Guesthouse

Chambers was dead.

A piece of shrapnel had caught him in the shoulder, entering right under his tattoo of two crossed Arabian sabers, frisbeeing its way into his left lung. Chambers, up until his lungs refused to fill anymore, had pleaded for a cigarette or anything to take his mind off the pain. The other men, strewn down in sodden mud under the low stone wall where they were hiding from machine gun fire, had nothing to give him.

They had been on patrol, checking on a burnt out village that on the map was under control of the revolutionarios but unofficially had been retaken by verdant jungle. A government helicopter gunship, efficiently cruel in the way that only Russian-made things can be, had ambled over and dropped down into the clearing with a predatory whine and the men got pinned down under its suppressing fires, bullets splintering the wall, and the helicopter fired a rocket, two, rebels praying aloud God please let me live, and they fired back, clip after clip of 7.26 millimeter ammunition, and the helicopter had danced around, the bullets too small to do anything to it, the smell of carbon and brass shells still hot littering mixing with the fear and the stink of sweat and piss and mud where they lay and Chambers was hit, and he screamed and then his lungs refused to inflate anymore and he could only whisper breathlessly and the medic came over and bandaged him but forgot to treat for shock  and then the medic died and nobody remembered Chambers, that he was shot, and by the time the helicopter buzzed away, it didn’t really matter because most of the rest of them were dead too.

When Paul Meyer, the only other American, couldn’t hear the sound of the helicopter anymore, he sat up and looked down at his friend and noticed the factory black of Chambers’ boots. Paul considered them for a second, before he felt bad, because Chambers was his friend, and that besides Chambers was two sizes bigger than him.

Paul had been drafted three years before, getting the letter from his local draft board at Dartmouth after coming back from dinner. He had driven home and his mother had cried when he told her, his father stone-faced in the station wagon to the recruit depot, where Paul reported in khakis, a white t-shirt, loafers.

Heart condition. The doctor at the recruit depot had chuckled, given Paul a pat on the back. Those nights when he woke up with bad dreams, breathless, wasn’t the result of stress or an overactive imagination, it was the heart condition. The doctor told him that war was not in his future, and to live fully for the unlucky bastards without heart conditions in Vietnam. They had sent him back to school.

On leaving the doctor had remarked, “You’re lucky, son that you’ll never have to see war.”

“Pablo!”

The only other survivor, a native Peruvian combatiente, had stood up and come over, a grimy cigarette hanging from his lip, Kalashnikov rifle slung across his narrow shoulders.  He put his arm around Paul.

“Pablo! Are you alive, my friend?”

“Yeah. I think.” Paul, looked at his rifle, taking out the magazine and looking inside. He didn’t have any ammunition left. He moved his arm to drop it into the dirt, but pain from his side speared into him.

“Are you hit?”

Paul looked down at the bloodstain on his shirt. “One just barely got me in the side. I already bandaged myself. No big deal.”

“We need to move. We don’t want to be here when los gobiernos come for you, my little celebrity friend. Where is Chambers?”

Paul swallowed, realizing how thirsty he was.

“Chambers…”

The rebel stopped smiling. “Leave him to the forest, my friend. Leave them all to the forest. We have no time. They’ll bring in a whole company after us.”

“No.”

The little rebel shrugged, his outward amiableness disappearing just as quickly as the cigarette he dropped into the undergrowth. He undid the top button of his raincoat, reaching into his shirt pocket for another. This gringo was not his problem; if he wanted to get himself killed in the jungle on this Quixotic quest, then that of course was his problem.  Besides who was this American to interfere with his homeland’s war and then refuse to follow orders?

“Do you not think that I’ve also left many friends lying out here in the jungle? It happens. Friends die. Friends die often.” There was anger in the Peruvian’s voice now.

“I promised. We promised. He would have done the same for me.”

“Pablo, I outrank…”

“Fuck this shit! I’ve had enough of it. You want to shoot me, go ahead. I’m not doing this anymore.”

The rebel’s eyes softened.

“Pablo. I’m not going to shoot you. That time in Trarenzo, I’d be a dead man otherwise. You want to leave now, you’ve more than done your duty.”

“I’m getting Chambers back home.”

“Pablo, if you live long enough, there’s a village eight kilometers down the road where they can make arrangements to have a truck come and get you to the airport. From there, you’ll be able to get Chambers back to los Estados Unidos.”

