J.P. Bustamante
Soledad
N.N. had dug himself neck deep. “Why haven’t I hit wood yet?”
“Family’s request. They asked she be buried under at least nine feet of earth,” Pedrito said, gazing down from the edge of the rectangular hole. He was holding a kerosene lantern. “You better hurry. It smells like rain.”
N.N. was searching for Soledad Rivera’s corpse, which was entombed in the upper-class section of Santa Cruz de Manga Cemetery. She belonged in the columbarium, with the bourgeois, but her parents had mortgaged their house to secure her a spot beneath the elitist lawn. “A telenovela actress of her stature needs better neighbors,” her mother had said to Pedrito, the eighty-year-old security guard who always tipped N.N. off about new arrivals.
“You sure I’ll find treasures?” N.N. asked as he shoveled dirt out of the grave.
“Have I ever let you down?”
N.N. chuckled.
“What? You still holding Tomb 454 against me?”
“And 312, and 76—”
“You got treasures out of those!”
“Trinkets, Pedrito, I got trinkets.” N.N. stood upright, panting, and leaned the shovel’s shaft against his hip.
“Your daughter would’ve loved them.”
“She’s not my daughter.” N.N. wiped sweat off his forehead.
“She has your eyes, your two different-colored eyes.”
“She has a papá.”
“And that’s you, not her stepdad.”
“Shut up.” N.N. snorted. “Shut your puta mouth!” N.N. seized the shovel and thrust it into the earth.
Clonk!
N.N. stared up at Pedrito. Pedrito grinned, his gold tooth sparkling. N.N. dropped to all fours and brushed away the dirt. A withered wreath appeared on top of a curved oak lid.
“Let me say a prayer,” Pedrito said.
“Getting soft tonight?”
“I can’t help it. Her role in Nunca Te Olvidaré captured my heart.”
Distant thunder rumbled. N.N. smirked, pointing at the sky.
“At least let me bring her fresh flowers.” Pedrito set the kerosene lantern down and strode out of sight.
A raindrop landed on N.N.’s cheek. He stood, grabbed the shovel, and cleared off the casket. A lightning flash reflected off the wooden surface. He jabbed the blade into the earth, stamped on the footrest, and left the tool wobbling. Wind howled above. He squatted and opened the curved lid—the reek of rotten meat rushed out. As he covered his nose with his T-shirt, he examined the body’s swollen hands. The skin was blistered, a nail had fallen off, and the right pinkie wore a sapphire ring with a platinum setting. He pulled a Ziploc and his folding knife from his jeans pocket. The kerosene lantern went out. He sawed off the finger and dropped it into the bag. A thunderclap startled him. He plucked off Soledad’s diamond studs while glancing at her fixed grimace, which her mother had described as “a peaceful smile” on the news. When he was unclasping her pearl necklace, something struck him in the back of the head. A chrysanthemum bouquet landed beside him.
N.N. cursed, turned, and looked up. Two policemen flanked Pedrito. The older cop waved at N.N., grinning. The younger one trembled as he pointed a baton at N.N. A steady drizzle fell.
An hour later, N.N. sat by himself in the rear of a police van, arms behind him and wrists handcuffed. A spray-paint bottle rolled back and forth across the steel floor, which smelled of urine. The older cop scolded the younger one for choosing a dirt road the thunderstorm had transformed into a mire.
“Pedro sold me out?” N.N. asked.
The downpour drumming against the roof grew louder.
“Hey!” N.N. kicked the wire mesh separating him from the policemen. “Answer,
cabrones! Pedro sold me out?”
The older cop glowered at N.N. A scar ran down his face like a red river. “You don’t ask questions here.”
“Why not?”
