LISA WINTER COULD ONLY SEE the back of Luc’s head as the repurposed school bus descended the steep valley toward Ahuachapan. The transmission whining through its downshifts was very loud. Over the noise Luc was trying to talk to Concha, the Volunteer Director, and the guys from Habitat for Humanity who were building houses at the same site. They were all talking about the El Salvador drug gangs.
“I mean, even after a week I still can’t get used to the guards with shotguns,” Luc shouted. Having to raise his voice over the engine made Luc sound breathless and overeager. “I mean, are there really a lot of them? The, you know – the gangs. What do you call them again?”
“Maras,” Concha replied, in the patient manner of a practiced tour guide. But Lisa thought she saw a hard spark in Concha’s black eyes that betrayed annoyance. “It’s just the slang word for gangs,” Concha said, and then slid into an officially-sanctioned patter in her unaccented American English. “It’s true that the maras are present in the region and represent a law enforcement challenge but the actual undesirable activity in all of the Western departments has diminished markedly in recent months and as you have seen both our organizations take great precautions nonetheless,” she said. She did not perceptibly inhale between phrases.
“In New York, the Maras own the Giants,” Cliff put in. Cliff was a Habitat volunteer from Queens. He made a bad joke about everything.
Lisa watched quietly as Luc talked.
…
Chris McDermott has lived in New York, New England and the Carolinas. He is a veteran lawyer, and a life-long writer of fiction. He recently has had stories published in Nude Bruce Review and Write City Ezine.