Eternity and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  • • •

  Shortly after nine o’clock, the hour when the Drive-In Puerto Rico customarily closed, Margery and the colonel went to talk with Tomas, leaving Gammage hiding in the room. They walked along the verge of the beach, keeping to the shadow of a palm hammock. Drops of orange fire pointed the windows of little wooden houses tucked in among the sinuous trunks, each one also announced by the rattle of a generator, and on occasion a lesser shadow emerged from the dark, tipped its hat and wished them good evening. Off on the horizon a lopsided moon, like an ancient medal of bone, paved the sea with a dwindling silver road, and the swarm of stars in its wild glitter seemed to construct a constant flickering conversation, causing the colonel to think that if he could hear them, their voices would resemble those of crickets. Bats squeaked high in the fronds; invisible chickens clucked; a dog barked distantly, with neurotic regularity. The wind had died, and mosquitoes whined in the colonel’s hair.

  “Tomas feels that women have been a misfortune in his life,” he said as they came in sight of the Drive-In Puerto Rico. “He may appear rude.”

  Margery slapped at her neck. “Maybe I shouldn’t be with you.”

  “No, it’s better he knows a woman is involved.”

  “But what if he won’t help?”

  “He will. His attitude toward women doesn’t reflect dislike, just a mistrust of their effect on him. As far as I know, he has never been able to refuse them anything.”

  The lights on the deck of the restaurant had been switched off, and Tomas was leaning on the railing. On spotting Margery, he let fall the hand he had raised in greeting, and his face grew impassive. As they sat together and the colonel told him what was required and why, he merely grunted in response. Margery continued slapping at mosquitoes, and finally, annoyed by these interruptions, Tomas went into the restaurant and returned with a jar containing a translucent greenish paste, which he handed to Margery. She sniffed at it, wrinkled her nose.

  “It is not perfume,” he said brusquely. “However, it will keep away the mosquitoes.”

  She thanked him and began dabbing it onto her arms and neck.

  With a dolorous sigh, Tomas sat with his back to the railing, his face angled toward the stars. “Benito Casamayor has a suitable boat. And he is in need of money. But he will want a good price to challenge the authority of Felix Carbonell.”

  “How much?” Margery asked.

  “A thousand might persuade him.”

  “Lempira?”

  “Dollars,” said Tomas.

  “I can have it within an hour.”

  Tomas sniffed, a sign—the colonel thought—of his contempt for anyone who could so easily promise a thousand dollars. “I’ll arrange for Benito to be at the end of Punta Manabique at two o’clock in the morning. That will give him time to prepare his boat.”

  “How will we get Jerry to the boat?”

  Tomas refitted his gaze to the horizon. Their edges gone diaphanous, all smoke and luminous mother-of-pearl, bulky clouds had closed in around the moon, framing it in glowing complexity, like angels heralding a glorious birth in a Rafael or a Titian. A fish splashed in the offing, a sickly generator stuttered to life among the palms.

  “How big a man is your friend?” Tomas asked.

  “About six feet,” Margery said. “Two hundred pounds, maybe.”

  “A little more, I think,” said Colonel Galpa.

  “There is a woman from the Bay Islands here in town,” said Tomas. “Maude Brooks. The people call her Sister Anaya. She tells fortunes at the hotels.”

  “I think I’ve seen her,” Margery said. “A big black woman…wears a turban?”

  Tomas nodded. “She will come to Mauricio’s hotel and provide your friend with a disguise. She will remain in the room, and he will leave, pretending to be her. But you will require something with which to color his skin.”

  “I have boot polish,” said the colonel. “It’s brown, but in the dark no one is likely to notice.”

  “Do we pay her, too?” Margery asked.

  “She will tell you her price.” Tomas chuckled. “Bring a great deal of money.”

