A Flag for Sunrise

by Robert Stone

  He checked his impulse to apologize for the question, for bringing forth her impatient scorn.

  “Have you?”

  “I think it was all for us,” she said. “What we did we did for ourselves.”

  “Everyone does for themselves finally.”

  “Easy answer,” she said.

  “You expected more from being here?”

  “What I expected I don’t know.”

  I know, Holliwell thought. But he realized he could know only in part. He avoided looking her in the eyes; it was harrowing because she could conceal nothing. Along with the fear, mastering it, was a mighty pride. More was what drove her. Whatever the world afforded in the name of virtue, sacrifice, good works—she wanted more, wanted it all, as though she deserved it. She could be clever, she could play a little homely poker but she had never learned to trim the lights of her pride.

  “What will you do when you get back to the States?” he asked her.

  “First laicize. I don’t belong in the church. I don’t believe in it. I’m a fake nun.”

  “You’re not a fake, ma’am, whatever you believe.”

  “We made a botch of it here,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe what a mess we made of it.”

  In her eyes, the hunger for absolutes. A woman incapable of compromise who had taken on compromise like a hair shirt and never forgiven herself or anyone else, and then rebelled. She could, he thought, have no idea what that look would evoke in the hearts of smaller weaker people, clinging to places of power. She was Enemy, Nemesis, Cassandra. She was in real trouble.

  When he looked out of the window and saw the fishing smack steaming for its berth, two deckhands with red and green flashlights playing at being running lights, he followed the rivers of his own past. There, in an instant was Dalat, the Perfume River, its banks disgorging Marty Nolan to a second, lesser life. Holliwell had the strange notion that Nolan had found this woman out by some magic of Lazarus, had found himself a new war and an enemy. Then watching Justin eat her charro steak, demurely, but one would have to say hungrily, he wondered if something like the same thing was not true of him, if he had not sought out war and nemesis. But he was in love past regret. Regret, his second nature, the very fluid of his veins, and it was not there.

  “You probably asked too much of yourself. I think it must be hard to make a dent down here.”

  “We tried. We were doing it the wrong way.”

  “I wonder if there’s a right way,” Holliwell said.

  She was puzzled. “There must be,” she said. Then she said: “I’m glad you stopped asking me questions. I felt on the spot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Holliwell said. “Why do you think I was asking questions?”

  She smiled a thin tense smile.

  “You’re seeing our part of the world, aren’t you? You’re an intelligent tourist and you want your money’s worth. We’re local color.”

  “You state my good intentions very coldly,” Holliwell said.

  “Good intentions get a going over here. Am I right more or less?”

  “No, you’re wrong. I’m asking you questions because I like you. And I’m an anthropologist. It’s my way of communicating. It’s all I know.”

  “You’re supposed to gain people’s confidence first. Even dumb missionaries know that.”

  “I would like very much to gain your confidence,” he said.

  “And why? When you’re just passing through. What’s my confidence worth? I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being difficult. I’m not very good company.”

  “Madam,” Holliwell said, “you’re all the company I want, believe me.

  “Who, me?” she asked. She seemed genuinely incredulous.

  “I like you, I told you that. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t so.”

  “Are you lonely?” she asked. Strange question.

  He smiled. “Always. So I’m the deserving object of your attention.”

  She was staring at him again but her look was no longer so wild.

  “It never occurred to me that someone like you could be lonely. I was thinking how interesting and full your life must always be.”

  “You’re putting me on,” he said. He was fairly certain she was not but he had to ask. There was not another soul he knew who would make such a statement without irony.

  “I’m not,” she said. “I most certainly am not. Do you know what fun this would be for me if it wasn’t for … things?”

  “Let’s …” He sought words, the right words, he was desperately afraid of losing her. “Let’s put things aside.”

  Her look was so sorrowful and so transparent that he could not bear to face it. She was shaking her head.

  “They don’t put aside too well,” she said.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said, “or I’ll make you drink more of the beer. Is it cool to walk by the river?”

  To her eyes came a smile that made them dazzle, a very small mischievous smile that she slowly gave way to. He stopped breathing.

  “You mean is it safe for tourists? Yes, it’s safe enough.”

  When they were downstairs, and Holliwell peeling out soiled Tecanecan bills to pay for dinner, it seemed to him that he saw her place her paper napkin, correctly folded, on the edge of the counter. He was too addled to take note of it at the time, but the image would come back to him later.

  Beside the Gran Mura de China was a sorry little park with the warped ruin of a railing between the uncut saw grass and the riverbank. A stand selling ices was drawn up beside it. A few children played on the overgrown lawns, dodging between the sprawled bodies of three unconscious cane-juice junkies. An old black man in a Panama who looked as though he had been there all day occupied the only bench.

  Holliwell and Justin walked a small paseo along the fence.

  “The coconuts are all that’s dangerous,” she told him. “They never pick them off the trees.”

  “We’ll sue.”

  “Good luck,” Justin said.

  Ahead of them, the river spread out to merge with the sea, a conjoining of darkness. The channel lights weaved restlessly between the slow current and the force of the tide.