The older cop banged the wire mesh with his elbow. “If you keep it up, I’ll shove a baton up your culo.” He turned to the front and gasped. “Stop the van! Pendejo, stop—”
The shock of a halt hurled N.N. to the floor while the older cop bumped his head against the windshield. N.N. caught a whiff of burned rubber. The younger cop kept stepping on the gas, but the vehicle remained immobile. N.N. heard tires spinning in the mud. The older cop yelled at the younger one to take his foot off the pedal, and the latter obeyed.
N.N. sat up, gripping the wire mesh for support. “You need help pushing the van?”
“I need you to shut your puta mouth,” the older cop said. He unhooked the police radio’s speaker mic and pulled it close to his chin. “Van 31317 to Control. Cambio.” He waited for a response, but there was only static. “Van 31317 to Control. This is Officer Rojas. We need a 10- 51. We’re in Villa Rosita, alongside Matute Canal. Heading to Ternera Jail. Cambio.” More static. “Van 31317 to Control. Anybody home? Cambio.”
The younger cop grabbed out his cell phone but claimed he didn’t have a signal. Officer Rojas grunted and returned the speaker mic to its hook. The younger cop suggested they pray to end the rain. Officer Rojas chuckled, withdrew a cinch sack from under his seat, and opened it. He pulled an olive raincoat from the bag and donned it. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he instructed the younger cop to stay put until he came back with a tow truck.
“What if the Matute continues to rise?” N.N. asked as he once again sat on the hard- plastic bench affixed to the van’s side.
The younger cop opened his eyes wide.
“Kid, if you let prisoners get into your head,” Officer Rojas said, “you’ll last less than a month.”
N.N. scoffed. “It’s happened before. The canal has flooded.”
“Can I trust you with the van while I’m gone?”
The younger cop nodded. Officer Rojas closed the door and vanished in the downpour.
“November, 1987. You weren’t born yet, kid, but the water reached the rooftops in Villa Rosita.”
The younger cop leaned his head against his fist and took a deep breath.
“First, torrents of rain filled the streets. Then the terraces, the living rooms, the kitchens….” N.N. stared at the younger cop. “But when the toilets overflowed—boom!” N.N. said, kicking the spray-paint bottle into the rear door.
The younger cop gasped, jumping in his seat. N.N. guffawed. The younger cop switched the stereo on and turned the volume up. N.N. distinguished fragments of Caracol Radio’s breaking-news bumper in a transmission punctuated with crackles and hisses.
Half an hour later, N.N. was startled by a thunderclap, which was followed by women screaming. He squinted through the windshield and saw a bus being carried downstream in roiling floodwaters—toward the van! It was a block away. The younger cop was napping, his peaked cap covering his face.
“Kid, hey!” N.N. shouted, kicking the wire mesh. “Get us out of here!”
The younger cop gave N.N. the finger. N.N. stood hunched over, sprinted to the rear door, and charged it with his shoulder. When he stepped back for another blow, he slipped on the spray-paint bottle. All N.N. would remember next was a crash, shattered glass, splashed blood, the steel floor, and his daughter’s brown-blue eyes.
When N.N. woke up, he was lying on a mud mound beside a decapitated girl’s body. The rain was still heavy, and his head ached. He sat up and scanned the surroundings. A month’s worth of rain had fallen in a few hours. The streets were oozy torrents carrying clothes, roof tiles, refrigerators, cars, and corpses as if they were driftwood. Trees had even been ripped from their roots. He turned to Matute Canal. It had overflowed its banks.
N.N. searched for the police van and spotted its rear half. It was upside down and had smashed into an acacia. The front was nowhere in sight. He grinned. Free! And surrounded by treasures, he thought. He tried to raise a fist to the sky, but the handcuffs stopped him, hurting his wrists.
N.N. slid down the mound, sank into thigh-deep floodwaters, and slogged toward the police van. He trudged around the vehicle’s remains, which were half-submerged, and turned his back to a piece of jagged metal jutting from the exhaust pipe. While he rubbed the handcuffs’ chains against the sharp edges, he stared at a woman paddling a canoe at a distance. She shouted, “Anybody alive?” over and over again. When she spotted a silhouette waving its arms from a balcony, she increased her pace, passing by Don José’s Carpentry Shop—as advertised on the worn sign. N.N. glanced over his shoulder and down at the links—only minor scratches. He sighed.
