A Flag for Sunrise

by Robert Stone

  After lunch, they trudged back to the Honda and took up positions.

  “There are jaguar in these mountains,” Tom said as they drove back to the highway. “Wouldn’t you like to see one of those babies?”

  Westward, the land sloped downward, the pine forests thinned and they drove over high desert cut by steep barrancas. Within an hour, the Sierra was behind them, the land sandy and cactus-ridden, picked over by lean cattle and skeletal burros. They passed an occasional burro cart laden with cords of pine wood but there were very few people to be seen. It was an empty desert of a place. In the western distance the slopes of another range rose; these were the mountains along the Pacific coast, fleecy marine cloud hung over them.

  They turned south well short of the coastal mountains and came in sight of a town centered on the copper dome of a basilica and surrounded by green irrigated fields.

  “That’s Zalteca,” Bob Cole said to Holliwell. “Where you and I get our visas for Tecan.”

  “Zalteca de las Palomas,” Tom Zecca said.

  Before long they were passing the gates to fincas and little wood and adobe villages.

  “This is another place known to sportsmen the world over,” Zecca said. “Here it’s the annual dove shoot.”

  “Yes, it’s very big,” Cole said.

  “Every year,” Zecca explained, “the doves migrating south pass through this valley. The Global Fishfinder types and similar sportsmen come down to shoot them. And all the villagers outside of town bum down their houses.”

  “Why’s that?” Holliwell asked.

  “Well,” Zecca said, “it goes like this. We’re out in the brush with our fowling pieces popping away at doves when suddenly this distraught granny appears. We don’t understand a word she says but she’s really upset. She shows us this column of smoke and leads us to a heap of burnt-up shit that she claims was the home of her ancestors. If we try and ignore her she gets whinier and nastier and louder and presently a crowd of locals appears. They’re wearing machetes, they smell of cane juice and they’re looking at us in a most unfriendly manner. So we say—what the hell? We’re all mogul Fishfinders out for a good time, we all own condominiums somewhere, we kick in twenty or thirty bills apiece to buy granny a new spread. Let’s say there’s six or seven of us. The old woman gets a hundred fifty, maybe two hundred. If she’s lucky she can find another bunch of blasting-away gringos and do the same number on them. When the season’s over everybody throws together a new bunch of sticks to live in and has a party.”

  “They’ve been doing it so long,” Marie said, “that it’s taken on a religious significance.”

  Zecca laughed. “As an anthropologist you should be interested in the cultural layers. A little crude insurance arson. Gringo baiting. Renewal.”

  “And the auto-da-fé,” Holliwell said. “Perhaps a subconscious reference to Martínez Trujillo.”

  “You could do a paper,” Bob Cole said.

  “I could indeed,” Holliwell said. “I’m working on a multi-volume study of mankind called The Aesthetics of Horseshit. I want to beat the sociologists at their own game. I’d happily include a chapter on Zalteca.”

  Tom Zecca had begun to sing “Cu cu ru cu cu, paloma.” His wife joined in briefly.

  “You don’t sound as though you take much satisfaction in your work,” Bob Cole said.

  Ah, Holliwell thought. The representative of history.

  “That’s not true at all,” he told Cole. “I’ve been temporarily sidetracked. But I go to bed every night with a profound sense of satisfaction.”

  “Really?” Cole asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Holliwell said. “I live for my work. Every day is different.”

  Cole nodded thoughtfully.

  “How about your work,” Holliwell asked. “Are you getting off on it, as we say?”

  “Well,” Cole said, “I suppose I’ve been sidetracked too.”

  “It’s very hard to fix one’s eye on the Big Picture,” Holliwell said. “Don’t you find that?”

  “Yes,” Cole said.

  They were driving through the cobbled streets of town. Small boys ran beside their car offering threats and guidance.

  The central square was nearly empty under the afternoon sun. A man lay asleep at the foot of a eucalyptus tree with a tray of chewing gum beside him. There were a few wrought-iron park benches that looked as though they might have been imported from Paris a hundred years before by some local philanthropist of means; they were covered with parakeet shit, and mongrel dogs lay asleep beneath them.

