by Mike Bond
Mice were chasing each other in empty corn husks by the door. Fog came up from the Río and under the hut walls.
He was conscious of every move she made, every breath, the pressure of her hand on his shoulder as she stepped past, how the light touched her black hair, the curve of her cheek. She stood beside him, warming her hands over the fire, and he held the inside of her thigh and kissed her there, between the thighs, smelling her through the worn jeans, her fingers combing his hair. Never, he realized, have I ever felt like this.
No matter how many times you see something it’s never the same: now from the Huey the river with its coat of fog reminded Lyman of an old drunk sleeping over a heat grate, like a goddamn python, its jaws sucking in the world. He smiled at Vodega − in the company of villains and fools. I could’ve done anything, and look where I’ve ended up.
He waved the door gunner aside and took the M60D, the great gun swinging loose on its mount, grips tight in his palms. Truly nothing like this gun, nothing ever. No sense of power, purpose, like this. Treetops tipped past, birds scurrying. They’re in among the fucking trees, the guerrillas. Millions and millions of trees. But their highway’s the river. He punched the gunner’s shoulder. “Tell Ramón drop down, follow the river.”
“Es claro que es muy peligroso,” the gunner said.
“I don’t care how fucking claro that it’s dangerous. Do it.”
“WE MUST GO,” Pollo said, “before the fog rises.”
“Unless you can wait, let her rest here till tomorrow,” Dona said. “That would be better.”
“Here it’s too dangerous. Better she’s among her own people. We can cross here and go up the Santa Amelia.”
“Go, then,” Dona said. “Quickly while the fog’s thick.”
“And if there’s monkeys I’ll shoot one to feed her.” Pollo took his Galil and went down to the Río, untied the dugout and brought it alongshore. Dona led the woman carefully down to the dugout.
“She’s going to die,” Murphy said. “She can’t heal.”
“She’s got no fever; at Santa Amelia she’ll be with family. I have to leave today − can’t go with her. In a couple of days I’ll check on her.”
“I’ll stay with her.”
Dona shook her head. “You have to go downriver.”
They settled María on her rush mat in the middle of the dugout, the baby quiet at her breast, inside her red shawl. Pollo poled away from shore, the dugout slipped into the fog, first the bow, then the thwarts, till only Pollo standing in the stern remained, a glimmer fading, gone.
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going downriver,” Murphy said.
She stood against him, warming her river-cold hands against his bare chest. He kissed her and kissed her, could not stop, get enough. Her body pressed hard against him. “I’ve got work today,” she whispered.
He opened her shirt, making her hold him, her teeth nipping his lips, her breath fast. “We’re going to do keep doing this and never stop.”
“Let’s go up there −”
“To hell with up there. We’re going to do it right here.” He was unbuttoning her jeans and she was pulling him down when he felt it suddenly on his back, his neck − the sun, the air suffused with sudden brightness. Fog rose like a curtain from the Río; Pollo was there, halfway across, caught in sunlight, using his pole like an oar against the current.
They heard the noise and Murphy sprinted uphill for the hut, grabbed Dona’s rifle and ran into the open as the chopper came sideways down the Río spitting tracer fire that hammeredthe water like a great sheet of glass breaking, loud as the whole world breaking, the dugout spurting up and knocked apart, and Murphy led the door gunner by half the space between him and the door, down the black channel of the Galil’s sights, on his neck to be sure to hit his chest; the rifle kicked and barked as the chopper swung away and then came round in a quick arc and Murphy fired for the turbine housing then the motor head, knowing he was dead now, that the door gunner would kill him, and Murphy saw a black man hunched over the machine gun, the officer who had helped to burn his village; as he fired the chopper swung away and he had to shoot at the engine housing; the chopper jerked and pulled up, and the black man was gone, I’ve got to lead them away from her, he thought, running along the bank, huge M60 bullets whacking and whanging among the boloconte roots, in the smell of burnt wood and dirt and the horrible vacuum that bullets leave behind. The chopper’s whine retreated; it was fluttering north toward Sayaxché trailing blue smoke from the engine housing.