Paul nodded slowly, and stooped down to pick up Chambers in a fireman’s carry across his shoulders.

“See you on the other side, my friend.” The rebel, taking one last look at the man he knew he would never see again, lit his new cigarette, disappeared into the jungle.

The thunder throatily murmured over the canopy as clouds spread over sierras in the distance. Paul hated it when it rained. It was the kind of wet that would get in your poncho, your Wellington boots no matter how deep you huddled in the underbrush, trying to keep yourself and your rifle as dry as you could. Paul was surprised at how quickly the rain had washed his old self out quick. He had started trying to keep his hands as clean as he could, which was not saying much. Now, if he killed less than the men he was with, it was only because he still wasn’t used to the heavy recoil of the AK or the twisted iron sights that meant at a range of one hundred fifty meters your bullet would always go two feet to the left and three feet below where you aimed. 

Still, the constant rain was harder to get used to than the bloodshed. It reminded Paul of a Bradbury story he had read once, men committing suicide by standing outside with their mouths open, drowning in the rain. Paul always felt that he was drowning but the rain had always reminded Chambers of home, cheered him up. Chambers on the plane seat next to him, telling dirty jokes the whole way, excited to be headed South finally. Of course Chambers was dead now and weighed 215 pounds dry and Paul’s skinny frame just couldn’t carry him anymore. He had gone two miles up the road evading a government hunter-seeker patrol.

“Fuck you Chambers, fuck you.” muttered Paul, half to himself.

The sky was pissing so hard that he could only see his right hand if he waved it in front of his face, but he could make out a clearing, another burnt out village. One house was still standing at the edge of the clearing, a light coming from the second story window.

A large hand-lettered sign:

Casa de huéspedes, guesthouse. Bienvenido, welcome.

The sign blowing back and forth in the wind began to make him lightheaded.

Paul, with the dead 215 pounds on his back, collapsed, his knees buckling into the sodden mud.

#

Light. The rain had stopped. Paul felt breathless, the distinct feeling of a bad dream where you just couldn’t seem to remember.

A brass bell tinkled.

.          “Don’t you just love the sound of wind-chimes?”

         Forcing his eyes open, Paul looked up at a woman opening the window, white sundress  and knee high boots and trenchcoat, who he would have described back home as beautiful for her age but a little skinny. Her green eyes reminded Paul of a panther that he had seen in a travelogue once.

“Siempre en la selva?” she asked. Paul’s mind went blank for a second, the Spanish not translating, before he understood. Always in the woods. She was asking him if he was a rebel.

Paul tried to speak, but his throat cracked. He nodded.

She looked him over for a moment more before responding, “We serve la cena soon.” Brushing her skirt off before smiling softly once more at Paul, she tiptoed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

The room was a closet space, spartan cot, woolen olive blankets, and an old photograph of a young boy in an oversized wax coat on the nightstand. Paul’s rucksack and his rifle were stacked neatly by the door. Exhausted, he tried to go to sleep but couldn’t.

A few minutes passed and Paul tenderly sat up, his back sore. He felt his side.  Clean bandage. The Patek on his wrist, his grandfather’s, still softly ticking, marked six o’clock. He had been asleep for an entire day. A knock and the door opened again. A man, his silver mane and wispy beard covered in rain beads, reminding Paul of his grandfather, trudged over in muddy boots and motioned him to follow. Paul climbed out of bed and walked out, finding himself in a small dining room. The table was set for two.

The man set down a tin cup on the table. Paul thirstily gulped down the water. The man sat across the table, studying him.

Paul looked up. “Chambers, where is he?”

The man nodded seriously, “Your friend, I gave him a proper burial last night. He has been taken care of as best we know how.”

“Where?”

With an air of finality, “There is a place where we bury those who have fallen.” The man folded his hands in front of him, “You are a rebel?” The words came out carefully, not question-like in the slightest, the slight lilt of higher education.

“Sendero luminoso.” Shining Path. Paul realized that at this point, the rainy season of 1968, he had been with the revolution for a whole year. Happy fucking anniversary.

The man nodded knowingly.

“You were here not too long ago.”

Paul recalled that day, a couple months before. The village was in danger of falling in government hands. They had torched the huts, shooting their rifles in the air amid the screaming. Those who protested were dragged out and shot. The survivors had run into the woods barefoot. Now, they were probably starving in the forest, if not dead.