  Zecca parked his car in a space beside the basilica; the church’s dome was held together with wooden scaffolding. The boys who had been following the car approached across the deserted square in an attitude of movie-hoodlum confidence. Zalteca was used to gringo tourists. Tom Zecca engaged the largest boy to watch over the car.

  Walking wearily, they made their way down the street of public notaries and public letter writers to the Tecanecan consulate. After several rings of the outsized doorbell, a teen-aged girl admitted them to a parlor filled with tropical plants and girded by whirring electric fans. In the adjoining room, prosperous-looking children were watching dubbed Yogi Bear cartoons on a color television set.

  The consul’s wife appeared after a while; in her tight sheath skirt she had the appearance of an attractive woman turning gradually into a caricature from a Rivera painting. The consul’s wife led them into an office where there were still more fans and a monumental ebony desk with an Olympia typewriter in the middle of it. On the wall behind the desk were a crucifix, a portrait of Tecan’s celebrated President and a tintype of William Walker’s last defeat.

  There was some difficulty about the visas for Holliwell and Cole; between the lady’s drawling Tecanecan and the whirring of the fans its nature was obscured to Holliwell’s ear. The difficulty had to do with its being Sunday, with its being siesta, the consul’s absence, the proximity of Lent, the configuration of the planets and the phase of the moon—whatever it was, it got away from him. He stood obstinate and uncomprehending while Cole nodded sympathetically. When the woman, with a melancholy smile, had finished her elimination of possibilities, Holliwell simply began over again—citing the necessity of his immediate departure for Tecan, the misfortunes that would befall both him and the country if he failed to arrive in time, hinting at the displeasure in high places that would be the result of his delay in Zalteca. Zecca, responding, came to his aid, producing a U.S. passport with a red cover. A diplomatic passport, Holliwell supposed.

  It turned out to be a matter of money. Travelers who insisted on crossing the border in the face of the many difficulties at hand paid twice the rate for their visas. Twelve dollars instead of six.

  He and Cole set their twenty-four U.S. dollars on the consulate desk. The lady, without glancing at the money, seated herself, typed out the visas and stamped them in the two passports. The children in the meantime had torn themselves away from Yogi Bear and were gathered in the office doorway, watching their mother work. As the Americans left, the consul’s wife shooed them away and back to the screen. The twenty-four dollars stayed where it was, on the desk.

  When they returned to the central square and their car, Holliwell and his company found the boys gone but their hubcaps in place. Zecca opened the hood to see that the battery had not been stolen. All was well.

  On their way back to the Pan-American Highway, a little boy of hardly more than six ran toward the car, demanding to guide them. Zecca avoided running over him with some difficulty.

  “Well, that’s Zalteca, folks,” Zecca said.

  “Not such a bad town really,” Marie said.

  “No,” Holliwell said. “Not really.”

  “When you’re in Tecan,” Zecca said, “you’ll think about it fondly.”

  They stopped at a filling station on the edge of town, filled the tank with the highest-grade gasoline and drank Coca-Colas.

  South of Zalteca the land flattened out altogether;
the line of the coast range disappeared and only fulsome clouds marked the proximity of the ocean. It was desert, the barest of cattle land, brown grass, dust. East of them the Sierra petered out into a low regular slope that seemed to be covered with a jungle of thorns.

  Within half an hour they were in sight of what appeared to be the border, a cluster of kiosks of different colors, a line of trucks, and most incongruously in this empty landscape, lines of people blocking the road.

  The border between Compostela and Tecan proved to be an affair of some social complexity. The Compostelan dimension consisted of three adjoining green buildings atop one of which the national banner hung lifeless from a peeling flagpole. The highway was blocked by a series of speed-trap bumps, the bumps were green-striped on the Compostelan side; on the Tecan side the stripes were yellow. Four Compostelan border policemen in green tropicals and Wehrmachtstyle caps lounged together in the shade of the customs shed, a fifth was making what appeared to be a halfhearted inspection of a truck loaded with kerosene stoves. From the perfunctory nature of his poking and prodding about the truck, he appeared not to have had his turn at AID customs school.

