The Last Great Road Bum

by Héctor Tobar

  * * *

  AFTER THEY’D BEEN marching for an hour, the rain suddenly stopped and Joe watched as Comandante Jonás frowned at the blue patches opening in the gray carpet above his head. Their mission was to study the terrain just past the southern edge of guerrilla territory, near the hill called Cerro Pando. They would be safer under the cover of bad weather, but now the sun was eating up the last of the clouds. The reconnaissance mission was headed toward the junction of two rivers, the Sapo and the Torola. Lucas watched Jonás following the path of a butterfly that flew alongside and ahead of the rebel column for about three seconds; it was metallic blue with black spots, and Jonás stopped and wrinkled his brow at it quizzically, as if he were trying to determine the butterfly’s military purpose, its use in a counterattack. The butterfly disappeared, and the comandante saw Lucas looking at him. “The army is going to come through here one day in large numbers, Lucas. We need to study this ground so we can cover a retreat from La Guacamaya. What do you see?”

  “It’s too open here, comandante. There isn’t as much cover.”

  “Correct,” Jonás said.

  “But those ridges up there; it will be dangerous for the army if we’re up there and we catch them down here,” Lucas said. Jonás nodded and ordered the men upward, and they climbed toward the ridge, past thin oak trees and over muddy ground, and Lucas climbed fastest, just to show these youngsters that the old gringo still had some pep in him. In fact, he was feeling stronger and healthier than he had in ages, and when he reached the ridge he turned to look down at the compas scrambling beneath him, and to examine the terrain. He saw a river, brown and swollen. And a column of army soldiers, some twenty or thirty, meandering through the trees and the brush. They were about two hundred meters from the last member of the rebel reconnaissance squad working his way up the ridge, Comandante Jonás.

  Oh shit. Lucas ran back down the ridge, almost falling down thanks to the downward momentum of his M16 and his field pack and his panic. “¡Soldados!” Joe cried out, and several members of the rebel reconnaissance squad turned, and saw the soldiers, who were scrambling to take cover and draw their weapons and open fire. Lucas reached the comandante and said, “There are twenty or so. Down there. About two hundred meters.” Jonás pointed to the higher ground where Lucas had been standing, and he ordered the rebel squad farther upward: “¡Arriba!” and told them to form a line on the ridge. As they began to climb toward that position, Joe heard several shots to their left, and saw a second group of about twenty soldiers approaching through the oak trees and the shrubs. Men in green canvas hats and black berets, army paratroopers, drawing weapons.

  Joe took four steps toward the paratroopers and crouched behind two large boulders. “¡Apartate!” he yelled back at Comandante Jonás. Get out! Lucas then opened fire on the army soldiers with a one-man fusillade from his M16, covering the retreat of the comandante and the other squad members straggling up the hill. Full auto. Bah-dah-daht! Sweep across the field of fire. Bah-dah-daht! Lean forward and use two hands and place your body weight behind the weapon to keep the barrel from climbing out of your grasp. Bah-dah-dah-dah-dah-daht! The bastards duck and hide. Bah-dah-dah-dah-dah-daht! A shining brass comet of expended cartridges shot out backward onto the ground behind him. Joe ejected the empty magazine, and reached into his pack to load another. The paratroopers were kissing the ground, cowering behind trees to escape the percussive killing sound of the bullets Lucas was firing at them. He emptied half of the next magazine, this one more deliberate and loosely aimed at the patches of enemy olive drab he could see. Comandante Jonás, now safe at the top of the ridge, looked back; he saw the usually mellow North American, a man who conveyed a middle-aged restraint in camp and on the march, suddenly transformed into a beast. “Un gato furioso,” as Jonás described it later to the other comandantes. A crazed cat. After his second fusillade, Joe rose to his feet and scrambled up toward his comrades, who were now firing down at both groups of army soldiers in an organized defensive line.

  The lieutenant in charge of the army platoon ordered his men to pull back, because he had deduced that they were facing fifty or one hundred men, and not ten; his mission was reconnaissance, not to engage rebels who might wipe them out from a position on higher ground. The rebels slowly and cautiously pulled back too, northward toward La Guacamaya. An hour later, when it became clear the army was not pursuing them, Jonás put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Muy bien, Lucas. Muy bien. You allowed us to organize the line.”

