Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Half an hour later, we were still looking for the right turnout.
There were farms all over here, and we didn’t want to trespass on an unknown coffee baron’s estate.
At least if we got caught on Dieter’s land, we’d be “family.” Still, I was a little concerned when Adrián started circling the same stretch of highway, peering into the dense foliage on either side. What exactly was he looking for?
“Are you worried about Dieter finding us?” I asked.
“I mean, it would not be fun explaining it to my family. But I’m more worried about the guards.”
“Wait... guards?”
“Yeah, the big farms have security guards. They do sweeps of the fields to make sure the pickers are productive. And to keep out union organizers.”
Oh. I started fiddling with my seatbelt. “What about drug traffickers?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Like, we need to watch out for them, or the guards are looking for them?”
“Both, probably.”
Suddenly I wondered if this was such a good idea. Adrián pulled over and drove through a pristine patch of greenery, then cut the engine. I looked at the path we had cut. It sprung back to life before my very eyes.
“Wow,” I said. “Durable.”
He smiled at me. “Tropical.”
The Jeep was completely hidden from sight.
We got out and headed toward an access road shaded by mango trees.
As we went on, the greenery gradually disappeared, replaced by wheat-colored brush and a pervasive dryness.
We passed a sign announcing that we were entering Tres Aguas .
Three Waters. Someone had a nasty sense of irony.
“Why is it called Tres Aguas when there’s no river?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s gotta be a river here somewhere. Most farms use the wet-processing method to process the beans, which creates a lot of leftover pulp. So farms dump the waste in the rivers.”
“That’s got to be bad for the rivers, right? Isn’t the pulp really acidic?”
“Yeah. Environmentalists are pretty upset about it.”
“But not you?”
He shrugged. “The waste has to go somewhere.”
We stepped onto a steeply ascending dirt path, bordered by oaks. I tried to read his expression. “So... your attitude is, it’s horrible for the environment and too bad?”
“I’m just telling you facts. Everything has a cost.” The forest was thick here and we couldn’t see more than twenty feet ahead of us. “Your coffee grinds each morning? They release carbon dioxide into the environment.” They did?! Uch, another thing to feel bad about.
“Is that good?” he continued. “No. But it doesn’t help the environment to be naive about how things are produced. Or about what you consume.”
I wrestled with this. Once you weren’t naive—what did you do with the information? Stop consuming? Consume less? In a world where perfection was unattainable, when was less harm enough?
“Now you know more about the environmental impact, are you going to stop drinking coffee?” he asked with a puckish smile.
I shook my head; obviously not. “Are you?”
“I’m going to drink more . Sometimes I leave my faucet running just for fun. And I love burning trash.”
“Trying to hasten the end of the world?”
“Exactly!” he said. “Usher in the reign of peace. Aren’t your people bringing back Jesus for us?”
“Oh, yes, the Mashiach . You’re welcome.”
“We’re very grateful.” He pulled me in for a kiss and my body melted. Impossible. He was just impossible. I reluctantly pulled myself away from him, and we continued on the path. It turned north and we were no longer in a forest.
Mature coffee bushes stretched out under the sun in endless rows, with no shade in sight. No banana trees, no poró trees. There weren’t even weeds. Just red dirt and neatly planted coffee bushes stretching out to the horizon.
“Well,” said Adrián. “I guess we found the real fields.”
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the adults, adolescents, and children hunched over in the blazing sun, picking the bright-red coffee cherries. “I guess we did.”
Unease settled over me. I noticed the angles the workers’ backs were crooked at, and I saw the sweat dripping off their foreheads.
They struggled under the weight of the baskets tied to their waists to hold the coffee cherries.
You never saw images of this on your one-pound bag of specialty coffee.
The backbreaking labor replaced—no, hidden —by the innocuous picture of a songbird.
The pickers noticed us as I took out my camera.
Some were heading farther into the fields, but one old lady with raisin skin stood there looking at me.
We walked up to her and I offered my hand.
Hers was hard and dry. I introduced myself in Spanish.
I told her who I worked for and asked if I might interview her.
Adrián stood next to me, scanning the horizon.
“Are you an American?” she asked in Spanish. “Your Spanish is very good.”