  The real action was all on the Tecanecan side. There, six or so trucks were lined up at the side of the road while Tecanecan customs men in coveralls went over them with screw drivers and flashlights. The difference in ambiance on the far side of the border was reinforced by the presence there of the Tecanecan Guardia Nacional, whose uniforms, resembling those of American paratroopers complete with the laced boots and colored scarves, were freshly pressed and spotless and quite different from those of the ordinary customs inspectors. The Guardia were occupying themselves with a long line of young foreigners who had been lined up in the middle of the road beside their shoulder bags and bagpacks and who stood, facing Compostela, squinting into the sun and looking frightened and unhappy.

  Zecca had parked his car so that its front tires surmounted the first Tecanecan speed bump; those foremost in the line of colorful young travelers could exchange glances with the passengers in the Honda at a distance of a few feet.

  “It’s hard to get into Tecan if they think you look funny,” Zecca said. “It’s even harder to get out.”

  There was a sergeant in charge of the line of funny-looking foreigners. The sergeant was black, although it was not a part of Tecan where many black people lived—the Guardia Nacional pursued the tradition of stationing the members of the gendarmerie as far as possible from their native region. This made assignments fairly predictable in Tecan; it was not a large country and its only regions were the mountains and the land on either side of them.

  The sergeant was repeatedly inspecting and commenting upon the hippie gringos. From time to time, he would seize hold of a boy’s long hair and pull him out of line, caress the hair while making kissing noises with his mouth, shout something at the youth and shove him back in line. He had a repertory of spits and sneers and snarls and his smiles were not good-humored. When he came to a girl who struck his fancy, he would pause contemplatively and feel her up. No one seemed to be protesting his behavior.

  “Shit,” Zecca said, “they must have caught someone with grass.”

  “I think someone should have a word with that guy,” Marie said.

  On the opposite side of the road, another event was in progress. A cow had fallen into the ditch that marked the frontier and entangled itself in the wire the Tecanecans strung on their side of the line. A crowd of local boys, whose proper business was assisting tourists through customs, selling cold drinks or begging, were amusing themselves by stoning it to death. The cow had so totally engaged their attention that they ignored the Zeccas’ car.

  The animal had lost its footing and was lying with its back legs tucked under it, its hooves tearing ineffectually at the dirt and wire while the rocks crashed down on it from every side. The boys would exhaust their handful and then run off into the sandy fields to gather more. Each stone was received by the cow with a soft bellow. Its eyes and nostrils were beginning to show blood.

  “Look at that, for Christ’s sake,” Marie said. “Are we going to do something about this bullshit?” she asked her husband.

  “Hang on,” he told her. “Everybody give me their passport.” The Honda’s passengers gave him their passports; he climbed out from behind the wheel and held a brief dialogue with the officials on the Compostelan side.

  Holliwell and Bob Cole sat watching the boys stone the cow. As they watched, one of the smaller boys looked over at the car, wiped his hands and approached them with a glass jar. He thrust the jar through the open window into Holliwell’s face—inside was the largest scorpion Holliwell had ever seen.

  “Two dollar,” the boy said.

  “No,” Holliwell said. “No, gracias.” For a moment he thought he might be being threatened. If he failed to produce two dollars the boy would drop it on his chest.

  “One dollar,” the boy said.

  Marie Zecca let out a fetching little scream.

  “No,” Holliwell said. “Otra vez.”

  But the boy only made a farting noise at them and ran back to throw more rocks at the cow.

  “That thing must have been nine inches long,” Marie Zecca said.

  “Smaller than that, surely,” Bob Cole told her.

  Tom Zecca came back clutching the brace of passports.

  “What happened?”

  “A kid just tried to sell me a scorpion,” Holliwell said.

  “Hell, you can’t give them away around here. This is alacrán city.”

  “I suppose,” Bob Cole said, “it’s considered a souvenir.”

  Marie Zecca grasped the back seat and turned to Tom.

  “Look, man—those nasty little kids are murdering a defenseless animal and over there that goddamn Guardia is abusing women and children. Can we do something about this action?”