Dona dove into the Río and swam toward the shattered dugout. Murphy checked the clip − six shots. “I’ll cover you,” he yelled, but she did not turn her head. He wanted to scream, tear his face, ran out into the Río till he could see the point far downriver where the chopper had swung round a bend, its smoke trail indolent in the wind. The water was stainless steel in the brilliant sun. Dona swam back, grabbed her rifle and ran up to the hut.
“Hurry!” she yelled, tossing her pack and blankets out the door. Wiping her face, coughing and crying, she knelt at the fire, blew it alive, tossed in more kindling. “Watch outside − for more helicopters!”
“What are you doing?”
“Go!”
Outside there was no sound of choppers, no distant glint coming upriver. He stood in the hot shade of the banana palms, trying to catch his breath, the somnolent air searing his throat. He kept trying to check the rifle in his hands but his hands were empty. She came out with a torch of kindling and held it to the thatch. “What the hell?” he said.
“Quick!” They ran for the jungle, through the saplings and creepers and past the great ceiba where last night they’d hung the hammock, deeper into the jungle, up out of the bajos and into the hills.
THE SMOKE got thicker making Lyman lean out the door to breathe. The soldiers crouched on the floor, the dead door gunner between them. Lyman kept watching the engine housing but there was no way to know if it would hold, the Jesus nut rotating wildly, hot oil spattering the gunner’s body. He stepped across the soldiers to the cockpit. “Get down close to the river!” he yelled. “When she dies we’re going to drop like a stone.”
“Bajo demasiado peligroso!” The pilot craned round. There were cuts like red paint on his face. “We tell you this already!” the copilot said in English. “Now we going to ditch, goddamn you.”
Lyman made himself smile, nodded back at the Jesus nut. “She’ll hold. Just bring her down, first open place you find, so I can get my men back to that hut. We’ll find them, get them for your gunner.”
“He’s dead?”
“Through the head.”
“Goddamn you!” the copilot screamed.
Lyman swung back to the crew deck, glanced down at the river like a glistening concrete skin fifty feet below the chopper’s skids. Fools, he thought, to take it serious. But it was him, the goddamn sky pilot, the tall guy with the blond hair and beard, the one who’d been at the village the other night. The same one. He killed the door gunner and blew holes in the motor housing. He tried to kill us all.
18
HER FACE, muddied, torn and bloodied by thorns, seemed a stranger’s yet infinitely near. “I didn’t want you,” she said. “We can’t be together.”
He tried to catch his breath. “Where’re we going?”
“I must be somewhere tonight. That’s why I couldn’t stay, with María and the baby.”
The mud on her face, he saw, was just tears and dirt. “I can get from here to Mexico. It’s just jungle. But I won’t leave you.”
She shook her head scornfully. He felt a moment of such pity and love that the earth shifted beneath him. He slid his fingers under the rifle sling to take it from her shoulder but she wouldn’t let go. “Everything you do − can’t you see − just brings more pain?”
“Less than if I do nothing.”
“For you, perhaps.”
“That’s cruel. And untrue.”
“If you hadn’t been there to help María, Pollo wouldn’t have died.”
She caressed his face, making him feel mean, selfish. “You mustn’t try to talk me out of what I do. Not when we both know I’m right.”
LYMAN KEPT the river on his left, a glimmer through the trees. It could only be another mile, Jesus, till they got there. He kept the pace steady, running, ducking, climbing, crawling, pushing aside the jungle at each step, elbowing and dragging his M-16 through the walls of trees. He looked back, panting, could see Martínez, the sergeant, then the first man behind him. “Anda!” Martínez yelled, pushing Lyman with his rifle.
Lyman ran onwards, going to lose him now, lose Martínez, lose them all, the bastards, do it alone, run, run lose them alone, the words steady in his brain like a beat, a heartbeat, and you can always beat exhaustion, just run, just remember the American pilot and how you’re going to kill him for killing Gallagher and the door gunner, the two soldiers in the village, trying to kill you, thinking of how the bullet had skimmed past his head and whacked through the fuselage and sung off the rotor. Little piece of metal with your death on it. Run run run, with a little piece of death on it.
