Green Ice (27 page)

“That’s not how the legend goes,” Wiley said, not disagreeing.

“For one thing, Che was sick. He had asthma, was constantly in need of drugs. That handicap had to be taken into consideration along with every tactic. Also, Che didn’t keep his
foco
, cell, on the move. Maybe he couldn’t because he was too old.”

“How old?”

“Forty.”

Lillian pinched Wiley again, to keep him from making any rash, defensive comment.

Miguel turned his head aside, gazed out into the darkness. “An incident is needed,” he said, nodding, agreeing with himself, “a great incident with a hero rising out of it.” He got up, kicked dirt onto the fire to put it out and said good night. He was the
jefe
(leader) and they were dismissed.

No matter, Wiley and Lillian were ready for bed. They crawled into their shelter, undressed as fast as possible and were shivering when they got into the sleeping bag.

Against one another, drawing warmth, causing it. They rubbed feet and put their hands between each other’s thighs.

After a while her hands went limp and he heard her breathing change, and he knew she had gone to sleep. He closed his eyes, started to drift off. Something hard in his pack was uncomfortable beneath his head. He reached in to rearrange it. The Llama pistol. Lillian had given him one. Kept the other. He shoved the pistol deeper into the pack and covered it with a sweater. Still, when he put his head down, he knew the weapon was there, believed he could feel it.

At dawn everyone was up and about. For breakfast, coffee and crackers. Then they went up to the farmhouse. Lucho was waiting outside for them with the burros. He had a shovel and an ax on his shoulders, and a piece of quarter-inch wire-mesh screen. Miguel offered to carry them, but Lucho wouldn’t have it. Miguel’s two comrades, Tomas and Jorge, took up other shovels, a pick and some rope.

They climbed. It was about a forty-five-degree slope. Lucho led the way. Wiley was amazed at the old man’s agility and energy. Lucho was used to such effort. His property covered four acres and not a foot of it was naturally level. It was notched with many terraces, which were planted with coffee trees, about four hundred trees to the acre.

The uppermost section of Lucho’s property was their destination. A number of the coffee trees there had lost all their leaves, appeared dead.

Lucho led them to one tree in particular. He knew exactly which it was, had spent hours contemplating it. For this tree the burros would not be needed. The tree had been pulled from the ground a week ago but had been set back into place immediately and the ground around it tamped by Lucho, so it appeared as though it had never been disturbed. At the time, Lucho had thought his best day had come. However, as he turned it over in his mind he realized the complications. If word got out, as it usually did, he would lose his land. It had happened to others for the same reason. His land would be taken over. He would have to accept whatever they offered, which would be little. Otherwise, he would eventually face a departmental judge, and the matter would end the same anyway. They would pull up all his trees, his great-grandfather’s trees. He owed the trees better than that.

He had been tempted just to forget about it, literally cover it over. But he found he could not. For advice he went to his only living male relative, his cousin Franco in Bogotá. Cousin Franco worked as a janitor. He lived in the Las Brisas
barrio
, where he shared one of his walls with the
foco
. On hearing Lucho’s dilemma, Franco took Lucho next door.

Now, there was Lucho at that trouble-making tree. Its death had seemed to be an omen. He would be glad when all the dead trees in that section had been removed, replaced by little young ones. It would take five years for the new trees to bear coffee beans, but that would give Lucho something more to look forward to.

He grabbed hold of the dead tree, pulled. It gave some. Tomas and Jorge helped, and the tree came down and out at the roots.

Miguel squatted, and Lucho was on his knees at the hole. The others gathered close around. Lucho dug away some of the loose earth and brought up a stone. He rubbed it on his sleeve, spat on it and cleaned it more on his sleeve before handing it to Miguel. It was about three quarters of an inch by half an inch, hexagonal, with well-defined planes.

“La materia verde,”
Lucho whispered, rather reverently. The green stuff.

It was an emerald of fairly good quality with some kelly in it. Its skin was dark, nearly black in places, and one end was irregular, attached to a hard white substance, part of its matrix.

The stone was passed around. Wiley took a good long look at it.

