by Lou Cameron
“What can I tell you? She says it’s love. The husband, I mean. She was just screwing me for laughs. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, Gaston. Many a soldier away from home has pined pretty good for the girl he left behind him, even in bed with somebody closer to hand.”
Gaston shrugged and said, ‘True, but since I will kick you in the head before I allow you to run off into the jungle with her, this discussion is pointless. If it were a test, you passed it. If it were not, you still can’t help her. They have spears, Dick. Big pointed things they like to stick in white men, and you would appear to have made la zig-zag with an important Ashanti’s woman.”
“I don’t think she’d tell him that.”
“Believe me, Dick, women always tell. Who do you think told on Elizabeth and Essex – Essex? If they do not confess with their mouths they do it with their eyes. One man in ten may be able to keep his foolish mouth shut about such matters. Asking a woman to keep such a secret is asking her to betray her nature. Sacré, what is the point of a woman having a secret lover unless her friends can envy her for it?”
Captain Gringo swallowed some coffee and said, “Let’s drop it. Before we were stopped by those cops you were saying something about a boat out of Sinnamary.”
“I was? I thought we just went to work for Van Horn, Dick.”
“Maybe we have and maybe we haven’t. Let’s find out if we’re prisoners here or not by trying a run into town. We’re still a long ways from the Dutch border, so if there’s no easy way out in Sinnamary we can always come back in time for supper.”
“We took the front money, Dick.”
“So what? Claudette offered more and was a good lay besides. This colony’s getting on my nerves. There’s too many wheels within wheels and my guts keep telling me everybody’s lying to me. I’d rather hire out to a nice simple war lord having a regular old fashioned revolution, where a guy knows who he’s machine-gunning, for Chrissake!”
Gaston laughed and said, “Ah, can this be the nice American boy I met in Mexico? You used to fuss at me for being practique, Dick. What happened to all your fine officer-and-gentleman merde?”
Captain Gringo smiled bitterly and answered, “I gave it up for my health. Robin Hood was a chump. He should have kept the money. I never would have gotten in trouble in the first place if I’d been thinking of my own ass instead of giving breaks to people who were going to get themselves killed anyway. You’re right that I started out with some half-ass ideas about an officer’s code. But it’s pretty dumb to be the only guy south of the border who follows one, and I’m tired of being played for a sucker.”
“Eh bien, I am pleased at the way you are growing up, my old and rare, but Van Horn’s particular double cross eludes me. He’s paying well above the going rates for what would seem a simple enough spot of gun thuggery. In what way do you think he means to double our crosses, hein?”
“I’ve no idea. That’s his problem. Finish your breakfast and we’ll see if they lend us some horses or shoot us.”
Gaston put down his coffee cup and said he was set to go. But before either could rise from the table a big buxom blond in a thin cotton Mother Hubbard came out on the veranda. Her wheat straw hair hung across her awesome tits in twin peasant braids and she was barefoot, but Captain Gringo had met few women in his time who looked so snooty.
She said, “Oh, you must be the gun tramps my brother was talking about. Have either of you seen him this morning?”
Captain Gringo started to ask her who the hell she was talking about, but noticed her family resemblance to Van Horn. It was odd what an improvement her gender made. Her pink softness and sensuous mouth had looked repulsive on her big brother. On her, they looked good. She was one of those big fluffy slabs of Angel Food cake a man wanted to dive into on sight. But he said, “No, Ma’am. The servants said he’d ridden off on some errand or other.”
The blond wrinkled her upper lip and sniffed, “Oh, damn, he’s probably off playing with his niggers again. I’ve told him he’s going to get us all massacred in our beds by those wild Blacks, but does he listen?”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “I didn’t know the Ashanti villages he mentioned were within a morning’s ride, uh, Miss ...?”
“Wilma. Wilma Van Horn. My brother calls me Willie and you can call me M’selle Van Horn.”
“You can call me Captain, then,” he laughed, “and this is M’sieur Verrier. You were about to tell us how far those Bush Negro villages were, M’selle.”
