“He’s more a man than any of them down there.”
“I know that, too. You don’t have to tell me that either, but can’t you do something to stop them picking on him?”
“I’m afraid not, Susi. Things have to run their course.”
Then a thunderstorm blew up suddenly without warning. The adults ran from the cabaña to take shelter in their automobiles, and the teenagers ran to occupy the place of their chaperones in the cabaña. (People unfamiliar with the tropics don’t realize how quickly the temperature can fall from blazing heat to chilling cold, as felt by those whose blood is thin.) Sarah and Carlos found themselves huddled together under a big beach towel apart from the others.
“I thought you played better than anybody else. You wouldn’t take any of their crap, not from anyone.”
Carlos laughed. His voice was deep, especially when he laughed, not like the girlish giggles of some of the other boys. “Watch your language, gringa. You’re just prejudiced because you like me.”
“I do like you, Carlos, very much, but . . .”
“But not as your boyfriend . . . .”
“Just as a friend,” they said together and both laughed again.
“I wish you could . . . Sarah, there’s something I have to tell you. Something very serious.”
“Oh, no! He’s going to tell me he loves me, and it will ruin our friendship,” she thought. “What Carlos?”
“You better start calling me Charles. I have to get used to it. My father is sending me to a military school in the States to finish high school. He thinks I need the discipline, and I believe he’s scared of something happening to me because of all he’s messed up in.”
“Carlos! Charles.” Sarah laughed, but her laughter wasn’t like her laughter before. Now it covered her pain and her sadness. “I can’t get used to that . . . Charles.”
“I know. Me neither.”
“Will we ever see each other again?”
“I’ll be back for vacations, and I’ll come home for good when I finish school. Will you still be here then?”
“Maybe. I might be away at college.”
“Yeah. Me, too. But I mean, are you coming back here to live in Nicaragua?”
Sarah paused. She wanted to be honest, but she wasn’t certain. “Sure, I suppose. Are you?”
“Of course. This is where I belong. I’m a Nicaraguan.”
“You’re half gringo. Your mother is a North American. She was Nancy Allen from Florida before she married your father. That’s why you’re Carlos Vargas Allen.”
“But neither of your parents is Nicaraguan. You’re not half anything, unless you’re half North American and half British. You’d have to choose to be a Nica.”
“I think I’ll choose Nica. I don’t like being a gringa very much.”
“Good. Then we’ll live here together until we’re very old.” Carlos grinned.
“I don’t want you to go away. I’ll miss you so, so much.”
“I know. I don’t want to go away either. I’ll miss you, too, Sarah, more than anything else.”
“Carlos! You’ll always be Carlos to me.”
“I . . .” Carlos never finished his sentence, and they moved closer and hugged each other more tightly under the beach towel. Sarah wondered if maybe she liked Carlos as more than a friend. She wanted to cry, but neither of them cried as they listened to each other’s deep breaths and sighs. They didn’t speak again at the beach, and the sun came back out, and Father Richard walked around the cabaña and told them to pack up their belongings to head back to the church. They rode home in her father’s car sitting side by side on the back seat without ever saying another word to one another.
Although he lived with his parents in the little house that George Rutledge had built for Martín’s family across the garden from Quinta Louisa, Pablo rarely came into the yard. Perhaps he’d internalized Mary Rutledge’s warning to stay out of her garden and feared being haunted by her ghost if he disobeyed her prohibition from beyond the grave. Sarah thought it was more likely that he was too lazy to toil in the dirt with his father and probably also wanted to disassociate himself from peasant labors like his older brother Julio had, at least in his own mind. Flora had always babied him, and she doted on him even more ardently after her two older sons left home. Pablo had nicer clothes than Julio or Guillermo had ever worn as boys. Martín acquiesced to Flora’s indulgences, and Sarah suspected that her father gave them extra money for Pablo partly as an inducement to make them contented in the little house behind the garden away from their friends in the village.
Pablo was even given a boom box that he carried on his shoulder, and he played music so loudly inside his house that it could be heard all the way inside Quinta Louisa. George Rutledge, who found it difficult to reprimand Martín or Flora or any of his workers or his daughter, marched across the garden on at least a half-dozen occasions to tell Pablo to “turn that damned thing down.” Three times that Sarah could remember, Pablo had come up to Quinta Louisa to speak with his mother as he played the boom box on his shoulder and wiggled his hips toward Sarah in a way that made her blush, even though he was only an eleven-year-old boy.
Occasionally Pablo would help his father carry baskets of fruit and vegetables from the garden at Quinta Louisa to their house across the garden with pouty lips and squinted eyes after a threat from Martín. Although Julio came up dutifully from Costa Rica every month or two to visit his parents, Guillermo came every week and spent the day working with Martín in the garden. Late in the afternoon Sarah saw him sitting shirtless on the bench in the middle of the garden, mopping his brow with a bandana, and she walked down to talk with him.
“Doña Sarah!” Guillermo reached for his shirt and tried to cover his chest as if he were embarrassed out of modesty. His torso and arms, like Martín’s, seemed to be molded from brown clay without any definition of the muscles on the surface of his skin, so that his vibrant strength was concealed, also like his father’s.
“Do not doña me, Guillermo. I thought we were friends, equals.”
“Friends, sí . . .” He smiled at her shyly and said with his eyes, “but not equals, never equals.”
Sarah thought that Guillermo was a typical middle child and recalled her mother’s analysis. Julio was the first-born successful son. Pablo was the pampered baby. Guillermo was the reliable, loyal, affectionate middle child, always trying to please and gain favor without calling any undue attention to himself.
“When Daddy and Don Martín are no longer able to manage . . .” Sarah looked away to conceal the tears forming in her eyes. “. . . who is going to help them manage?” Despite trying to control her voice, it cracked. When Sarah looked back at Guillermo, she saw him also wiping his face again with his bandana, this time not to dry sweat but the tears that echoed Sarah’s. “Of course Daddy was grooming Julio after he had no son to take over.” Sarah looked back and smiled at Guillermo who mirrored her smile discreetly. “But we know that is never going to happen.” They both began to laugh.
“You know I am going to be here and am going to do what I can.”
“Will you, Guillermo? Will you really? If I am . . . if I am left here alone will you help me?”
“Of course. You know so. Of course so.”
“You are more like a brother to me than . . . well, than anyone else; and if that doesn’t make us equals . . . Shit! ¡Caramba! I don’t know what would . . .”
“Watch