Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer
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become completely preoccupied with straining in the distance for the shoreline, since the road had diverged quite far from it. By midafternoon, the lake was now completely back in sight. At first it was still some distance away, and then it got gratifyingly closer, and then even closer, and then it began to get uncomfortably close. Suddenly, Star started slowing the little truck down, pulling as far over to the side away from the lake as she could go, but that wasn’t very far since at the same time the hills had been encroaching and a sheer wall of rock had begun to hem them in. As she slowly crept ahead, they could see the lake side of the road falling away rapidly to a descending slope beyond which were the rippling waters. At first a few goats and cows and a little wooden house or two and even palm trees would fill the space between the road and the lake, but, as they drove on, they began noticing the road was lowering. Star was glancing at it continually as she drove slowly on. Every few yards it was dipping down, and the space between it and the lake was still narrowing. So she began pausing every few yards. All this time, Basil was staring intently at it.
“Bo!” she said.
“I know!”
There was no doubt about it now. The road was descending to meet the lake. Waters that had been some fifty yards away were now only thirty, then only ten, then lapping up among the trees. Shortly, the lake was beside the road. And then the road dipped down out of sight, and Star came to a sudden halt. The lake had crossed the road and begun to fill the other side, lapping up against the foot of the mountain wall that had been their far-side border. All that either of them could think about was the road submerged to nothing back on the western lakeside above Jimani.
Basil got out once again and surveyed the water over the road. “This is deep,” he called back to Star.
Her head was down, and then she leaned out the window and waved the guidebook at him. “Watch out!” she called. “I just noticed they got crocodiles in this lake!”
Basil jumped back. “Crocodiles? They don’t have crocodiles in this part of the world!”
“They do here! According to the book, they put ’em in here.”
“Geez!” said Basil. “Who would want to put crocodiles in your water?”
“Says they’re supposed to be a tourist attraction.”
Basil shuddered and peered more closely at the waves.
“Says they’re shy,” shouted Star.
“Sure! Shy!” Basil picked up a long stick as a tomato truck rattled by, splashing the water around, and spilling several fruit as it bumped back up on the road ahead of him. Basil waited until the stirring subsided, then stuck the stick in and saw it was up several inches. “We shouldn’t go into this,” he yelled back. “We’ll lose our brakes or—worse yet—get stuck.”
“I don’t wanna get stuck in some crocodile-infested lake.”
“Me neither. But what can we do? We can’t go back all that distance—and we got nothing to go back for. Lemme drive.” He squeezed into the driver’s seat, which Star, by this point, was glad to relinquish, and then he grunted as much to himself as to Star, “The other truck made it.”
“It was three times our size!” Star pointed out with a nervous gesture.
But Basil just backed up a bit, then rammed his foot on the gas, and barreled ahead, splashing and sliding through the water until their little truck skidded up an incline on the other side.
They both heaved out sighs. Star laughed and patted Basil on the shoulder, and they forged on now with determination, ignoring the heavy trucks that whirled by, splashing through the invasion of the lake until they left it all behind them.
“This might be our future here,” mused Basil, “if we can find a partner with some capital.”
“Whaddaya mean?” asked Star.
“I’ll bet we can buy some of this disappearing property real cheap and sell it to easy marks on the internet. All we got to get is a downpayment and then take off with it. It’s not like they didn’t get anything for their money. They got exactly what they paid for. It’s beachfront property—at least for now. . . .”
“Right!” said Star, catching the vision. “We don’t wait for them to come and see it to pay the rest of the payment! In fact—we can’t!”
“Exactly!” said Basil. “In the meantime, we can take some pictures, which will look great. Real honest-to-goodness beachfront property. They don’t need to know what it’s gonna do in a year or two. For now, though, let’s keep on going toward Barahona to get the lay of the land. I think we should spend a little time just checking out this huge opportunity.”
“And the crocodiles?” asked Star.
“Jungle theme park,” grinned Basil. “I’m getting a lot of ideas.”
“Yeah,” said Star chuckling, “Then it can become completely ‘Crocodile World.’”
Basil laughed and they rode on.
Hungry as they were, they felt good. Perhaps the credit for Star and Basil’s new positive attitude toward the southern region of Laguna Enriquillo should go to the fact that they now had a handle on a workable scam. That always lifted their spirits.
Perhaps the reason for their lifted hearts was that they had finally begun to leave the lake itself behind and no longer had its terrifying commandeering of the land so uncomfortably in front of them. In other words, their response was proportional: As the lake receded behind them, so did its terror. They were, after all, immediate sort of people. Their final lingering look at the great lake was through a strange portal in a large, grayish white wall of cement, with sidewalls that stopped halfway back, making a three-sided enclosure, but with no rear wall. Its entrance was a large opening with a cross at the top and the result was that it framed a panoramic view of Lake Enriquillo for those who stood before it. Paradise, one might say, through a portal. And this is exactly what Basil did say.
“This is great! Great!” he enthused. “We got to get a picture of this. Welcome to your summer home! Beauty! Boating! Fishing!”
“Crocodiles!” muttered Star, but he ignored her. He had his hands up making squares with his fingers, imaginary lenses through which to capture the best shot of the water.
What he didn’t know was that he was standing at the entrance of an unfinished cemetery. The town was hoping as the years went by to afford to complete it.
Another possibility for their positive attitude was the astonishingly lush beauty of the land to the east of the lake. They had been through some beautifully prosperous fields of plenty, but nothing bested the region southeast of the lake. There was a hand at work in these fields that would arrest the attention of anyone. The magic of the land’s obvious comestible wealth was working on Star’s appetite. In a matter of minutes, she began complaining, “I’m hungry.” They had left Descubierta at noon, but without the foresight to pack a lunch.
Basil smirked, however, reached awkwardly into his pockets, and began dropping things into Star’s lap.
“What’s this?” she demanded.
“Tomatoes. Wipe ’em off. That should hold you until we get to a food chute!”
They rode along, munching the tomatoes that had dropped from heaven, or at least off the tomato truck at the first spillover of the lake, and these allowed them to be a bit picky as several food stands flew by and then they entered a lovely little town named Villa Bahoruco.
“I see a television antenna!” Star exclaimed.
“I smell food!” Basil agreed.
“I wanna stop here!” demanded Star.
“Done!” grunted Basil, and he pulled in by a neat little roadside restaurant out of whose kitchen poured the wonderful smells of cocina criolla, traditional Dominican food. Soon they were feasting on rice and beans in a thick warm sauce, chicken