N.N. dodged a buoyant corpse and headed toward the carpentry shop. The building was a hovel, and a rock avalanche had crushed its west side. N.N. entered through a window, turning sideways and clutching the frame. The place smelled of moist sawdust. On N.N.’s left, stones had piled into a heap, where a pillow corner stuck out from a cleft. In front of N.N., a screwdriver, a plastic level, a tape measure, and a wood chisel floated around a wooden workbench in blood-tinged water. He sensed two more tools under his boot and guessed they were a hammer and a drill.
“A bolt cutter is hanging over there,” a girl’s voice said.
N.N. peered at the stone heap but saw no one.
A child’s hand emerged from a crevice above the pillow corner and pointed to a spot out of N.N.’s sight. “On your right.”
N.N. glanced at the bolt cutter and walked backwards until he felt the handle grips against
his fingertips.
“Now bring it to me,” the girl said, pushing her other arm through the rift.
While trying to glimpse her face, N.N. stood on his tiptoes and unhooked the tool from a nail. She gave him a thumbs up. He approached the stone heap, turned, and waited till she grasped the handles.
“Why are you helping me?” N.N. asked. “Because I have a final exam.”
“What?”
“Stay still. What day is it today?”
The handcuff chain snapped.
“Gracias!” N.N. said, extending his arms. “It’s early Friday morning.”
“Caramba! I’ll flunk math!”
N.N. took the bolt cutter from her and cut through the left cuff. “What’s your name?” “Señorita Aftermath, according to my teacher. I always arrive late to her class.”
“And according to you?”
“Soledad Rivera.”
N.N. chuckled. “So, you want to be a telenovela actress when you grow up?”
“Yes. But first I need a B+ in math, or else the principal won’t let me star in the school play.”
“I’m sure your teacher will cancel her class for today,” N.N. said, cutting the other cuff. “You’re so wrong. She never calls in sick.”
When N.N. freed himself from the second bracelet, he tossed the bolt cutter into the water and hauled the workbench toward the stone heap. “And what’s your name?” Soledad asked.
“Noé Navarro, alias N.N.”
“What’s ‘alias’?”
“A nickname the police give you.”
N.N. climbed the workbench and examined the stone heap, his fists on his hips. He noticed the rocks had crushed a section of the zinc roof and broken a hole through. Rain fell into the opening.
“Talk to me,” he said. “I need to focus on where you are.” “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Batman.”
She giggled.
“I aim to be rich.” N.N. grabbed a rock from the top of the pile and dropped it into the water.
“Me too! If I become half the star Señorita Soledad was, I would have enough money to move with my papá to a tall building in Castillogrande.”
When N.N. removed the thirtieth stone, he uncovered a series of zinc roof tiles bent downward. He detached one and threw it aside, revealing Soledad’s face. N.N. thought she was around nine years old—five years older than his daughter. Soledad was black and her short Afro was pulled back with an aquamarine headband. A bed sheet depicting starfish floated around her. As she looked up, N.N. noticed her big eyes were both the same color. She wore a string necklace, from which hung a mermaid trinket.
Soledad grabbed N.N. by the chin. “Brown, blue! The best Batman gaze ever!”
“Let’s get you out.” He wrapped his arms around her torso and drew her toward him, but he stopped when she moaned.
“What’s wrong?”
Soledad said her legs were trapped beneath bricks. N.N. asked if she remembered how she had ended up like that. After watching a rerun of Nunca Te Olvidaré, she replied, her papá had tucked her into bed and they had prayed for Dios’s light to shine upon her math exam. Later in the night, she added, her papá had shaken her awake and a brown torrent had knocked in the front door. The next thing she recalled was N.N. entering through the carpentry shop’s window.
