HOUSE OF JAGUAR

by Mike Bond

  Lyman wanted to hug him. “Head wound.”

  “Sí!”

  “Which one?”

  “The tall one.”

  “That’s right.” With a stab of pain Lyman saw Joshua in Chichito’s face, the boy’s calm self-assurance, of one born too long before his elders. He looked back into Chichito’s black eyes: this time I’ll protect you.

  THE SKEIN OF THINGS unwinds, then you have nothing. She tripped, not taking her eyes from his back, how he ran surely and without fatigue for hours, the rifle easy, part of him. The skein unwinds and disappears. And when we’re gone it never was. This is the decision she’d made long ago, after they shot Diego. To have nothing but la lucha. If you don’t have it completely you don’t have it at all.

  The trail skirted a slope, half-clear, a view back over a hundred miles of jungle, the Río down its belly like a God. It’s all God, she thought – and we betray it. “The trail goes down,” he said.

  “So do we.”

  He snatched her arm. “It’s true, what you said?”

  She looked at the ground. White rocks through the black soil, grass fine as a child’s hair. “Yes.”

  She listened to him breathing. Sweat poured down her back. You’ll never have this again, she told herself. And you’re to blame. “When we reach the cutoff for San Pedro there’ll be someone to take you downriver.”

  “I don’t need anyone.”

  “Without help you won’t make it. We have a way.”

  “I don’t care for your ways.”

  “You’re being spoiled again, gringo. It’s nothing − a man and woman making love − you don’t do this, sleep with someone then go away, the next day?”

  “It’s all I’ve done, for years.”

  “So what’s so hard to understand?”

  He smiled, shook his head. “Forget it.”

  “You’ll go downriver? Or you’ll be killed.”

  “And you?”

  “We’ll split up at the Río.”

  He grabbed her arm and knocked her into the brush, rolled up and crouched over her, scanning downhill. “Christ! You didn’t see that?”

  She tried to squirm free but he held her down. “What?”

  “You’re blind as a bat! Soldiers coming up the trail!”

  Carefully she raised her head above the leaves. A string of soldiers coming at a run up the hill she and he had climbed ten minutes ago. “Give me my gun!”

  “Go! I’ll keep them. Easy here to pin them down. Tell me where to bring the gun.”

  “You won’t keep it?”

  “I don’t want your goddamn gun. I don’t want anything that’s yours.” He pointed the muzzle at her face, six inches away. “You don’t go right now and you’ll be the very first one I kill.” He switched the selector off safety, jabbed the muzzle into her cheek. “Then I’ll only have six bullets for the soldiers.”

  She had a throb of fear seeing his face white with anger. “In about ten miles the trail splits for San Pedro and Chinajá. There’s a little valley. There’ll be people there. They’ll keep the gun. They’ll take you downriver.”

  Watching where the soldiers had disappeared in the brush, he settled himself in position, wiping bark and dirt from the Galil’s muzzle shroud. She gripped his shoulders. “Please?”

  “What?”

  She kissed him, tasting salt. “Go, goddamnit!” he said.

  When he looked again she was gone. Six bullets. And one in the chamber. Too many soldiers. Kill a few and pin the rest. Or kill one early and try to get to his gun.

  He crawled backwards through the scrub to the apex of the slope where the trees grew thick behind him and there was an angle of fire downhill where the trail cleared at a bend, enough to hit the point man, and if you had enough bullets you could rake the brush and try to hit the slack man. But he didn’t, so the slack would reach cover and open up as soon as he shot, and they’d spray everything up here and he’d have to pull back, then when they came forward he’d be able to get the slack unless they circled. Of course they’d circle, but if he swung uphill he could flank them and in any case they’d get him, it was just a matter of how soon.

  Again he glanced behind but she was truly gone. You’re such a fool, he thought, an abandoned puppy ready to fall for anyone. This crap of all these years without anyone means that’s how it should be.