“That’s very nice of you to say.”
“You’re a Tico?” she asked Adrián. He nodded.
“I want you two to interview me,” she said. “And I want you to go back and tell your friends how it is for us nicaragüenses in Costa Rica.”
I took out my phone and started recording.
“My name is Belén Chamorro,” she said. “I want you to use my real name.”
“What brought you to Café Bavaria, Dona Belén?”
“The Rust,” she said. Her eyes took on a faraway look. “We lost our farm in Nicaragua two years ago when the Rust killed our plants.”
A man nearby chimed in. “The Rust loves the heat. And every summer is hotter than the last.”
“Did you plant new bushes?” I asked.
Dona Belén shook her head no. “The price of coffee dropped. Now it costs more to produce than it does to sell. So why would we buy new plants? If we could even get a loan.” She pushed back her straw hat. I could see the folds of her skin hanging heavy under her eyes.
“How long did you have your farm?”
“Four generations. It was my life. Now it’s just dirt.” She kicked the soil at her feet. “Or who knows. Maybe it’s a hotel for gringos now. With a swim-up bar.”
I felt a knot form in my stomach. “What happened after you lost it?”
“All of my daughters came to work in San José as housekeepers, and my sons came to work in the fields here. My husband never recovered from the loss of our farm. He had a heart attack.” She was unblinking. Unflinching. “After he died, I didn’t want to stay in Nicaragua by myself.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. The words felt so inadequate.
“I could’ve stayed with my sister. My kids sent home money.
But I thought, why should young people work so hard to support an old lady like me?
What’s my life worth now that it’s almost over?
If I come here and work, that will help them save money, and then maybe they can return home and buy back our farm when the Rust is gone. ” She paused. “If it’s still there.”
My heart ached for her. It was all so unfair. Our lives were a lottery of where we were born and to whom. I noticed Adrián had started pacing in a wide circle around us. He seemed agitated.
“Have you been able to save money?” I asked.
She laughed, but it was mirthless. “No. They pay us dirt. They don’t care what our labor is worth. They care more about their horses than us. When the horses get sick, they get medicine. When we get sick, we get replaced.”
She didn’t speak with emotion. Her matter-of-factness left me feeling empty.
“To them, we’re disposable,” she said. “But I wonder. The people drinking the coffee. Do you ever think about us?” She looked me directly in my eyes. “Do you ever imagine who sowed your beans? Who picked them?”
Her gaze was so intense I got goosebumps. I thought of how casually I would drink a six-dollar-latte in Cody’s air-conditioned car. Sure, I paid a premium for ethically produced coffee. But did I ever really think about the people who made it possible? Or the costs they incurred?
Before I could answer her, an enormous roar startled us. We turned to see a dust cloud billowing hundreds of yards away. My heart began racing and I looked for Adrián. He was running toward me.
“ Oye ,” said Dona Belén. The cloud of dust was coming closer and pickers were running. My mouth tasted like iron. “Tell our story.”
“ ?La guardia! ” the man behind her shouted. “ ?Váyanse! ?La guardia! ”
Belén didn’t budge. She maintained eye contact as dust swirled around us.
I nodded.
Suddenly Adrián grabbed my elbow and dragged me toward the edge of the field.
By now the dust had dissipated enough to reveal an old army Jeep rushing down the perimeter of the fields.
Adrián and I were at a dead run heading toward the path when I suddenly fell to the ground, pushed down by Adrián’s palm in the small of my back.
“Be still!” Adrián said in a fierce whisper, collapsing on top of me.
I was face down in the dirt with black crud in my eyes and silt in my mouth.
I couldn’t see anything. The sounds of the engines stopped and heavy boots thudded onto the ground.
I could feel the vibrations of their steps through the earth.
The steps came closer. Blood pounded in my ears and the saliva dried in my mouth.
My mind couldn’t make sense of this. The transition from safe to unsafe was so quick. The footsteps came to a halt.
“Who were you speaking with?” asked a man in the distance, in Spanish. The sound of his voice froze me. This was a voice of metal, of gunpowder, of unchecked violence.
