On a park bench one evening in Sensuntepeque, David Applegate and I sit talking about social change and about how sometimes that change has to come slowly. As we talk, an old campesino walks by, bent almost double under the bag of fertilizer on his shoulder.
* * *
I don't know which spray-painted phrase I see tagged on more walls in San Salvador, “Prohibido Olvidar” or “Prohibido Orinar.”
* * *
On the wall at Lolo and Esperanza's house there is an old and faded picture of Jesus Christ. Next to it, shining with all its magazine cut-out brilliance, is a poster with the inscription “Backstreet Boys Por Siempre.”
* * *
As we sit at the stop light by the terminal, a rotund man with a red hat hides at least three large cardboard tubes in the branches of a tree.
* * *
At noon on November 7, in the center of San Salvador, the driver and the cobrador of the 38 D were shot and killed. No robbery, no words said, just three bullets fired.
* * *
One day Don José, the Mago, came knocking at the door of the CIS with his dog. Chunga is her name. “She likes to dance,” he said, “she's making me laugh.” The dog turned in tormented circles upon the pavement, trying to scratch a blood-encrusted nipple with a bare and broken leg.
* * *
On the long, hot bus ride from Usulután, an evangelical pastor boarded and preached the most passionate sermon I had ever heard. Later, as the bus emptied out in the busy terminal and the man sat alone and exhausted, we shook hands. “Dios le bendiga,” I said as he took my hand in both of his. It seemed he had used up all of his words, but he held my hand for a moment longer and then pointed a finger towards the ceiling and towards his heavenly father.
* * *
One night Franklin asked Doña Esperanza when it is that the puppies will start to talk. “Los chuchitos no saben hablar,” she responded, “sólo saben decir 'guah, guah, guah.'”
* * *
What does it mean, I ask myself, to be sitting in the comedor scoffing down my lunch while Don José, peering in through steel bars, asks me “Is everything all right with you?”? As I get up to leave from my seat on the little knoll where we hang out with the boot shiner, José advises me “Take care of yourself.” Later he gives me a toy gun and asks me whether I'll be here for Christmas.
* * *
I don't remember now how he got my attention, but it was clear from the outset that he was deaf. For twenty minutes we made a tortured attempt at conversation. He, gesturing with mounting intensity from across the aisle of the bus, I trying in vain to understand. Finally, fixing my eyes with a knowing look and clasping my palm in a familiar handshake, he rose to leave. He tipped his greasy hat to the driver as he stepped out the door and rolled off something in a rapid-fire Spanish that I couldn't understand. The driver, whose tongue knows no sibilants, mumbled something in return. The man had been having me on the whole time.
* * *
“Es bueno que patrullan,” decía Don Lolo, y tiene razón. Pero siempre me da escalofríos ver a soldados y policías juntos.