  The first soldier broke through the brush, climbing fast, a small man in khaki with his rifle slung. Murphy rested the Galil stock on his left hand, elbow well propped, settled his chest into the warm, soft ground so that the muzzle came up steadily, seeing down the barrel shroud to the center of the man’s chest, adjusted for the slope, and slowly squeezed the trigger.

  20

  LYMAN HAD BEEN thinking of his sons, how Joshua had never lied, didn’t need to, except when he’d been very young, and Lyman had taught him not to, that it was bad for him. But Jason lied constantly, almost a reflex. Have I made him ashamed of himself? Is he ashamed of himself because he’s not Joshua?

  The rifle’s crack and Chichito flying back arms outspread were unreal because Lyman wasn’t there, had to come back suddenly as he dived for cover and fired wildly uphill toward the sound and yelled for Martínez to spread the men. Someone was gasping; he realized it was Chichito. Behind him someone opened up, bullets shrieking over his head and whacking into the knoll above. The firing stopped, then from the knoll barked a single shot. Below Lyman a man screamed. Several Galils answered back; their fire wound down and again from the knoll the rifle fired once.

  “Stop shooting!” It was Martínez, yelling at his men. “Eduardo, Camilio, Benito!”

  “Sí!” one answered.

  “Who?”

  “Benito,” the man called back.

  It’s the fucking pilot, Lyman realized. Up there with the chica I saw from the chopper. He doesn’t have much ammo so he’s letting us make the moves then picking us off. He’s got the position and I’ve let us walk into what I said I never would.

  Or he has the chica on his flank and when we try to circle she’ll hit us. Or she’s the one up there and he’s waiting for us to come round. There was a faroff whine − Chichito, who must have fallen off the other side of the trail. There was no way to reach him without crossing open ground. Someone was thumping his rifle butt into the earth and Lyman was furious with him then realized the sound was his own heart.

  THERE WERE THREE BULLETS in the magazine and one in the chamber. Murphy could not judge how much time had passed. Already soldiers were moving up through heavy cover to his left; he could hear them but couldn’t risk a chance shot. When they got to the top they’d rush and he wouldn’t get them all. He crept leftwards on his belly from the knoll into the dark jungle, down toward the soldiers.

  A GALIL chattered uphill but not from the top. One of us, Lyman decided as he spun on to his belly and dashed across the trail and dived down beside Chichito who lay on his back, head low, feet splayed uphill. His mouth was full of foamy blood and Lyman sucked and spat it out, mouthful after mouthful, hammering his fist on Chichito’s chest but not near the round wet hole in the sternum. Trying to stay low Lyman dug a compress from his pack and reached under the boy’s thin body, pulled out his hand coated with lung tissue and blood. “Martínez!” Lyman rasped. Crumbles of earth bumped his knee and he saw they’d come from where Chichito’s hands had clenched then relaxed. A breeze abraded the leaves.

  “Sí,” Martínez whispered, down and to the right.

  “We got to circle both sides of that hill,” Lyman called in Spanish, hoping the pilot wouldn’t understand or maybe not hear.

  “I sent the right flank,” Martínez said.

  “You and Angel go left, cut off the back.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll stay with Chicho. Cut them off this way. Remember, there’s two of them...”

  A dragonfly landed on Lyman’s wrist. The wind ruffled the boy’s hair against his sweaty
forehead. A spider web between a stem and branch cast prisms of sunlight. Lyman laid his ear against Chichito’s chest, hearing only his own pulse.

  MURPHY CREPT fifty yards downhill, found a depression with limestone boulders, all around thick with trunks, limbs, stems, shoots, saplings, creepers, leaves, brambles. Something hissed across the damp leaves, twanged a thorn, moved uphill behind him, a rat, maybe. He waited, counting out a hundred in pulses, forcing his heart rate slower while mosquitoes battered at his forehead and face, while the wind teased the leaves, masking the sound of moving men. Then he continued down, north, then up through ferns to a crevice of madrone that gave a view of the knoll where he’d been.

