Chapter 3: Father Hammond

Chapter 3: Father Hammond

Father Hammond had long perceived that he was destined to live a holy life. The region he called home was one of the most unknown to most Nicaraguans. He came from a land of myths and legends, of African monarchs and nobles, of Indian tribes and strange customs, a place where turtles were corralled like chickens for their flesh and eggs, where people of all races could be seen about the towns, greeting each other with in their respective tongues—hellos and holas and nacsas—a place so remote that it could only be reached by small unstable planes from Managua, known as a pipilachas, a word which probably originates from Nahualt, and which Nicaraguans normally use to refer to dragonflies. Only after embarking on the precarious journey to his birthplace, and witnessing the violent rattling of the little plane, would you realize how appropriately they had been named.

Father Hammond was raised in an expansive wooden house—the standard style in that department—not only due to the impossibility of acquiring concrete in such a remote place, but because of the innumerable pine trees which available to them, trees which grew in the hundreds of thousands across the plains extending from the central highlands to the Caribbean coast. Unfortunately, this asset led to the rapid deforestation this strange land where slash and burn tactics are still employed for agriculture, and long-term logging is practiced for short-term wealth. It was growing up there, specifically in the town of Puerto Cabezas, known to the native Miskito Indians as bilwi, where Father Hammond, being subjected and exposed to several cultures—all equally burdened by extreme poverty—learned about suffering and God.

The Caribbean environment is tremendously foreign to most Nicaraguans, who are among the most homogeneous people in the world. The great majority of its citizens live in the Pacific lowlands near the lakes. Forced to forget their native songs long ago, most Nicaraguans now speak the same Spanish, still using the colonial vos instead of the modern tu, pray in the same styled low-ceiling Catholic churches, and share the same skin tones, which vary as much as their morning café con leche varies, depending on how much milk they can afford to add.       

The department of RAAN (Autonomous Region of the Northern Atlantic), as can be inferred by its name—or non-name—has been for centuries mostly known for its raw material. Like all regions abounding in natural resources and beautiful scenery, fate had condemned it to exploitation, to prostitution by its own populace, to be enviously abundant and catch the eye of avaricious foreigners. And yet, it was not this which ailed the heart of Father Hammond as he was growing up. He could easily bear the thought of his corporeal homeland being cut up and ravaged for profit. But it was the harvesting of souls which troubled him, the contention that “raw material” was not limited to the land, but extended to its inhabitants.

His home was also the home of five distinct peoples, the Miskitu, Sumu, Rama, and the multi-ethnic Creoles and Garinagu, descendents of black slaves and natives. These peoples had remained unconverted by the Spanish conquistadores. Their souls—inhaling and exhaling whatever air the breeze imparted unto them—were free to roam and reap the benefits of the land and sea in their natural state. But in the eyes of the worldly, it was nothing less than a melting-pot of deviants, bare and simple—a nudity lustfully coveted by the numerous Protestant churches in North America, whose affiliates were known to Father Hammond, not by conventional mediums of friendship or kinship, but through some obscure mechanism beyond his understanding, for they seemed to intuitively sense the tenderness of these ripe souls, without ever having witnessed them with their own eyes, and appear sporadically in great numbers, flourishing, as rapidly and mysteriously as flies enveloping the substance of a ripe mango, which, in falling from its branch, rips open, exposing the naked treasure of its insides.

“Insects, all a bunch of swarming insects!” his mother would contemptuously murmur on their way to mass, holding the hands of her two sons, keeping them close to her sides. The two boys—heads pressed against her floral Sunday dress—walked in fear and awe as she heroically led them through the wilderness of gazes emanating from the white faces which tried every week to persuade her to join their sects in vain.