“I was singing,” said Dona Belén. “While I worked.” I writhed underneath Adrián. I had to see her. I lifted my head slightly and saw that we were lying in an irrigation ditch. We were behind some very thick bushes and wouldn’t be visible to the guards. I could barely see them through the branches.
“We saw you from the highway,” said a guard. “There was a group of you. You know you’re not supposed to congregate while you work. Who the hell were you talking to?”
Belén shifted in and out of view. “No one. I told you. I was singing. Like a Disney princess.”
I heard a smacking sound and saw her basket fly to the ground, berries cascading in every direction.
“You better tell me who you were talking to,” said the guard. “Or you’re going to lose a lot more than one basket.”
“She was talking to me.” It was another man’s voice. “And my brother. We’re sorry. We know it’s not allowed.”
Another basket went flying. Red berries arced through the air, landing softly on the ground.
“We have a duty to protect the farm. And from the highway, we really can’t tell who’s who. Who’s a picker, who’s a union organizer, who’s a drug runner. You understand?”
Belén shifted and I could see her. Her chin in the air, her stance defiant.
“You understand?” he said again.
“I understand.” Her lips curled into a smile. “I understand you’re a son of a bitch.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what happened next, because I couldn’t see whose hands were connected to whose bodies. I saw a raised hand, another hand grabbing it, and Belén flinching ever so slightly.
“You keep talking like that, old lady,” said a guard, “and I’ll cut your mouth right out of your face.”
I shook in the ditch. Adrián held me tighter to stop the movement.
I wanted to run at that guard and whip his gun across his face.
I wanted to run straight back to Adrián’s Jeep and drive to the airport and get on a plane back home.
I wanted to run in one thousand directions at once. But I did nothing.
“ ?Vámanos! ” said a guard. There was the loud roar of the Jeep starting, a crunching sound as it mowed over greenery, then the hushed chatter of the pickers. Even that died down as they wandered to other corners of the fields. Finally, it was silent.
“They’re gone,” Adrián whispered in my ear, pushing back loose strands of my hair. He removed his hand from my mouth. “It’s okay.”
I breathed in and the air was harsh against my throat.
Adrián rolled off me and crawled to his knees.
Brown smudges covered his arms and face.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and ran it lightly across my face.
I saw streaks of red on the white cloth.
“It’s just a scratch, Preciosa ,” he said.
He gently dabbed at my cut. “Let’s get out of here. ”
Adrián took both of my arms and pulled me to my feet, then started back down the path.
I hung back for a moment, peering out into the fields.
The pickers had moved on to other rows. I couldn’t see Belén.
What had happened to her? Adrián grabbed my hand.
“She’s fine, Dee. I saw her go to a different part of the fields.
” I let out a sigh I didn’t know I was holding.
Numb, I followed Adrián back down the path toward the road. I could feel my necklace clicking against my collarbone. I took the gold snakes between my fingers and rubbed them so hard the pads of my fingers ached.
They say discretion is the better part of valor , my grandfather had said to me in his sunny breakfast nook. He was teaching me gin rummy and life lessons at age eight. But only sometimes. Sometimes, it’s just valor.
I wondered what my grandfather would have done if he had been here. Would he have jumped out of the bushes and identified himself? Or kept silent in the ditch?
Adrián stepped off the main trail and walked on a narrow, unkempt path.
He pushed back the fronds of some overgrown ferns and we saw the Jeep twenty feet away.
Within thirty seconds we were in the Jeep, racing toward the main highway.
As soon as we were on the highway, the tension melted off Adrián’s face.
“That was close,” he said. He wiped sweat off his forehead. “I would’ve had a hell of time explaining that to my dad.”
“Adrián.” I searched for the right words. “Did we do the right thing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe we should’ve declared ourselves, admitted to trespassing, and said that the pickers had no knowledge of our visit.”
“Are you crazy?” The Jeep hiccuped as it went over a big round rock. “Then they would’ve gotten into trouble for sure. At the least they would’ve been fired.”
“It was our fault they got in trouble.”
“They didn’t get in trouble. They got a warning. Besides, that woman wanted to talk to us. She wanted us to tell her story.”
“I hope you’re right.” I leaned back in my seat, suddenly feeling all the soreness in my body. Suddenly feeling the reality.