  Leaves twitched across the slope below the knoll. A soldier bolted toward the knoll, another coming over the top through the trees. They met at the top and scrambled for cover; he hit the first and missed the second who ran back for the first and Murphy blew his head off, his helmet bouncing into the scrub. Murphy squirmed back from his crevice as bullets sprayed and sang through the trees. He checked that there was still one bullet in the chamber and crossed over the top of the slope and down its western side, away from the trail and the Río, then turned south, paralleling the trail.

  “HE’S NOT DEAD,” Lyman said.

  “He will be. You’re not going to save him by carrying him two hours in the jungle to an LZ.”

  “How come you don’t have any fucking LZs? How come you don’t own this country?”

  Vodega came running up the trail and ducked down beside them, lifted one of the boy’s eyelids, shook his head. “That’s it,” he said. “We’re pulling back.”

  “Back?”

  “We have five dead out of eleven. Or out of ten if we don’t count you. That makes six you’ve killed today including the chopper gunner.”

  “You insubordinate little shit.”

  “You’re not my superior, Colonel. You’re from another world and you’re screwing up ours. As soon as we get back I’m telling Arena to send you home. If I don’t get back, any of my surviving men will carry the message.” He turned half away to watch the knoll where they were bringing down the bodies one by one on a bough and poncho stretcher. “We’re not girls,” he spat, “you can’t cut our throats.”

  THE RIDGE of the knoll continued south, bending eastward as it dropped toward the Río. Murphy kept to the heavy jungle below and west of the trail, halfway between the ridge and its valley. The jungle seemed to thicken, then he realized it was night coming, everything falling into shadow. There was a gray glimmer ahead and he pulled back to skirt it, turning east toward the river. The ridge had flowed down into the valley and he crossed a trail and could smell wood smoke and then the cool breath of the Río.

  Voices were coming up the trail, several people running; he ducked into the trees. Now with only one bullet left he would pay for shooting the last two soldiers on the knoll, for shooting the one who’d gone back for his comrade. The first person passed, running hard. The second passed, lighter on his feet. “When we get to the fork,” the third one called in Spanish, “we must spread out.”

  “Dona!” Murphy called.

  The running stopped. There was a snick of metal as someone clicked off safety. “Dona! It’s me,” he whispered quickly in Spanish, before they could shoot. “I’m back.”

  “It’s him!” Her voice neared out of the darkness, her hands snatched his wrists, clasped his face. “Oh God it’s you,” she said in English. “I was so worried, we came fast as we could. Where are the soldiers?”

  “Went back.”

  “Pascual! He says they went back!”

  A tall heavy man came to them, breathing hard. Dona dropped her hands from Murphy’s arms. “How do you know? the man said.

  “I hit several and they must have decided to carry back the wounded. After that I left the trail and went through the selva. They can’t follow till tomorrow.”

  “How many’d you hit?”

  “Two. Maybe more.”

  “Mierda!” the other man said. “Is it true?”

  “If he says it,” Dona said.

  “I just wanted to give you time,” Murphy said to her in English.

  “I came to get a gun and found these two and brought them. I kept telling myself I must not worry because you are truly difficult to kill, but this time I was sure you were dead.”

  “And here I am.”

  She felt perfect within the circle of his arms, her shoulders a perfect shape and size, perfect the touch and smell of her hair against his cheek, her neck against his shoulder, lovely the feel of her arms around his back. She leaned into him, her weight suddenly on him. “Just let me stay here, a moment, like this...”

  21

  “YOU’RE GOING to die here.”

  “I can’t go with you. Please, accept that.”

  “Your people need medics. I’ll stay.”

  “You’re too different, you’d be captured in a month. You’d give too many of us away.”

  Swallows were skimming the Río under the rising moon, darting and diving after insects, crying their harsh cries. “You’re lying.”

  She glanced round at Pascual, who stood a few yards behind them. “Remember what I said, why I can’t?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “He’s the one.”

  “Shall I tell him what you said to me, last night?”

