The Last Great Road Bum

by Héctor Tobar

  24

  Yoloaiquín. San Francisco Gotera

  29 Jan

  Brother Steven:

  Guess I better give up making predictions about when I’ll be returning to the States. Just found out there will be still another delay. Could be a couple of weeks, could be three more months, so to hell with any more wild guesses. Just hope y’all and rest of family are doing okay. Damn near a whole year since I heard from anybody. But so it goes. As for me—still punching in a 1200 and keeping fat and healthy. Anyway—duty calls—so I best get cracking. Will continue to keep in touch whenever possible. Let folks know I’m doing fine.

  Love to all, J.

  14 Feb

  Morazan

  Dear Papa:

  4:30 a.m. Woke up to the sounds of shooting and grenades to the north—the mountain lads bidding the soldiers “good morning.” Moon’s on the wane, flashlight’s on the wane, but wanted to scribble a quick message Arizona-way since a pal of mine plans to do some traveling in the next few hours. Been nearly half a year since I wrote that I would “be home soon.” Hmmm. So it goes. No indication even now when I might be heading toward the bright city lights. Well over 2,000 pages of manuscript to date—rucksack quite heavy these days. If you’re interested in what’s going on in this little corner of the world, you might try catching back issues of The New York Times and The Washington Post at the local library. Had a few visitors back in January and have heard that their articles are causing quite a stir in Washington these days. The weeks prior to Xmas were pretty grim and with the help of U.S. military advisers the E.S. military went from tactical massacres to a strategy of wholesale genocide. And that’s why I’m still in the mountains—to survey the aftermaths, collect data, and try to figure out the reasons why. So here I be—still fat and healthy on tortillas and beans, still grinning my grin, still ready to swap my Salvadoran butterfly net for an Arizona fishing pole. By the time we get around to splitting that bottle of wine, looks like we’ll have some real vintage stuff on our hands.

  Love, J.

  22 March

  15:00-Limetree

  And a new phase begins. And with a little luck + good strategy and planning on our part + bad luck to the cuilios—even the last phase. Restless cold night, beaucoup fleas, up early to smoke + listen to radio. No coffee, so went patrolling after breakfast. Pan dulce, puros, coffee de palo. Village folks scared of recriminations with coming operations, keeping apart, but siempre nearby to undertake their daily ventas.

  Joe wrote his letters in English, but every day more Spanish worked its way into his journal. Café de palo. A local coffee-like concoction made from roasted corn. When I write a novel, maybe it’ll be bilingual. Will need footnotes to explain it all to Mom and Dad. Cuilios. What’s the etymology on that one? An onomatopoeia? A peasant was being strangled by army soldiers, and a sound gurgled from his mouth. ¡Cuilios! And that’s the word the peasants have used for soldiers ever since. In describing the coming battles between the rebels and the army, Joe wrote: Vamos a ver quien es más vergón. Verga = dick. Vergón = endowed with a big dick. Thus: We’ll see who has the bigger dick. Compared to “dick,” verga sounded so much more vulgar and penile. His favorite Salvadoranism was “pura paja,” which translated as bullshit or lying. Pura = pure. Paja = straw. But, also: Paja = masturbation. In El Salvador masturbation was a synonym for falsehood. All the talk of democracy coming to El Salvador was pura paja. Half the leaders of the main opposition party had been murdered, and the other half were in hiding, and the junta scheduled an election. Pura paja. Instead of real democratic coitus, a simulation, a public jerking off.

  On March 23, five days before a planned election, Lucas was assigned to a rebel column led by a new comandante he nicknamed Willy the Joker. He was an older San Salvador urban commando putting his gunfighter experience to work in the hills for the first time. Pure talent and balls, Joe wrote in his journal. His was one of several units that would lay siege to the provincial capital of Morazán, San Francisco Gotera, and to its airbase. But first the rebels captured the very small town of Yoloaiquín and occupied it, just north of San Francisco Gotera, giving chase to the small National Guard unit there, killing two soldiers. Lucas missed the fighting because he was on “ambush duty” on the high ground outside town, awaiting an army counterattack that never came. He fell asleep in the middle of the day, his forearm over his eyes, listening to the birds sending mating and warning calls in the tree-filled cemetery below their position. Awakened from sunbaked siesta by the choppers machine-gunning area—troop carrier and a little round job that looks like a flying bathysphere, he wrote in his journal. The flying craft disappeared to the south, toward the airbase at San Francisco Gotera. Otherwise, it was a dull, tedious day for us here on the knoll.1