“I’m sorry.”

“It is too late for apologies...”

Paul leaned forward, “My friend, I need to get my friend’s body back to the United States. I promised.”

“You are an American.” The man’s eyes were serious.

Paul nodded quickly. “Yes, I…”

“I have seen your face on posters. Do you not know that there is a reward for your capture?”

Paul tried to interject, “Senor, that’s not me, it must…

The man continued. “My wife and I are not animals. We try to live like the people we were before. You can stay until the area to quiets down.”

The door opened. The green-eyed woman from before walked in, put a plate in front of Paul.

“Thank you, thank you both.  If there is any way that I can repay, please let me know.”

The man smiled a little smile and stood up.

“There is some, ah, business I need to attend to.”  The man nodded at his wife. “Camila. Take care of our friend from the forest.” and looked back at Paul as he pulled on his raincoat.

“My name is Alfonso. Welcome to our guesthouse.”

The door closed.

Camila took her husband’s seat, pulling a strand of hair behind her ears. She could have been twenty, she could have been fifty.  She put a plate down in front of Paul, nothing in front of herself.

“Thank you, ma’am, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate…”

“Call me Camila. Why are you here, why are you in the jungle. Were you poor in the United States?”

         Paul laughed out loud. “Far from it actually, my father was the kind that wore Brooks Brothers suits everyday and we had a house on Weston Island, he was a banker, see, and always telling me that one day we would start our own bank together, Meyer and Son.”

         “I do not understand.”

         “I don’t really either.” Paul looked down at his food, the smell reminding him that he was starving. There was meat fried in narrow strips, tortilla, beans. All the livestock had been confiscated by the government—Paul hadn’t eaten meat for almost a year. It tasted like veal.

         Camila leaned forward, her eyebrow raised, a secret smile. “I went there once, American I mean, New York, before meeting Alfonso. My sister lives there with her husband. They work in a restaurant.”

         “Really?”

         Camila smiled, “Oh how I would love to be there right now. The restaurant, there were women with furs and there was a piano on a stage and so much food! And light everywhere! If only I had the money to escape.”

         “Me too, ma’am.  Me, too.”

#



Thanksgiving. Paul remembered driving home from Dartmouth. His old jeep crossing the bridge, passing the sign: Weston Island. The police chief had known him since he was eight. He was stopped at the driveway. Told to sit down. There was yellow tape blocking the door. Dinner had already been laid out; they were waiting for Paul to come home. An addict, a robbery gone wrong, the pistol found in the living room, empty, and the suspect was in custody, in the local police station.  Paul’s cousins, who lived in Beaufort, had already been called and were coming to pick him up.

Paul had stood up, walked to the car, heart pounding, breathless. They didn’t stop him. He had driven back across the river. Bought a pistol. He had never shot a gun before, not even a toy, and had almost walked out before remembering to buy bullets. The clerk had moved with trepidation, and almost dropping the box of cartridges when Paul asked him to show him how to use it. Fill the magazine, lock it into the chamber, flip the safety switch. Fire. Easy. The desk sergeant at the police station, sympathizing, let him in to look at the suspect. He hadn’t been searched. Walked to the lockup. Looked at the man who took everything from him. Two shots to the chest, one to the head. It would have been over.

His father had always said that if you could end this life counting your friends on one hand, to be happy. To stick with family.

#

Camila laughed, tilting her head back and resting her weight lightly on the doorframe.

Paul smiled. “How did you think they turned?”

Camila smiled, crossing her legs. “I remember thinking as a little girl that sailboats couldn’t turn in the sea. That in port the captains had to take special care to make sure they were headed the right direction before they set off. The wind would take care of the rest.”

Camila put down the plate she was holding, a snack for Paul, on his nightstand, by the photo of the little boy, and slid down the wall, sitting on the floor, her legs crossed.

“What was it like to live in America, to have a sailboat, to not worry about war?”

Paul had spent the morning helping her with errands, splitting logs and helping to clear away all the fallen brush in front of the house. The bullet wound in his side no longer hurt, except when he bent over to pick up something especially heavy.

Paul sat down on the bed, carefully rolling up his sleeves.

“They were worried about war in America too.  Bunch of guys I went to school with went to Vietnam. “

“You didn’t?”