  “You’re limping,” she told Holliwell. “A shame about your leg.”

  “It was just a ploy,” he said. “To get you down to the beach.”

  “You didn’t know I was there,” she said.

  “No.”

  “I’m being simple,” she said, “I’m so turned around.” Then she laughed a little and he was glad she did because he felt as though he had lied and it pained him. Of course he had not lied; he had not known. “It’d be like shooting off your toe.”

  He knew that he was going to have to tell her. But not just now, he thought, when the weight was off her and she was trying to have fun. Wartime romance, nothing like it.

  “When do you think you’ll be back in the States?” he asked.

  “Hard to tell. As soon as we can get it done.”

  “And when you laicize—what will you do then?”

  “Get a job, I guess. I’ve got an RN. I might apply to medical school after all, if I can borrow the money.” She looked at him in mild reproach. “You’re asking me questions again.”

  “I have to,” he said, “because you never ask me any. Otherwise how will we find out who we are?”

  “We’ll never find out,” she said. They had come to the end of the railing. Beyond there was only mud and mangrove stumps and darkness.

  “I hate to,” she said, “but I have to go back. Can we? My God,” she said, “I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Frank. Yes, of course. We’ll go back.”

  The road and night took them up again; they sat alone with their Furies as the jeep splashed along. Justin sat ramrod straight behind the wheel as she had on the drive in—Holliwell was halfway back to Route Three, with a sense of being caught on the road in the villes after dark, expecting a mine or an ambush and ready to dive for a ditch if there had been one.


  When the jeep pulled up before the mission, they stayed in their places listening to the night sounds. Somewhere in the distance, an English-speaking voice was raised in some frenzied incantation. Neither of them remarked on it.

  “God,” she said, “how I hate this place and what it means.”

  Holliwell climbed out of the jeep. Justin stayed where she was.

  “Look,” he said, “let it go. It’ll be your past and you’ll have learned something from it. There isn’t a lot you could have done differently.”

  “Six goddamn years,” she said. She took the keys out of the ignition, climbed out of the jeep and started to walk around it. “We could have done a lot differently. We could have helped people defend themselves … from these American flunky thugs that run things here. Instead of dispensing APC’s and holy water. Now it’s too late.”

  He came around the jeep to her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m blathering.”

  When she looked at him, he saw that she was exhausted. Her face was drawn; she was near breaking.

  “Nothing is too late for you, Justin. You’re young.”

  She bit her lip and looked at the ground, her eyes wild again, like an animal looking for a way to run. His hand went out toward her as though he could not have held it back and he took her hand. It was trembling but dry, a small fastidious hand in his large sweating palm.

  “My name is May,” she said suddenly. “I was born in May.”

  “May,” he said, “I have to hold you a minute. You’re shaking.”

  She looked up then and stared—past him, through him.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t do that here. You don’t know what you’re doing to me. You can’t know.”

  “You’re in trouble,” he said. “I think you’re in trouble. I’m coming back tomorrow.”

  “You mustn’t do that …”

  “I’ll come tomorrow. And if you think you have to—you’ll send me away.”

  She only shook her head.

  He forced himself away from her, walked to his rented jeep and started it up.

  She was standing at the foot of the steps as he drove out. He could take his eyes from the roadway only for a moment to look at her; he tried to smile.

  “Be careful,” he heard her call to him. May.

  When the mountains and the aircraft beacon were in sight above the horizon, Pablo cut his speed back to nine knots and watched the Loran digits roll toward what he hoped would be the figures on Mr. Callahan’s line-of-sight chart. The dock lights on the chart were dimly visible now, a single glow below and to the right of the beacon. From time to time, he glanced at the Fathometer. The bottom was still in its place.

  Two local shrimpers showed their working lights far off southward; the Cloud itself was showing no lights at all. As Pablo watched, the mountain beacon loomed ever high above him and through his glasses he could make out the little dock on which the dock lights shone. He could even see lights in the windows of the building behind the pier.

  He cut his speed further; the rattle of his engines in the quiet night was making him nervous. He was swallowing another pain pill when the Fathometer suddenly plunged to ten feet and sloping up—he took manual control and came about; the DF signal after so many constant hours began to waver and wander in its tone. He turned it down. The zero-zero-zero course meant nothing now, he was up against a wall of coral, blundering for the Loran fix, trying for all he was worth to line up the beacon with dock lights at the proper bearing. The night seemed full of treachery.

  He began to panic. Everywhere he turned the wheel, the marbles were waiting for him. Instincts of mindless flight possessed him. To turn seaward. To put out and follow the coast to the appearance of safety. Or to Negus’ promised islands of bliss, or San Ignacio or Colombia. But he could no longer believe in refuges, he dreaded the morning light and its exposure and dreaded more the open sea from which he had escaped and which was now beyond his managing. Whatever was done would have to be done here.

  Half praying, drenched in sweat, he spun the wheel. Trying to put the light bearings where they should be, watching the Loran digits.

  Suddenly there was a voice on the open CB. The voice sounded so close and clear that Pablo turned from his desperate work in guilty terror. It was as though someone were there.

  “Mr. Fry? Do you copy? Mr. Fry?”

