Free Water from My Heart by Charles Martin

he ever wanted a corner on the Central American coffee market, this was it. It struck me as I spoke that Marshall’s attention was elsewhere. His head was aimed at me, but his ears were not. He’d checked out. Which meant he was three steps ahead. Whatever his next move was, he’d made it long ago.
    He turned to Brendan. “Brendan?”
    Brendan had developed a habit of pretending to shoot an imaginary six-gun when he spoke about stocks or decisions involving money. He’d practiced the whole routine: draw, cock, shoot, blow smoke off the barrel muzzle, and then holster. He thought it made him look like a gunslinger, which became his self-adopted nickname—because he didn’t like “Oz Brown.” Brendan brandished his finger pistol. “It’s a loser. Close up shop. We’ve accomplished what we set out to do.” He blew the smoke off the barrel. “Cut our losses and run.”
    The words “We’ve accomplished what we set out to do” echoed in my mind.
    That’s when it struck me how perfectly Marshall had played this hand. It was never about the coffee. In the last six months, he’d successfully removed me and inserted Brendan. My limited experience with Brendan told me that Brendan loved Brendan and would sell his soul for Marshall’s money. Which he did. And it didn’t take a genius to realize that while I’d been gone making them money, Brendan had been dating my girlfriend.
    *  *  *
    Overnight, Marshall called in the loans on the remaining family members of the Cinco Padres. Penniless and coffee-less, they and their families lost everything. The farms were foreclosed on and became the property of the bank. If the hurricane had set that region back two decades, Marshall’s business tactics would set it back five more. Then, like a man who’d slept with the town whore, he took a shower and walked away. As was his right given him by his money.
    Entire villages, dependent upon the plantations for work and sustenance, lost everything. And all for what? His money? His daughter? His entertainment? As the bitterness settled in my mouth, I realized it was about none of that. Marshall’s life had one overriding urge—power. And this game he was playing, in which I was imprisoned and little more than a pawn, was how he wielded it.
    The following week, I returned to Nicaragua to deliver the papers Marshall and his lawyers had signed and to clean out the hotel room in León, which I’d converted into an office and had served as my home. The night I left, I rode out of town on a rented motorcycle up into the mountains. Until then, I’d spent some time examining warehouses in town where the coffee was stored once it had been harvested, cleaned, and brought to town for sale, but I’d never actually made my way deep into the mountains—onto the plantations—where the coffee was grown. Where the people lived who grew it. Never gotten my hands dirty or talked to a single family working in the plantations. I can’t tell you why I did. I just did.
    Entire families were walking down. Mothers and fathers with three, four, or five kids. No shoes. No shirts. No food. No nothing. They carried their lives in sacks on their shoulders. I didn’t know them because I hadn’t tried. I didn’t speak Spanish, nor had I attempted to learn. But something inside me, what might have once been called a moral plumb line, told me that I’d helped orchestrate their misery. No, I didn’t create the hurricane, but they could have survived that. Rebuilt. What they could not survive was Marshall. Me. The empty and gaunt eyes told me that we’d broken these people.
    One woman in particular still comes to mind. She was pregnant. Wore a black scarf that matched her black hair, her face ashen. She looked like she’d just lost everything that ever mattered. She stared down the road, numb to the tears shining on her cheeks. I cut the engine, crossed my arms, and watched as the line of people filed down the mountain like ants. Most didn’t know