But he didn’t cry. In fact, it was as if he discovered that he didn’t need to cry at all anymore, about anything, and he didn’t. He figured it out, where the boundaries were and how to stay inside them. In a remarkably short time, as I assessed it now, feeling admiration for that skinny, determined boy, he wrested himself from his past. He became a stateside kid. It was like erasing the blackboard, a reward for well-behaved students. For the moment I felt heartened, as if I had looked over the side of the hotel bed and could see my old shoes of self-management waiting to be worn.
Then I shut the boy away, gently but firmly, and took off again in search of an H. Two presented themselves directly, in a bonus of trivia riches: Billy Herman, ancient history with the Chicago Cubs and later manager of the Red Sox, and young Ken Hubbs, his promise cut short by a plane crash in 1964.
It was then that the city’s silence was broken, at first with what I heard as faint dull thuds, without resonance. These, as they grew louder, were joined by a chorus of staccato grunts, the bottom note on a hundred bass fiddles, too low to be called music. I got up and opened the French doors. They led to a narrow balcony. I stepped out into the chilly air, half-naked in sweat pants. Street-lights still burned amber through the morning mist. Closed stores lined the sidewalks, their display windows secured by steel roll-down barriers.
It seemed to me the sound was coming from the right. In that next block a dense ceiling of signs stretched across the road, as far as I could see. Some were readable through the shifting fog: TicTac Relojes, Jordache, Wrangler, Orange Crush. From under these, out of the fog, a tight rank of figures emerged, a hundred or so of them, wearing identical red shorts and berets, army boots on their feet, chanting off-pitch as they trotted. Some kind of guard, I supposed, maybe from the National Palace, three blocks away. I watched them until they turned a corner and their eerie song faded to a rumble.
I remained outside, gazing at the empty wet street while the damp air enveloped me. The benign silence had returned, the only sound the squeak of the metal signs in the breeze. The air smelled not unpleasantly of wet dust and some kind of smoke. I took note of the sky, its clouds now faintly tinged with pink. A bony dog nosed its way down the gutter. Other than that, I was alone, until my eye caught a single figure on the farther sidewalk, again to my right, a young man, maybe a boy, wearing a straw hat with the brims rolled up on the sides. He was in a hurry, walking quickly, close to the buildings, head down, shoulders heaving, as if he had been running.
I watched him for a second or two, then headed back to the room. I had crossed the threshold of the French doors when I heard the snort of car brakes and a yell and turned in time to see a white van, a Chevy, I thought (snub-nosed), which had apparently stopped in the street, gather speed and swing with a roar around the next corner. The man who had been walking was nowhere in sight.
That was it. You could say I saw nothing, or that there was nothing to see anyway, or nothing ominous. A man was walking, a vehicle came by and stopped, and the man was gone. I knew there were abductions here, everybody knew that. But it seemed hardly likely I’d witness one on my first night, as if the country had arranged it for my orientation. Nevertheless, the effect was total. I felt blind-sided, hit by a board, the sense of control, renewed just moments ago, now knocked askew. The incident had found a match in the molecules of my own inner state and linked up perfectly. I slipped back inside and sat on the bed. My breathing filled the room.
I should report it, shouldn’t I? That was the next question, a rational one, I thought. I reached for the phone. But who did I think I would call? The front desk? Police? To tell them what? For all I knew, it was a legitimate arrest. Even if not, any idea that I ought to do something about it, that I had any legitimate role, was naive. I was just an over-reacting tourist, and—I felt with deep visceral conviction—I shouldn’t be here anyway. I should leave right now, get a taxi to the airport and stand by for the first empty seat I could get to the States. I took a shower, considering that possibility, to go back. Then toweling off, I acknowledged another question. Back to what?
I dressed and went out again on the balcony. In that last quarter hour the street below had changed, bathed fully now in the rosy light, reflected in the wetness of the pavement. A bus went by, then another. There were people in the windows. They looked normal and composed. Church bells rang somewhere, clunkingly, sounding very much like a pot banged with a spoon, then others, more melodious, at a distance. Something was lying in the gutter that I hadn’t noticed before.
On the way to breakfast I detoured out to the street, past two potted fig trees and an armed guard who opened the door and wished me a buenos días. The mists had cleared and the temperature was balmy, a glorious day in promise. I crossed over. What I’d noticed from the balcony was a straw hat, upside down. I walked around the corner. Nothing there except a crushed plastic bottle and a sneaker, quite small, but a man’s, I thought. I went back to the hat, picked it up and shook it, dispensing moisture and the dirt it had collected. It was an ordinary straw hat, rolled up on the sides, and nothing inside, not even a manufacturer’s label. I put it on. It was too small and sat on the top of my head.
I should explain now that I wore that hat often in the following weeks. It was not because I expected to find the owner and return it, and I didn’t. I never saw him again and never looked for him. The hat was just a token that something, whatever it was, had actually happened.
THREE
Back in the hotel dining room all was order and decorum, white tablecloths, the subdued voices of early morning patrons. A woman in native dress was patting out fresh tortillas with a sound as old to me as my name. “Teddy, Teddy, Teddy,” I once thought the sound said. A sleeping baby was tied to her back by a wide swath of fabric. The waiter who pulled out my chair was decked in black knee breeches and an embroidered jacket, a bright scarf with long tassels on his head. I ordered cornflakes, ignoring the breakfast menu.
I ate slowly, reconsidering my next pre-planned move, to the city of Antigua, 20 miles or so to the west. I knew one thing about Antigua. It was home to more than a dozen language schools, and one of these, the Escuela Méndez, just might be expecting me to make an appearance. I had chosen that school because it was small and taught only on a one-to-one basis. For some reason, I had never received final confirmation of enrollment. I could have phoned right now—that might be sensible—but I decided to just go there instead. Because, where else?
I finished my coffee and stopped at the desk to pay the bill. The clerk assured me that there were indeed buses to Antigua, even on a Sunday morning. Would I rather arrange a car rental? No, I predicted no need for that. He called me a taxi.
The terminal turned out to be the parking lot of a Shell station, filled with recycled buses, gaily painted in three or four colors. I spotted one with “Antigua” printed on a card in the windshield, and under that in black crayon, Starship La Empresa. As a one-time trekker, I was hooked. I paid the fare to the attendant at the door—a kid, really, maybe fourteen—and climbed aboard with my luggage. It had been a schoolbus, a U.S. discard probably, with child-sized seats, rows of three on each side. All were occupied, whole families jammed in, babies hammocked to their mothers. The windows were shut and several people were smoking.
I turned to retreat. Too late. A line of passengers was boarding behind me, shoving me along, women with baskets of produce on their heads, one with a squawking chicken in a wicker cage. I edged all the way to the back, resigned to standing, my hat brushing the ceiling, backpack behind me against the emergency door. There was no place to store luggage. I stuffed my suitcase on the floor between my feet. Beside me, a very drunk gentleman occupied what amounted to three places, but I decided not to contest it, and no one else did either. The aisle filled quickly, some passengers standing, some squatting on the floor. I stood head and shoulders above everyone in front of me, like an over-grown kid at the back of the bus. Even the men tended to be short. This was not something I recalled. But why would I? All the village adults I had known as a child had been far taller than me.
The horn trumpeted, the boy in charge called out something, and with a lift-off explosion we were on our way. The driver, who wore a head-set, peered through