by Mike Bond
“Keep watching it. Give me the number three scalpel now − quick − wash this off before you put it in the water, hurry! And string the big needles now, like I showed you!”
The scalpel blade sank into the bursting flesh. It’s thick, the uterus, Murphy thought. The fire hissed and Pollo went to it, came back. “It’s almost done, the stew.”
The woman’s hand in Murphy’s was hot and weak, her breast throbbing. In the pool of sweat and tears in the corner of her eye the rush mats of the ceiling were reflected. Her whole body trembled; I’ve seen that, he thought, the tremor mortis. “I have him!” Dona gasped. “Slowly now he’s coming.”
She raised a clump of bloody organs in her hands and he thought it was the placenta then saw its wizened Mayan head, the tiny gaping mouth, the twig arms and taut belly with the umbilical cord plunging down. “It’s a girl, cariña! A cloth, Pollo! Hold her, gringo, while I get the rest.”
The baby weighed nothing in his hands, a bloody bitter face choked with horror. This is what it is, he thought, making love. Where did you come from?
“Quick!” Dona held the baby’s head down, sucked out her lungs and spat; the baby jerked, convulsed, wailed a high, tiny cry. “More cloths,” Dona said.
“No more,” Pollo answered.
“My coat then, by the door.”
She wrapped the wailing baby in her camouflage jacket. “A big needle, now, gringo. You’re sure you’ve threaded three of them? And then the little ones. Remember, the light thread not the black one. Take her, cariña, quickly, she needs milk!”
The baby gummed a nipple, took a breath and wailed, sucked again. Everyone’s sacred, Murphy suddenly understood. Everyone’s been through this mystery. Up out of the water into the air. Gasping, stunned, dragged like an innocent fish from the sea.
“The smaller needles now, gringo.” When she had finished suturing the uterus Dona gathered the muscles together one by one and sutured them with lighter needles and the same pale thread. Pollo took the afterbirth down to the river and then the cloths to wash them. “The stew’s done,” he said.
When she had finished the muscles she sewed up the skin with the black thread. Now that the woman’s belly was less swollen the incision seemed smaller. Pollo washed her face and hands with the last of the hot water and brought her a cup of broth from the stew.
Murphy sat with Dona and Pollo by the fire, the bailing can half full of stew, chewing the last shreds from a shoulder bone. The woman lay silent, the baby whimpering at her breast. Out of the kettle the monkey’s eyeless skull stared up at them.
13
LYMAN KICKED at a stone, heard it skitter along the gravel and hop into the grass. You should’ve stayed with the girl, he reminded himself, stopped to piss by a clump of cedars, holding a branch for balance. Behind the cedars rose a broken stone wall. Ahead were more cedars and a white fence, then dark scrub, a moonlit meadow. Take away color, he thought, you still get black and white.
The piss spattered on the rocks, sparkling. Rum and beer. Bad fuckin combination. And your combination doesn’t fuck at all. But gets high thinking of other people doing it. People you know.
If your fly won’t zip what if you leave it down? Why have a fly at all? To cover up your rod. Why have a rod? To make sure you’re a God. Rocks stumbly underfoot, don’t let ‘em trip you. Halfway home. Fix the fuckin road, Lawd,
“Why don’t they fix it in the road, Lawd,
“Why don’t they fix the fucking road?
“Why don’t they cover up their God, Lawd,
“Why don’ –”
Horrible compression of air whizzed past his skull. He dove into the ditch as the sound of the shot crackled and banged up through the hills. In the ditch no cover, every stub and leaf sharp-cut. Clear ground uphill, a few bushes dark against the milky slope. Ahead a bare grassy channel, ditch shallowing to pale empty ground. Any way you go he’s got you.
The pilot. He’s followed you. Wants you to fear before you die.
Close-cropped grass, a boulder, the far dark hollow of the road to town, distant streetlights on the church face. He’ll hit you before the boulder. Even if he misses he’ll pin you at the boulder and you’re worse off there than here.