  * * *

  WHEN JOE OPENED his semiconscious eyes they were soothed by quiet yellow sunlight and he slipped back into a half wakefulness in which he was snoring while thinking about how tired he was. He was startled into full consciousness by the agitated voices he heard coming from the bottom of the hill, and he rose to his feet and walked down to investigate; the compas had detained a “suspicious civilian” trying to leave the town. Suffering shakes, very quiet, Joe would write in a small notebook later. Willy the Joker questioned him and the guy started contradicting himself right away. Willy soon concluded, “This guy is a cuilio, or an informer.” The captured man was tall and muscular, and the rebel soldiers made him take off his shirt and found markings on the skin around his waist like those left by an ammo belt; they marched him out of the cemetery and up the hill for some further questioning. Heard him holler once, Joe wrote later. About 30 minutes later cry went out: The guy was making a run for it. Willy the Joker yelled, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” By the time I reached the crest, a dozen compas were in hot pursuit. Eventually, one compa opened up with FAL from about 50 feet. Just got bored of chasing the guy. Saw the guy spin and seem to trip. No, he’d been hit by the burst. I was 200 meters away but he was still bleeding from carotid veins in his neck by the time I reached him. Half his head torn off too. The compas were already taking off his boots, and his pants (brown). “No photos,” Willy said. Willy wasn’t mad at the compa who shot him. Said the suspect had finally admitted he was a National Guardsman. The compas had him sitting on the ground, but he stood up and broke his wrist bindings. Willy said no one was much in the mood for prisoners. I guess not. Compas quite amused at the whole incident. “A fresh corpse? Garbage. Bury him, throw rocks on him so he doesn’t stink.”

  Joe felt a burst of wind blow across the hilltop and over the prisoner’s stiff and unmoving form. His feet and chest, bare cinnamon skin, his arms limply at his side. Palms facing the sky, and in the bowl of each one Joe saw an eye. The bent line of his mouth, as if he were trying to keep the flies out. The insects explored the corpse’s nostrils until the compas pushed him into the shallow grave they’d dug into the ground next to him. They tossed rocks and kicked dirt on his half-naked frame. Strange to be watching a live person one moment, hearing him answer questions, then watch him get killed a few minutes later, Joe wrote in his notebook.

  After the death of the prisoner, more tedium followed, hours during which a few rebels amused themselves telling the story of the prisoner’s lies and his brief sprint for life. There was nervousness in the compas’ laughter, but with each retelling, a little less so. The next day, in his journal, Joe gave his psycho-tactical analysis of the incident. Hard-nosed these kids. Definitely turning into soldiers. Yesterday’s incident with the prisoner hardly pretty but the subsequent savagery, the general behavioral reaction, important to us winning this war. After the December massacres, any cruelty inflicted on the enemy seemed justified. Without the killer instinct, we probably don’t have a chance.