  “How did you learn to do that, Lucas?” one of the compas asked. He was the youngest one, in fact. Seventeen.

  “Yo soy army,” Lucas said. By which he meant, I am United States Army–trained; the beneficiary of taxpayer-funded lessons in warfare imparted when I was the age you mocosos are now. Aggressiveness and awareness of your surroundings. The uses and misuses of the M16. It’s coming back to me now. “Yo soy army.” Normandy, the Rough Riders, Gettysburg. Lectures from captains while standing in clouds of cordite. The martial posture beaten into you by drill-sergeant jerks. The practicality of it all. What I know and where I’m from. My ancestor who fell upon the British after Lexington. American knowledge and history placed at the service of the skinny boys and girls of Morazán.

  “How did you make it fire so many bullets so quickly?” the teenage compa asked.

  “What?”

  “Mine only fires one bullet at a time.” Joe was stunned that this teenage fighter did not know how to change the rate of fire of his M16.

  “Here.” Lucas moved a switch. Click, click. “This is full auto. Semi. But don’t use it unless it’s an emergency. Because you’ll just waste bullets.”

  “Mine is different,” another compa said.

  “This is a newer M16. The newest one. Where did you get this? One of the weapons we captured recently, right? Do you know what these lines mean?”

  “No.”

  Lucas explained how the rear and front sights worked, and how the rifle’s angle of fire could be adjusted with a small wheel to hit targets that were farther away. “Oh, so that’s what those numbers are for.”

  Later, when they made camp for the night, Joe sat next to Comandante Jonás in the darkness and said, in a low voice: “The M16 is a very useful weapon. A very good weapon. Unfortunately, the compas don’t know how to use the M16. You need to train them how to use it.” Jonás nodded in agreement, and when they reached La Guacamaya the next day the comandante spread the story of Lucas the Beast, and his very intelligent and courageous decision to make himself a one-man linchpin of fire.

  Joe did not feel brave. That night, as he tried to sleep on top of one sheet of plastic, and underneath a second one, he saw boys in green marching toward him, and he saw his own bullets aimed at them, their steel tips and lead cores striking trees and dirt. He saw a Salvadoran man-child falling to the ground, afraid of dying, and for all he knew the dude might be dead. Joe imagined his actions replayed on a movie screen at an Urbana drive-in, his friends and family watching. Like Audie Murphy, the reckless hero of black-and-white movies. Firing at brown-skinned peasant soldiers I see through my eyeglasses. This mess I got myself into. I came here from Urbana. Couldn’t let the comandante die or be captured. Save his life, save the lives of the compas. Those army kids, clutching at the dirt with their fingers, trying to dig themselves into the ground. Could have shot a dozen men back there. Unlikely. But even one. Killing isn’t in the road-bum manual. How will I explain this to Steve and Mom and Dad? Will I ever tell them? Where are they now? Summer in Urbana. Rain here, rain there. The air over Joe’s mountain sleeping place rumbled with thunder. He remembered the prairie lightning with Kathy. Tall girl. All us Sandersons are tall. Prairie stock. How does the Salvadoran army bury their dead? Big green lawns with grave markers, like back home, I guess. Everything makes sense back home. The steady progression of normal days. Kids in school, crops in the ground. Mashed potatoes served in a white porcelain bowl shaped like a boat. A plate of mashed potatoes with
gravy. Simple pleasures of living people, far from these mountains where we are trying to kill and maim each other, with bullets and jellied gasoline.

  Joe wondered, as the night dragged on, if he’d ever be able to fall asleep.

  * * *

  AFTER LUCAS BECAME the Beast he was assigned to a combat unit. With a comandante called Che, who had a reputation for being one of the toughest fighters in the guerrilla army. Che’s column, some two hundred men and women, were going to march southward, out of Morazán; they were going to take the enemy by surprise and hit him in his unprotected gut, some thirty miles south, in and around the city of San Miguel. In the weeks that followed Lucas and his unit entered and occupied and then withdrew from several villages and communities in the department of San Miguel. Whenever they entered a built-up place a compa said to Joe, “Hey, Lucas, we found something for you.” A notebook. Pens. He began to compose another letter home over the course of two weeks during which his unit and others operated on the fringes of San Miguel city, blowing up electrical towers and bridges, including the suspension bridge that linked the eastern third of the country to the capital, transforming it into a limp mass of tangled cables. It seemed to Joe that the guerrillas could wander about the country at will.