Not a Galil, an M-16. Wind crossed the road, odors of mud, trees, cattle. He’s in the cedars, behind the white fence. With a perfect field of fire.
You’re going to cross the road and kill him.
“HE’S NOT THE ONLY PRIEST in a Guatemalan jail. And even if he’s still alive, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I’m not going to leave him. In a sense he gave his life for mine.”
“That’s what priests do. You can’t change that.” Dona took a bowl of stew and sat across from Murphy at the fire, cross-legged. You’re very good with bandages and sutures. Where did you learn it?”
“The medics. I’d go in, to get some wounded guys, I’d get pinned or the chopper’d get hit, there’d be no medic or the medic would be dead or there’s too many wounded coming in, so you learn what you can. While they die all around you.”
“And in hospital?”
“I was only there a month. Hawaii. Soon as my wounds closed up they shipped me back. They were short of chopper pilots just then.” He looked at the dirt floor, seeing the ward, the boys paralyzed from the neck down, the blind, the maimed, the ones with brand new steel skulls begging to die. “I learned there, too, how to care for people.”
She reached out, squeezed his leg. “You see, you’re just like me.”
He shook his head. “I’ve learned every time you try to do good you just cause more pain.”
“And now you want to find Father Miguel. Isn’t that trying to do good?”
“No. That’s just settling scores.”
She sucked the marrow from a wristbone and dropped it in the fire. After a moment it began to hiss. “Before Vietnam, what were you?”
“A kid from west Texas. With a grin and a pickup truck. At least that’s how I look in the photos.”
“And now you’re a drug pilot.”
“Was. I don’t have a plane anymore.”
“You must have insurance?”
“They don’t sell insurance for my kind of work.”
“And you liked it, that work?”
“It kept me alive. Like the signs on the cement trucks in San Francisco: ‘Find a Need and Fill It’. Like vodka or Valium or baseball or politics or television or anything else people want.”
“But what people want can hurt them.”
“Cars kill a thousand people every week in my country, maim ten thousand more. And nobody says a word. Grass never hurt a soul. It’s like music, it makes people happy.”
“And now?”
“That village was no different than my family. I didn’t want to leave. I’ve walked into something I can’t find my way out of.”
She held her ankles, knees up under her chin. “Sometimes I think I’ve walked into something that even if I found a way out I couldn’t leave...”
“That’s war − you stay with it because you won’t desert the ones you’re with. But they’re only there because they won’t desert you.”
LYMAN ROLLED TO HIS FEET, dashed up the ditch, spun round and sprinted down it then swerved sharp right across the road where moonlight snared every pebble and the thud of his boots was like thunder and the rush of his breath the wind, feeling the bullets whack against his ribs, smashing his skull, the loud blunt roar tearing out his lungs, then he was across, no shot, smashed down the fence then soft creeping on fingers and toes, close to the moss, the dirt, a breeze in his face, nobody, roots, stalks, lianas, creepers, bristle of pine tree, dead needles loud, creeping round it, still no human odor or gun or uniform or sweat smells. He laid his hand softly on a root and it recoiled and slid away.
MURPHY LOOKED AT HER across the pale fire, her small body, her long hair, her lovely face with full lips and dark arched eyebrows with the lines o
f fatigue in the corners of her eyes. “You look so tired.”
“Every death takes you with it.”
“Do you ever fear?”
“I used to fear for me; now it’s that I can’t afford it yet −”
“Afford it?”
“Death. Once you’re in la lucha, you’ve don’t have much time.”
“How did you start?”
“I was in love, with an intern at medical school. They arrested him for going to the barrios to heal the poor. They shot him and six others the day the Pope came to Guatemala City. To show the Pope he needn’t worry about liberation theology here. For three years afterwards I lived like a nun, finished medical school, did my residency in Mexico. When I came back I realized there was nothing else except this I could do.”
He wanted to lie down beside her, hold her. “You’re lonelier than I am.”