Miguel found other stones in the hole and some within the clump of the roots. As though the roots, like fingers, had reached down and brought the emeralds up in a fist.

Perhaps this was a small isolated pocket of emeralds. They pulled down other dead trees with the rope and the burros, shoveled and used the wire mesh to sift the earth along those terraces. They found no emeralds here, found several there, and that was how it went.

They went at it for two hours. Miguel decided it was best that they work only during the very early morning, to lessen the chance of being seen. From where they were they could look across to several hillsides. Anyone over there had an equally clear view.

Back at the campsite, the emeralds were washed and placed on a bandana. Twenty-four stones in all, some smaller but none larger than the first they’d found. Sunlight came through the breaks in the leaves overhead and played on the stones, which played back with hints of glowing green.

Wiley wondered how much they were worth. He guessed from what little he’d gathered about emeralds that what was there totaled about 350 carats. Allowing that they weren’t the finest grade of rough, say they were in the $200-a-carat class, that came to … $70,000.

Just for scratching around for a couple of hours!

It brought Harry Galanoy to mind. Harry from L.A. who had so envied the guys who discovered Silly Putty and Hula Hoops. Wiley hadn’t given Galanoy a thought in years.

In the afternoon Miguel made up another batch of
locro de choclos
. This time he dropped a whole chicken into it. While it simmered, Miguel, Tomas and Jorge napped. Wiley suggested a walk. Lillian just wanted to read and be lazy. She’d brought along a paperback edition of Stendhal’s
Le Rouge et Le Noir
and was already into it. Wiley lay with his head in her lap for about a quarter hour. Then he took off on his own.

He made his way down to the dirt road and walked the two and a half miles to Leiva. It was an attractive village with some very old well-kept buildings. Wiley played the sightseer for an hour. There was a church. At its gate, vendors were offering tiny silver replicas of arms and feet, lungs, livers, eyes and especially hearts. To be taken inside and pinned on the skirt of the Virgin as a cure for the appropriate affliction. A woman came from the church carrying holy water home in a Roman Cola bottle. On that same street, Wiley bought four quarts of Blanco del Valle
aguardiente
, double checked the label to make sure it was right. As an afterthought he stopped in at a shop that sold religious statues. Plaster of Paris saints in every size and color. He was reminded of the cheap painted-plaster statues of horses and dogs and Hawaiian hula girls that were prizes at carnivals for throwing baseballs or darts. Once he had spent ten dollars of his sidewalk-shoveling, lawn-mowing, leaf-raking money trying to toss a wood hoop over a wristwatch mounted on a black-velvet-covered stand. The watch gleamed. It looked easy, anyway possible. The stand was the catch, of course. Being black made it appear smaller than it was. It was actually only an eighth of an inch less in circumference than the hoop, a million (or more)-to-one shot. The carnival man had given Wiley a plaster Krazy Kat statue as a consolation prize. Wiley had smashed it on a rock wall on the way home.

The shopkeeper asked which saint.

Wiley had no idea. Saint Ignacio looked pretty good and so did Saint Sebastian. To be on the safe side, Wiley bought Jesus for fifty dollars. The largest Jesus in the place, about four feet tall, Jesus in a shocking-pink robe with a green mantle and red sandals, flesh a Man Tan color. A slightly walleyed Jesus, the way it was painted, wreath of thorns in gold.

Wiley was sorry he hadn’t picked the statue up before he paid for it. It weighed about sixty pounds.

What a sight, he thought, as he made his way out of town with four quarts of
ardent water
in one hand and Jesus on his shoulder.

It was three miles to the turnoff onto the even lesser road that went up another half mile to Lucho’s land. Wiley was glad to get there. He put the statue and the
aguardiente
out of sight in a clump of bushes not far from camp.

Lillian didn’t ask where he’d been. She had gotten through fifty pages of Stendhal, and now Miguel was explaining an automatic rifle to her. She was thoroughly absorbed. This was the first evidence Wiley had seen that Miguel was armed. The rifle had a retractable stock, so it could easily have been concealed in his bedroll. Miguel ran down the specifications in a patient, instructional monotone. It was obviously something he’d done many times before. The rifle was Russian. The 7.62 millimeter PPS-43. Fully automatic, blow-back operated. It could fire 700 rounds per minute.

