Nicaraguan Gringa. John Keith

Rutledge’s terminal illness and after her death George had relinquished his custom of sitting on the back patio with Sarah after supper, as he had abandoned several other rituals that he’d shared with his wife and daughter during Mary’s final illness before she died. Sarah assiduously maintained the familiar traditions, almost obsessively, as if not observing them every day would cause her to forget her mother. Gradually George’s pain brought on by remembering and Sarah’s fear of forgetting abated as they lived through the first stages of their fresh grief; and they came together again, adapting old practices and inventing new ways to be together.

      The fronds of the tall palm trees that lined the perimeter of the garden looked almost black in the moonlight, and the gentle breeze rustled them with quiet, soothing sounds that allowed George and Sarah to sit quietly together in silence or to talk to each other comfortably, without any repressed feelings of guilt.

      “Daddy, are you going to send Pablo to school like you did Julio and Guillermo?”

      “I don’t think so, Susi. He’s a poor student. I don’t know whether he doesn’t have the intellectual ability or just won’t apply himself. In any case I’m not inclined to waste my money for no good reason.”

      “I think that’s a mistake.”

      “Why?”

      “If you did it for the others, you should do it for him. You ought to treat them all alike.”

      “I might pay for him to go to a technical school, but not the colegio.”

      “You really should consider doing the same for him as for Julio and Guillermo. You let Guillermo go to the advanced technical institute after he finished the colegio.”

      “The primary technical school is good enough for Pablo. He wouldn’t achieve anything attending the colegio. He’s not my son. If they were my children, I’d try to treat them equally; but I have no obligation to help him. The money I spend on their education is as much for the country as for them personally—to provide needed skills and future leadership.”

      Sarah sighed. “He is something of a rebel.”

      “Something! With those ridiculous clothes, that attitude, his infernal loud music . . .”

      Sarah reached over and clasped her father’s hand. It would have been a familiar gesture if he had reached for her hand; it was as if they were reversing roles of parent and child. “Pablo has lots of spirit. He may do something remarkable one day.”

      “Maybe so. Maybe so. But not on my shilling.”

      In late October just after the peak of the rainy season Sarah and her father were sitting together on the back veranda when she noticed a red glow in the sky to the northeast.

      “What’s happening, Daddy? It surely can’t be a forest fire with everything so wet from the rains.”

      “I don’t know. It’s rather peculiar. Maybe it’s some strange meteorological phenomenon.”

      The following day at school Sarah learned that the volcano Cerro Negro was erupting. Later she heard that several villages near León had to be evacuated; and as the winds blew over León, ashes piled up in layers over houses and automobiles in the city.

      On several evenings some of Sarah’s friends drove toward León to see the fiery boulders and lava hurled into the night sky, and Sarah pleaded with her father to let her ride along with them. George Rutledge adamantly refused to allow his daughter to put herself into such danger.

      Finally one night her father agreed to drive her closer to the eruption himself, but only as far as he deemed an appropriately safe distance. He didn’t trust the judgment of teenagers’ daring recklessness.

      “It should be a good experience for you to see such an event of Nature. You may never be able to see anything like it again.”

      When Martín heard about their plans, he went around the entire afternoon wringing his hands and muttering, “Take care. Be very careful. You must not go too close to the vomit of the gods.”

      George Rutledge stopped the car several kilometers farther away from Cerro Negro than what his careful inquiries over several days had informed him was a safe distance and even farther away from it than Sarah’s friends had driven; but Sarah still shuddered when each explosion rumbled, causing the old Austin to vibrate. She thought that the fire in the sky was the most beautiful and most terrible thing she’d ever seen.

      On the drive home her father was silent and seemed morose. Just before they left the main highway to take the steep, winding road to Quinta Louisa, George Rutledge began speaking in a soft monotone, as if he’d forgotten that she was sitting beside him and was musing alone to himself.

      “This is a violent land. I wonder whether it will be destroyed by Nature or by its people when their anger is unleashed.”

      “Daddy?”

      “Oh, Susi!” Her father turned toward her as if he’d been suddenly reminded that she was with him in the car. “I’m so sorry. I was just thinking out loud.”

      “That’s all right. Thanks for taking me tonight.” Sarah started to say something else and ask her father why he was sad. She thought that he’d descended into a moment of anguished mourning for her mother, as he often seemed to do briefly before he recovered his usual placid, positive demeanor; but this time he didn’t emerge from his dismal funk.

      Sarah wanted to say something more to him, but she didn’t know what to say. She looked over at him and smiled; but he glanced away out the side window of the car turning away from her, as if he were afraid of her seeing something in him that he’d divined from the fire of Cerro Negro.

      Sarah continued her private conversations with Father Richard Sims almost every week and continued participating every week in the youth group that he led, but it didn’t seem the same after Carlos Vargas left. She’d hoped to see Carlos during his school’s summer vacation and at Christmas, but his family had almost always visited his mother’s family in Florida for Christmas, and they continued to do so after Carlos was in the military school. His mother spent more and more time in the United States, especially during his summer vacation, as if she were trying to keep him away from Nicaragua. Some of Sarah’s Nicaraguan classmates whispered that Carlos’s father was more and more involved with the Sandinistas. Perhaps Carlos’s mother wanted to shield him from danger or from humiliation if his father was imprisoned by Tachito or suffered an even worse fate. As Sarah advanced through her final years of high school she thought of Carlos, like her mother, as someone cherished in memory and affection that she would never see again.

      One evening near the end of her senior year Sarah and George Rutledge were sitting side by side on the back patio as they usually did after supper, looking at the garden beneath the blazing stars after the moon had set. Sarah had been accepted at Elon College in Burlington, North Carolina, where her mother had gone to school and close to some members of her mother’s family. She wasn’t sure whether her anxiety was induced more by her fear of living in what was to her a foreign land or her concern about leaving her father alone here in Nicaragua.

      “Do you think I’ll like it up there, Daddy? Do you think I’ll fit in?”

      “Of course you will. Your mother reveled in her college years at Elon. That’s where we met, you know.” Sarah knew very well. She’d heard the story recounted many times, but she didn’t speak because she knew her father wanted to tell her again; and even if she had objected, he would have gone on narrating his memories.

      “I was asked to speak at a forum about Central America at Elon. I’d just graduated from Duke, and Mary was a senior. From the first time I saw her, I knew she was the woman I wanted to marry.

      Then George Rutledge continued with a long monologue about things Sarah had never heard before, perhaps things her father had never said aloud before. “I was so worried about how Mary would fit in down here, like you’re worrying about fitting in up there in North Carolina, I suppose. But she was at home from the moment she got here. Not that she ever went native.