“I have my own war to think about.”

“Let me tell you a secret, Paul.” Camila leaned in, green eyes looking at Paul.  “I write letters sometimes, to my sister, and my relatives. And sometimes Alfonso lets me send telegrams, when I’m lonely, and I want a response quickly.  And he’ll take them into town, like he’s doing today.”

Paul nodded. “And?”

Camila smiled indulgently, “he stopped looking at the addresses long ago.  I wrote a letter to my friend, and she says there’s a way to leave.  She knows the captain of a cargo ship who is nice and can take you anywhere you want to go.”

Paul smiled at her.  “Anywhere?”

“Well anywhere I’d want to go at least.  I could leave.”

         “Where would you go?”

         Camila looked down.  “Nowhere for now I guess.  The fare is many more thousands of dollars than I have.”

         “And Alfonso?”

         Camila was silent, staring intently at the rafters above, as if there was something interesting written in very small lettering there.

Paul, looked away, glanced at the picture on the nightstand. The boy in it was smiling, missing a tooth, running and grabbing for something just outside of the view of the camera.

“Who is this?”

Camila looked at him. “My son.”

“He looks like a nice boy.”

“He was.” Camila looked down again.  “Before the war.”

She stood up. Paul watched her go, her light dress seeming only to move a second after she did, a soft swishing. The snack on the night stand was leftovers from dinner wrapped in a tortilla. Paul flipped open the tortilla absentmindedly to see what was inside.

A crossed swords tattoo stared back at him from the meat.

Chambers?

Fuck.

Really?

Fuck.

Paul picked up his rifle, still no ammunition. Put it down on his rucksack. The door creaked as he opened it. He treaded carefully into the dining room. Camila was mending a flannel shirt at the table, humming to herself.  She looked up, saw Paul. Smiled and looked back down at her mending. Paul forced a smile back, and swallowed the blind panic back into stomach. Almost to the door. Fuck. 

         The door opened, Alfonso on his way in. He looked at Paul for a second, puzzled. Before Paul could react, Alfonso kneed him in the stomach. He didn’t seem old anymore.  Alfonso punched Paul in the stomach where the bullet wound was, and this time Paul fell. Alfonso kicked him on the ground, to the stomach. Paul put up his hands to ward off the blow, but Alfonso laughed and kicked Paul again, this time to the face.

#

The man had still been high, whispering to himself, his eyes rolled up into his sockets so that all you could see were the whites.  He didn’t notice Paul at all.  Paul, standing there a gun in his coat pocket, his hand clenching the handle, unclenching. Playing with the safety lever, finger grazing the trigger.

Instead, Paul had walked out, tossed the gun off the dock, and had wandered the streets angry and along early into the morning, the front of his coat doused in cheap whiskey, yelling at passing cars on the interstate. He had tried to pick a fight with a bum sleeping under the overpass. The man had lazily pulled out a switchblade and even Paul wasn’t drunk enough not to back away.

When the sun finally came up, he went to the recruiting station. U.S. Army. The sergeant was ecstatic; it wasn’t everyday that a recruit came in to volunteer for infantry. When they found out about the heart murmur, the failed draft, Paul had been yelled out of the station.

Heart condition.

Paul dropped out, cancelled his medical school applications. He moved back to his family’s empty house—the carpets had all been changed, and sat on the back porch late into the night, or on the sailboat at the dock when the weather was good, throwing empty whiskey bottles out into the waves and yelling at the ocean. 

Chambers had been outside the grocery store reading the newspaper headlines behind the glass, just another one of the wild-eyed bums who periodically pass through Weston Island because it looks greener than whatever shithole that they previously came from. The police usually take them away within the hour. Paul was coming out of the store, his brown paper bag filled with apples, chocolate ice cream, bacon and white bread, microwave dinners, beer—the sustenance of a bachelor.

Chambers had asked for a cigarette.

Paul even though his hands were full, set the grocery bag down on the newspaper machines, and obliged.

Chambers had been to war. Korea.

He had been a 19 year old basketball player from Iowa and had been in Korea for all of eighteen days before his platoon got overrun and he was dragged screaming from his foxhole by the Chinese.