The Hammond family had been Catholic for three generations. His grandfather, William Hammond I, a black Creole who still spoke English, had married the daughter of a man from Masaya who worked as a middleman, selling fish, lobster and shrimp, from the fishermen of Puerto Cabezas to the populace of Managua, selling at inflated prices. The marriage was one of convenience; William Hammond I was, at the time, the administrator of a small union of fisherman, having the advantage of owning a large refrigerator in which to keep their goods fresh until ready for shipping. For transport, the man from Masaya made use of his connections. Being good friends with a pipilacha pilot, he secretly transferred the stock of fish and crustaceans—slowly but surely—underneath the passengers of the unstable plane, which took small numbers of visitors to and fro the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, and sold the parcels of tuna fish and prized jumbo shrimp to wealthy families in Managua.

            It was during one of those long periods of absence when the man from Masaya left his wife and daughters in Puerto Cabezas for Managua, when William Hammond I was informed by his beloved that she was pregnant. Although strongly opposed to their marriage, her father eventually capitulated, unwilling to sacrifice these times of economic prosperity. In order to retain his pride, however, the girl’s father gave them his blessing only under the condition that their wedding ceremony be held within a Catholic church, as would be done in Masaya. Thus, by the time William Hammond III was born, his family, although Creole in heritage, and black in skin color, spoke only Spanish and swore strong allegiance to the Virgin Mary, and this religious heritage was tenaciously upheld by the spiritual zeal of his mother, who never was seen without a rosary in her right hand.

            As an adolescent, William III would contemplate this rosary throughout the night as it dangled in the moonlight, clinging from his mother’s hand as she slept. He hoped in vain that the monotonous swinging of the prayer beads would induce somnolence in him, as if it were a hypnotizing pendulum. William III had suffered from chronic insomnia ever since he was a child. He slept on a thin mat he shared with his younger brother, while their mother occupied the only formal bed in their modest household; its four sturdy legs kept their mother elevated from the hard, wooden floor on which they laid, a height from which the rosary hung, revealing a tinkling cross in the darkness.

 In the intense heat of the night, exacerbated by the warm limbs of his brother, young William could think of nothing but poverty. He felt that he should not have to live an uncomfortable life, that there existed, somewhere—perhaps, from where the missionaries had come from—a place where material poverty did not exist, in a country which existed only vaguely in the poor geography in his mind, where there were entire families who had their own rooms and their own beds, for in the eyes of the missionaries he had noticed a certain sorrow which he could not yet discern, because he had not yet learned what it was to pity.

 And so William began to adopt the look of concern he saw in the white faces, for he felt that should be the first step he should take in his overcoming his discomfort. He felt that if he could believe, like the missionaries did, that this was not the way people were meant to live, that if he looked upon others who, like him, at times suffered from hunger, heat, and the persistence of flies and mosquitoes, with a face of sorrow, then eventually, it would become clear to him, what another existence would look like, what it would consist of and how it would function—that he would finally see, what he was unable to see now— the inscrutable should behind the is, in which he had spent his life thus far.   

One evening, William’s mother, stricken by the chills of dengue fever, lay in her bed reciting Hail Marys incessantly throughout the night. He watched as white beads of the rosary shook frantically, glimmering passionately under the moonlit darkness. He prayed as he pressed his thighs to his torso, his murmuring lips touching his knees, asking God that she should not die this night—at least not this night—while his brother curled up on her bed, weeping.

In the morning, William was awoken by the sound of his mother’s voice. “William, vení!” she demanded, “William, come, I want to tell you something. Underneath my bed, yes, underneath…the third plank, yes, turn it, turn it around. Ay, Dios me libre! Yes, hand me that pouch.”

“Was it my father’s?” William asked.

“I told you—you never had a father. God gave me my children. This was your grandfather’s.

Handing her son a golden wristwatch she said, “If anything should happen to me—if anything should happen to me…”

“Yes mamá” William interrupted, not wanting to hear her speak of death. “Yes mamá, of course, mamá.”

 “I kept it here for safe-keeping; one must always be prepared for an emergency, especially with children. Listen, I want you to take this, if anything were to happen to me, you should sell it, and take your brother far away from here on the pipilacha, to Managua. There are orphanages there run by nuns and priests…”

“No mama,” he interrupted again “I won’t leave. I don’t want to leave.”

“Hijo mio, sometimes we are meant to leave. God has plans for us all.”