The DMZ by Jeanete Windle

Author:Jeanete Windle [Jeanette Windle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780825489549
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Published: 2011-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

THE BOREDOM WAS THE WORST, Julie had decided by the second week. Every day began the same. A pleasurable wakening to the freshness of the jungle dawn, the odor of wood smoke and brewing coffee, the morning chorus of birds and monkeys. Familiar scents and sounds, even loved. Then a glimpse of mottled green and brown and the metallic gray of an assault-rifle barrel, and the feeling of well-being would evaporate like the lingering coolness that burned off as soon as the sun rose.

Breakfast was invariably coffee and arepas. The rest of the day stretched endlessly ahead, with nothing to mark the long hours but dinner and supper. Julie found herself anticipating these as she had never looked forward to meals before, just to break up the day, though again the food rarely varied from rice and beans or sancocho, with an occasional piece of meat added to the pot if one of the guerrillas had gone out hunting.

Victor did not again prohibit the guerrillas from talking to Julie. But besides Carlos himself, only Alberto and Marcela showed any inclination to friendliness, and even these three grew visibly uneasy if Julie dragged them into too long a conversation. Since she didn’t want to focus unwelcome attention on them, Julie soon learned to limit her communication to a minimum. After that first night, she wasn’t invited again to join the guerrillas’ evening activities.

Nor was she allowed to help around camp, though by the second day she had begged Marcela to let her assist with the kitchen chores. It was Victor who vetoed her offer, shouting at the young girl that the prisoner was not permitted to move around the encampment. The camp leader seemed to have his eye on Julie at all times, and even an overly long trip to the latrine could trigger an eruption of anger.

Julie spent most of her day sitting cross-legged on the pallet in her shelter, fanning herself with a palm leaf against the humid heat. When her muscles protested that position, she stretched out on the thin mattress, pretending to be asleep. For a person who had always taken pride in filling her days with productive output, the idleness was a worse torture than the mosquitoes.

These continued to plague Julie and everyone else in the camp. Her capture had occurred at the tail end of the wet season, and in a few weeks the rains would be gone and with them the mosquitoes. In the meantime, there continued to be at least one good downpour almost every day, and if the rain itself washed away the mosquitoes and brought momentary relief to the heat, it was always followed by an increased insect population, as though the puddles left standing after the rain were breeding tanks for them.

Julie’s bottle of repellant ran out after the first few days, and after a day without, she was desperate enough to submit to what the others were doing. They had brought along one of those flit gun sprayers filled

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