The Best Man (Fiction)

The church was even more terrifying for Greg than the airport had been. He stood in the white entrance hall for a second, alone now his taxi driver had dropped him off, heads turning to stare at him. Some of the faces he recognized, others he knew by proxy, still others he had to guess at. Those he knew had aged since he’d been away, most of them badly. The women, most one-time bouncy cheerleaders sneaking a quick cigarette behind the sports hall before practice had become, in the space of barely a decade, worn out husks of their formers self’s, peroxide blondes wearing too much make-up and clothes bought on the cheap. The men had fared as badly, many having obviously stashed their baseball caps in the cabs of the many pick-up trucks waiting outside, their suits shiny and mostly rented from the Mr. Tux in the Regal Mall.
‘Hey’ he heard someone whisper, a jock he remembered drinking beers with in a dirty basement, ‘No fucking way… Holy shit, that’s G.’
‘Who’ someone else asked and the Jock replied in a hushed tone, ‘Some kid we went to school with, him and Ethan were really tight. After graduation he bounced, went to Columbia or some shit…One of those countries down there…became a doctor, if you’d believe that…’

Greg looked right and left and started walking down the isle, feeling self conscious in his suit, which he’d had tailor-made in a town outside Huehuetenango by a ancient Mayan man with no teeth and skin as wizened as a dried apple, who spat brown tobacco juice onto the ground and shouted throaty commands in Mam at his pretty daughter who would bustle in and out of the room in the thick fabric of her traditional ethnic dress, carrying small bundles of material for Don Gregory to feel between finger and thumb. In the end he had selected a piece of quite good linen that the man had somehow acquired as part of a successful barter over a goat, and a length of silk lining taken from a abandoned suit that the owners cousin had found in the Salvation Army shop in Guatemala City.

The result, Greg and the Mendoza family felt, was positive. He had lived with them for five years as their guest, and eventually adopted son and sibling. The thought of him being dressed up and looking like a “Proper” Gringo had been so exiting that they had all stormed into his room the minute he had returned from the tailor. The family had watched him put it on in the mirror and turn around to show them, just before he left and caught the chicken bus to the airport. Mama had clapped her large calloused hands together with her brood of five following suit, all except Ramon who was up in the highlands with his machete and the goats.

They were an odd combination standing next to the tall white man, Mama and her daughters in their long embroidered, multi-coloured dresses and the sons in their red and white striped pants and heavy collared white overshirts, the traditional belted hats of the village on their heads.
‘b’á’nxsa’ Mama had said in Mam, repeating the phrase in Spanish as she always did around him, even though his Mam was almost perfect now, ‘Bueno, Bueno’ and Sylvia the oldest daughter had giggled and looked up at him with her large brown eyes,
‘Tu es Tom Cruise’ she said, ‘James Bond.’

It was common for the Maya to get Hollywood actors and their film muddled up and this joined with the comparison had made Greg roar with laughter, as he realized how much he would miss them all for the week and a half he would be gone. As he turned away, feeling a bit self conscious and blushing she had said a word in Mam he didn’t understand.
‘Que significa Shíwel?’ he asked, ‘Yo No Comprende.’
‘Zorro’ Little Alfredo answered, using the Spanish word for fox.
‘Gracias’ Greg had smiled, tears in the corner of his eye, ‘Gracias’

Now Greg walked between rows of people he had less in common with than a family of Mayan Guatemalans who lived with no running water and constant power outages in a harsh land of mountains and tough, backbreaking work. These Americans were, at least in terms of skin colour, his people, but even on that issue there was little similarity. His face was dark and slightly leathery now, from summers spent vaccinating children against polio and dengue in the hills outside of Todo Santos, and a livid scar ran two inches down his right cheek where a machete had caught him by surprise in a drunken bar brawl when he’d first arrived in Guate. Never the less he had aged well due to Mama’s every effort to keep her ‘Doctor’ well fed and nourished in the mornings before he rode his bike down the hill to the clinic, piling beans and corn torteas onto his plate with reckless abandon.

‘Jesus’ a voice said, cutting him off from his reverie and a familiar figure stood up and rushed in to hug him in an embrace of muscle and relatively expensive cologne,
‘You actually made it you bastard’
‘Yeh, I said I would’ Greg grinned, pleased but slightly awkward, as he had still not entirely got used to speaking English again.
‘Let me look at you’ Ethan smiled, stepping back to look at his friend, ‘do you look the part...’
After a second he nodded, pleased ‘yeh, you’ll do, for a jungle man. What about me?’
Greg looked at his best friend, noting the clean-shaven chin, the still broad shoulders he’d had playing football, the dark blue eyes and crew cut hair just starting to grey around the edges. ‘She’d be crazy to turn you down, I always said that, when you first asked her out in middle school.’
‘Thanks man’ Evan smiled, his manner slightly brushed up from his years working as a car salesman, ‘It means a lot you being here, Cheryl is exited as anything.’
‘And her sister’ Greg asked, slightly dreading the answer, ‘has she forgotten me?’
‘Ha’ his friend laughed, ‘that girl will never forget you. She’s still looking quite good, she’s the maid of honour of course so you’ll see her in a second. She’s mad nervous about seeing you, Cheryl says. Had she not been such a retard and got knocked up by Hal White, I bet she would have stopped being stupid and gone for you in the end.’
‘But she didn’t…’
‘No’ Evan agreed, lowering his voice and whispering in Greg’s ear, ‘But you’re a doctor, in Guatemala man. Think of the shit you do, your one in a million bro, I’ve read your blog and seen the photo’s. Whole villages depend on you to keep them alive and shit, and she’s stuck at home with a drunk for a husband and three kids to look after when she’s not watching daytime t.v. I know your still pissed but you don’t need that shit, and however much I miss you, leaving was the smartest thing you ever did. Now’ he said, straitening up to look around the crowded church,
‘Now that the best man has arrived I wonder where my damn girlfriend is.’
As if on queue the fat priest appeared and waved at the two men to walk to the side of the alter.

Later, as the organ started and the bride walked in, followed by her sister and the bridesmaids in their pink dresses, he knew with a sharp pang that he could not live in America ever again.