Paul and Chambers moved on to the beers, and sitting on the curb in front of the grocer, Paul talked about his family’s murder for the first time. How he had bought a gun and had walked into the lock up and had looked into the man’s eyes, and how wished he had done it when he read in the newspaper that the trial ended and the man was sentenced to 25 years in prison, eligible for parole.

Chambers took this in, finally turning to Paul at the end of it and saying, “in Korea, I was sitting in the foxhole listening to the other men dying.  We had made a pact to bring each other home if we died.  We were all scared of being left there.  But I was alone and there were too many dead men and there was nothing I could do except crouch in that godforsaken hole. I heard laughing and voices outside and I had my rifle in my mouth and wanted to pull the trigger. Since the Chinks dragged me out, there hasn’t been one second where I don’t regret pulling that trigger. I shouldn’t have come back.  I shouldn’t have come back without them.”

Chambers was on his way to New York Harbor, he had been offered a contract job by some mercenary outfit looking for “military advisors.” He offered to have Paul to come along with him. “They need people, they’ll take anyone, even someone with a fucked up heart like you.”

It hadn’t been hard. As foreign fighters they had been treated well. They had been asked to tape propaganda, anti-American propaganda, denouncing the imperialist pigs. Chambers thought it was funny, payback somehow for letting him rot in Chinese Manchuria digging cola for four years. “Fuck you Uncle Sam,” Chambers had always said at the end of the recordings.

There were posters in the capital, Paul had seen himself smiling back under REWARD DEAD OR ALIVE 10,000 AMERICAN DOLLARS. But it was too late to stop, to leave the only solace he found now, which lay in pulling the trigger, never hesitating.

#

Paul regained consciousness, moving his hand to his face and feeling congealed blood. He was in his room. His rifle and rucksack had disappeared. He cursed himself for being so careless, for not keeping his knife on him, for letting his guard down because people were kind to him. The room had undergone a transformation from the night before. The small window now had iron bars crisscrossing in front of it, throwing a broken stream on light onto the floor planks. Fuck. Chambers. Paul crawled out of the bed unsteadily, knocking over the nightstand, sending the tin plate flying into the corner. Tried to pull off the grate. Stuck fast. He examined it more closely; it had been bolted in from the outside sometime during the night.

The door opened and was shut quickly. Alfonso entered, pointing a shotgun between Paul’s eyes. “Don’t move.”

“Fuck that…” Paul moved to stand up.

Alfonso shot a burst of birdshot to right of Paul; a couple pieces of bird shot lodging themselves into Paul’s hand.

“Fuck!, fuck!, please, please don’t.”

“Pig! I wasn’t lying. Next time I begin shooting off body parts. You’ll feel like you’re dead, but you won’t be. Not for a long time. Don’t worry, you can still eat meat that has birdshot in it. You just have to spit it out.” The voice rose and the fell into a deathly quiet. “Now sit down.”

Paul sat down, looking at his hand, not able to tell if he still had all his fingers.

         Alfonso continued, now not looking so grandfatherly, “your friend Chambers, he was a big man. You can live off him for the next three weeks.” He laughed bitterly. “You’re not going to starve to death under our hospitality.”

         He pulled up a chair from the corner, he was reclining now, the shotgun across his knees.

         “Don’t judge us. I know you intellectuals do. Yes, that’s right Paul Meyer, I’ve seen the posters. I went to school in the States too, although, I admit, not as good as yours. I met Camila there. We were going to come back here and do good with our new Western educations.”

         Alfonso gestured to the window, the sun-setting light fading past the bars.

         “Then this fucking war happened.” Alfonso spit on the ground, looked up at Paul, a sad expression grazed his face. “Camila has to clean this room,” he remarked apologetically. Alfonso rubbed away the spittle with his boot.

         “Camila and I had Oliver. He was to symbolize the new hope, the new president, the coming of peace and freedom to our home. I was working in the Ministry of Economics, a good job for somebody my age. I was almost so happy that I didn’t pay too much mind when the riots started. Then the bombings. Then the militias on the streets with rifles, the voices on the radio, the tanks and the curfews.”

         Paul twitched.

         Alfonso smiled slowly. “Don’t worry, I see you. I wouldn’t try it, I’ve become a very good shot with this shotgun in recent years. When we moved out here to avoid the unrest in the city, I thought I would be able to defend my little family from bastards like you.” Even the word bastard was said with a lilt, almost politely. Alfonso sighed. “So here is what we’re going to do. You will eat your friend for three more weeks. Then, and then, well, Camila does make some excellent roasts.”