THEY CAME to a path going north and south along the first ridge above the Río. “The burro trail to Cobán,” she gasped, holding his arm to keep from falling.
He felt the same sudden sureness he’d had the night before, going out with her to the hammock. He glanced up at the cracks of light through the canopy. “Choppers see us here.” Thoughts blizzarded through his mind; he could see the tree canopy from above, as if he were looking down through the chopper’s Plexiglass shell, as if with God’s eye he could see how the trace of the trail cut through the jungle, how to pick out a motion, gun it down. Nam, how it was, shredding people under white hot metal hail. He saw her dead, torn apart by .50 caliber slugs, then saw her old, grandchildren round her, saw how that was false, would never be, saw the jungle crouching nearer, waiting for them to fail. “Give me that goddamn thing.” He took the gun, swung it over his right shoulder, the backpack over his left. Sensing it might be the last time, he freed her lustrous hair from her collar, so that it fell down her back.
She wiped her face with both hands, a motion that seemed strangely like prayer. “It’s for you that I wanted you to go to Mexico.”
“How far do we go?”
“About an hour south. I’ll tell you.”
“You’re going to follow me. About fifty yards behind. If I hit trouble, you beat it.”
“The Army doesn’t bother this trail, it’s too far in the jungle.”
“If you hear a chopper get into the trees. Try to get under a log. Same if you hear me shoot.”
“TOLD YOU!” Lyman yelled. “Here it is!”
Martínez scrambled up to him. “There’s fire.”
Lyman tried to peer through the brush at the clearing. “Bastards’re cooking.”
“No. Big fire.”
The men crept forward one by one through the jungle, exhausted, dirty, clothes ripped, faces bloody, Angelo last. “So what you want?” he said. “Cook lunch?”
“It’s a big fire,” Martínez repeated.
“Spread out, Christ!” Vodega whispered. “You want to get extinto?”
“They’re gone, Angel,” Lyman smiled, enjoying it that Vodega didn’t want him to use his first name, not in front of the men, Vodega already angry about the chopper, about leaving it back there in the clearing instead of trying to make Sayaxché. Pilots not daring to take off again, waiting for a Shit-hook to pull them out. World of cowards.
The men were spreading out in a line, down to the river and up into the jungle. Lyman crawled forward to the edge of the open space with three charred banana palms and the cinders and burned beams where the hut had been. Too goddamn small for an LZ or I would’ve had him, the American, he thought. Why was he here? Who was that with him, that had looked like a woman? He back-crawled to Vodega and Martínez. “Burned their hut.”
“Told you,” Martínez said.
“I’m going around, find their trail. Hold your fucking fire.”
Vodega smiled. “Think we’d waste you? Aren’t you our ticket to Paradise?”
Lyman went up the line, Martínez’s laugh behind him burning in his mind. “I’m going in,” he said to each man. “Don’t shoot.”
He circled the open. His knees were trembling with fatigue and he forced himself to wait a moment till they stopped. Using the muzzle of the M-16 to prod his way between the branches and creepers he inched forward, waited, moved forward again. A khaki green and yellow bird hopped along the leaves before him pecking at twigs, fluttered away when he got close. The jungle was like the bottom of the sea, too thick to breathe.
Ahead a big goddamn tree, didn’t feel right, danger. They could be here, he warned himself. He crouched in a fern clump watching the tree but nothing happened. Wind off the river brought the burnt smell of the hut. Why was he here, the American pilot? Figure that out and you’ll have him.
He moved round the tree, closed in. Scuffed leaves, broken ferns. Rope burn round a trunk. Something was tethered here, a burro? Nonsense − never get a burro through this stuff. There was a second rope burn on another trunk nine feet away. Or someone slept here, in a hammock, not in the hut. Why the Hell’d they do that?
Unless there’d been some people in the hut, the two we killed on the river, and another one out here. On guard? Didn’t make sense.