“I was? Oh, very well, since you’ll probably have to lead a rescue expedition in any case if Paul doesn’t return by sunset. This plantation is on the landward edge of cultivation. Our back lots abut the tree line of the uncleared jungle. The Niggers are almost anywhere in there, but I don’t think they have any villages this side of the foot hills of the Tumac-Humac ranges. Paul trades beads and things with them in the no-man’s land between here and the treaty line. I’ve asked him not to do that.”
Her lip curled further as she added, “Frankly, I think he mucks about with black girls. Have you ever heard anything so disgusting?”
The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Captain Gringo looked away to keep from breaking up as Gaston said, “Incredible! Surely M’selle is mistaken? I took your brother for a gentleman, and surely no gentleman would defile his flesh in such a monstrous fashion!”
The big blond shrugged and replied, “I know it’s hard to believe, but you’d be surprised at how many Whites down here go in for that sort of perversion. I am driving into town, should my brother return before me. You will tell him where I am, won’t you?”
Gaston started to say something, caught Captain Gringo’s warning glance, and shut up as the big blond turned and went back inside. But as soon as they were alone again Gaston said, “What’s wrong, Dick? That was a good chance to leave for Sinnamary, non?”
“No. If we offered to escort her we’d be stuck with her company. The big cheese is off the reservation and his sister’s leaving. Let her get clear and nobody around here will have the authority to question our own expedition.”
So they decided to have another cup of coffee after all and when they’d finished, they got up and strolled over to the compound of smaller out-buildings to the north of the main house. They heard the ringing of a blacksmith’s anvil and spotted a corral of horses half hidden by the smithy, so they headed for it. As they cut across the hard packed red clay the trustee, called Chef, stepped out of the shade of an overhang to greet them. He still wore a gun belt, but he’d left his shotgun somewhere. He smiled and said, “Ah, bonjour. You wish to inspect the guns, hein?”
They’d had no such thing in mind, but Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah, we told Le Grand Chef we’d look them over before we ran into town to see if we could scout up more ammo.”
Chef didn’t go for his gun, so it appeared he accepted it. He pointed at a tin roofed shed and said, “Bien, we have the guns in there.” So they followed him.
Inside, squatting on their tripods atop supply boxes, waited three oil covered machine guns. Two were Maxims and one was a Spandau as Van Horn had said. It was nice to know somebody had told the truth for a change. Captain Gringo stepped over to the nearest Maxim and opened the breech. The action was clean and in good condition, considering the climate. But the headspacing was all wrong. He took out his pocket knife, opened the screw driver blade, and proceeded to adjust it as Chef asked, mildly, what he was doing. He said, “You have to make sure this back plate fits snuggly against the bases of the ammo at all times. The last time this weapon was fired it was left to cool off without tightening the headspace. Too loose a fit means a jammed belt. Too tight means a gun blowing up in your face. It’s ready to fire, now. As it warms up, you have to ease back on the headspace and give the bullets more breathing space, see?”
Chef shrugged and said, “It’s not my job. You are the machine-gun expert, Captain Gringo.”
The tall American didn’t answer as he opened the
second Maxim and saw it was okay. Van Horn had said they were to instruct his followers, not a thing was said about them doing the machine-gunning in the field. He made a mental note to ask the fat man about that the next time he saw him, if he ever saw him. Taking the money and running was making more sense by the minute.
The Spandau was a copy of the basic Maxim patent with just enough change to get around the international patent and make the fucking gun more complicated to service and fire. It looked to be in good shape and he noted all three guns were chambered for the same Belgian 9mm rounds. The Fabrique National made good ammo for anybody that could afford it. Van Horn seemed to like to travel first class in weaponry as well as furniture. Had it been up to Captain Gringo, the guns would have been chambered to take French army issue, pedestrian as it were. Once the revolution started, the French navy would be certain to blockade the coast and it made more sense to have guns that could fire captured ammo after the first few skirmishes with the colonial troops and gendarmes.
