The yanqui padre was in his little office at the front of the church when Esteban burst in on him, sitting with a withered old campesino who held his straw hat between his knees. The padre was expressionlessly listening while the campesino complained that someone had stolen his only macho, how was he going to survive? Could the padre lend him the money to buy a new horse, or even a mule? “Where’s Marta?” interrupted Esteban. “Where’s the BON from León?”
The padre recognized him but had to ask his name, and already, from the tone of his voice, the sudden expression of sorrowful alarm in his blue eyes, Esteban knew … The padre stood, and the campesino looked up, following him with his frightened eyes.
“Esteban,” said the yanqui padre, his face burning bright pink, his blue eyes wet and magnified behind the lenses of his steel-rimmed glasses. “Your friend Marta …” The padre took a step closer and held his hands out. “They were caught in a terrible combate. Amalia was very seriously wounded, but Marta did not make it, Esteban, her spirit is with God.”
Esteban stood in silence a moment. “But you promised them,” he finally stammered. Hadn’t he promised to talk the command in Wiwili, urge that the Nightmare BON be kept in Quilalí? Then he started to sob.
“I did, Esteban,” said the padre, his hand on Esteban’s shaking shoulder now. “But there were so many combates to the north all at once, and they sent in everybody, Esteban, the local militias too, as reinforcement. They sent everybody. Everyone in the town is still angry about it, or still grieving, Esteban. There was nothing I could do.”
The campesino, barefoot, his pants looking stitched together out of sugar sacks, his shirt frayed and missing most of its buttons, wrinkled face the color of an old cigar, just sat there holding his hat between his knees, mouth open, looking like he was about to wretch, his frightened little eyes focused on the paneled wall in front.
“Reinforcements? Hijueputa! They couldn’t have reinforced a rabbit hutch!”
“This war, Esteban,” said the padre almost indignantly, wet stare boring into his. “I pray for almost nothing else but for it to stop.”
“Sí pues,” rasped the campesino, not taking his eyes from the wall, briefly running his twiggy, viejo fingers through his gray, matted hair. “Si Dios quiere. Padre Guillermo es un buen padre. He helps the poor. He loves the young people.”
He wanted to hit the campesino. Wanted to take his AK and smash his head in with its butt.
“But what happened?” he asked. “Where is she?”
“It was one of those LAU bazookas, Esteban,” said the padre. “They fired it into her camp, and Marta was standing closest. They … I’m afraid they were under fire, so when the helicopters came, they only took away the wounded, and some of the dead. Marta was buried there. I’m sure they’ll be going back for her.”
“She was standing closest?” he said.
“Yes,” said the padre. “So she couldn’t have known, or felt anything. She didn’t have to suffer.”
He turned away without saying good-bye or thank you, and walked out of the office and into the sun and the dirt street. An LAU bazooka. He knew the craters they left in the earth, the shards of steel propelled deep into the trunks of trees. She was standing closest. He had seen what that could do to a body. Sometimes you found them torn to bits, sprayed into the brush, up in the branches of trees…
Later, the morning after the ambush on the Zompopera Road, he saw the IFA truck that had been carrying the muchachas of the quartermaster corps that had taken a direct hit from an RPG. He saw a severed head with long, black hair, the skull so deflated that the scorched face was barely recognizable as a face, it looked like a flounder, hollow eye sockets staring up. And then he knew, and he lost the whole Marta he’d, until then, been able to keep inside. (But here, in this empty terminal, la Marta comes back to him whole.)
Much later he learned that Amalia stayed in her coma for three days after she was helicoptered out, so many broken bones, and severe neurological damage and memory loss … He did not go to see her in the military hospital, in Managua. He told himself that she would not remember him and that even if she did, she would not want to see him. But he should probably have gone anyway. He hadn’t been able bring himself to.
