Just past dawn on the Santa Fe shoreline, Hari Bhakti Das parked his small, white pick-up truck beside the boardwalk and got out. He examined a trash can full of wine cartons and large beer bottles. Cigarette butts lay scattered all over the concrete and on the path leading to the beach. He shook his head in disappointment and chuckled at the sight as if the detritus were the leftovers of a silly game.
As he walked towards the sand, the thick, salt air clung to his skin, and the bowels of the bay greeted him with the stench of oil, gas, and garbage.
Dead seagulls—meat fetid, bones exposed—were common everywhere on the beaches of Bolivar Bay, as were washed-up fishing nets, razors, children’s toys, tampons, and wrappers of all kinds. Though not an everyday occurrence, anyone who lived in the Bay had also seen the rotting corpses of sea lions berthed on the beach—their eyes pecked out; their bellies filled with sand crabs.
At the edge of the boardwalk, Hari Bhakti watched a crane across the Bay pick up an orange shipping container waiting in the stacks. The port city, La Bahía, rested on a hilly promontory at the west end of the Bay; it guarded his eyes from the rising summer sun long enough to follow the arm of the crane from the stacks to the freighter beneath the boom. Not much of Güevavela’s exports were ever sent anywhere but the country’s northern neighbor. Coffee, beef, even women trafficked on the hush, were shipped north from Güevavela. Hari Bhakti grunted at the sight and stepped on the sand in direction of the distant hill that marked the eastern edge of the Bay.
As a monk, steadfast to the Order’s fastidious rules of cleanliness, Hari Bhakti Das never came to the beaches in town. They were filled with all the attachments he had vowed to renounce, or the behaviors he shunned. He was no stranger to the shore but preferred to make the trip outside of Bolivar Bay, where the sand was clean and bearded, hard-put bums didn’t ask monks for change. But the bus terminal was only three blocks away, and maybe some latent purity still abided in the sounds of the ocean.
Vrindavan’s bus would arrive in an hour—the overnight from the capital. The boy was in his early twenties now, not the wide-eyed child whose smile and play helped heal Hari Bhakti after five years of hard incarceration. Though he’d seen Vrindavan at devotee gatherings from time to time, seven years in a big city will change a person. Maybe he didn’t know Vrindavan at all. Maybe a new addition to the temple wasn’t the best idea after all, but he was Arjun’s son—shrewd, hard-working, forward. And, sooner or later, everyone misses their home; everyone misses family.
As he headed east, Hari Bhakti drew closer to the water, the waves small and calm that morning. He wore a strap around his neck which held a green cloth beadbag that fell to his sternum, the contents of which bounced against his chest as he walked. Past the flotsam and litter, he took off his sandals and hiked up his work pants.
His feet shimmied into the wet sand. The water covered his ankles. He took the strap from his neck, holding the beadbag with both hands. The hardest part about chanting is getting started. The mind will give anyone a thousand reasons to avoid a challenge.
Out in the bay, three freighters shimmered in the morning sun. A cormorant hurled into the water for its breakfast. A gaggle of seagulls squawked overhead.
Hari Bhakti was temple president now, only months away from taking the Order’s highest vows of service. He’d be a full-fledged Sannyasi by October. He had to chant even when no one was looking, even when he couldn’t sleep and especially when he was worried.
The sound of the waves drowned out the cars passing behind him on the strip. The silence engulfed him; seldom did he find it. He dropped his jaw; his shoulders relaxed. A tear of fatigue fell down his face, but he quickly wiped it away. Grunting, he shook his head wildly and said to himself, “C’mon dammit,” as he pulled the beads from the small, green bag.
Minutes into chanting, he’d finally caught a rhythm—moving his body back and forth as he repeated the mantra again and again. Chant for chant, his voice grew louder. No one could hear him surrounded by water, granting him full license to yell out into the Bay. “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,” he’d shout, switching into a mumble when his voice grew tired, then back to shouting, “Hare Rama, Hare Rama.” His eyes were half closed, his focus entirely on the mantra, and when he finished the round of one-hundred eight mantras, he said the prayer to his spiritual master and chanted another round.
“Eeeh! Eeeh!”
Whatever voice that sounded from the beach didn’t break his focus.
“Eeeh!” A hand nudged his shoulder. Startled, Hari Bhakti jumped sideways. A man with short, greasy hair and red, leathery skin was standing beside him, his shoes immersed in the lap of the waves.
“Must be some shit,” said the stranger smiling. “Look, look,” he said fiddling in his pocket, “my last two lukas.” He pulled out a couple of crinkled, light blue bills, excited at the prospect.
Hari Bhakti turned to the stranger baffled, taking his right hand out of the beadbag. He looked farther afield to see that the stranger had a friend who twitched in anticipation of a score.