  In the situation he was almost tempted to call for help. At the moment, nothing seemed worse than being where he was.

  “Do you copy, Mr. Fry?”

  He fought the impulse to answer and the voice desisted.

  Once, when the bearings seemed right and the digital reading was square with Callahan’s, the Fathometer reading was less than fifteen feet. It was all wrong. Just before he spun her around, he saw his bottom reading fall off all the way to seventy, then eighty, then ninety feet. He laughed and swore and was cutting his engines when the terrible sound of something striking the hull shook him to his soles. He swung hard to port, knowing it would be too late—and ran to look over the side. There, in a light which was purely the illumination of God’s grace, was the marker, bouncing along his starboard side like a tin can along a windy street, until its anchor held it fast and it cleaved to his hull like a puppy.

  “Ave Maria purissima,” Pablo said aloud.

  The inshore current was already easing him toward the reef edge. Moving quickly, he released the windlass and let the chain play out. There was no extra line across the anchor crown—if it stuck fast, then he was stuck fast—he could not concern himself with that now. The current spun the vessel round so that her forepeak faced the open sea. Pablo looked at the ocean and trembled. He was sick and hurting, he wanted no more of it out there. More than anything he wanted to land.

  But turning shoreward was no comfort. Behind the lights that had shone to save him was Tecan. It was all the game and there was no end to it.

  He hastened to arm himself—reloaded the Remington and put another clip in his own automatic. He retrieved his shoulder holster from the lazaret and slipped it on under his dirty work shirt. There were no more slugs for the Nambu, so he pitched it overboard. Then he seated himself outside the cockpit and waited.

  It was not long before he heard engines approaching in the darkness. They were strong outboards, the kind that pushed the heaviest Boston whalers, and there was more than one.

  “Mr. Fry!”

  It might have been the voice he had heard over the CB. The other boats had cut their engines; only one advanced toward the Cloud on low throttle. He raised his head over the rail. What he saw in the darkness might have been a boat with men in it. Or might not.

  “Mr. Fry?” asked the voice from the ocean.

  Pablo thought about it for a minute.

  “That’s right,” Pablo called back. “That’s me. Who are you, cuz?”

  He was answered with silence. Then all the outboards started up together; there were three or four. There were no more hails from the water, they were waiting for codes.

  “No sé las codas,” Pablo shouted. He did not know the Spanish word for codes, whether it was codas or not. “I’m just a peon on this boat.”

  “Show yourself,” a frightened voice called. When he came to the rail, he was holding the shotgun. He could see their boat now; it was in fact a whaler and there were four men in it, all of them pointing what looked like M-16’s at him. The other boats hung on their throttles in the darkness some distance off. There would be other guns covering him there.

  “The gun!” a second and even more frightened voice called.

  Pablo realized that he was holding the Remington and threw it over the side. If they’d landed as many pieces as had gone over the side this trip, he thought, they could have themselves a couple of revolutions. And it was a damn fine shotgun.

  Lights went on in his face and from the startled reaction he heard from the men in the boat, he imagined he must be a strange sight.

  The friend of Mr. Fry had regained his compos
ure.

  “Everyone aboard together,” he demanded. “Everyone to show themselves.”

  Pablo felt very tired in spite of the speed.

  “The hell of it is,” Pablo shouted back, “there ain’t no one but me.”

  Silence again, while the unseen boats circled off somewhere and the four men in the nearest boat watched him. Finally they pulled alongside. As the others tried simultaneously to hold their rifles on Pablo and steady themselves in the swell, the main man began to clamber aboard. The artificial hull deceived him; stepping from his own boat, he found himself short of the rail and was forced to come in hand over hand.

  The men in the boat flashed their light on Pablo and on their leader and then turned it off again. They were plainly as chary of lights as he was.

  Pablo shrugged to show his good will. His diver’s knife and the automatic were still concealed on his person.

  The man from the whaler was trying to watch Pablo and look around at the same time. In a moment, he called his friends aboard, and Pablo heard the other whalers draw closer.

  The four men who had come aboard tied their whaler’s painter around a bit. The leader, the one who spoke, had Pablo spread-eagled on the deck beside the wheelhouse. The two others made their way cautiously through the compartments. They carried lights but showed them only in closed spaces.

  “Sangre,” Pablo heard one of the men say. Perhaps for that reason the leader ripped open Pablo’s shirt and found the automatic there. When there was a second man to back him, he took the whole harness, holster and all, and put it over his own shoulder.

  The leader spoke to one of his men in words that Pablo could not make out and the man spoken to made a noise over the side like a soft cattle call. The other boats came in now and people began climbing over the rail. Pablo had the feeling there was another boat off somewhere, perhaps keeping watch.

  They could kill him now, Pablo thought. A number of them crouched around him, keeping below the rail, shining their lights on him as though he were some strange sea creature they had brought up.

  Men were shoveling aside the ice covering in the hatches. When they found the weapons crates, he could tell from their cries that not all of them in fact were men. They were hauling the crates out of the hatches now; their boots crunched against the overturned plastic baskets and the shrimps’ useless shells.