Gaston asked how many old soldiers Van Horn had in his improvised trustee army and Chef said, “None. The French army and navy have their own military prisons and the few men with military experience out on the rock are never paroled ashore.”
Gaston sighed, “Trés practique of them. A small but well trained garrison can handle ten times their number of untrained street fighters. To give the devil of Devil’s Island his due, he seems to have his eye on all the chips in the game.”
“Merde alors” Chef said. “We can take them when Le Grand Chef gives the word. Our men are desperate and we outnumber the garrison by a hundred to one, even if we didn’t have these lovely machine guns!”
Gaston raised an eyebrow at Captain Gringo, who shrugged and added, “It’s a big country to cover with three heavy weapon squads. The last time I looked at the map there were five mainland towns big enough to have their own garrisons and when you throw in the island prison you get six. There’s one coast road broken up in dots and dashes by swamps and lagoons. So that means some hit-and-run in small craft, and France has a big navy with guns that can fire inland all the way to where it hardly matters.”
Chef pouted, “Don’t you think we can win, Captain Gringo? What is your point in joining us if you don’t think we can win, hein?”
The American said, “I’ll tell you after we have a look around town. Our American revolution was against impossible odds, too. The first thing I need to know is how much ammo we’ll have, and I want to scout the defenses of Sinnamary, too.”
So the mollified Chef led them around to the corral and told a couple of trustees there to saddle two mounts for them. A few minutes later they were riding off the plantation alone and Gaston said, “I don’t care for these horses, Dick. The horse is not a tropical beast and neither of these looks capable of making it to the border, even if the way were clear.”
Captain Gringo said, “Yeah, they’re just crow bait the Van Horns use to save on shoe leather. Van Horn and his sister probably use the only decent mounts in the corral and I told you I’ve been looking at the map. We could probably make it to the next town up the coast on them. But it gets pretty wild and soggy between Iracoubo and Mana, near the Surinam border. There are a couple of good-sized rivers to cross, too. So that means a ferry boat and I’d just as soon look for a tramp steamer once. Come on, let’s move these nags. It’s starting to warm up and I want to get there before they button up for La Siesta.”
He whipped his mount with the rein ends and it managed a trot, although a more comfortable lope seemed to be asking too much of it. So neither had much to say as they concentrated on getting to town with their balls intact. Captain Gringo reined his lathered nag to a walk as they approached the outskirts of Sinnamary. There didn’t seem to be a road block or guard post and the favela around the little seaport was the usual collection of shacks whipped up out of salvaged packing crates and thatch. Scrawny chickens scratched in the bare yards between the road and shacks. A lean pig dozed in the roadside ditch, a vulture brooded from a fence post as they rode by. Captain Gringo suspected the vulture knew more than the pig or chickens. They passed a shack where bare assed mulatto kids played in the dusty yard and a man in convict’s whites held hands with a Black girl in a short cotton shift as they both watched the children from the shack’s veranda. Captain Gringo grimaced, not at the misogynation but at the devilish ingenuity of the French prison authorities. The trustees were exploited as slave labor and fed just enough to keep them alive, but were allowed enough wine, women, and song to keep them undecided about running off into the trackless jungles all around.
It was no wonder so few escaped from Devil’s Island. No matter how miserable a man is, he hates to risk the little he has if he has anything at all. It was a good way to lighten up the native population and hope for future French speaking free labor, too. He made a note that most of the prison population would probably sit out Van Horn’s uprising until they knew which side was winning.
The outskirts of Sinnamary didn’t amount to much, since the little seaport didn’t amount to much either. As they reached the plaza they could see some high bottle-front buildings leftover from the original Dutch colonists. Most of the buildings in the center of town were the Steamboat Gothic the French built in tropical climes. There was a Spanish-looking church to complete the cosmopolitan atmosphere, and as they tethered their borrowed mounts in front of a hotel, they noticed the polychrome people passing by spoke a mélange of French and Spanish Creole with what sounded like Dutch and English embedded in it like raisins of seaman’s slang. Gaston asked what the next move was and Captain Gringo said, “Let’s split up. We’ll cover more angles that way. If I’m not here when you get back, ride back to the plantation. Every time I wait for you in a strange saloon I seem to get in a fight.”