That little cardboard sign read: The greatest victory is the battle we avoid having to fight. The mailman-jefe wasn’t asking them to be cowards. He was just offering another idea of victory. One perfectly suited to a Juventud Sandinista volunteer Nightmare BON, totally lacking in arte militar. But he’s never been able to figure out what those words really mean. Claro, avoid having to fight. It’s a victory because those who force us to fight have resolved their differences in a different way, decided that peace is better all around, which takes a different kind of human being from the humans who actually exist, which is why it’s too easy, a completely ignorant fantasy, and not the mailman’s fault or responsibility anyway. So what did he mean? A victory just to stay in Quilalí? If only.
Now Esteban sits up straighter in the sand. Has he been a coward? It’s just another word sometimes, no? Sometimes people forget they’re not supposed to be cowards, they live in a cowardly way without even realizing. You don’t have to fight all the time, just don’t shame yourself. On our ship we’re sick with shame, because our situation has become shameful. If I desert the ship like the viejo is always telling me to—will that be brave or cowardly?
Arte militar. Here you are going to learn to live and fight con mucho arte militar, Milton had told them, his very first day in the BLI. And they all had, because they had to. But when Milton was stripped of his command of the BLI, finally, it was for having too much arte militar. Milton, with his pocked, hard Indian face and granite build, his big, effusive personality, always going on about arte militar and amor, the love he wanted (ordered) everyone in the BLI to feel for one another; he didn’t need all the words their political officers used to be more convincing. Milton was full of amor, always bedding the compitas in the BLI’s quartermaster corps who trailed them into battles and waited for them at their bivouac points. A member of El Coro de Ángeles, the very first BLI, who lost nearly half their battalion back in ‘83 at the legendary battle of Jalapa and Teotecacinte, when they turned back the first big yanqui-contra invasion almost single-handedly, fighting across a flat, wide plain jutting into the triangle of Honduran hills the contras were attacking from, keeping up a constant hail of machine-gun fire and mortars, most of the fighting at night. Milton’s problems started during that last contra offensive, when he refused the orders to make them all carry three hundred extra rounds in clips in their packs instead of the usual hundred. Along with the extra bullets, the Comandancia’s Grupo Operativo wanted all BLI troops to carry 82-mm mortars, extra grenades, and mines from now on, instead of just the usual AK, Tokarev pistol, and knife. Milton, explaining his vehement refusal of the orders to the BLI, said, If all of you carried just one bullet apiece, I guarantee you every one of those bullets would kill a contra. Because when soldiers have too many bullets, they shoot wildly, loose their concentration and focused fear, turn back into just a bunch of undisciplined draftee cipotes, firing off into the trees and all over the place, never hitting anything or anybody, and war turns into a fucking children’s game. And with their packs so heavy, by the time they encounter the enemy, they’re too exhausted from the march to fight well anyway. But the Comandancia was panicking, the yanquis had loaded up la contra with so much new firepower! Good, said Milton, let them be the tired and wasteful ones. Esteban’s BLI kept on fighting just as they had before, light on their feet, stinging everywhere, from one cachimbeo to another, always in hot pursuit (their only calamity that one with the dog near Wamblán).