  A flow of wind poured in off the water, growing stronger by the second, flapping the colonel’s jacket, twitching the end of Tomas’s braid. For the first time, he looked directly at Margery. His creased, leathery face seemed more an accidental pattern of nature than a human design, the sort of shape your eye might assemble from the strands in a mound of seaweed. “Give me your hand,” he said.

  She glanced anxiously at the colonel, but complied.

  Tomas did not hold her hand, simply let it rest on his palm. He kept his eyes on her and she on him. It appeared initially that they were engaged in a contest of wills; but then the colonel realized that neither one showed evidence of strain. Still, it made him uneasy, and he asked Tomas what he was doing.

  “Looking.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Must I look for something specific? Whenever you try too forcefully to order the world, you fail to see anything.”

  Soon Tomas withdrew his hand, frowning.

  “Is something wrong?” Margery asked.

  The old man muttered several words in a language Colonel Galpa did not recognize, then his eyes downcast, said, “Mauricio. You will have to escort the American to meet Benito. Once he has disguised himself, the three of you must leave the hotel together. You,”—he gestured at Margery—“cannot go to Punta Manabique with them. Is there a place where your colleagues might gather at that hour?”

  “Club Atomica,” she said.

  “Then go there. It will seem that Mauricio is walking Madame Anaya home.” Tomas addressed himself to the colonel. “Do not accompany him all the way to the point. Leave him on the beach nearby. He will pass into the shadows of the trees. If anyone has followed, they will lose interest in him and follow you back to the club.” The plan sounded eminently workable to the colonel, but he was perturbed by Tomas’s subdued manner and asked if he felt ill.

  Tomas took such a long time to respond, the colonel grew concerned that he had been stricken and rendered incapable of speech; but at last he said, “It is nothing. An intimation of ills to come. Men of my age often receive morbid signals of the future.” He patted the colonel’s hand, his own hand trembling. “It is you about whom I am concerned.”

  “I’m perfectly well,” said the colonel. “Except for being hungry. I had only a few shrimp at dinner.”

  “It is not your health that concerns me. I wonder if you are prepared for what may ensue should Carbonell discover what you have done.”

  “Carbonell cannot hurt me. I have friends in the capital whom he will not wish to offend.”

  “I think you underestimate him…and I am certain that you do not entirely comprehend his character. Men like Carbonell, beasts disguised by a thin dress of human behavior, they sometimes act without regard for consequence. As to your friends, ask yourself this, Who is more valuable to them—the hero of a war fought long ago, or a beast who wears their uniform, whose uncontrollable nature serves to strike fear into the hearts of the people, making them all the more malleable and accepting of their lot?”

  Put this way, the question disheartened the colonel. He realized that—matters of principle aside—he was on the verge of risking everything for a man who, albeit a friend, was not a great friend, and for a woman whom he scarcely knew. And to what end? He had little conviction that Carbonell or his masters would be damaged by the revelations Gammage proposed to make. He wondered what his response might be if Margery were not sitting beside him. “I’ll be all right,” he told Tomas.

  The old man made a clucking sound with his tongue. He stared at his hands, which rested flat on the table, the fingers lifting idly—like two ancient blind crabs seeking familiar purchase. “Then there’s nothing more to be said.”

  • • •

  Enthroned in the chair by the window in the colonel’s room, rolls of fat squeezed out over the arms, her voluminou
s white dress emblazoned with tiny red skeletons, hair turbaned in this same material, her scowling black face diamonded with beads of sweat, Madame Anaya was not shy about voicing her displeasure. “Dere’s no television,” she said. “De ol’ mon tol’ me dere were a television.” She pursed her cherub lips; almost hidden behind her pouchy cheeks, her eyes gleamed like polished sea beans. “How you ’spect me to sit t’rough half de night wit’out some television?”

  “I have magazines,” the colonel said. “Books.”

  “Now what I wan’ to read fah? Ruinin’ my eyes wit’ dat tiny print! You bring me dat television de mon promise!”

  “I’m afraid at this hour it’s impossible.”

