Card, Orson Scott - 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

Side 1

Card, Orson Scott - America

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

Side 2

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Card, Orson Scott - America

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