But two thousand contra were pouring down through the Cerro Chachawáy and Wina, where the Coco and the Río Bocáy meet. Milton was put in charge of the counteroffensive: three entire BLIs subordinated to his command converged on the front. And when everyone was in place Milton directed a triangulated attack, an
d within a week had the enemy pushed back against the border and fenced in on three sides. Over the radio the Grupo Operativo said it wanted Milton to go in and finish the attack. But Milton thought too many compas would die if they went in: the contras were well dug in, had laid mines everywhere, they had riverbanks under control and reinforced hills at their backs, it reminded him too much of what El Coro de Ángeles had faced at Jalapa and Teotecacinte. He wanted to bring in the helicopters, rocket the territory from the fearsome Soviet M-27 transport-attack helicopters first. But the Grupo Operativo only gave him permission to use the helicopters to ferry soldiers to the edge of battle, they were afraid of more helicopters being shot down by the contras’ new Redeye missiles. They were afraid of provoking the yanquis. They were worried that there were too many civilians in that zone the contras were trapped in. Milton was infuriated: why should his soldiers die instead of contras? Why should they die instead of civilian contra supporters, because of course they’re contra, because if they’re not, then what the fuck are they doing there? Degenerate satraps, that’s how Milton was beginning to refer to the officers in the Comandancia and Grupo Operativo, the new breed of subcomandantes rising up through the army, puteros, drunks, enjoying the perks of war in their headquarters and in Managua, always worrying about pissing off the yanquis, taking too much advice from the fucking Cubans. Milton ordered Esteban’s company to lead the attack, to ride the helicopters into battle. Ten came, huge, black and green, armored, bristling with rocket launchers and machine guns, petrol reeking, their whirring blades working up a hurricane gale of hot wind. But Milton had changed their orders at the last minute: the pilots were under his command, he’d been put in charge of this offensive, he ordered them to arrive ready and loaded to go in and attack … Milton climbed into the lead helicopter himself, and Esteban’s company stayed behind. They flew in high, firing off magnesium flares to divert the Redeyes, flew right at the hills, rocketing and strafing with high-caliber machine guns, and returned to their base to reload and then came back and did it again; the operation went on all day. While the BLIs on the ground and the artillery units aimed a steady fire of Katyusha rockets and shells into the zone. Not a single helicopter went down. It wasn’t until the next day that Esteban’s company boarded them and flew in, the helicopters firing off more rockets: Rigoberto Mazariego briefly held his novia’s doll out the bay so that she could watch the dirty, smoky explosions in the landscape below, the wind pulling out some of her hair. They were landed near now-empty trenches outside an abandoned hamlet that had been taken over by la contra. There was not that much resistance. And many contra dead, often found in clusters. The dead like the dead always, their deaths so poorly disguised by their grimacing and flinching and astonished and sometimes peaceful expressions, some already bloating, stinking. Vultures everywhere. And dead mules and horses. Milton claimed four hundred contra had died, but that must have been an exaggeration, there weren’t that many bodies; but who knew how many dead they’d carried back across the border? They recovered at least that many weapons, and radios, all kinds of yanqui equipment, left behind when they’d fled. Milton wanted to cross the border and wipe them out, but the Comandancia forbade it. Esteban’s entire BLI lost five compas, three to mines, and nine wounded, several by cazabobos, those mines that blow off a foot. But the problem was, supposedly there were a number of dead civilians—women, children—too. Though he, personally, saw only a few, a family sprawled along a riverbank, a mother and three children, two of them chavalitas, their shredded dresses dark brown with blood, their bodies already dissolving into the warm mud. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen such an obscene sight: more than a few times they’d come upon the still-smoking rubble of farming collectives and hamlets razed a day or two before. Supposedly there was a too high number of dead civilians. Supposedly the yanquis were already complaining about their counteroffensive. Milton was summoned to the Comandancia in Wiwili by helicopter, and as soon as he stepped out he was stripped of his command and publicly humiliated by the jefe of the Grupo Operativo for having disobeyed orders and acted irresponsibly, and transferred to the draftees’ training camp at Mulukuku to wait for the results of the investigation into the civilian casualties at Wina. And the BLI was ordered to stay where they were, in that landscape of silent death, to await their new comandante.
His name was Eliseo. He was buena onda. Though they weren’t the same BLI anymore, they were more like the other BLIs for a while, carrying the extra weight in their packs, fighting fewer combates, which was fine, though everyone remembered what it had been like before, and that was confusing, to feel proud of your past while you still had to keep on fighting. What happened later on the Zompopera Road wasn’t really Eliseo’s fault. That was after they’d returned to Quilali and Esteban had learned la Marta’s fate, so by then the extra weight he carried on his back was nothing compared with the weight of grief and dread in his chest. Though maybe what some said was true, that Milton would have checked over and over to be sure that the Comandancia had executed and confirmed and reconfirmed the order he’d requested for army regulars to secure the road against ambush before the BLIs convoy traveled down it. It turned out that the officer in the Comandancia who’d received the order from Eliseo had been drunk.