He followed the tracks from the big tree down to the still-glowing coals of the hut. “Angel!” he called. “Just you. Come on in.”
Vodega came along the bank and up to the hut. “One of them went along the river,” he said, “then came back.”
“One of them slept up there,” Lyman pointed behind him. “Under a big tree.”
“We’re chasing espíritus, fantasías. People who sleep under big trees.”
“Who’s your best tracker?”
“Chichito − the kid.”
“Get him.”
Vodega called and the boy came out of the brush, too small for his uniform, black hair in his face, his gun pulling down his shoulder, dirty toes out of worn sandals. “Five hundred quetzales,” Lyman said, “if you can track them down.”
Chichito dropped his eyes − he’s too shy, Lyman thought. “Three people here,” said, and Lyman realized the boy had just been checking the ground. Chichito circled the hut. “Maybe four.” He raised his eyes, scanning the jungle wall, went down to the river, came back. “Two left in the canoe,” he said. “Two went into the woods. One man, one woman. The woman is Guatemalteca. The other wears Quiché sandals but he’s big and heavy and walks like a white man.”
Joy cascaded down Lyman’s spine. “You see, Angel?” he smiled at Vodega. “Oh thee of little faith?”
19
DONA FOLLOWED Murphy at a run south up into the mountains, the trail overgrown in thick scrub under the overarching boughs, tracers of day down through the canopy. It was crazy to let him carry the gun, the backpack. If he was killed how would she get her medical kit, the gun?
Murphy slowed to a walk but she couldn’t see him in the brush, hunted his tracks through the snapped leaves and bent creepers.
She yelled in surprise as someone lunged at her but it was him, coming back. “Lost the trail,” he said.
“Give me my pack.”
He held her shoulder, keeping them standing. “No.” His head wound was bleeding. I don’t care, she thought. I don’t care for anybody’s wounds. The blood was bright on her hand. “I’ve got to sew this up again.”
“No,” he repeated, turned and spat into the brush.
“If they track us,” she said.
“That big canyon we just went round − not far from the Río.”
She nodded.
He took a deep breath, staring at the green wall of their back trail. “I should pick out a good place, wait to see if they come.”
“W
ith how many bullets?”
“Six, plus one in the chamber. You have more?”
“No.” She felt a wild need to protect, hold him. “At the Río there’ll be a canoe, to take you downriver.”
“You’re coming.”
“Are you crazy? After all this? You think a quick fuck makes any difference? I have my job, other people here. They won’t want you around. I have a man here, he’ll be very angry if he sees you.”
He was breathing deeply, wiping mosquitoes from his face. “You have some guy?”
“Of course!”
His face looked pummeled, defeated. She clenched her fists, the nails sharp into her palms. Do it now, she told herself, while you still can...
“The things you said, last night, this morning.”
She could do it one more time, touch his face, making it seem like condolence. “I was heartbroken. The village, your village −”
“So you did it for me.”
She shrugged. “Think that if you like.”
“Bitch.” He turned away, swinging the rifle ahead through the brush, and again she followed him, running harder, as he shoved through the thorns and scrub, shadowed under the great trees, this shred of still-unravaged earth, she thought, from way back, from the beginning. How have things gone so wrong, she wondered, why do things always go wrong? Go ahead, cry, he can’t see you, he’s far ahead, lost in his anger. That’s why things go wrong, it’s anger − striving causes pain, and striving’s from a lack of freedom, the freedom not to die, and so it goes round and round and never stops and I must not get caught up, she told herself, must stay free to help those who aren’t, for what good’s freedom when others are in pain? But that’s an old lie and you must promise yourself no more lies, not even the lie of love.
CHICHITO’S BACK was bent as he ran, to watch the earth, sweat on his khaki shirt, the rifle butt like a brown animal under his arm, Lyman running behind, panting and trying not to show it, the others gasping and swearing and trying to keep intervals behind. Chichito halted, stood up; Lyman nearly ran into him. “Good!” Chichito pointed his small finger at a leaf splashed red.
