Life During Wartime

by Lucius Shepard

  “Why’d you do that?” Mingolla asked.

  The brujo reached out and touched his forehead, and when the brujo spoke in a harsh language that had the sound of a language of crows, full of hard hs and aspirates, he understood every word.

  “I had no choice,” said the brujo. “It was given me to do.”

  Though this answer seemed an evasion, Mingolla was satisfied by it and could think of no other question he wanted to ask.

  “Tell me what you’ve learned,” the brujo said.

  This at first struck Mingolla as an impossibility, because he had learned so much; but he found himself giving quite a concise answer, as if the brujo’s demand had sought out the level of answers and dredged up the exact quantity of knowledge required.

  “I’ve learned that everything men prize is a joke,” he said. “An illusion. That what men see as their essential things can be stripped away by the power of a whim, that action has no value, that peace and war are the same, that beauty and truth are the convictions of fools, and that fools rule everywhere in the name of a wisdom that exists like music, like smoke, for a moment and is gone.”

  “You know all this,” said the brujo, marveling, “and yet you are sad?” He burst into peals of laughter, and his laughter choreographed the pale streamers of mist furling in the doorway into the likenessess of dancing women.

  “Why shouldn’t I be sad?” said Mingolla. “I think that’s pretty goddamn sad.”

  “It’s only sad because you don’t really believe it,” said the brujo. “You don’t want it to be true. But once you accept it as true, then other truths will become applicable, and you’ll see things aren’t so bad.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Doubt is fine for now,” said the brujo, and then, doing a perfect imitation of Mingolla’s voice: “Whatever works for ya, right?”

  Irritated, Mingolla asked, “What am I doing here?”

  “I’m just checking on your progress,” said the brujo.

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “Your cousin,” said the brujo with a mad cackle. From beside him, he picked up a weed that had tiny violet florets with magenta centers; he waved it in Mingolla’s face. “Those idiots back in Panama City aren’t the only ones who know about this, and they certainly weren’t the first to discover it…just the first to abuse it. Now they’ve paid for their abuse.”

  “Did something happen back in the city?” asked Mingolla.

  “You’ll know soon what happened,” said the brujo. “There’s no use in dwelling on it now. But when you find out, remember that you weren’t the agency, only the spark.”

  Mingolla couldn’t frame a response.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn,” said the brujo. “Remember that, too.”

  There was something hopeful in the brujo’s words, his tone, and Mingolla looked up at him, ready for some good news, but none was forthcoming.

  “It gets a lot worse before it gets better,” said the brujo, who—along with the hut—was fading, growing as insubstantial as the mist. “And when it does finally get better, you won’t care one way or the other. At least not the way you’d like to care now.”

  Despite its air of unreality, the dream was so vivid that when Mingolla awakened back in the car he expected to find some talisman, some proof that his meeting with the brujo had actually occurred. A piece of fern stuck to his trousers, or a portion of the weed. There was nothing like that, but there was a proof of sorts. The knowledge of the disaster in Panama City. As real and palpable as a gold coin in his hand.

  Debora was still asleep, scrunched into a corner of the backseat. He ran a hand along her flank, loving her, wanting love to mean more than the meaning it had acquired in Panama. She stirred, blinked. “What is it?”

  He leaned down, brushed hair from her cheek, and kissed her. “Go back to sleep.”

  She struggled up to a sitting position, looked around at the misted windows as if awakening somewhere unfamiliar. “Did something else happen?” she asked.

  In the morning they followed the road through the hills into gray light, to a ridge overlooking a valley. Tres Santos was situated at the far end of the valley between two jungled cliffs that nearly formed a natural arch overhead; from their vantage, the cliffs had the look of two cowled figures gazing down at an unlucky throw of the dice: little white houses with shadow-blackened windows and doors. Green mountains surrounded the valley, appearing to extend forever in every direction; roads wound through them, visible as red threads. Dark cloud bellies swirled and changed shape above the cliffs, lowering, intensifying the atmosphere of gloom.