  Madame Anaya made a beastly noise in her throat, but held her tongue. A brief commotion arose in the bathroom, where Margery was helping Gammage put the finishing touches on his disguise.

  “I believe the café is still open,” said the colonel. “I could bring you something to eat.”

  “I gots my own.” Madame Anaya’s right hand, dangling off the chair arm, stirred, and she pointed with a sausage-like finger at her purse, which—so black and bulging, it seemed her familiar—rested beside the chair. “Nevuh trus’ Sponnish cookin’. Make you weak in de liver.” She glared at the colonel. “Dis de night dey be playin’ de duppy movies.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “On de television. Dey plays de duppy movies at midnight of a Saturday.”

  The colonel checked his watch. “You’re not going to miss much. It’s almost over.”

  “Dey be playin’ two of dem,” Madame Anaya said reprovingly. “Las’ one always de best.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Been two weeks and dey played dis one, Curse of de Blood Witch.”

  “That was a good one?”

  “It were domn funny! De people make it, dey don’t know de first t’ing ’bout witches. Mus’ be dey t’inkin’ magic somet’ing you catch from a book.”

  The colonel made a non-committal noise, thinking ahead to the beach, the walk to Punta Manabique, the dangers it might present.

  “Magic what people gots in dere bodies. Some gots it in de eye, some in de hand, some in de heart. You gots it all three places, den you a witch.”

  “I see,” said the colonel distractedly, trying to decide whether or not to carry his sidearm. Crime was not unheard of on the beach, but generally it was perpetrated against tourists. Better to leave it in the room—he did not want to arouse suspicion. He glanced at Madame Anaya. Immense and motionless; eyes fixed. She did not appear to be breathing. Then two fingers of her right hand began to move in slow circles, as if she were stirring something. The colonel was drawn to watch them. His head felt warm, thickish, his thoughts subject to a drifty confusion, similar to the way he had felt on the rare occasions when he smoked marijuana. The air seemed to eddy in response to the stirring of Madame Anaya’s fingers, rippling outward, and as the ripples washed over him he came to feel increasingly stoned, a faint keening in his ears. She looked to have no depth, an exotic image painted on a liquid surface. Then, abruptly, the fingers stopped, and the colonel became aware that the ripples in her considerable flesh were caused by silent laughter.

  “Curse of de Blood Witch,” she said, and chuckled. “Dat ain’t nowhere de way of it.”

  The bathroom door opened and Margery, followed sheepishly by Gammage, entered. Gammage’s white dress and turban were of a piece with Madame Anaya’s, only his were decorated with tiny blue skulls; his face, arms, and sandaled feet were coated with mahogany boot polish. The effect was both gruesome and laughable.

  “Oh, God!” said Madame Anaya.

  “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” Gammage said sourly.

  The colonel stood. “It’s twenty minutes’ walk to the point. We should go now.”

  Gammage looked down at his glistening brown arms. “Man, I don’t know about this shit.”

  Margery rubbed his shoulder. “It’ll be fine once you get out onto the beach.”

  “Now you shed dat dress fah you leave de boat,” Madame Anaya said to Gammage as he moved toward the door. “And Benito he fetch it to me.”

  “Hey, you’re welcome to it,” Gammage said with false bravado. “It doesn’t do a thing for my hips.”

  She gave another quivery, silent laugh. “Darlin’, you hustle yo’self on down to Barrio Clarin, you gon’ get more action den you can handle.”

  The colonel opened the door, peeked out to see if the corridor was clear, then beckoned to Margery and Gammage. They eased past him, and as he closed the door he heard Madame Anaya say, “You tell dat ol’ mon, I gon’ make him rueful ’bout de television.”

