Colonel Rutherford's Colt

by Lucius Shepard

  As he stood that morning gazing down at his wife’s charms, his faith in this self-image caused him to dismiss all doubts relating to the fact that he knew Susan would likely not wish to hear what he intended to tell her. “My dear,” he said. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow for Guantanamo.”

  Susan, who was reading a letter from her mother, did not lift her eyes from the paper and murmured an acknowledgement.

  “I would hope,” the colonel went on, “to be received by you this evening.”

  It appeared to him that Susan flinched an instant before she whispered her assent, yet she offered no objection or excuse as she had done in the past. Feeling that he was making good progress with her, the colonel picked up his hat, bid her good day, and left the house.

  While stopping in Santiago, on his way back from Guantanamo several days later, the colonel, having satisfactorily settled a thorny problem of miscommunication between the commandant of the base and a loose association of local fisherman, treated himself to a night at the house belonging to Sra. Amalia Savon, an establishment known more famously amongst the locals as Tia Maria’s. The colonel almost never frequented such places, but on those occasions when he did he justified the indulgence by telling himself that the tutelage of a wise professional would serve to inform his own instruction of Susan. On this particular evening, after spending several pleasant hours with a young lady by the name of Serafina, he repaired to the downstairs bar where, in the company of several Cuban gentlemen, he helped himself to a large post-coital brandy and a good cigar. As he sat in a comfortable chair of red velvet in a quiet corner, nursing his brandy and less thinking than savoring the quality of his satisfaction, he was approached by a distinguished elderly man with a full head of white hair, wearing a cream-colored suit and walking with a malacca cane; he had in tow a much younger fellow, a reedy, sallow sort wearing fawn slacks and a yellow guayabera.

  “Your pardon, Colonel Rutherford,” said the elderly man with a bow. “I am Doctor Eduardo Lens y Rivera. You may recall that we met last April in Havana at the American Embassy. We had a brief discussion regarding the regulatory body that oversees imports into your great country.”

  “Of course! Doctor Lens!” The colonel’s pleasure was genuine. Lens had struck him as a reasonable politician, an anomaly among his grasping, shortsighted colleagues.

  “May I present my wife’s cousin?” Doctor Lens indicated the younger man. “Odiberto Saenz y Figueroa.”

  “Mucho gusto,” said Odiberto, and shook the colonel’s hand.

  Once they had taken chairs adjoining his, the colonel said, “I apologize for not recognizing you straightaway, Doctor. I was . . .”

  “Please!” Doctor Lens held up a hand to restrain the colonel’s excuses. “There is no need to explain. Following an evening at Tia Maria’s, a man tends to re-order his perspectives.”

  After further pleasantries, compliments all around to the women of Cuba, those of America, as well as various other Caribbean nations, Doctor Lens slid forward in his chair and rested both hands on the macaw-shaped gold head of his cane. “Colonel,” he said, “there is something I wish to discuss with you, but I hesitate because it is a matter of considerable personal delicacy.”

  “Personal?” The colonel set his brandy down. “Personal in what way?”

  “In the deepest and most fundamental way. It relates to your family.”

  “I’m afraid I have no real family,” the colonel said. “My sister and parents have passed on. There is only my wife and . . .”

  “Exactly,” said Doctor Lens; then, after a pause: “Truly, colonel, I do not wish to offend. I bring this matter to your attention only because I would wish it brought to mine were our positions reversed.”

  “Let me get this straight. You have information concerning my wife?”

  “Information is, perhaps, too strict a word. What I have is a story told by one young man to another. Young men are prone to boasting. All I can do is offer you the opportunity to hear the story and make your own judgment as to its authenticity. Should you not care to hear it, then I will beg your pardon and take my leave.”

  Shaken, the colonel curled his fingers round the brandy glass, but felt he did not have the strength to lift it. The idea that Susan had been unfaithful, and he could think of no other circumstance that would cause Doctor Lens to come forward in so oblique a fashion . . . It was insupportable, implausible, unfathomable. She would not be the first American wife to take a Cuban lover, but given her isolation and the inquisitive nature of his servants, he could not imagine how she would manage it.

  “Go ahead,” he said with some confidence.

  “Do you know a man named Luis Carrasquel? The nephew of General Ruelas?”

  “I know of him. We may have met . . . I’m not sure.”

  “Odiberto is employed at the Banco Nacional, where Carrasquel also works. And that is not their sole association. They have been friends since childhood. Our families have vacationed together. A week ago, Carrasquel asked Odiberto to have a drink with him after closing. He seemed quite distraught and said that for some time he had been involved in a romance with a beautiful American woman. The woman loved him—he was certain of that. Yet for reasons he could not understand, she refused to leave her husband, a man she described”—Doctor Lens offered the colonel an apologetic look—“as a monster.”