  Apparently we’re down out of the mountains for good and could well be on the verge of wrapping this show up, he wrote to his father. However, the “verge” could still be several months more of fighting. Switched camps 5 times since I last wrote. Military occupied 2 of our old camps, but found nothing but discarded candy wrappers and latrines. Why they should be in hot pursuit of a band of lepidopterists is, of course, beyond me. He told his father to ignore the reports Joe himself was hearing on Voice of America about the army wiping out rebel bands. I’m still alive, and thriving, or as Mark Twain once said: News of my recent death was greatly exaggerated. They’d crossed paths with a couple of European war correspondents, and it seemed possible to Joe that he might be in the newspapers again. Since I’m the only North American butterfly collector out in the field throughout El Salvador, my photo has been taken numerous times, he told his father. To his mother, Calhoun and Steve, Joe wrote: Me and my pals went on a sort of “pie stealing” raid the other night. Came down out of the hills to a local village. Drank my first Coca-Cola with ice (!) plus saw my 1st TV set in many months. Felt like Huckleberry Finn all over again, and at 39. I do miss some of the amenities of civilization (mainly food + cigs + privacy + books).

  Joe wrote his letters alongside a sleeping rebel squad. I grow weary of it all now and then, he told his father. The routine, the frustrations, even weary of the responsibilities. And of the moral obligation I feel to see the whole thing through to the end. Have certainly adopted well to camp life, and companionship. Yet I remain solitary, an individualist, despite the negative connotation that carries to those struggling for a collective society. He told his mother not to worry about him. I’ve been healthy as a hog for months. Not so much as a cold. Did my afternoon splash in a nearby creek, combed out my flourishing bronze beard (who found 2 dozen gray!!! strands?). Word just came that all us math scholars are to whack off our beards, trim our hair, sew on that missing button, tuck in our shirts, and in general prepare ourselves for mingling with civilized folks. So it looks like we’re finally bringing this show to a close at long last. Hooray! All’s well—1200. Save me a pork chop.

  After the army counterattacked, Joe added another entry to both letters. The bad guys got mad at us again and 9 truckloads of them showed up at a small village near our last camp this morning, he wrote to his mother. But we already had a 2½ hr. jump on them and are presently sitting on a hillside overlooking the valley munching cheese and rolling cigarettes. He wrote to his father that the peasants had abandoned their farms in the valley, and were fleeing as the army advanced—Who’s going to milk the cows today?—and said he could hear scattered gunfire coming from the valley. He mentioned the wandering cows to his mother too, and said that he’d picked up a Salvadoran newspaper and seen a photograph of the damage a tornado had caused in Lawrence, Kansas. No story to go with the picture; hope the family is OK on the farm.

  Joe’s final entry in both letters was dated July 6. All continues going well, he wrote to his father. And to his mother: All’s still well—1200—hope y’all had a good 4th of July.

  Lucas wrote the addresses on the envelopes left-handed, and “Pedro Gonzalez” on the return address and handed it to a rebel courier. Two weeks later it arrived in Urbana. After she’d read it several times, Virginia placed the envelope in one of the shoeboxes where she’d kept all of Joe’s correspondence since he left for college twenty-one years earlier. She was on her fourth box now. Many of the letters were tied in strings, and they all were in chronological order. Thick sections from his years in Bolivia and Colombia. From his two trips around the world. At the end of the newest shoebox, the letters he’d sent from this most recent trip to El Salvador; it was the thinnest section of all, just a handful so far this year. She thought of the chaotic events Joe described—the abandoned crops and cattle, the approaching soldiers—and felt as sad and empty as she ever had. Her son was on a path toward personal catastrophe. There are things you feel as a mother, the danger that hovers over your son. I see this as a constant throughout his life. The way things catch him by surprise. At two years old: the boy who “didn’t want to miss anything” and soiled his pants. Now he’s thirty-nine, smoking a cigarette with an army in the valley below him. She closed her eyes and felt death lurking near him. Like being caught out in an open field in a Kansas tornado, the gray clouds boiling overhead, being wrung into a funnel. Nowhere to run.

