by Dennis Vickers
Abuelo Balam squats in the front corner of the truck as it bounces over ruts etched into the brown dirt. He grips the rail and leans forward to gaze from under his straw hat. When the truck turns north, he squints into the sunrise and the wrinkles etched into his brown skin stand out in the orange light like ripples on a jungle river. Four men share the back of the truck with him, three in the other corners, Arrange and Eke and Chun; the fourth holds tight to the middle of the front railing. He is Ortega’s nephew, Lozano. Martìn and Ortega ride in the cab. This is Abuelo Balam’s last day on the work crew. Ortega told him he is too old. On Monday, a boy will take his place.
One day Lozano will take over Ortega’s crew. He’ll assign the jobs, collect the bills, hand out the wages. He’ll talk with the farmers and figure the money and everything the boss does. He’ll know these things because Ortega will teach him. Now Lozano is a worker, like anyone on the crew, but one day Ortega will acknowledge his nephew and teach him these things. That’s how it will be; that’s how it always is. One day Martin’s truck will go to his son, Julio, and Julio will make his living with it.
Martìn drives around the square before he turns toward the highway. Surely, Ortega told him to do this; otherwise, he’d be afraid. Ortega must think he honors the old man by taking him around the square, but everyone knows Abuelo will leave the work crew not in honor but because a boy will take his place. Where is the honor? He is old. The town will pity him.
Ortega’s crew is digging a trench through Lozano’s land to the river, not a big trench, only three spades wide and two deep. Lozano says the field will dry out when the trench is finished and he’ll grow corn, bananas, beans, whatever he wants. Already the crew has worked seven days and they’ll work seven more. A strong tractor could plough the trench in an afternoon, if there were men to pry the rocks free and put them aside, but there’s no tractor to do it. If the whole village set to it, the trench would be finished in a day, and the rocks from the trench and the field would be built into a wall to keep out the animals.
A priest named Pedro, one of the order of Jesus, founded the village two hundred years ago. He organized the people to build the church and named the village Santa Elena because he arrived on her day. The village had a name before that, but no one knows what it was. There are platforms where houses once stood around the village. There is the ruin of a stone temple on top of the hill, and another stone ruin by the river, partly washed away. Everywhere there are trenches to drain fields and rock walls older than anyone can remember. Dirt chokes the old trenches and the walls have fallen. The people who lived here before the priest came and before the village was called Santa Elena made them. I’d like to know what they called the village. I’d like to know if they had work crews to dig trenches, or if the whole village worked together or how they did it. I’d like to know if old men worked on those crews, and if they walked in the front or the back when the crews went to their work.
Abuelo never complains about the work. He’s worked with a shovel and pick his whole life. He worked that way before I was born. He worked that way before my father was born. To see him squatting in the back of the pickup truck, holding his hat on his head with one hand and holding himself upright with the other, his brown face tough as leather, his arms strong as mahogany branches, you’d say he’ll go to work forever. There will always be another day to ride in the truck, always another trench to dig, always another rock to pull from the earth. But the work won’t go on forever, not for him. Abuelo won’t go on forever either. One day we’ll put his casket in the back of Martìn’s truck and drive him around the square so everyone can pay respects before we take him to the cemetery. The priest will say the things that are said and he’ll pass out of this world, like his father, like the village that was here before Santa Elena, like the people who dug the trenches and built the rock walls and the house platforms and the stone temple on the hill.
Everybody comes to his end when the time comes. The people who dug the trenches and built the walls and house platforms and the stone temple, when their time came, they were buried in the cemetery or somewhere else. Since they weren’t Christian, probably somewhere else. The walls and platforms and the stone temple they built fell into rubble and the earth swallowed them. Father Pedro, who built the church, his time came too. The village buried him in the cemetery under a statue of Jesus. One day the church Father Pedro built will fall into rubble too, like the temple on the hill. All these things are fitting. When something stops living, decay sets in and something living takes its place. The old village name is lost; now the village is Santa Elena. The stone temple on top of the hill has fallen; Father Pedro’s church stands. Dirt clogs the old trenches; the men dig a trench to drain Lozano’s field.
What isn’t fitting is when something that has life in it still is put aside. If the church is closed when there are people who go there to pray, that is not fitting. If Martìn’s son demands to drive the truck before Martìn is ready, that is not fitting. If Lozano insists that Ortega hand over the work crew before he is ready, that is not fitting. Abuelo Balam’s last ride in the back of the truck, when his arms are still strong and his heart still wants to work, that is not fitting either.