  “Sure,” Zecca said. He handed the passports back round and started up the car, easing it over the Tecanecan speed trap. This forcing of his nation’s border attracted the Guardia sergeant’s attention; he came toward them with languid belligerence, walking with his hands on his hips.

  “Buenos tardes, sargente,” Tom Zecca hastened to say, when the Guardia stood beside his window. He thrust the red passport into the sergeant’s hand. The Guardia looked at it through the reflecting sunglasses that were as much a part of the Guardia uniform as the paratroop boots. Within a moment of inspecting the passport, the sergeant drew himself to attention and saluted energetically.

  “Señor Capitano, bienvenidos a su casa.”

  Zecca thanked him for his kind greeting and returned his snappy salute.

  “What about the cow?” Marie whispered.

  From where they were now parked, Holliwell was looking out nearly eye level with the young Europeans and North Americans who were trying to cross the border. A number of them, boys and girls both, had begun to cry.

  “Sergeant,” Tom Zecca said, “I’m sure you know how women are. My wife here is disturbed by the misfortune of that cow. Can something be done?” His Spanish was effortless, unashamedly American in accent.

  “Capitano,” said the Guardia, smiling with Zecca, “claro que sí.”

  He walked over toward the ditch, drawing the automatic pistol from the web belt at his waist as he went. Bracing his legs, he fired the weapon three times, a few inches above the hairline of the tallest boy. The gringo youths in line recoiled at the firing. The boys dropped their stones and scattered crouching, diving for cover. Some cringed along the shoulder of the highway, sad-eyed waifs awaiting the sensitive photographer, their hands clasped over their heads.

  The cow was so startled at the burst of fire that it freed itself from the wire in an awkward lunge, gained its feet and succeeded in hauling itself out of the ditch. Liberated, it trotted up to the Pan-American Highway, eluded a charge by the cursing Compostelan customs cops with a bovine end run and took off down the center line, headed for the capital.

  Zecca waved his than
ks.

  “Que le vaya bien, capitano,” the sergeant called, and returned to the line of quaking travelers. The Honda and its passengers drove past their wistful glances.

  “It’s lousy about these kids,” Zecca said. “But I can’t interfere in that.”

  “They can’t all be carrying dope,” Holliwell said.

  “No, he just got one or two. He’ll let the rest out when he’s had his fun.”

  “They really are pigs, the Guardia,” Marie said. “Actual pigs.”

  “What happens to the ones with the dope?” Bob Cole asked.

  “Best not to think about it,” Zecca said. “It was very dumb of them to buy it here. They were probably turned by the guy who sold it.”

  “I didn’t know you were a captain,” Holliwell said after a while.

  “That’s because I didn’t tell you. But I am. U.S. Army. I’m with the military mission in San Ysidro.”

  Bob Cole stared at him.

  “Don’t you feel a little …” Cole let the question die.

  “A little what, Mr. Cole? I feel just fine.”

  “O.K.,” Cole said. He turned to Holliwell. “Can you imagine what that feels like—especially for a college kid? Standing there, taking that abuse, waiting for those bastards to go through your stuff?”

  “I know what it feels like,” Holliwell said. “I dream about it.”

  “That was no dream back there.”

  “No,” Zecca said, “that was an average day at the gates of Tecan.”

  As they drove south, the wind carried dust clouds that sometimes forced them to close the car windows. With every kilometer the land seemed more brown and infertile, the cattle fewer, the corn scantier and more stunted. A squat brown volcano came into view in the southwest; the wind whipped its faint smoke trails into the lowering sky.

  “I’ll tell you a Guardia story,” Tom Zecca said. “Our Caudillo in the capital lives in a house with a hundred and fifty rooms. The grounds take up about twenty-five city blocks square and there’s a wall of cactus against the fence. The whole complex is patrolled by German shepherds, real ones—from Germany. When the old man bought them he was told that they had to have steak every night to be happy and alert—so the palace is serving up steak dinners for over a hundred of these huge mutts. The dogs probably eat more meat than the population of Tecan.