Free Blood Lake by Liz Kenneth; Martínez Wishnia Page B

open the gate to let us in, because the machanism’s broken, I think.
    Workers are loading dozens of
quintales
onto a big German-made transport with a wooden cargo bed that somebody painted bright orange. The license plates say AZUAY province, so this rice is also getting ready for the long, strange trip up to Cuenca.
    Lucho spots the truck driver and goes over to shake hands with him. They’ve seen each other traveling the same hard roads every week.
    â€œ
Hola, compadrecito, ¿cómo é la cosa?
”
    â€œ
Bien mal, Don Luchito
. The price is in the clouds this week.” The guy’s in his thirties, and already going marsh-mallowy from the driver’s seat blues. His shirt is soaked with sweat and he’s red-faced from the heat.
    â€œFilomena, this vagabond calls himself Vicente.
Esta chica tan guapa es mi prima
.”
    â€œ
¿Ah? Mucho gusto
,” says Vicente, gripping my palm with a sticky hand and shaking it twice.
    â€œMy pleasure.”
    â€œYou both hail from the frozen plains,” says Lucho.
    â€œReally? I’m from Cojitambo,” he says, which is too close to some other places, so I mutter something inconsequential about the harsh country around there and follow Lucho inside the cavernous warehouse. I’d like to say it gets cooler inside the place, but it only gets hotter under the big tin roof.
    â€œLet me open a few,” says Lucho, waving his finger back and forth over a phalanx of upright sacks plopped in the middle of the cement floor. Three guys in dirty blue T-shirts look over and nod. I guess they know a rice man when they see one.
    Lucho loosens the plastic knots and opens the coarse white sack, caresses the surface of the grainy mound and comes up with a few samples in his fingers. He bites into one and grinds it between his teeth. He repeats this taste-and-texture test five times before finding the batch he likes and buying it.
    A couple of workers try to impress me by helping Lucho lift the
quintal
onto his wooden flatbed. It’s only a hundred pounds, guys.
    The big truck pulls out, and we pull out with it.
    â€œThey have a sale on orange paint, or did somebody get drunk and buy the wrong color?” I ask, as the bright orange monstrosity in front of us pitches on flaccid suspension like a caravel buffeted by the waves.
    â€œColor? Hell, I’d spend the money on some new shocks. Those highland roads are tough on the ass,” says Lucho, and while we’re both laughing, four masked men armed with handguns and a streetsweeper stop the orange truck and hijack it.
    They get my
paisano
Vicente covered on both sides, then two of them climb in the back with the rice. They tell him to keep driving, and they head down the street and make a left at the sugar refinery.
    Plans change.
    We wait, then I tell Lucho, “Follow them.”
    â€œFollow them?”
    â€œYes.”
    It’s not hard. They don’t try to be elusive. The two men in the back have already taken off their masks and are making themselves comfortable, reclining on the sacks of rice. We’re heading south. After we pass the free hospital, Lucho says, “They’re heading towards the port.”
    The port? That doesn’t make any sense. Rice is shipped by the mountainload every day in such colossal quantities that it’s actually priced
cheaper
for export than for wholesale. They’re going to lose money on this deal if they try to resell it at the port. Of course they just stole it, so what do they care about losing a few pennies? But people here care about a few pennies. And those thieves looked mighty well fed.
    â€œThey’re going to El Guasmo.”
    Lucho looks at me, then nods.
    It sounds crazy at first. But we know.
    The bumpy paved road becomes a bumpy dirt road leading into the heart of a slum more crowded than our third-largest city. As the truck approaches a central square, several unsmiling men wearing light-colored suits and