  • • •

  The wind that earlier had risen now swooped in off the water in long powerful gusts, giving roaring voice to the palms, their crowns tossing and swaying like an exalted crowd under a mesmeric preacher’s thrall. Surf pounded in over the break, exploding in phosphorescent sprays, and racing clouds cut just below the high-riding moon, now and then dimming, but not obscuring, its light. Through a gap between trunks, the colonel saw men and women moving their hips and waving their arms under the thatched canopy of a shanty bar to the rhythms of a small steel band. A rich yellow light englobed them, and beyond, for a backdrop, a deep green undulation of shrubs and sea grape, shaking their branches as if in mimicry. At that distance, unable to hear the liquid metallic arpeggios, the shouted vocals, it seemed to him that all the complicated grace of the dancers, the children chasing each other in and out among them, and the jittery attacks of the drummers served a more oblique principle than mere abandon, that their madness was orchestrated toward some end, a mysterious providence being invoked.

  From the heat of late afternoon, the temperature must have dropped twenty-five degrees. The weather had driven most people inside, and so the colonel and Gammage came to the landward end of Punta Manabique without incident. “I’m not gonna hug you, Maury,” Gammage said as they stood together. “’Case somebody’s watching.”

  “I appreciate that,” the colonel said. “Though it might do wonders for Madame Anaya’s reputation.” He gazed toward the seaward end; even in the strong moonlight, the thrashing foliage and shifting shadows made it impossible to determine if Benito Casamayor’s boat was at hand. “You’d better hurry.”

  “I’m gone. But once Carbonell’s over, I’ll come back and we’ll hoist a few.”

  Gammage stood there a moment longer, a vastly ludicrous figure with his turban, his boot-polish skin, and the dress alternately belling and molding to his thighs. The disguise failed to hide his anxiety. “See ya, Maury.” He hesitated another moment, turned, and went trudging off among the palms that bounded the little ridge guarding the point.

  The colonel watched him out of sight. Then, head down against the wind, he started toward town, making slow progress in the tacky sand. He felt disconnected from the events of the night. Though concerned for Gammage, for Margery, he was unafraid of what might happen to him, and not because he was assured of his immunity. Either he did not especially care what happened, or else he believed he could do nothing about it. There was evidence to support both conclusions. Perhaps, he thought, they were more-or-less the same, related products of a larger mental circumstance. The wind chilled him; the concatenations of the surf were assaultive in their loudness, affecting his nerves. His unsettled mood deepened. Despite wanting to see Margery, he came to dread the noise and the crowd at the Club Atomica. Instead of going directly to the club, he decided he would first visit Tomas and let him know how the plan had turned out.

  The corrugated metal door of the Drive-In Puerto Rico had been rolled almost all the way down, a half-foot-high gap of light showing beneath it. Tomas must be putting his bills in order, the colonel told himself, or working on his mural. He picked up his pace, slogging into the wind, eager to see the old man. As he came abreast of the steps that led up onto the deck, he made out a shadowy figure sitting at a table close by the door. �
�Tomas?” he called, mounting the steps. “What are you doing out here? Aren’t you cold?”

  Someone pushed him hard, planted a hand between his shoulder blades and sent him reeling forward. He righted himself and saw a short dark man in fatigues standing at the top of the steps, training a pistol at his chest—his lined face had the vaguely oriental cast of a Mayan, and his jacket bore a sergeant’s insignia.

  “Man, are you crazy?” Furious, the colonel took a step toward him. “I’ll have your balls!”

  “Colonel Galpa!”

  Carbonell had risen from his seat by the door. His presence was not completely unexpected, and the colonel was not shocked to see him; but he felt a kind of fatalistic incredulity, such as he might have experienced on hearing a gloomy prognosis from his doctor.

  “Where is Tomas?” he asked.

  “Where is the journalist…Gammage?” Carbonell came toward him, easy in his walk, like a cat sauntering toward his favorite chair after a big meal. The wind had not mussed a strand of his slicked-back hair. He folded his arms and waited for the colonel to respond, his face empty of emotion. He was in his shirtsleeves and on one of his cuffs was a dark spattering. In his left hand was a silvered automatic pistol.

  “He is gone,” said the colonel. “Within a few hours, I imagine, the world will know what you are.”