  She half-smiled, embarrassed. “Go back to the States, tell the newspapers, everyone, what’s happening here.”

  “Dona − I saw it all in Vietnam. Nobody cares, up there. Long as it doesn’t hurt them.”

  “Tell them. Make it hurt them.”

  “It’s coming,” Pascual said. “La lancha.”

  Murphy looked at Pascual, burly and bearded, hair curling down over his brow. “Why don’t you protect her?” he started to say, but the question was crippled by too many differences. Pascual would not think a man should protect a woman, give his life for her if needed and never spend hers for his because she was the holy mother of his children, because she was life incarnate, because no cause was worth the death of a single woman. He thought of Inquisition priests killing Indian children to save their souls from Hell. They like Pascual believed in the efficacy of death. He saw how his whole life could be lived with Dona, and that it would not be.

  “I’m sending a wounded compañero downriver with you,” she said. “He was shot in the stomach two days ago. He’s suffering horribly. We’re trying to get him to Mexico, to the clinic at Bonampak. Please stay with him. You were a medic, do what you can.”

  From upriver a motor was approaching, a dugout canoe with two women in the stern, burlap sacks of corn stacked on planks atop the hull in front of them. In the shallows the women leaped out and shoved aside the front rows of sacks and lifted the planks, and in the moonlight Murphy saw a dark-haired man lying in water in the hull, under the planks. Dona bent over him, speaking softly, caressing his brow. One of the women grabbed Murphy’s arm. “Get in!”

  Dona was gone. Murphy squeezed into the hull, keeping his face above the water inside. The other man groaned, and Murphy saw his mouth was thick with blood that ran down his neck into the water. You’re not going to live, Murphy thought. Planks clumped down over their heads, the corn sacks thumping on them. He could see nothing. The bilge of water, blood, and gasoline eddied back as the propeller dug into the river, then came sloshing forward as the engine steadied and the prow dropped. He twisted up his face and tried to back his body against the hull to avoid bumping the other man.

  The hull banged and slapped the water, bubbles rushing past the wood beside his ear. There was no air. The man coughed blood down Murphy’s face. “Water!” he gasped. “Please, water!”

  SHE LAY IN the hammock pushing it slowly back and forth with a stick shoved into the ground. It was like moving in a womb, protected by the blackness, the silence, floating in an invisible world. Her mother’s womb, dark, enclosing, warm, complete: was s
he truly remembering it? Could she go further back, to the fusion of her father’s seed and mother’s egg, back down the tunnels of their single cells?

  The hammock rocked gently, its mesh tight around her shoulders. Unimaginable that he was here, in this hammock, what we did. The skin of her neck prickled, flushed. It wasn’t even here, then, this hammock. Nothing was here but him.

  Sex is God. Why didn’t I know that? Sex brings life, and war takes it away. And look which one I’ve chosen.

  THE CANOE’S motor slowed. Over its diminishing rumble grew a larger, heavier one, another boat approaching. Cracks of light flared down between the planks and corn sacks. The hull thudded into steel, the wounded man cried out as Murphy lurched against him.

  “Where the hell you going?” a voice yelled down.

  “To Sayaxché, Jefe.”

  “Where from?”

  “Finca el Paraíso.”

  “Can’t you see it’s night?”

  “The corn must be there by the morning! It’s for the truck to Flores.”

  “How many sacks?”

  “Twenty.”

  The prow dipped as boots thumped down on it. The wounded man sputtered as water sluiced over his face. “You troopers,” the voice said, “move those sacks.”

  “You’ll tip my boat!” one of the women yelled. “I’ll lose my harvest! Who’ll pay for that?”

  The sacks groaned as bayonets thrust into them. Corn kernels sifted onto the planks. Lights darted back and forth through the cracks between the planks. Kernels plopped into the water. Murphy tried to raise his arms but the wounded man was jammed against him.

  “Please, Jefe,” the woman begged. “This corn is for the mill at Flores. To make tortillas. Everybody needs tortillas −”