Sugarcane

Armando should never have taken on the boy, but the food lines were long, and despite being the town doctor, he was not privileged beyond the standard cup of sugar every Saturday. He had a jeep, no roof, paid for by the barracks, but he was allowed no passengers (other than the boy) and he could not drive the vehicle except on house calls to the base, which he made daily. He’d thought about taping boards where the windows should be and driving south to the city beaches on weekends, but he’d also thought about setting fire to his house, hiking to Guardalavaca, slipping into the ocean at midnight and trying for Duncan Town. The bad joke was most of the sugar left the island, and even if Armando could drive the jeep to another food station, he’d still have to produce a clean rations book, which his was not. People eyed him jealously when the truck sputtered by on uneven roads, but his luxury meant only he could work longer hours and see patients farther away. So when a pound of raw sugar appeared five months ago in his mailbox with a note requesting an internship for the plantation manager’s son, Armando wrote back “yes” and “of course” while shoveling four teaspoons of amber crystal into his evening coffee.

But the boy, Eduardo, was thick in the hands, and recently he’d proven himself thick in the ears. Entrance exams were now sixteen days away, and the week before he confessed to not having read the books Armando had given him back in April. He said they were all lists and diagrams, and he was learning more by watching.