N.N. tugged on the starfish sheet and hurled it to the workbench. The floodwaters were up to Soledad’s waist. It seemed as if she were trapped inside a small rock volcano. N.N. noticed enough space for him to get in, so he did. Soledad said water had been rising since he removed the zinc roof tile. He submerged himself and peered at the girl’s legs, but he was blind in the murky liquid. As he surfaced, he touched the things wrapped around her knees—bricks, a tree branch, maybe a doorknob, something resembling a doll’s head, and another human’s skin.
“You feel someone near?”
“Under my feet,” she said, nodding. “That’s my aunt—I think. I hope that’s not my papá.” She squinted down and drew a deep breath. Then she picked up some muddy water and took it to her mouth.
“Hey!” N.N. said, shaking her forearm. “If you’re thirsty, just say so.”
“I’m thirsty.”
N.N. raised his arms to the sky, palms joined and pointing up. When his hands overflowed with rainwater, he let Soledad drink from them and told her to imitate him. While Soledad followed his example, he shoved several stones down the heap’s side facing the workbench until the opening was big enough for him to swing his legs around it. The water was now up to Soledad’s chest, and he asked if her papá had a bucket somewhere. She shook her head but said the gardener across the street had one; she would borrow it to wear as a helmet when she practiced for the school play. As N.N. climbed out of the rock volcano, he assured Soledad he would be back.
N.N. exited the carpentry shop through the window and peered at the gardener’s house. A muddy torrent tore at an oak, which was about to fall onto a Dodge truck. He spotted garden tools on the cargo bed and sloshed through to the other end, his torso inclined in the opposite direction of the current. After looking to each side, he climbed into the back of the pickup and rummaged through it. A branch creaked above. He noticed a pail’s handle behind a hose, grabbed it, and jumped off the vehicle as the tree collapsed.
Minutes later, N.N. placed a zinc roof tile over the rock volcano’s mouth. Soledad smiled at him through the U-shaped hole he had opened on the side.
“Which character are you in the school play?” he asked.
“The mermaid from Nunca Te Olvidaré.” She grabbed her pendant and showed it to him. “But I have to learn how to multiply or else my teacher will give the leading role to ugly Cordelia.”
N.N. held up the pail. “This carries three liters. If I drew water from where you are twelve times, how many liters have I gotten out?”
She shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“You have to care—if you want to follow Soledad Rivera’s footsteps.” He dunked the bucket into the rock volcano.
“Try it. Figure out how many liters I’ll dump behind me.”
After N.N. pulled out the twelfth pail of water, Soledad said, “Thirty-six.” He smiled. “Now you know what three times twelve is.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
He chuckled. “It is.”
“Will you come to my school play?” “That’s a bad idea.”
“You can come with your wife.” “What?”
“You have a wife. Right?”
“No.”
“A girlfriend?”
“No.”
“A Batmobile?”
“Not yet. So, no.”
“You have any friends?”
“Not anymore,” he said, frowning. “You always say no?”
“No.”
“You have children?”
“Hmmm….” A grave robber can’t be a papá, he thought.
“No.”
“That sounded like a yes.”
“Wrong.”
“No, I’m not. What are their names?”
“You must have mud in your ears.”
“Let me check.” She wriggled her index finger in her earhole. “I’m still hearing a loud yes.”
N.N. grabbed her hand, staring at it. Her fingers were turning white, as if something was bleaching them.
“Look at me,” N.N. said.
Soledad obliged. Her face was swollen and her eyes were red. He hurried to extract more water from the rock volcano.
“You hear that?”
“Stop it already, Sole—”
A flood wave burst into the carpentry shop, cascading from the roof and spurting through the open window. It pushed N.N. to the ground. The water swirled him, shook him, and pulled him under. When he surfaced, gasping for air, the brown torrent hauled him underwater again. He remained conscious, but he closed his eyes.
