America

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AMERICA

By Orson Scott Card

The difference between Latin America and North America's United States has always

been vast; the first being in virtual colonial aspect to the Empire of the Dollar. Now

beyond the border between Mexico and the U.S.A. there lives another race, that of the

native Americans miscalled Indians. The majority of the inhabitants of those countries

are among the dispossessed of the world. This may change; indeed, as history always

calls the tune, no matter how long or in what fashion it takes, it will change.

Sam Monson and Anamari Boagente had two encounters in their lives, forty years apart.

The first encounter lasted for several weeks in the high Amazon jungle, the village of

Agualinda. The second was for only an hour near the ruins of the Glen Canyon Dam, on

the border between Navaho country and the State of Deseret.

When they met the first time, Sam was a scrawny teenager from Utah and Anamari was a

middle-aged spinster Indian from Brazil. When they met the second time, he was

governor of Deseret, the last European state in America, and she was, to some people's

way of thinking, the mother of God. It never occurred to anyone that they had ever met

before, except me. I saw it plain as day, and pestered Sam until he told me the whole

story. Now Sam is dead and she's long gone, and I'm the only one who knows the truth. I

thought for a long time that I'd take this story untold to my grave, but I see now that I

can't do that. The way I see it, I won't be allowed to die until I write this down. All my

real work was done long since, so why else am I alive? I figure the land has kept me

breathing so I can tell the story of its victory, and it has kept you alive so you can hear it.

Gods are like that. It isn't enough for them to run everything. They want to be famous,

too.

Agualinda, Amazonas

Passengers were nothing to her. Anamari only cared about helicopters when they brought

medical supplies. This chopper carried a precious packet of benaxidene; Anamari barely

noticed the skinny, awkward boy who sat by the crates, looking hostile. Another Yanqui

who doesn't want to be stuck out in the jungle. Nothing new about that. Norteamericanos

were almost invisible to Anamari by now. They came and went.

It was the Brazilian government people she had to worry about, the petty bureaucrats

suffering through years of virtual exile in Mannaus, working out their frustration by being

petty tyrants over the helpless Indians. No I'm sorry we don't have any more penicillin, no

more syringes, what did you do with the AIDS vaccine we gave you three years ago? Do

you think we're made of money here? Let them come to town if they want to get well.

There's a hospital in Sao Paulo de Olivenca, send them there, we're not going to turn you

into a second hospital out there in the middle of nowhere, not for a village of a hundred

filthy Baniwas, it's not as if you're a doctor, you're just an old withered up Indian woman

yourself, you never graduated from the medical schools, we can't spare medicines for

you. It made them feel so important, to decide whether or not an Indian child would live

or die. As often as not they passed sentence of death by refusing to send supplies. It made

them feel powerful as God.

Anamari knew better than to protest or argue-it would only make that bureaucrat likelier

to kill again in the future. But sometimes, when the need was great and the medicine was

common, Anamari would go to the Yanqui geologists and ask if they had this or that.

Sometimes they would share, but if they didn't, they wouldn't lift a finger to get any.

They were not tyrants like the Brazilian bureaucrats. They just didn't give a damn. They

were there to make money.

That was what Anamari saw when she looked at the sullen light-haired boy in the

helicopter-another Norteamericano, just like all the other Norteamericanos, only younger.

She had the benaxidene, and so she immediately began spreading word that all the

Baniwas should come for injections. It was a disease that had been introduced during the

war between Guyana and Venezuela two years ago; as usual, most of the victims were

not citizens of either country, just the Indios of the jungle, waking up one morning with

their joints stiffening, hardening until no movement was possible. Benaxidene was the

antidote, but you had to have it every few months or your joints would stiffen up again.

As usual, the bureaucrats had diverted a shipment and there were a dozen Baniwas

bedridden in the village. As usual, one or two of the Indians would be too far gone for the

cure; one or two of their joints would be stiff for the rest of their lives. As usual, Anamari

said little as she gave the injections, and the Baniwas said less to her.

It was not until the next day that Anamari had time to notice the young Yanqui boy

wandering around the village. He was wearing rumpled white clothing, already somewhat

soiled with the greens and browns of life along the rivers of the Amazon jungle. He

showed no sign of being interested in anything, but an hour into her rounds, checking on

the results of yesterday's benaxidene treatments, she became aware that he was following

her.

She turned around in the doorway of the government-built hovel and faced him. "O que

e'?" she demanded. What do you want?

To her surprise, he answered in halting Portuguese. Most of these Yanquis never

bothered to learn the language at all, expecting her and everybody else to speak English.

"Posso ajudar?" he asked. Can I help?

"Nao," she said. "Mas pode olhar." You can watch.

He looked at her in bafflement.

She repeated her sentence slowly, enunciating clearly. "Pode olhar."

"Eu?" Me?

"Voce, sim. And I can speak English."

"I don't want to speak English."

"Tanto faz," she said. Makes no difference.

He followed her into the hut. It was a little girl, lying naked in her own feces. She had

palsy from a bout with meningitis years ago, when she was an infant, and Anamari

figured that the girl would probably be one of the ones for whom the benaxidene came

too late. That's how things usually worked-the weak suffer most. But no, her joints were

flexing again, and the girl smiled at them, that heartbreakingly happy smile that made

palsy victims so beautiful at times.

So. Some luck after all, the benaxidene had been in time for her.

Anamari took the lid off the clay waterjar that stood on the one table in the room, and

dipped one of her clean rags in it. She used it to wipe the girl, then lifted her frail,

atrophied body and pulled the soiled sheet out from under her. On impulse, she handed

the sheet to the boy.

"Leva fora," she said. And, when he didn't understand, "Take it outside."

He did not hesitate to take it, which surprised her. "Do you want me to wash it?"

"You could shake off the worst of it," she said. "Out over the garden in back. I'll wash it

later."

He came back in, carrying the wadded-up sheet, just as she was leaving. "All done here,"

she said. "We'll stop by my house to start that soaking. I'll carry it now."

He didn't hand it to her. "I've got it," he said. "Aren't you going to give her a clean sheet?"

"There are only four sheets in the village," she said. "Two of them are on my bed. She

won't mind lying on the mat. I'm the only one in the village who cares about linens. I'm

also the only one who cares about this girl."

"She likes you," he said.

"She smiles like that at everybody.

"So maybe she likes everybody."

Anamari grunted and led the way to her house. It was two government hovels pushed

together. The one served as her clinic, the other as her home. Out back she had two metal

washtubs. She handed one of them to the Yanqui boy, pointed at the rainwater tank, and

told him to fill it. He did. It made her furious.

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America

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