Free Pacazo by Roy Kesey Page A

Fine, I say.
    This is what I always say. If I am not mistaken, Armando has already had today’s first drink. I tell him that I will see him on campus, and he waves again.
    A bit faster now—my first class does not begin until nine, but I am required to be present in my office by eight-thirty. Nothing urgent or important has ever occurred in the course of that first half hour; none of the Peruvians in the English Section have their own offices, and none are paid as highly as me though most are better professors. I wonder why they do not resent me more than they do, and when I first came to Peru I had not planned to stay in Piura for any length of time, meant only to visit the ruins in Morropón, but as I waited for my bus to Cajamarca there was a tug at my arm and I turned, turned back, and my backpack was gone.
    Smell of balsam, smell of sweat, and how I would love to find those thieves and squeeze their heads until they burst but then another man, large and clean-cut and friendly: Reynaldo. He was waiting for a bus to Trujillo, saw me spinning, has come to ask if he can be of help. I say that he cannot. He stays regardless and together we confirm that I am here because Peruvian history interests me, that I am from the United States and have been robbed. He speaks slowly and clearly so that I will not misunderstand, requests a phone book at the counter, and while we wait for one to be located he asks me multipart hypotheticals about Michael Jordan and the future of the NBA.
    The phone book is brought. Reynaldo copies down for me the address of the police station. Then his bus arrives. He asks what I plan to do. I tell him that I do not know. He looks at me, gives me his card, says that he can promise nothing but the university where he works is often looking for more English professors. I ask about the History department and he shrugs, says that perhaps it is also a possibility. We shake hands. I watch his bus pull away. I possess nothing but my passport and a little money, and my research trip is otherwise over. I walk to the sidewalk, and hand Reynaldo’s card to the driver of the first taxi in line.
    The smell of turned earth. I thank the History dean for his time, walk out of his office and ask, follow along the white building and across a parking lot and up a path, am led to Arantxa. I ask if she is in need of professors. She says that God has sent me. Not God, I say, but a man at the bus station. Arantxa insists, a dog barks, sun sharp again in my eyes, and I see no reason not to agree. I give her the answers required: native English speaker, M.A., teaching experience, not a felon. She does not care that I do not have a TEFL certificate as long as I plan to get one at some point. I say that I have just been contemplating that very option. She tells me that the summer term starts in two weeks, that she can give me a full load, will pay me hourly for now but switch to a monthly salary in the fall if things work out. I agree though all this makes no sense to me, and won’t until I learn that the week before she had to fire her only native speaker, an Uzbek-Canadian named Shukhrat. I will later hear about Shukhrat from many at the university. The things I hear will be meant as warnings. He was polite and smart and pleasant and stole office supplies, smoked marijuana on the roof of the water tower, wrote a weekly underground newsletter comparing the Pope to Stalin.
    The work was and is simple. The students are lively and kind. Then Pilar, and three years move past, and perhaps I will see the taxista pull up to the pump at the Texaco station, will approach quietly, strike a match.
    Unlikely, ungraceful. I will have to come up with something better, and Sancho’s chronicle, Atuahualpa standing in the square, asks Pizarro to watch over his children, and Pizarro promises, steps back, signals the executioner. Months later he sends Atahualpa’s brother Quilliscacha to fetch the children from Rumiñavi in Quito. Quilliscacha