When he freed himself from the current, N.N. found himself atop a mound of corpses, his stomach pressed against a young girl’s dead face. She was younger than Soledad and his daughter. Sunlight warmed his skin while he vomited putrid water. A vulture landed beside him but leaped into the air when he shooed it away. He clutched his ears. A ringing sound had disoriented him—until he heard a cry for help. Soledad was calling for Batman. He stood and headed toward her voice, but a sting in his leg stopped him short. A wood chisel had pierced his left thigh, and blood and mud dripped from the wound. He gazed up and realized the flood wave had destroyed and swept away most of the carpentry shop. But the rock volcano was still standing. He slid down the corpse mound, sank into chest-deep water, and limped his way to Soledad.
When she looked out the side hole and saw N.N. approaching, she said she didn’t know how to swim. She was shaking and weeping. The water was up to her neck. He swore things were better, pointing at the sky. The downpour had turned into a drizzle. But she only calmed down when he reached over and patted her head. She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her cheek.
“I need to find help.”
“Don’t leave me again,” she said, sniffling.
“It’ll only be for a short while.”
She squeezed his fingers.
“We need help.” He glanced at his wound.
“I forgot how to multiply.”
“We’re both losing our strength.”
“I’ll let go if you promise to come to my school play.”
He sighed. “Look, girl, I’m just a grave robber. Your principal will kick me out the moment I set foot—”
She embraced his arm.
“Okay, I promise.”
When Soledad released him, N.N. gazed around. Villa Rosita had transformed into a war zone of crumpled houses, stinking garbage, and human limbs. He waded back to the corpse mound, gripping his thigh. Vultures circled in the sky above the bodies. He grabbed a navy-blue purse whose strap had choked a teenager to death and unzipped it. After rummaging through, he pulled out a cell phone with a broken screen. He pressed the power button, but smoke swirled out. Soledad must understand if I leave, he thought, the other girl did.
As the sun rose and the water receded to waist level, N.N. continued searching for a working phone in the pockets and bags of different bodies. Until a ringtone went off nearby—
Fito Páez’s “Llueve Sobre Mojado.” He smiled, stared at the spot where the cheery music came from, and shoved two corpses aside. A cell blinked in a schoolgirl’s grayish hand. As he reached for it, someone clenched him by the hair and wrenched him underwater, facedown.
N.N. pushed his head back, but somebody thrust it the opposite way. He kicked and punched, hitting no one. Just as he was about to suffocate, he was pulled out. N.N. gaped at a familiar face marred by a red scar.
“Have some puto heart,” Officer Rojas said.
Officer Rojas dragged N.N. to the gardener’s Dodge truck, lifted him, and hurled him into the cargo bed. N.N. smashed his back against the fallen tree. A mower handle tumbled to his head. Officer Rojas climbed inside and handcuffed N.N. to a branch.
“No, wait! You don’t under—”
Officer Rojas kicked N.N. in the stomach two times. Five, seven, eleven times. N.N. mouthed “Soledad,” and Officer Rojas punched him in the cheek.
“Any survivors?” a staticky voice asked. “Cambio.”
Officer Rojas grabbed a portable radio from his chest harness and pressed the push-to- talk button. “Only vultures in Buendía Street. Cambio.”
N.N. took a deep breath and shouted, “Soledad!”
“You asking for more?”
“Ten–four,” the staticky voice said. “I’m sending the search party to Remedios Square—or to what’s left of it.”
“Soledad!”
“I’ll break your ribs,” Officer Rojas said. “Soledad!”
“Batman!”
Officer Rojas turned at Soledad’s cry. N.N. continued calling out her stage name while she replied by yelling his. Officer Rojas jumped down from the truck, sloshed through the muddy waters, jumped over the debris of the carpentry shop’s front, and peered at the rock volcano’s side. He said something into the portable radio while staring at N.N.
