needs protection, always. Why do you think is here now, standing the way it always has”
She smiled again, deeply, at the nobility of it.
Her father would have been proud and tremendously grateful.
“You’re a good man”, she said.
He smiled.
“You’re a good mother”
As she sat that night, she felt thankful for everything she had, even though she had nothing at all. She smiled to herself and felt for the first time in many, many months, the warmth of her faith returning to her soul and she sat in contemplation of it all, lost in her head and her heart.
She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her.
He walked from the front gate of the park and stood a few feet back in the dusk, shadowed from face to boots, a long rifle hanging from his hand.
As he shuffled on the stones, she snapped back to her reality and her heart jumped and she leaped up and spun around to face him, instinctively pointing the Colt at the darkened figure.
She burst into tears on the spot.
He stepped forward and grabbed her and held her as hard as he could.
“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come” she sobbed, holding him tightly.
“Of course I would come mom” he said, tears in his own eyes.
She held him for what felt like a lifetime, crying and stopping and crying again until eventually she stepped back and looked at him.
“You found it”
He nodded.
“Belo’s tree” he said, looking up at the great white ceiba before him
“The tree of life”
She nodded and smiled the proudest of smiles.
“We made it Dyl. I’m sorry about your father, I am, so much. I’m so sorry this was how it was, we tried so hard. He loved you so much son, so much”
He shook his head.
“Don’t be sorry mom. I’ve seen so much, so much death, so many people dead that you can’t even imagine. I know how difficult it is to get by, to survive. I know. I know now, I understand how life is and how it has to be. I understand. But we’ll go to dad, yeah? You know where he is?”
She nodded.
“I do”
“We’ll go there”
She nodded and wiped the tears away.
He walked slowly away from her to the tree.
“So what now, mom?”
She stood next to him.
“I don’t even know any more”
“The border?”
She shrugged.
“Do you want to go north to see where your father is?”
He shook his head.
“One day. Sure. Not now. We are not finished yet, mom”
She looked at him.
“Are your platoon here, the others? Will they find you?”
He shook his head.
The moonlight flickered down through the leaves.
“No. I left them a few days ago. There’s no way they can move together as quickly as I can move alone. Even if they sent out a smaller group to get me, they have no idea where I am. We’ll stay here tonight and go for the border at dawn”
She thought for a while and looked at him and looked at the tree.
“So that’s the plan?”, she said.
“Amatique Bay?”
She smiled.
“Yes. Let’s do it then”
“That was always the plan, mom”
She nodded.
“It was son. It was always the plan. It will be good down there, I know it will. We’ll come back one day”
“Maybe”
“Yeah, maybe”
They stood together beneath the immense arms of the tree of life, its bark shimmering white beneath the stars and the moonlight bouncing red from her long coat.
She took the hat from her head and placed it on Dylan and adjusted it slightly and smiled, and he smiled too and each felt the hope and the energy from the ceiba flow out over that place, and they each knew that, in that land of uncertainty and brutality and ruthlessness and sorrow, their days were not done and there was yet more for each of them to give.
Mark L Watson, Where Fires Are to Burn