  They drove down from the ridge and into the village along a dirt street broken by gray mica-flecked boulders and parked outside a cantina with the faded mural of an armored man on horseback upon its facade: Cantina Cortez. The door was open, and several men were standing at the bar, watching a portable TV. Short bandy-legged men with impassive pre-Columbian faces, wearing blankets and white cotton trousers and straw hats. When Debora and Mingolla entered, carrying rifles under their arms, the men acknowledged them with nods and turned back to the TV; an agitated voice was issuing from the speaker, and on the screen was a flickering image of ruins.

  “A bomb?” said Debora. “In Panama City…a bomb?”

  “Yes,” said the bartender, a man older than the rest, with gray streaks in his hair. “An atomic bomb. Terrible.”

  “It must have been very small,” said another man. “Only one barrio was destroyed.”

  “But many are dying in the other barrios,” said a third man. “Who could have done this?”

  Mingolla was sick with the news, heavy with it. “I’m looking for someone,” he said finally. “A big black man named…”

  “Señor Tully,” said the bartender. “He arrived this morning. Take a left at the next corner, and you’ll find him in the third house on the right.”

  Mingolla listened a minute longer to the voice detailing casualty figures, recounting the horror of Carlito’s punishment, the punishment of Tel Aviv, a little irony he’d probably never expected to employ. When he went back outside, he found Debora sitting on the hood of the car. “Tully’s here,” he said. “Maybe he’ll know what happened.”

  “I know what happened,” she said. “Izaguirre blew them up. Shit!” She jumped down from the car and kicked at the red dirt. “I’ve been acting like a stupid girl. I never should have believed them!” She walked off a few paces, whirled on Mingolla. “We have to kill the rest! Or else they’ll kill us. Your dreams, your hallucinations about the future…they must be accurate. I didn’t understand before, but it’s clear now.”

  He was more stunned by her reaction than by the news of the bomb. She looked as if she were about to explode, swinging her rifle back and forth, unable to locate a suitable target.

  “Let’s get Tully,” she said.

  As they walked he watched her out of the corner of his eye, noticing how anger…no, not anger, but the restoration of commitment, how that had carved weakness and worry from her face, left her more beautiful than ever. And in her face, in its clean rigor, he saw the insanity of their relationship. How first one pushed, then the other pulled. How her desire for commitment would drag them so far, how his anger would carry them on until she had another chance for commitment. How they fed off this exchange and called it love. And maybe it was love, maybe the insanity incorporated love. Even realizing all this, he loved her, loved love. Loved it to the point that rejection became unthinkable. To reject it he would have to stop loving himself, and while that was something he would have had no qualms about under other circumstances, he couldn’t afford that kind of honesty now.

  Tully was sitting in a chair outside one of the houses, a rifle across his knees, and as they came up, he waved: a languid, boneless wave. “Glad you made it, Davy,” he said in a weak-sounding voice. His eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed energyless, depleted.

  “Where’s Corazon?” Mingolla asked.

  “I
nside,” said Tully. “’Pears she cotch a dose from de bomb. ’Pears I cotched one, too.”

  “Radiation?” said Mingolla, guilt-stricken.

  Tully nodded. “Look like you two got away clean.”

  “What went on back there?” Debora asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Somethin’ happen at de palace, but I never sure of what. All de day dere’s not’in’ but riot. People ’cusin’ each ot’er of dis and dat. Fightin’ in de streets. Took me and Corazon most of de day to get clear. And we not get clear ’nough. Must be dat bomb were battlefield ordnance, or else we be shadows on de stone.” He coughed, wiped his mouth, and checked his hand to see what had come up. “We took de coast road and make it dis far. Bet you got lost in de mist.”

  “Yeah,” said Mingolla.

  Tully let out a sigh that Mingolla thought might go on forever. “Mon,” he said. “Here I been t’inkin’ better must come, and now dis.” He cocked an eye at Mingolla. “Seem like you ’bout to choke on somethin’, Davy.”