  Colonel Rutherford suffered this slur without visible reaction. But a numbness began to spread from his extremities, and along with the numbness, though he rejected the notion that whatever their personal difficulties, Susan could ever think so badly of him as to call him a monster, there came a feeling of certainty that the story was no boast.

  “I think it might be best if Odiberto told the story from this point on,” said Doctor Lens. “I have heard it but once. Thus I cannot recall every detail . . . and it is from the details, I believe, that you will be able to determine its truth. Since Odiberto regrettably speaks no English, I will translate.”

  “That’s fine,” said the colonel, and favored Odiberto with what he intended as an encouraging smile.

  The story unfolded in a curious fashion, alternating between Odiberto’s bursts of passionate narration, accompanied by florid gestures and woeful faces, and the calm, almost lectoral translations of Doctor Lens. The emotional opposition of these two styles set up a dissonance in the colonel’s thoughts, and it came to seem that he was listening to both a lie and the truth at once, and that at heart they were the same.

  “ ‘I have never seen Luis so upset,’ ” said Doctor Lens. “ ‘Once we reached the bar, he began to cry. When I asked what was wrong, he said he could not tell me. He could tell no one, and the pressures of the situation were driving him mad. But at length I prevailed upon him to confess his secret. I swore I would never reveal it.’ ”

  “Apparently this was not a sacred oath,” the colonel said with wry bitterness.

  Doctor Lens let out a heavy sigh. “It is shameful, I know. Odiberto’s motives in coming forward were less than pure. He was passed over for promotion at the bank and blames this upon Luis, who is in a supervisory position. But since the story is out, I thought it best that you be made aware of things.”

  “When you say the story is out,” the colonel said, “what do you mean? Has he told anyone else apart from you?”

  “My wife,” said Doctor Lens. “Odiberto told us together. I give you my word that I will tell no one, but my wife . . .” He shrugged. “I can control how much money she spends at market, but not whom she whispers to.”

  “I understand,” said the colonel. “Please . . . proceed.”

  Odiberto, through the agency of Doctor Lens, told of the married woman’s indecisiveness, this the thing that had caused Luis so much pain and distraction.

  “ ‘He could not determine what she wanted,’ ” the doctor said. “ ‘One minute she was telling him she would do anything to make him happy, and the next she became distant, uncommunicative. He asked me what he should do, and I
advised him to break it off. No matter how much he loved this woman, I said, it would be the act of a fool to surrender his life to what was on the face of it a hopeless passion. But Luis shook his head, said, “No, no! There must be a way to make her know . . . to make her see . . .”

  “ ‘He was fanatic in his devotion to the woman. Even obsessive. I could not convince him that he was on the road to disaster, that the physical, mental, and moral dangers he confronted were likely to destroy him. In hopes of finding some means of persuading him, I convinced him to tell me more about the relationship.’ ”

  Doctor Lens leaned forward and said in a lowered voice, “I will spare you the intimate details, if you wish.”

  “No,” said the colonel, who felt cold and immobile, as though imprisoned within a block of stone. “No, I want to hear it all.”

  As he listened to Doctor Lens describe the woman’s passion, the unalloyed freedom with which she employed her body in the service of her lover’s pleasure, Colonel Rutherford began to take heart. This woman, with her unending avidity and sexual inventiveness . . . She could not be Susan. Either Carrasquel was lying, or he was describing someone else entirely. But then the doctor related how Luis gained entry to the estate. The ceiba tree, the sapling palm, the doorway leading to the housekeeper’s apartments, the vines crawling over the yellow stucco. Only a single shred of doubt remained in the colonel’s mind.

  “Did Carrasquel ever speak this woman’s name?” he asked.

  After a hurried consultation with Odiberto, Doctor Lens said, “ ‘Several days following our initial conversation, Luis and I were walking in the market, taking our lunch al fresco, when Luis stopped to stare at a pale beautiful woman who was shopping with a servant. He appeared absolutely devastated by the sight. A moment later the woman lifted her head and their eyes met. The exchange was not casual. For the longest time they seemed unable to move away from one another, and after the woman had left. In a great hurry, I should say. After she left, Luis was beside himself. Flustered, incoherent. His eyes filled with tears, and he refused to speak other than to insist we return to the bank at once. I later ascertained that the name of the woman who provoked this reaction was Susan Rutherford.’ ”

  The colonel lowered his eyes to the carpet. “Is there more?” he asked grimly.

  “Only this,” Doctor Lens said. “And it is I, now, who speak. I hope you will accept that I speak as a friend.” He fingered the beak of the gold macaw. “No one, not even General Ruelas, will blame you if you seek revenge for this betrayal. However, I beg you to be moderate in your judgment. Not only are the lives of Carrasquel and your wife in the balance, but your own. Should your vengeance be a bloody one, your career may suffer. Cuba needs American friends such as Colonel Hawes Rutherford.”

