Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver [95]
I reread the old ones before opening the fourth one. Hallie’s week had gone wildly up and down. On Tuesday she was nigh unto manic because the government had had a successful national meeting on the pesticide problem. Central America was becoming a toilet bowl of agricultural chemicals, she said, because of war-strained farming economies and dumping from the First World. In the seventies, when Nicaragua was run by the U.S. Marines and Somoza, it was the world’s number-one consumer of DDT. But it seemed the new Nicaragua (our government, she called it) planned to take responsibility for its poisons. She also mentioned that her friend Julio was back in Chinandega after a stint of literacy work near the Atlantic coast. I couldn’t read anything between the lines.
On Wednesday, a child was rushed in from the village of San Manuel to the Chinandega clinic in critical condition because someone had stored paraquat in a Coke bottle.
On Thursday she was grimly happy. Five contras were making a secret sabotage raid on a hydroelectric plant, somewhere to the east, and were surprised by some armed farmers who took them captive. The culprits had passed through town in the back of an open Jeep, slit-eyed with dishonor, on their way to trial in Managua. Wouldn’t it be something, she mused, if that Jeep hit one of the contra road mines? But there was the driver to consider, and even if there hadn’t been, it wasn’t something she could wish for. She said, “You can’t let your heart go bad like that, like sour milk. There’s always the chance you’ll want to use it later.”
I wondered at what point I’d given up on later and let mine go sour. I didn’t know, although Hallie might. I reread each of the three letters with fascination but also the same dissatisfaction I’d had on the morning I’d opened it. It was all just things happening, and selfishly, I wanted Hallie. Even if she didn’t speak to me directly, I wanted her to speak.
I tore open the last envelope and was hit full in the face with what I wanted. It was four pages long, in a cursive enlarged by rage. When God wants to punish you, as Isak Dinesen declared, He answers your prayers.
I am like God, Codi? Like GOD? Give me a break. If I get another letter that mentions SAVING THE WORLD, I am sending you, by return mail, a letter bomb. Codi, please. I’ve got things to do.
You say you’re not a moral person. What a copout. Sometime, when I wasn’t looking, something happened to make you think you were bad. What, did Miss Colder give you a bad mark on your report card? You think you’re no good, so you can’t do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It’s the other way around, it’s what you do that makes you who you are.
I’m sorry to be blunt. I’ve had a bad week. I am trying to explain, and I wish you were here so I could tell you this right now, I am trying to explain to you that I’m not here to save anybody or any thing. It’s not some perfect ideal we’re working toward that keeps us going. You ask, what if we lose this war? Well, we could. By invasion, or even in the next election. People are very tired. I don’t expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven back in Tucson, after hearing the stories of some of those refugees. What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, “What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?” I didn’t look down from some high rock and choose cotton fields in Nicaragua. These cotton fields chose me.
The contras that were through here yesterday got sent to a prison farm where they’ll plant vegetables, learn to read