  “Tully, I…”

  “Get on outta here, Davy. I don’t wanna hear no bullshit ’bout sadness and de back-time. Dis de way it have come, and dere’s not’in’ to do more. Be worse places dan dis to have a funeral.” He laughed, and the laughter started him coughing. When he had recovered, he said, “De fools ’round here, dey wash a body wit’ lime juice and wrap it in white cloth and sing over you. Lime juice! Dey t’ink lime juice be fah everyt’ing. Cure de dysentery, cure de fever, and make you sweet fah Jesus.” He gestured with his rifle. “Go on, now. Dat stream what’s marked on de map, you find it at de end of dis street. You can spy de trail from de bank. Just cross dem two big hills east, and you be square on one of dem villages I told you ’bout.”

  Mingolla fought the urge to do something stupid like insist upon staying. This was the way Tully wanted it, fast and low-key, and the least he could do was to go along. He allowed himself to say, “I’ll miss ya, Tully,” and then wheeled about, leaving Debora in his wake, not wanting to hear Tully’s response, not wanting any more knowledge or guilt. But as he passed by the window of the house, he heard the click of a safety being disengaged. He went into a shoulder roll, heard the popping of a rifle, felt bullets pass close, and as he brought his rifle to bear on the window, in the instant before he fired he saw Corazon, her face empty of emotion, her rosy eye looking full of blood. His bullets knocked her back from the window, pumped a hoarse grunt from her chest.

  He got to his feet, unsteady. Debora was covering Tully with her rifle, and he was trying to stand, having a hard time of it. Mingolla went to the window, peered into the darkened room. Corazon had been blown back onto the bed and was spreadeagled on a white coverlet made into a severe abstract by angles of shadow and the scatter of her blood. Her rifle lay on the floor. Tully stumbled into the room, stopped dead.

  “What you do, mon?” he cried. “What you do?”

  “She tried to shoot me,” said Mingolla. “I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t even have time to think.”

  “She wasn’t tryin’ to shoot nobody!” Tully dropped to his knees beside the bed, his hands hovering over the body; blood was still leaking from Corazon’s mouth and breast, and it looked as if Tully was unsure where to put his hands, what hole to plug.

  Voices behind Mingolla. He turned, saw Debora explaining things to a group of men who had come to investigate. When he turned back to the window, he found that Tully had picked up Corazon’s rifle and was training it at his chest.

  “Goddamn you, Davy!” he said. “You ever was low on de spirit.”

  “Listen,” said Mingolla. “She tried to shoot me. What else could I do?”

  “Why she shoot you, mon?” Tully was trembling, his finger poised on the trigger. “She got no cause to shoot you.”

  “I don’t know, man. Maybe somebody put something in her head that made her want to do it…or maybe she was just crazy, too sick to think straight. I don’t know.”

  “You tellin’ me she like dem ot’ers, dem empty shells dat de Sotomayors pump fulla dere shit? Don’t be tellin’ me dat! I know her, mon. Dere were more dan dat in her!”

  Suddenly Mingolla wanted Tully to pull the trigger, to end the suspense. “What was I s’posed to do?” he yelled, “Let her kill me? Let you get all fucking soulful ’bout me dead? This is crap, man! You wanna kill me, go ahead! Go on! Pull the fucking trigger! Maybe somebody put something in your goddamn head, told you to do it. Maybe this whole fucking shuck ’bout Tres Santos is just more Sotomayor bullshit!” He pushed his chest to the window, puffed it out, daring Tully. “C’mon, man!”

  “You t’ink I won’t?” said Tully. “Ain’t but one t’ing holdin’ me back, and dat’s de knowin’ how I helped make you dis way.”

  Instead of Tully, Mingolla saw a big black shadow, a creature of blackness, empty, hateful, a nothing with muscles and a sweaty forehead and bloodshot eyes. “Fuck you, Tully,” he said, and focused his anger in a stream of poisonous energy that sent Tully reeling. Tully’s gun discharged. Wild misses aimed at the ceiling, the walls, the floor. He tried to bring the gun to bear on the window, dropped it, clutched his head, letting out a hiss that turned into a scream. Then he fell across the bed, twisted onto his side, his fingers shaking at his temples as if trying to push thoughts back inside, thoughts crowded out by the anger roiling in his skull. And then he was gone. Winked out, truly empty, his blind eyes staring at a cross of black wood on the wall, like an incision into a region of darkness.