  These last words, imparted with a sly oiliness, made clear to the colonel that Doctor Lens’ motives in telling him the story were, like Odiberto’s, less than pure. The doctor wanted something, and consequently, he must have something to give. It occurred to the colonel that he was being subtly and unobtrusively blackmailed—in effect, being offered carte blanche as regarded his handling of the infidelity in return for some favor yet to be determined.

  “You say your wife cannot be controlled?” he asked.

  “Not easily controlled, at any rate,” said the doctor. “Though I suppose it might be possible, with great effort, to restrain her.”

  “And can you guarantee Odiberto’s silence?”

  “Odiberto understands that his revelation will only profit him if”—the doctor appeared to be contemplating a choice of words; then he smiled—“if there is profit to be had.”

  The colonel, in whom rage had begun to stoke its fires, could barely withhold from striking him. He had endured a sufficiency of these effete little men, these half-breeds with their dapper attire and usurers’ hearts. But he only said, “I would very much appreciate it if you would do your level best to ensure your wife’s discretion.”

  The doctor nodded, said, “Of course,” as if no contrary thought had ever entered his mind.

  “Perhaps,” the colonel continued, “you will visit me in my office so we can discuss the matter further.”

  “I would be delighted,” replied the doctor.

  Once the two men had departed, the colonel knocked down his brandy and went out onto the grounds of Tia Maria’s. He stood beneath a coconut palm, tipped back his head and gazed at the sky.

  All the feelings he had suppressed during the conversation now came spilling out, like tiny devils bursting free from an enchanted box, led by Fury, but followed in swift order by Hate, Bitterness, Loathing, Envy, Despair, and, lastly, by a horrid, squirming, tumescent thing he could not identify by name, but that he recognized as emblematic of the odious and unhealthy sexuality that the news of Susan’s infidelity had roused from his depths. These vile beasts of feeling enlarged him, inflated him with their gaseous breath, making him so great with emotion, he half-believed that were he to stretch out his hand, he might pluck the stars from out their sockets of black bone and rewrite the diamond sentences of the sky to contrive a tale of calumny and murder. The colonel was not a courageous man. He had used his family connections to ensure that he would never set foot upon the field of battle; and it was by dint of these same connections and a talent for political in-fighting that he had risen to his position of eminence. But now he saw himself as a warrior, triumphant and painted with the blood of his enemies. And yet he was not, in this vision, intemperate. Oh, no. He would assure himself of the facts before acting. He would weigh his choices. Then and only then would. . . .

  * * *

  “Mister!”

  A boy and a girl—both of junior high age—were standing in front of Jimmy. The boy was skinny and rodentlike, had tipped hair and wore a white T-shirt with spattery red letters spelling out the words JESUS WHO? The girl, a strawberry blond of no appreciable beauty, was demurely dressed in jeans and a crew-neck sweater. The cluttered noise of the crowd was that of a thousand people all saying the same thing slightly out of synch.

  “You were talking weird shit in your sleep,” said the boy, and the girl giggled.

  Jimmy could not get the colonel out of his head. He stared at the boy with the ferocity of a man who has just received news that has left him in no mood to suffer fools. It seemed his eyes were boring like slow bullets into the boy’s eyes.

  “He’s fucked up on something,” the boy said in a hushed tone that put Jimmy in mind of a golf announcer explaining a difficult lie to the viewing audience. The girl leaned into him and took his hand: he was so wise.

  Jimmy hefted the Colt, still warm from the telling, and laid it on the table. He got to his feet. Yawned.

  “What kinda gun’s that?” the girl asked. “Is it worth a lotta money?”

  “Colt forty-five automatic, Model Nineteen-Eleven,” Jimmy said. “Designed by John Browning. Damn near the same sidearm’s been used by the US Army these last ninety years. This one here’s worth a good bit.”

  “He’s just talking more shit,” the boy said.

  “You know where you are?” Jimmy asked him.

  The boy affected a tone only slightly more doltish than his natural one. “Naw. Where am I?”

  “That’s my one rule of life,” Jimmy told him. “Know where you are. You don’t know that, you don’t never see it coming.”

  The girl tugged anxiously at the boy, urging him away.

  “You fucking with us?” said the boy.

  “Not yet . . . but I’m tempted.”

  In a cute show of defiance, the girl flipped him off and stuck out her tongue. Jimmy grinned, staggered back, pretending to be heart-shot. She giggled again. The boy, perhaps sensing a rival, slung an arm about her shoulder and steered her off toward safer ground.