  * * *

  LUCAS AND THE REBEL ARMY headed north, back into Morazán, protected from air attacks by rain and fog that clung to the undulating landscape. They were not going to march on San Salvador after all. Instead, they spent two weeks eating mangoes at the rebel base, and Joe met the head of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, Joaquín Villalobos, the theorist and thinker of the movement. His code name was Atilio, and he was long-jawed and clean-shaven and spoke with his hands, moving his joined thumb and index fingers before him as if his thoughts were a musical instrument he was playing for his assembled audience. Joe called him “the Juggler” in his journal. The commander in chief had marched down into Morazán through Honduras, after visits to Nicaragua and Cuba and Europe, and he brought an outsider’s assessment of the military situation: The rebels were not yet strong enough to launch another “final offensive.” Instead, they had to consolidate their presence in Morazán. Plans were drawn up. They were going to strengthen their position in the mountains by continuing to attack and occupy towns and cities. Larger ones each time. Weapons were cleaned and oiled, and ammunition gathered, and Lucas joined one of several rebel columns that moved out northward, through fields of prickly-pear cactus and white rocks, climbing steeply upward into a pine forest, toward the town of Perquín, population 3,500, located on an old Lenca Indian settlement, on the top of a hill overlooking the countryside below.

  The rebel army quickly overwhelmed the National Guard detachment defending the town, half of whom surrendered immediately. The other half, about sixty men, retreated to the small barracks on one side of the oddly shaped polygon of the town’s central plaza, and radioed for help. The army sent two hundred ground troops northward to rescue the Guardsmen, but the rebels held them off, and the Guardsmen in the town surrendered. Perquín was the biggest town the rebels had liberated in Morazán, and for several days Radio Venceremos broadcast from the plaza, and the Juggler later said these broadcasts were a kind of theater that was changing the balance of the war, because a war wasn’t just troops on the battlefield, but what an entire country saw in its imagination and fears. A good radio drama carried the power of a rebel army all by itself, because it reached into the minds of thousands of people and occupied a space there as long as new dramas were broadcast. Radio Venceremos was a chortling, subliminal rebel with big teeth who lived i
n the relaxed space behind the eyes of everyone who hated the dictatorship.

  Ten days after the assault on Perquín, Radio Venceremos announced another “triumphant withdrawal” of the revolutionary forces. The government casualties included eighty-three dead. The rebels took thirty-two prisoners and captured fifty-five M16s, and two machine guns and too much ammunition to count, and left four of their own compas buried in the grass of the town plaza, while the last rebel unit to leave the town covered the rattling retreat of the cooks and their arsenal of steel kitchenware with three hundred members of the Atlacatl Battalion bearing down on them.

  * * *

  WHEN THEY WERE BACK in La Guacamaya, Lucas asked Comandante Jonás if he could have some time to write, because there was so much that he had seen that he wanted to commit to pen and paper, and the comandante said yes, and he assigned Lucas to the radio crew again, because there he would have access to all the writing materials he needed. Over the course of five consecutive mornings, writing first in his notebook, and then using the radio station’s typewriter, Joe composed the piece he had imagined himself writing during the Perquín campaign; it was a profile of Che, the idiosyncratic former army soldier who had become a rebel comandante.

  Compañero Che is one of the old-timers, a guerrilla with half a dozen years of experience behind him. At present Che commands an entire guerrilla section; two platoons, or roughly 60 insurgent youths. As Joe typed, he occasionally endured the annoyed stares of the radio compas, many of whom resented Lucas for getting such special treatment: “Time to write, during a war,” a compa said with a sneer. Joe filed his “Portrait” in his backpack, to use when he returned home to write his novel about El Salvador, a moment that couldn’t come soon enough. This war is going to drag on for years. I don’t have years in me. He needed solitude. He couldn’t write with radio DJs and smart-aleck college-kid guerrillas looking over his shoulder.