  The rebel forces withdrew from Yoloaiquín that same day. Joe watched as a line of soldiers approached the town; but after two days of waiting, when the opportunity finally came to pounce on the army, the command came
not to do so. Sort of deflating to get the order to pull back. Joe watched from above as the soldiers entered Yoloaiquín through the cemetery, a picturesque assemblage of stone crypts and small, teetering crosses of wood and steel. Army goblins with M16s, squat-running through a graveyard. A day later the rebels went back into the town following the same route through the cemetery; they crouched behind the stone monuments and the crypts with their pitched stone roofs, and crushed dried flowers under their boots, knocking over the few wooden crosses still standing. This time the battle lasted an hour and the army withdrew, both sides leaving shell casings amid the graves. Joe noted later in his journal that the taking of the town had not gone well for the rebels. Bad intelligence. Our lads snuck into town and laid a charge on the wrong fucking building. It wasn’t the army HQ we blew up after all. A woman came screaming from the building carrying a bleeding child. “The guerrillas killed my son!” The boy was, in fact, very much alive, but she wouldn’t allow the rebels’ medics to treat him, and instead she climbed with him into the back of a pickup truck, to get a ride through the battle lines to the hospital in San Francisco Gotera. As the pickup drove off, a big man half dressed in civilian clothes ran and caught up with the pickup and jumped in the bed. “A soldier! He’s escaping! Stop him!” But no one did. Instead, the rebels ransacked a store said to belong to an army informant, and Joe drank an orange soda and lit up a smoke from said store, enjoying these small comforts of civilization while they lasted. Fanta. Chesterfield. The rebels evacuated the town and allowed the army to take it back again, and Lucas found himself again on the top of No Ambush Hill, and of course he felt a sense of déjà vu. Saw a line of soldiers down in the cemetery, where I’d been taking pictures earlier in the day. Word came from the comandancia, which was communicating to its units with notes written on small pieces of paper carried by running little kids. “Army unit is preparing mortar attack on your position.” A single shell fell well below his unit’s position. Then two on either side of them. And then many, many shells all at once. Crouched behind a tree when mortar slammed in only several meters away, Joe wrote in his notebook afterward. Went momentarily deaf. A dozen of us all covered with dirt. Like being inside the explosion. Rifles caked. Definitely a concussion. Jabs your fillings loose. Literally my teeth ached. No one hurt, everyone shaken. The explosion had shattered a nearby rock, transforming its shards into stone daggers the size and shape of fingernails. I picked up a few rock chips in right leg, blood soaking through blue jeans in several spots. Slight rock chip embedded in left hand. Comandante ordered me out, to the rear. I said, “No. I want to stay.” “Why,” he asked. “To fight,” I said. So I went down to join the compas in the firing line. Chopper came by and strafed the shit out of us. But no casualties.

  * * *

  THE BACK-AND-FORTH over the town of Yoloaiquín was a short prelude to the main event, the rebels’ attack on San Francisco Gotera, the departmental capital, a town of fifteen thousand people with an airstrip that was the military’s lifeline in Morazán. Just like the Juggler had prophesied, one town bigger than the last one. The army of massacring soldiers was waiting for the rebels there, protected by trenches and pillboxes lining the edge of the city and airstrip. Lucas’s unit took a position on high ground near the army positions, and Joe watched as a C-47 troop carrier propellered over the city and landed. A day passed, and no attack took place. Snoozing under shade tree getting gut ache over too many green mangoes, Joe wrote in his journal. Several hours later he added: Agonized with a gut ache + whooshing mango-peel shits—not helped by a cup of sweet milk last night. The next morning: Slept on firing line last night, at my position behind stone foxhole + small tree. Lots of movements, us and them, but in the end we left enemy alone, they left us alone. This a.m.? Awoke with slightly sore leg, rock frag wounds infected but no sign any chips remain inside flesh. Two Fouga Magister jets swooped by on a bombing and strafing run. Some really fancy flying, corkscrewing, pancaking in, standing on their noses. Had to be some of our gringo “advisers.” Went out to the rock point to have a looksie and chat with the last compa on the rearguard. Soldiers opened up on us from Yolo (maybe 700 yards away) and holy shit they had us pegged. Then a chopper came and holy shit they knew exactly where we were too. Not much cover in the rocks. The bullets, as they say, came thick and fast. Sounded like little birds trying to whistle after eating cracker crumbs. Pfffittt! Pfffittt! Dozens and dozens of rounds came our way, all zinging in overhead. First time I’ve really gotten it from a chopper. But finally chopper left without dropping altitude and we ducked over the crest so the soldiers firing at us would get off our case.

  Joe and the rebels marched back to La Guacamaya and took stock of what faced them in a full assault of the city and the airstrip. After another day of preparations, they assembled in the dark, at 3:00 a.m. “This is the day we’ll see who is who,” Willy the Joker said, and Joe wrote later in his journal: A real good feeling this time, watching the kids get ready to move out. We’ll have a lot of activity today. Shoot and maneuver. Hit and run. Fire and Flee. Rough, select group of compas will be involved in our part of it. Compañeras too. Boys and girls ready to murder and to maim. Will most likely get our asses kicked today, but so be it.