Later they heard Milton had left the country and was living in Miami, working as a nighttime security guard in a perfume warehouse. A perfume warehouse? That’s where arte militar finally got Milton. Pues, at least it isn’t a Parcheesi warehouse. Wonder if he’s still there. Maybe he should go to Miami and look for Milton …
José Mateo has cooked duck before. Once, when his ship docked in Shanghai, they went to the market and bought half a dozen. But then he had an oven. He says it’s too bad they ate all those berries, he could have made a nice sauce. But how was anyone supposed to know Esteban would bring back duck? Boiled duck, in a fatty broth filled with peas, potatoes, and rice. The broth poured into their plastic drinking glasses, layer of smoky, golden fat on top. Delicioso.
Esteban says, “Vos, you know what that truck sounded like? Like hundreds of honking little Cuban patos in cages all going coño coño coño coño!”
3
HE’S CROSSED UNDER THE EXPRESSWAY, CLIMBED INTO BROOKLYN. IN THIS neighborhood, there are many signs in Spanish. Paco Naco’s Tacos. A place that arranges money transfers and telephone calls to Mexico and the Caribbean and all the Central American countries. There are people out on the streets, lots of men, many mestizo looking, wearing baseball hats, bulky, plastic-looking jackets of different colors, who seem to be in a hurry to get wherever they’re going, to work probably. Many descend stairs that lead beneath the sidewalk to the underground trains—he can feel and hear the pavement thundering under his feet. Nobody looks at him in a friendly way. It’s nearly dawn, but he finds a little corner restaurant that is open, drab blue walls, steam tables in the window, some of the dishes he recognizes—arroz con polio, looking like it’s been sitting there all night—and others he doesn’t. He wishes he had some money so he could go in, order a cup of coffee, get out of the cold. The greasy smell of food, a smell of sauce-saturated chicken, fish, and overripe fruit, makes his stomach rumble; mixing with bus exhaust and the chilly, faintly briny breeze channeling up the long street from the harbor.
He’s never stayed out this long. By now, they must be waking up on the ship, wondering where he is. On a side street he finds a puzzling sign, a white sheet of paper covered with photocopied handwriting taped to the glass behind the bars of a lowered shutter: someone has lost a cat named Dolores and is offering a fifty-dollar reward. There is a photocopied picture of Dolores, too smudgy and gray to help you distinguish this cat from most others. But here is the rare thing: the cat’s color is listed as “aceituna.” But olives can be black or green. If black olive, why list the cat’s color as olive and not black? And who’s ever heard of an olive green cat?
“Tu, güey!”
He turns and sees this golden-curly-haired muchacha glaring
at him, slight and pretty, holding keys to the lock in the door to this place that has lost its cat. She has a soft, almost nougat-hued face, her eyes big, stormy pools framed by blue eyeliner and long, black lashes. Small, puffy nose. Pert, lipsticked mouth, pouting angrily at him. “You’re the güey that’s been urinating in this doorway, no? Pinche asqueroso!” And now her affronted brown eyes are pulsing at him.
“No!” exclaims Esteban. “I’ve never been here before!”
“Ah no?” accusingly.
“No!”
He can smell her perfume. How old is she? Young. About his own age, no? She’s wearing a long, blue wool coat with a collar that looks made of coarse lamb’s wool, skinny ankles in whitish tights descending from the coat, into glossy black, sturdy high heels. Now she’s looking him up and down.
“Qué triste, güey,” she says, with impassioned mockery. “Letting yourself go around looking like that. Güey, you’re too young to be homeless. Any güey can find some type of job. Bueno. What can you do? Otro desgraciado sinvergüenza.” She shrugs, looks at him with exaggerated pity, shakes her head. “En fin.”
The Ordinary Seaman Page 23