         Alfonso, groaned as he stood up, his hand involuntarily going to support his back. The door closed.

#

Paul had a dream, where his mother and his father, and Jacqueline who was fifteen then, were back alive, and they were on the lawn. Paul was getting off the yellow school bus, his backpack on one strap. He desperately wanted to show his parents something.

“What is it son?” asked his father, his hands in the pockets of his gabardine trousers.

“Honey, don’t rush Paul, let him tell us himself.”

Paul breathless, fumbled with the zipper as he tried to open his backpack.

“Probably something stupid anyway,” said Jackie, as she walked back inside to refill her lemonade.

Paul rolled his eyes and took out his elementary school year book, and pointed to the fifth grade section. He was excited. He had waited the whole year for this to come out to see what his classmates wrote about him under his picture. He hadn’t looked yet.

“Read it aloud, Molly,” said his father to his mother, whose brow was furrowed looking for her son’s picture.

“There.” She pointed and underneath Paul’ smiling nine year old face:

WANTED. AMERICAN. DEAD OR ALIVE. REWARD: 10,000 AMERICAN DOLLARS.

#

The steady hum of a helicopter approaching.

Paul had been trapped for two weeks.  He could tell by how rancid his portions were that his time was almost up.  He had initially refused, out of principle, but eventually ate.  He tried not to think about it.

Whip-whip-whip-whip. Paul could tell by the horsepower that it was one of the old lumbering Sea Kings, a government helicopter. Of course there were no other types of helicopter in this jungle. Out the barred window he caught a glimpse of the helicopter landing, three men in jungle fatigues creeping toward the house , their rifles in the low ready. A search party. He quickly crawled across the room and looked out under the door crack, where he could see the dining room and the front door.

The front door opened. A soldier’s boots. I see Alfonso’s shoes move across the room.

“Hello, can I help you se…”

An unfamiliar voice.  “American?”

A note of disdain was obvious in Alfonso’s reply. “What are you talking ab…”

CRACK! Paul involuntarily flinched as a heavy slug came through the door above him and into the back wall of the room.

“Fuck! Fuck!” The soldier was cursing. 

Jammed rifle. By the position of the boots, Paul could see that soldier was pulling desperately on the charging handle, trying to get the dud round out of the chamber.

Alfonso’s voice was tramping across the room to where kept his shotgun, headed for his shotgun.

Two more sets of boots appeared in the entrance way.  They didn’t bother to talk.

         The rat-a-tat of assault rifles was deafening in the small house.

Rounds were going through his wall punching holes. Paul tried flatten himself even lower against the floor; he could see Alfonso ducking behind the banister now, the metallic click of a round being locked home.

Alfonso’s return fire with his 12-gauge peppered the entrance way with birdshot. 

A hit. A thud.  Paul could see jungle camouflage writhing on the floor.  Screaming. Alfonso had shot for the legs, getting birdshot in between the soldier’s body armor.

Alfonso laughing.  “Pig!”

Shouting from the soldiers. “Pendejo!  Show yourself like a man!”

A volley of bullets whined around, the soft walls of the rooming doing nothing to obstruct their flight. They were suppressing Alfonso, keeping his head down so he couldn’t fire back. Paul’s wall was starting to have more hole than wall.

A break in the firing.

Screaming from the soldier, still bleeding out on the ground.

Alfonso was not returning fire anymore. Paul could only hear heaving breathing from that side.

Soldier boots slowly circled around to the staircase and out of Paul’s sight line.

“Please…” Alfonso.

A rifle went off once.

The boots came over to Paul’s door, and he barely scrambled out the way before it was kicked down. The government soldier pointed his rifle down at Paul.

“Are you the American?” he asks tiredly.

Paul nodded hesitantly.

The soldier‘s posture relaxed, he took off his helmet and wicked off the sweat with his finger. “It’s your lucky day, amigo, we have orders to bring you back alive.”

Paul tried to refuse to go without trying to find what was left of Chambers, but they cuffed him with zip-ties and punched him in the stomach and shoved him into the helicopter. As the bird took off, Paul looked back at the house, the only one standing in a village full of burnt hulls.

Camila was smiling out of the lit second story window, her bottle green eyes blazing brighter than the jungle around them.