“What’s the muzzle velocity?” Lillian asked.

“Sixteen hundred feet per second.”

Lillian tried the feel of it, put the butt of the steel-frame stock to her shoulder and sighted. Miguel showed her how to release and connect the magazine. He only had to show her once.

Wiley thought there she was, his love, sitting high in the mountains in the late light of day, handling a lethal weapon. But really, would he rather she was doing needlepoint?

That night after supper, Lillian and Miguel talked old times. Wiley was a good listener for a while, then got up and went off. He glanced back once, saw he wasn’t being missed. Despite the dark he had no difficulty finding the Jesus and the
aguardiente
. He carried them up to the house.

Lucho was glad to have company. It took him a while to accept the fact that the Jesus was a gift for him. He was overwhelmed. Only the finest large homes had such an impressive Jesus. Lucho would build a special shelf for it and get more candles. For now it stood on the table.

Wiley thought perhaps he should have bought a smaller version, for the statue overpowered the modest room. As for the
aguardiente
, Lucho could not accept it.

“You are in my house,” he said. “Perhaps when I come to your house you may offer me a drink, but here you are the guest and it is I who should pour for you.”

“Have I offended you?”

“No. However, I am ashamed that I do not have a drink to offer you.”

“There has been a misunderstanding,” Wiley said. “Look, the bottles aren’t even open, so how can I offer you a drink? When I go, the bottles will be left behind, because I didn’t intend to take them from this house tonight or ever. Sooner or later, perhaps months after I’ve gone, you will open a bottle, won’t you?”

“It would be a long while.”

“Then why don’t you share with me now that I’m here?”

Lucho appreciated Wiley’s having found a way around the situation. It was the sign of a kind man. He broke open one of the bottles and poured double an adequate measure into cups.

When they had drunk to each other, Wiley asked, “How many trees do you have?”

Lucho knew exactly. “One thousand six hundred and thirty-two.”

That sounded like a lot to Wiley.

Lucho explained that on the average each tree produced two thousand ripe beans a year.

“How many beans in a pound?” Wiley asked.

“Two thousand beans make one pound.”

“So, each tree yields a pound of coffee every year.”

“Yes.”

Now it seemed very little to Wiley. What could Lucho be getting per pound? A dollar? Probably even less. He recalled that back in the States coffee prices had been extremely high, but he doubted Lucho had benefited from that.

“I could be doing better,” Lucho said.

“You will when you get the help Miguel promised.”

“Yes, but still my machine is broken. I must pay to use the machine of a neighbor.”

Lucho welcomed this opportunity to talk coffee. The
norteamericano
Wiley seemed interested. Lucho explained how the beans came from the tree two to a berry, covered by a tough hull which had to be removed by a machine.

“What kind of machine?”

“Gasoline makes it run. My machine was good but it is through. There is a new machine that can be bought.”

“For how much?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“You could have made that much easily from the emeralds.”

“That was one of my thoughts. But I also thought, what sense would there be in having the machine if I have no land?”

“No one would know where you got the five hundred.”

“I could have gotten the machine and paid for it a little at a time, as I would normally have to do.” Lucho was thinking out loud.

“So, tell Miguel you’ve reconsidered.”

“I cannot,” Lucho said regretfully.

“Still afraid the emeralds might be traced back to you?”

“It is not that so much now. If I had it to do again, I would ask for the picking help
and
the five hundred. However, I have already put my word on the deal.”

“I will speak to Miguel.”

“No. It is done,” Lucho said.

“There must be some way,” Wiley said.

Lucho glanced up at the walleyed Jesus. “I wish it would be shown to me.”

They finished off their portions of
aguardiente
, had another. Wiley felt it to the tips of his fingers, a well-being.

“How do you market your beans?” Wiley asked.

Lucho explained how he put them into large jute sacks, a hundred pounds to the sack, took them by burro to Leiva whenever the agent for the coffee exporter was scheduled to be there.

Did Lucho have to sell through the agent?

No.