Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer
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same time Jo was slipping out of the door of her classroom at David B, a world away in the land of Jo’s birth—the Dominican Republic—Basil and Starling Heitz were racing out of Puerto Plata as quickly as their rattle trap of an unreturned rental pickup truck could take them. The cause was a “misunderstanding” between them and a prospective investor over some salted iron pyrite in what they had purported to be a vein of gold begging to be mined on some otherwise nearly worthless terrain that they claimed to own in the usually lush farm land of the Cibao region.
Puerto Plata is a lovely, tourist-oriented city on the northern coast of the island of Hispaniola, renowned for its all-inclusive resorts, its golf courses, and its longtime, old-moneyed visitors, all of whom, as a village policy, were protected by the local policia. As a consequence, the Heitzes were speeding off into the interior on little Route 5. Their plan: cross the mountains before nightfall, work their way along the border of Haiti, and lose themselves in the peninsula that extended down to the generally undeveloped south, where they would definitely not be known. Here, in what they’d heard were the comfortable little cities of Pedernales and Barahona, they would once again see what fortune would bring.
So far it had not brought them much. They had come to the Dominican Republic after reading about a recent discovery of the gold that had eluded Columbus and his soldiers of fortune so long ago. Of course, they imagined themselves in a plush tropical paradise surrounded by millionaires who would throw money at them. They’d begun in La Romana, a city beloved by tourists as well as humanitarian and church mission groups, but nothing developed. The government years before had hired a Canadian firm to mine the gold and dreams of being 49ers Latin-style evaporated as fast as their meager capital. Puerta Plata beckoned, so they traveled north, but that was disastrous. So here they were at this moment, somewhere west of the mountain village of Platanal, as Route 5 yielded to a precarious winding road, identified only with the number 18, that went up and up and up. Dusk began encroaching upon the mountain fastness like a bad case of disclosure, until both of the erstwhile bunco stock conspirators realized that hiding in the hills was a very poor idea—to say the least. Star was the first to speak.
“What a dump!” she grumbled. “There’s like absolutely nothing up here! There’s not even like a gas station. There’s no restaurants. There’s no nothing!”
Basil offered a suggestion. “Shut up!” he growled.
“I will not! If you hadn’t oversold him, we would be at the casino right now.”
“Me? Me? You were the one talking about gold prices and the government disenchantment with the Canadians and how, if we just offered them four pesos out of every ten, we could clean up!”
“Well, you weren’t bringing it home! You knew he had some kind of surveyor set to check it out and some lawyer looking at the documents. What’d you imagine they were gonna find when they checked out our coordinates?”
“Well, how was I to know that old guy was sharper than he looked?”
“You never figure out anything in time. You just push on and on until the whole thing blows up.”
Basil glowered at her, but he had no answer to that, and they settled into a grim and completely unsatisfying temporary ceasefire, both licking their recent wounds, which cut a lot deeper than this little common skirmish.
Presently, Star said, “Bo, I’m scared. These roads are so little and there’s no lights and there’s no guard rails. The sides are falling away and it’s a sheer drop over the side. We haveta stop!”
Basil strained into the darkness. “I don’t like it either. We got gas—I look ahead—not like you said. But you’re right this time. We could run off the side and no one would find us.”
The little truck rolled slowly to a halt in the center of what now looked like a tiny path. There was no sound but the wind.
“I can’t see anything.” Basil opened the door and began feeling his way up the path. He came back almost immediately. “I don’t think anybody’s gonna come this way tonight. There’s no place to stay. We gotta make do.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Me too.”
“Where we gonna sleep?”
“Well,” said Basil pointedly, “we could pile the suitcases out on the roadside and stretch out in the truck bed.”
“Not on your life,” snapped Star. “Not my suitcases! They stay safe in the back. You can stretch out on the ground.”
“Right! And get eaten alive by mosquitos.”
“Well, what’s your plan?”
“We’ll just start at dawn.”
A night cramped in their little rental with the mosquitos banging against the windows like suicide bombers did little to improve their disposition. Morning entered gently like a blessing. Basil simply woke up, started the truck, and was winding down through little clusters of country houses when Star finally woke.
“Where’d all the shacks come from?” she yawned.
“We’re in a valley skirting the mountains,” Basil explained.
“Whatever. But I’m starved and I gotta go.”
The little wooden structure that served as a store offered them gasoline in little cans and, hanging from small hooks and dangling over the counter, dried, spicy jerky, which they ate ravenously.
Starling almost cried when she saw the accommodations in the shed back behind the store—a hole in the ground, no sink, and a slab of old wood simply leaning in to the entrance to serve as a sort of door, pulled open by a broken piece of rope dangling from a nail. This was the lowest they had ever fallen. Basil shared her sentiment as he gaped mournfully at the broken, filthy porcelain tray in a small, door-less aperture around the far side of the same shed. Neither of them said anything afterwards as they shared a little towelette for cleaning hands that Star had in her purse.
Munching on the rest of the jerky and drinking sweet carbonated bottled drinks that together made their stomachs churn, they were still able to notice that the poor little country villages had begun to multiply. Maybe civilization, as they saw it, wasn’t too far away. . . .
The land was arid now, like a wilderness, but makeshift roadside stands had also begun to appear before the little wooden and sheet-metal houses. Beside them sat entire families, selling whatever was in season and watching what came by. Star waved at one little family knot and they broke into big smiles and waved back. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad, she thought. And she felt almost good about it when they reached the border road at Dajabon and with relief turned south at last.
But the border was another world than the mountains, empty and desolate. Both Star and Basil felt their spirits sinking again. And, as they traveled, the northwestern border villages all matched their mood—depressed little places with empty-eyed people who stared at them as they drove swiftly past—and on the edge of each town cemeteries with all the graves broken open. “This place gives me the creeps,” shuddered Starling over and over again as they hurried through town after town. Another stop and the sun was beating upon them as on a voodun drum.
Then about six o’clock in the afternoon, the road left the border and continued winding south, past villages with more encouraging names like “Happy Angel,” “Granada” (Star loved that song and began to hum it), and “The Pines.” Star’s spirits began lifting again. Both of them were feeling as if they were on the brink of some kind of deliverance when suddenly a little city aptly named Descubierta—the “Discovery”—hove into sight. This was a lovely little town with an “up and coming” appearance punctuated by motorcycles zipping by like so many new ideas.
Basil paused before the village square and studied the benches replete with lovers lost in their mutual attraction, the tables with old men playing dominos, and, specifically, a mature family threesome sitting next to the road to whom he asked the name of the town in his “get-by” version of Spanish, awkwardly leaning over Star to do