She smiled. “In Vietnam you weren’t afraid?”
“All the time. Even on leave, I’d know what was waiting when I got back.”
“It doesn’t bother you now?”
“I had some bad times and everybody I really cared about died, but now I hardly ever think about it.”
“That’s a lie.”
A rock in the fire cracked and he felt he could hold it together, keep it from breaking despite the heat, the pain. “It’d drive me crazy. If I really saw it how it was.”
“Then you are already going crazy. You just don’t see it.”
His back was aching; he sat up on his heels. “Maybe I still live it, all the time. Yes, I admit it − I do.” His ankles were tingling from his having sat too long cross-legged. “After I came back from Nam I went down to Mexico, lived by myself in the desert, did a lot of drugs, thought things through. I learned there’s no good in going over pain.” He took her hand, warm from the fire. “Can’t you see that?”
“It’s not like that, la lucha.” She looked down at her hand in his, up into his eyes. “Don’t condemn what you don’t understand.”
The fire was like a friend, softly rumbling to him in its red-golden depths. It doesn’t matter, the fire said. You can choose to die and be with her. What else better could you do? “Nothing’s worth dying for,” he said. “Except someone you love.”
“Then it just depends how far your love goes.”
LYMAN HELD THE PISTOL against the palm of his left hand to mask the click as he pushed it off safety. Moonlight behind him, making him black and his enemy light. A stick twinged underfoot − how can I let that happen? He backed off, stepped round the stick. Shall I go to you, my friend, or wait for you to come to me?
“I NEVER SLEEP in a hut. It’s one of my rules. Nowhere they can surprise me. I always sleep in the jungle.”
Her skin felt so near, her eyes in his and his in hers, no distance between them. “It doesn’t spook you?”
“It did at first. I hate snakes. But if only once out of a thousand nights you avoid danger, it’s worth it.” From her US Special Forces pack she took a cotton hammock, two blankets, and a camo tarp. She lifted the freshly boiled instruments from the bailing can, wrapped them in dry india and put them in the pack. She handed him a blanket. “Pollo will make you a place by the fire.” She felt his brow. “You must terribly need sleep.” Her hand came down, caressed his cheek. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”
“Done? What have I done?”
“You fought the soldiers at San Tomás. You saved two children.”
“Out of twenty.” His eyes stung and he looked down at the fire, away from hers.
“You have to let it pass.” She squeezed his hand. “If the woman has pain, or if the baby cries too much, Pollo will get me. You must sleep.”
He took up the camo vest and draped it round her shoulders, pulled it close around her neck. Her hair was fine against his fingers. It’s true, he realized, only once do you really fall in love. And right away you know.
She took up her rifle, but he slipped his fingers under the sling and eased it from her shoulder, bent down for the blanket she’d given him. “I’m coming with you.”
14
TO HIS RIGHT between the cedars Lyman saw patches of starlit meadow. That meant the road was to the left, beyond the thicker wall of trees. Ahead the cedars must narrow to a point fringing the road: his enemy couldn’t get away. His fingers touched stone – no, three stones, one still muddy on the edge, just now overturned.
He put down the stone and checked that his knife was still secure in its sheath at his ankle. A moth fluttered in his face.
An owl whirred down through the branches, swerved and flapped away. Ahead was a big tree darker than the rest. Under his hand the land sloped slightly left, toward the road. Was the enemy still by the road? Or back in the trees?
The pistol caught in a spider web and he tore it free, heard the spider scuttle away. His fingers bumped a stinging plant. In the darkness just ahead someone breathed out softly.
TO STEP out of the hut was like falling into space; the stars vaulting up over the jungle were thick as atoms in a sea of light. Wind came up from the water, tasting of fish and stone, rustling the leaves of the banana trees.
They went down to the Río and drank. He dug mud from the shallows and washed his hands and face, feeling the skin come clean. Everything you give, he thought, you only get it back.
“I saved Ofélia’s life once,” she said.
The name made him flinch. “Nobody told me.”