  Radio Venceremos was planning to go on the air at sunrise with reports of the attacks in San Francisco Gotera; and also in Usulután to the south; in Chalatenango in the north, and many other places. Lucas was going to play a small part in a nationwide action, coordinated between different rebel factions, to disrupt the phony election scheduled to take place that day. That the many egos assembled, loosely, in the FMLN (or “the Fellow Merchants of Leftist Non-sequiturs,” as Joe jokingly called it), could actually coordinate anything was a miracle in itself. But they had, using letters sent through the mail and notes hand-delivered by girl couriers, and coded radio messages. Lucas was assigned to provide security for a rebel comandante he called St. Pete, a former army officer with a fatherly disposition; Lucas had strict orders to stick to St. Pete and not move toward the firing line, and before they marched out, Joe swapped his mud-caked M16 for an M1 carbine, captured at Yoloaiquín. He called it “the Little Virgin” because it was brand-new, polished and beautiful. I’m now with La Virgencita, and more than 150 shells, 2 packs of smokes, clean clothes, stitched boots, coffee + sugar, marching with St. Pete, who is the leader of one of two platoons led by El Che.

  They entered the town’s outskirts at 4:00 a.m., with one of Che’s platoons dispatched to capture a knoll five hundred meters from one of the enemy’s positions, outside a barracks, while Lucas’s platoon moved to a stone wall inside a farm, several hundred meters farther back. The forward platoon began to fire on the army positions, and soon the army soldiers were firing back with G3s, and Joe heard fire coming, too, from the airbase to the south. The rebels were close enough to the airstrip that Joe could see the air force markings on a plane taxiing on the runway, and the sight of the plane confirmed to Joe how momentous the coming battle would be. El Che peered into Lucas’s agitated eyes, and saw the North American compa wanted to do something, anything, so he told him to enter the farmhouse and see who was inside. Joe found a family of trembling people. Told the women to get their kids hidden under beds and to barricade the door with tables and bags of corn, whatever they had at hand, he wrote in his journal later. Couple of old folks, kids. Patted shoulders and tried my best to reassure everyone—difficult as the lead came flying into their yard. Lucas rejoined El Che, who was ordering his troops to move out. We didn’t have much room to maneuver. Cuilios had us pinned down from their trenches. Got behind a woodpile, caught some lead, but didn’t start firing until compas had all moved through the farmyard, to a grove of trees on the other side of a creek. Lucas was covering his companions from behind with his M1, an instinctual act; no one had ordered him to do so. Soldier on top of hill was firing at the compas; I could see he was an open target from the waist up. So I set my rear sight on 200 yards; the first shot fell way short. Went up to 250 a
nd sent him scampering. Then he and his pals opened up on my woodpile; a burst from a G3, then shot by shot. Got my gear squared away to do some work. The soldier eased up on me, and started exchanging fire with Che and the compas, who were now another 50 yards forward and to the right. I opened up on the soldiers from the side. Nothing better to disperse a group of human beings than spinning metal projectiles. Cleaned off the hillside and started peppering their little pillbox with rifle shots. Finished a 15-round clip, switched to another, then zigzagged across the creek—stopping for a smoke and to get out camera along the way. There were two women behind him, Sonia and Reina, and a handful of other “brigadista” medical support troops. Where the heck did they come from? All unarmed and hugging the ground to avoid enemy fire. Yes, I’d say we were just about pinned down, Joe wrote. Found myself shin deep in a stinking bog, St. Pete nearby, not looking happy. Lucas and St. Pete moved forward through the grove of trees, and finally Lucas got close enough to the front line to see El Che, crouched down behind one of the thicker trunks, his legs exposed to enemy fire. He motioned for Lucas to come to him. “I got a soldier firing at me,” he told Lucas. “Get him off my back so I can concentrate on the radio.” Lucas quickly gathered himself and studied the enemy position, which was near a clump of grass two hundred meters away, and started firing. Wasn’t getting any response, he wrote later. Suddenly he spotted an army helmet directly in front of his position.

  * * *

  JOE WOULD REMEMBER this moment later as one of extreme lucidity. In his memory, the entire day would be illuminated more brightly than any he could remember. Some sort of brain impulse, perhaps. A way the mind has of keeping essential information in the foreground of one’s thoughts. The events and the ambition that had brought him to this battlefield. His story assembled into something precise and powerful. He would remember the orange glint of the morning light on his American-made M1 carbine as he raised it, the sheen on the polished grain of its wooden stock. Brand-new. The Little Virgin. The hot bulb of sun rays reflected on the forest-green sphere of that American-made helmet (also called an M1, coincidentally), worn by a minion of the massacring army, right there in front of him.