“Just a hit each, and we’ll even come out here and scream with you.”
Hari Bhakti studied the stranger—his dire condition. After several moments of bated anticipation, the stranger leaned sideways to glance at the long scar that ran from forehead to chin on the right side of Hari Bhakti’s face.
“Comandante?” asked the stranger.
From sheer surprise, Hari Bhakti’s jaw dropped. No one had called him by that name in ten, eleven years.
"You don’t remember me, huh?”
Hari Bhakti winced and shook his head no. He backed out of the water while wrapping up the beadbag and stuffing it in his pocket.
“Lolo,” shouted the stranger to other fiend on the beach. “Come meet Comandante Araujo, fierce leader of the rebel army.” Despite the playfulness of his tone, the stranger’s words carried reverence.
Lolo was sitting on the sand with his knees bent, legs wide, digging a hole in the sand. When Lolo didn’t even lift his head, the stranger chuckled and turned back to Hari Bhakti saying, “The war had its toll on all of us. Lolo…” he sighed, twitching his chin. “Lost his four-year-old son when the greenbacks marched on Payzandú.”
“Payzandú,” Hari Bhakti repeated as his eyes flickered side to side, calculating the trace of his distant past. He looked again at the vagrant—his arms lanky and tired, the rings around his eyes mementos of war, prison, and beggary, his hunger for freedom masked by an appetite for intoxication. But beneath the shroud of torment and injury, dying embers of the young men who had rallied against unscrupulous soldiers to avenge their village and the child who’d protested the rape of his mother.
“You’re Vaquerito,” realized Hari Bhakti, looking then to Lolo digging in the sand.
“Yeah, that’s him,” affirmed Vaquerito, “our sergeant.”
“Canales?”
“Yeah,” sighed Vaquerito. “You sent him the squad and the extra rifles.”
“And then you bushwhacked your way down to Eyapel.” Hari Bhakti paused in his recollection. “We called you ‘The Forgotten’.”
“But you remembered, eh?” acknowledged Vaquerito.
“Yeah,” nodded Hari Bhakti, “that was what the War was about, wasn’t it?”
Waves crashed on Hari Bhakti’s bare legs, and towards La Bahía seagulls were circling a carcass.
“You remember?” asked Vaquerito. His tone turned sour, his eyes wilted. “We rode the HEMTT together.”
Hari Bhakti hung his head, saying, “Greenbacks left us in that truck for two days.”
“And your whole shit”—Vaquerito nodded at the gnarly scar on Hari Bhakti’s face— “was getting infected.”
Vaquerito’s friend was now pouring sand over his legs and mumbling something to himself.
“We ain’t much guerrillas these days,” reckoned Vaquerito. “But fuck man, if we could just get a couple more lukas to hold us over. We gatherin’ kelp tomorrow on the east end. We just need a little to get by, you know?”
Hari Bhakti chuckled at the junction of past and present, studying the sea, the bright rising sun, his old comrades desperate for relief from their wretched existence. “I’m not on paste, Vaquerito. I was meditating.”
Vaquerito raised a single eyebrow.
“I’ve been a monk for ten years now.” He dipped his chin down and sighed. As he opened his mouth again to speak, Vaquerito interrupted him, saying in his distinct coastal accent, “Don’t start to preachin’ on me now. They tried to convert me like eight thousand times.”
Hari Bhakti chuckled, partly at the play in Vaquerito’s response, mostly in disbelief that they’d come face to face again. “We run a restaurant downtown. We can bring you leftovers. I don’t have much else to offer.”
“I just need a pack of cigarettes, man.”
“I keep vows, my brother. Can’t help you with that one.”
“It’s whatever. Keep on keepin’ on, I guess.” Vaquerito turned away but paused to leave a final comment. “Comandante, honestly, I’m a good electrician, but nobody wanna give me a chance.” He looked at the sand, then back at Hari Bhakti. “But I hear Hightower is hiring mercs so…you know.”
“Hightower?” Hari Bhakti asked with alarm.
“Yeah,” replied Vaquerito, “I don’t know exactly what for, but it’s probably some cowboy and Indian shit. Know what I mean? At least I’d be back in the highlands, right?”
“Right,” mumbled Hari Bhakti, looking past Vaquerito towards the west end of the Bay.
“It was good to see you, Comandante,” said Vaquerito.
“I’ll keep you in my prayers,” replied Hari Bhakti in rote recitation.
“Prayers ain’t shit, brother, if nothing become of them.”
Vaquerito walked back up the beach towards Sergeant Canales playing in the sand. Another freighter was arriving to port. Another wave crashed at his feet.
Mercenaries were up in the highlands. Vrindavan was coming home. No, his god never let him idle for long.
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