“She had diphtheria. I waited it out with her, three nights. There were no drugs but a bark tea we use, a salicylic compound, to bring down fever. She came back −”
“You mustn’t −”
“All during the Caesarean tonight I was seeing her, your people, what the soldiers did. Over and over.”
He tugged the camo vest closer round her shoulders, the smooth skin of her jaw against the back of his hand. “You brought another life into the world tonight.”
“And I regret it.”
He kissed her temple smooth and cool from the Río, the thud of her pulse against his lips. “You’ll drive yourself crazy. For nothing.” He massaged her back; the muscles hardened then relaxed, her eyelash tickling the corner of his mouth, her cheekbone hard against his chin, her small breasts pushing into his chest, her hair soft over his fingers as he squeezed the muscles of her neck. “You’re hard as stone.”
“The muscles get like that − from carrying the gun.”
“Don’t carry it.”
She shook her head, her face against his neck, her breath down his chest. Her arms were strong around his back, her hands gripped his shoulders. “If I put down the gun it wouldn’t change a thing.”
“It doesn’t help anyone if you die.”
You don’t see what life is, in Guatemala?”
“It’s still life.”
“It’s what happened to your village − poverty, sickness, death squads, hunger. If you had children.”
“I’d get them out of here. Mexico, Belize.”
“They get sent back, and all the men and boys are shot.”
“Can you get out?”
“Of course, I’ve got Mexican papers. But never −”
“How long, here, do you give yourself?”
“It could be tonight. In a year.”
“All those years afterwards you won’t be alive, to heal people.”
Her shoulders slumped. The Río was like a drumbeat, steady and deep. “I’m sorry I was rude to you,” she said, “when you first came.”
“You weren’t rude; you saved my life.”
“No, but calling you gringo, and all that.”
“I barely noticed.”
“I say it sometimes now, but just to tease you.” She held the curve of his face, giving it form in the darkness. “So many villages. San Tomás, Santa Teresa, Puychíl, Aguateca, San Juan Sayjá. . . I can see them all, every person dead and burnt, the children’s bodies − all the hundreds of villages
and towns destroyed, and I can still see all their faces.”
He hugged her tighter. “You can make it go away. Everything goes away.”
“You’re saying you don’t care?”
“I’m saying I no longer care that I care.”
WITH A RUSTLE of cloth the enemy stood. A click of magazine against the buckle of a sling. Black metal grazed by moonlight.
A beetle crawled up Lyman’s calf. He did not make a noise breathing or licking his lip or shifting his weight as he dropped his left hand down to the knife. He held his thumb over the snap and slid his fingers under the flap and popped it free. The knife’s ebony handle was soft and warm, the tang up each side cool against his palm. The knife slid by itself from the sheath.
With a crunch of cedar twigs the enemy turned to go. Doesn’t know I’m here: a ravenous joy surged in Lyman’s chest. He holstered his pistol.
The enemy was stepping lightly away, heading toward the cover of the trees, shouldering his rifle − doesn’t even know I’m coming.
He switched hands with the knife, darted up behind and grabbed the enemy across the eyes, yanking the head back to slit the throat but long hair was in his way and the sentry screamed and Lyman twisted the knife aside, yanked the enemy down and fell atop her, the knife at her throat. “Where’s the others?”
“No one!” A girl, eyes wide with terror, flimsy hands at his wrists. “Please no!”
“Why’d you shoot?”
“Just a warning, Señor. I’m supposed to warn you!”
“Warn me what?”
“Not to come up the road. We’re stopping the road-”
“Who? Who?” He grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the rifle barrel underneath. “Who?” Pinning her arms under his knees he jammed the blade against her trachea. She coughed, gasped a breath. “The compañeros. I didn’t mean to shoot you. I wouldn’t shoot anyone. It’s to warn you to stay back!”
“Why?”
“There’s danger ahead. You were singing in a foreign language. I didn’t want you killed, you’re not a soldier.”
