Sarapiqui: Page 2 of 4

Jacob stood where the driveway met the gravel road. God love that child, nearly as tall as a seven year old although he was five and looking like a parody of Huckleberry Finn in rubber boots and pants that were too short. He heard the bus while it was descending the long winding hill and he had come alone to meet me and his brother. Jacob was quieter than his brother. His hair was not as blonde and it was harder to fathom his thoughts. I once made the terrible mistake of thinking I loved Liam more, but it was not true. I should have thought I love them equally but in different ways. That was the truth of it. My heart felt lighter with Liam, while it ached for Jacob and his sense of duty toward his father, his brother and me. Once, after an argument with Ari, Jacob took my hand and Ari’s and placed them together. What would he do if his father and I divorced?

Here came my husband, from the cantina up the road, carrying a six pack of cold beer. Jesus, he let his hair grow long and he has a scruffy beard, too. Well, it’s hard to keep groomed here, of course. “Ari! You left Jacob here alone while you went to buy beer!” I shouted.

“Now don’t get started on me, he’s just fine,” he called. “Hello, Esperanza! Isn’t this beautiful?” He turned all around with the six pack held aloft like an offering to the gods who found this farm. “Come see the cows!” He seemed delighted, effusive even, but I was wary that his brooding moods were not gone.

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I met Ari at a nonviolence workshop, freshly divorced from his first wife. Ari was affable, humorous and loud. He loved downhill skiing and football and scouting big farm boys for football scholarships to college. He had a small business, a popular ice cream and chocolate shop. He hired Vietnam war resisters at his shop and he also hired me because I was a Quaker, opposed to any war. At first I was proud of my job. I worked five daily shifts and I kept the accounts, made the payroll, and paid the distributors.

Then, a few years later, after we were married and our sons were born, I found an old newspaper clipping from the time of Ari’s discharge from the Navy and before his first marriage. “It’s time to get married,” the article quoted him. “I need a secretary and a little woman to help me around the farm.” Ari often joked and I thought it was funny at first reading, but I was gobsmacked because that was similar to the role I was fulfilling. Like Rip Van Winkle waking up from a long sleep, things were no longer the same. Once, I was grateful for a ‘politically correct’ job, then we married and I worked without wages.

I didn’t know him when he was most successful. He built three farms and owned big polished dairy transport trucks and a large colonial-style home. He said he was a pilot with his own private plane, but all of that was gone when I met him. “It got too big,” he said, “and prices for milk bottomed out.” He was restless, often over-the-top with his intentions to live a simpler life and to live somewhere beyond the reaches of his ex-wife and alimony. When I was pregnant with Jacob he wanted to manage a ranch in central Brazil. He thought I should pack up and go, and give birth without medical care on the edge of the Amazon Forest. Costa Rica was a compromise, much closer to home and more civilized compared to the Amazon basin. He waited until Liam was born, then he bought a VW van and the four of us camped all the way to Central America.

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The boys ran toward their father while I looked around the rented farm, or finca, in the tiny village called La Virgen de Sarapiqui. It nestled at the foot of a cloud forest which in turn climbed the back of Poas volcano. There, waterfalls hung in long threads among the volcanic ridges. The vista was astounding. Many mornings after my arrival, I rode on horseback just to see it all again, constant except for the days the forest disappeared into belches of steamy cloud from Poas’ caldera lake. This side of the cordillera was completely different from the often sunny fields of our own farm. The Poas volcano was shaped like a candle in the wind: a taller unmelted back shielded this side, while the other was marked by furrows of old lava. This side was lush, the other in drought.

Between us and the cordillera ridge were jaguar and coati, tapirs, spiders and snakes.There were countless species of snakes in this region including the dreaded fer de lance. There was a large tool box containing snake anti-venom in the unfurnished living room of our borrowed home and every few days a worker arrived with a machete to chop the grass around the house to its shortest so that no snake could hide.

Sometimes he found a snake, killed it and hung it on the fence as a trophy.

Once, while walking to a spring surrounded by lush foliage I saw a snake coiled beside the path. Jacob was a few steps ahead of me. Should I call out to warn him? If he startled, he might step on the snake instead. I said nothing and after he passed by, the snake unwound and slipped across the path, down toward the spring. After that, I watched Jacob and Liam almost obsessively, to keep them from harm.

Black rubber boots for shoes, clothes misshapen by hand wringing and fair haired boys riding on the shoulders of the workers were the images I kept of Jacob and Liam at Sarapiqui. They were allowed to go to the barn with their father or with the workers to bring the cows in for milking. That was as far as I would let them wander out of my sight. They had few playmates but loved ‘working’ with their father and the farm hands most of all.

On another day, the workers came running to say one of our best cows had fallen into a huge labyrinth-like ant colony, with soil soft as quicksand, but she suffocated before they returned with ropes to try to haul her out. Her body was left for the ants and night prowlers to strip. Calves were born and cows died. Jacob and Liam learned about birth and death long before I thought to teach them.

In the drowsy afternoons, I read bilingual picture books to the boys, then we napped on our one bed. While the boys slept on, I prepared our dinner. Like campesino meals, rice and black beans and fried plantains (platanos) were our main dishes. We made Tico cheese, a salty and firm cheese, because there was no electricity for cooling fresh milk, so an added treat was corn tortillas with melted cheese from our own production, if it could be spared.

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