  Mingolla was crying. He knew it by the wetness on his face and by no other sign, because he felt almost nothing. The tears might have merely been an excess, as if he had been filled to overflowing and was experiencing a necessary spillage. He turned from the window, and the bandy-legged little men moved back from him, staring incuriously, betraying neither fear nor any sort of strong emotion. They had, he realized, seen nothing out of the ordinary. Tears and violent death were part of their milieu, and though they might not comprehend the specifics of the situation, they understood that it was none of their business; they already had a sufficiency of tears and death, and had no interest in sharing the grief of strangers or involving themselves in moral judgments. All this he saw in their faces, all this he perceived as admirable and right.

  From the bank of a narrow stream at the base of the hill, Mingolla could look back and see the edge of the village less than a hundred yards away. He could see all its sweetness, the bougainvillea in window planters, smoke curling from a jointed tin chimney, an old man picking his way among the ruts. The view was unobstructed, but Mingolla knew this was an illusion. Doors had been closed, and there was no going back. He looked up at the hill, its green slope as imposing as the hill of the Ant Farm. But this hill was even more menacing. Its blank, silent enormity presaged the grimness of a five-year-plan with no joyful goal at the end, and Mingolla was reluctant to set foot upon it.

  “Are you thinking about Tully?” Debora asked.

  “No,” he said.

  She looked surprised.

  “I don’t know why,” he said. “The thoughts just aren’t coming.”

  “I know how it is…sometimes you can’t think about important things right away. You have to let them diminish.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it wasn’t important.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

  “Yes, I do.” Her eyes were wide, her mouth tight, as if she was trying to hide some emotion. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  They sat awhile on a boulder by the stream, gathering themselves for the climb. The stream was the only thing of energy in the entire landscape. Its tea-colored water raced over a stony bottom, foaming at the breaks into lacy white threads; orange iron-bearing rocks thrust up from the surface, and midges danced above them. Clumps of small flowers fringed the bank, the blossoms a pale creamy yellow with a magenta splash at the center, the stems furred with dark filaments. Wherever Mingolla turned, his e
ye met with an infinity of detail, with complicated mosaics of life, with patterns too intricate to unravel, and this complexity afflicted his sense of competence, made him aware of the ineptitude of his judgments, the fallibility of his hates and loves. It might be best just to sit there, he thought, and wait for the ones who soon would be hunting them. The sun’s light came grayish white and watery through a rift in the clouds, and seemed to search out all the fine stems and tendrils and cottony fibers, to course along them and fill the air with a single disturbance, a constant fluctuation of pressure and heat that unsettled Mingolla as might have a background of slow shadows or shouts in many languages. Nothing was clear, not even the urge to sit and wait. But at last he was moved by some vague impulse to stand and begin the climb.

  The hill was slow going. They tripped and stumbled as if their many uncertainties were posing an impediment. But on reaching the top and gazing out over the mountains of Darién, jungle-shrouded and rumpled to the horizon, it seemed they had come to one of the strange green places of God where the structural immensity of life was made plain, all paths delineated. The low sun had broken clear in the west, and its heavy golden light, reflecting off ridges of slate-gray cloud, mined a mineral brilliance from every color. The slopes were a luminous green, the air held a shine in every quarter, and the view was so intricate yet at the same time so comprehensible, it offered a promise of hope and magical possibility. Above one hill a rainbow arched into oblivion; a hawk circled another, and dark slants of rain stroked the summit of a third. Like signals, portents. As if each green dome were a separate identity with its own character and values. The sight boosted Mingolla’s spirits, and as they started downhill, his confidence returned. They walked swiftly, stealthily, twitching branches aside with their rifle barrels, moving with an efficiency that comes only with a surety of purpose, and it seemed to Mingolla that he was growing lighter, the past falling away with every step…and it was, he realized. The past was becoming weightless, frail, and they were leaving behind everything familiar, leaving friends and enemies…