Ten minutes later, when the drizzle had ended, a group of six rescuers from the Red Cross and the Colombian Civil Defense arrived in an inflatable boat. A doctor extracted the wood chisel from N.N.’s leg, disinfected the wound, and sewed it shut with three stitches. The other rescuers destroyed a big portion of the rock volcano with drills and sledgehammers, but Soledad was still surrounded by stones from the chest down. N.N. could only see the back of her short Afro and the orange lifejacket she now wore.
Officer Rojas and the rescuers left Soledad and gathered in a circle.
“Why did they stop?” N.N. asked.
The doctor finished bandaging N.N.’s thigh. “Let me find out.”
As the doctor went to rejoin the group, Officer Rojas headed toward N.N.
“What’s going on?”
Officer Rojas climbed into the cargo bed. “We’re waiting for a pump.”
“What for?”
He unlocked the handcuffs. “The rescuers say they could injure her legs if they continue drilling.” He wrapped his arm around N.N. and helped him to stand. “They’re blind in that murky water.”
“Let’s figure something else out.”
“There is something else—talk to her. She needs Batman now, not us.”
N.N. took a step toward Soledad, but Officer Rojas put a hand on N.N.’s chest.
“Just be aware she’s not making much sense.”
As N.N. squatted in front of Soledad, he said, “Let’s review the multiplication lesson. Soon you’ll be on your way to your math exam.”
“Pa-pá….” Her eyes, even the whites, had turned dark brown.
“I’m not Papá. I’m Batman.”
“I’m cold.”
N.N. jumped into the rock volcano’s remains and hugged her. She shivered and gasped for breath. He grabbed the mermaid pendant hanging from her string necklace and asked her to tell him more about her character in the school play. She mumbled a series of incoherent words. Officer Rojas and the rescuers gathered around them. The doctor joined her palms and prayed.
“We can’t just let her die,” a blonde rescuer muttered.
“Shut up. We’re waiting for a pump,” Officer Rojas said.
“We could amputate her from the knees down,” the blonde rescuer whispered.
“With what surgical equipment?” the doctor asked.
N.N. covered Soledad’s ears while the rescuers continued arguing. She smiled on his shoulder. When she stopped breathing, he shut her eyes and embraced her tighter.
Half an hour later, three blocks away, a helicopter landed on a soccer field, which had survived the flood because it was on a terrace. Two rescuers pulled a pump from the cabin and carried it toward the rock volcano’s remains. Officer Rojas extended his arm, which N.N. grabbed and held onto as he got out. A rescuer tugged the pump’s ignition cord while another immersed its suctioning tube into the murky liquid. Bit by bit, the water level descended to show Soledad’s legs, trapped from the knees down by debris and her papá’s corpse.
When the night fell, N.N. was sitting in a police Humvee’s passenger seat. He was wrapped in a space blanket. The doctor used a penlight to examine his eyes.
“Is there a family member or a friend I could call to speak about your situation?” the doctor asked.
“What situation?”
“Your medical condition.” She put a stethoscope to his chest. “Breathe.”
He inhaled, exhaled, and said, “I’m fine. And no, I’m all by myself. Tell me.”
“Okay. You’re in shock. You haven’t grasped—”
“I’m fine.”
“But you haven’t externalized any emotion about Soledad’s passing.”
“She’s not—she wasn’t my daughter.”
“You have muscle tension, a racing heartbeat, a clenched hand….”
“Again, I’m fine. Ask Officer Rojas. I’m used to dealing with cadavers.”
“It’s true,” Officer Rojas said as he sat behind the wheel.
The doctor helped N.N. to buckle up and closed the passenger door. Officer Rojas turned
on the Humvee. N.N. half-smiled at the doctor while Officer Rojas drove away from Villa Rosita. As N.N. raised his window, he stared at the blonde rescuer zipping the body bag containing Soledad’s corpse.
“Your records show an old and a new address. Which one is home?” Officer Rojas asked. “Where should I take you?”
N.N. opened his fist. The mermaid pendant rested on his palm.