Gaston laughed and said he’d see if he could bump into anyone he knew or might like to. He headed for the waterfront where the funnel of an ocean-going, three-island tramp loomed above the sheds and warehouses. So Captain Gringo headed the other way, knowing Gaston was better at blending in and that if the French authorities were keeping an eye on anything it would be the waterfront. Gaston’s French was letter perfect and thanks to the massacre the night before, no local gendarme should suspect his papers if he had to show them.
Captain Gringo soon saw, however, that there was little else of note in Sinnamary. It seemed all residential on the far side of the plaza. He didn’t want to go to church, so he stepped into a corner tobacco shop and stocked up on fresh smokes, noting that his usual Cuban Claros were more expensive here. He bought some anyway. Gaston had warned him the French government had a monopoly on tobacco and that the results were God awful. The French had invented cigarettes, but nobody else could smoke their brands.
He noticed a rack of newspapers. If he moved his lips and took it slow, he could barely read French. So he pulled a copy from the rack. The shopkeeper came out from behind the counter protesting, “Mais non, M’sieur! It’s I who takes the papers from the rack!” as Captain Gringo saw him grab a couple of smaller pamphlets that had been hidden by the top paper and hold them behind his back.
Captain Gringo arched an eyebrow and asked, “What are you saving for your regular customers, dirty pictures?”
The shopkeeper looked flustered and retorted, “Oui, very filthy. You have paid for your cigars, so the paper is gratis, M’sieur. I bid you au revoir.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I want the good stuff. What are you getting for those pamphlets?”
“They are not for sale, M’sieur. I can see you are a foreigner. You would not understand our humor in any case.”
Captain Gringo wondered if he should let it go. It was none of his business what the bored colonials read to get a hard on. On the other hand, in a country where people pissed in the streets and sex was sold wide open, it was sort of mysterious that they’d censor “Jack and Jill Play Doctor!”
He put his smokes away and held out his free hand, sayin
g, “I’ll take one of those pamphlets the nice way or I’ll come back with the police and find out why you’re so unpleasant to a paying customer. What’s it going to be?”
The shopkeeper blanched and quickly handed him one of the forbidden pamphlets, saying, “I assure you these mean nothing to me, M’sieur, but some of my customers will read trash.”
Captain Gringo took it to study the paper cover. It read, J’ACCUSE! PAR EMILE ZOLA.
He nodded and tucked it in his side pocket as he offered to pay. But the red-faced shopkeeper said that was gratis, too, and seemed anxious for him to leave, so he left.
He walked on, chuckling. Zola was that French writer who’d written Nana, wasn’t he? Nana had been a pretty dirty book, sold under the counter back in the States. If this newest effort had to be sold under the counter in a French shop it had to be shocking indeed. He’d read it later. He hoped he’d understand the good stuff. That scene in Nana where the two whores got together, after hours, for some lesbian love had been hot as hell in English translation. It was funny how the idea of two women slithering all over one another seemed so interesting to men. The idea of two men doing the same thing seemed sort of revolting. He wondered if a woman would get a charge out of watching two male homosexuals. He didn’t see how he’d ever find out.
He came to the end of the street and saw nothing beyond but high weeds growing on either side of the walk. But there was a fair-sized building across the vacant lots, so he decided to check it out. He got maybe two city blocks from the building before something landed on his back like a big cat, pinning his elbows to his sides!
As he fell to his knees, cursing himself and the son-of-a-bitch holding him from behind, another man in prison whites materialized from the weeds and moved in, reaching for Captain Gringo’s holstered guns as he hissed, “Hold him, Jacques!” as the mugger who’d jumped him from behind gasped, “I am trying to! Get his guns, you idiot!”
