The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  ‘Can I help?’

  He was brusque. ‘Anything that seems dry, scrub and brush and leaves and old grass . . .’

  ‘For the aircraft?’

  Bleak. ‘There won’t be a London omnibus coming this way . . . Christ, I’m sorry . . . to guide in the aircraft, if it comes.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry, not after what you have done for us.’

  Savage. ‘Are they still talking round the future?’

  ‘It is only talk.’

  ‘Shallow bloody talk. All right, fine, I had them wrong. I thought they were bigger . . .’

  ‘Not fair, and it is all they have. It is all that is left to them . . . At the block, Jorge would have charged. You turned him. You made the big speech, “empty gestures” and “small victories”. He would have charged their guns. You have to be fair, Gord . . . You have to have charity for those who don’t have your strength, your purpose. He’s honest and good and brave, Jorge is, so what does it matter if he’s shallow? What is he left with, what are any of us left with? Please, Gord, try to be fair . . .’

  He bent and his fingers groped for the loose wood and for cut brush, and his hands swept up the leaves that had been blown down by the winds and rain, and under the cut brush and the loose wood he reached for dried old grass. He made a great armful and carried it back to the line that he had made. He put his boot on the newest heap and carefully pressed it down, feeling the give, not so hard that he broke the branches and made noise. He touched her wrist. The rough fingers found her smaller and stubbed fingers.

  ‘Thank you, thank you for being with us.’

  She said lightly, ‘Did I have the choice?’

  ‘Thank you for your charity and your kindness and your love.’

  ‘Speeches are the killer, silly boy. I don’t need speeches.’

  ‘When they had you . . .’

  ‘Leave it, Gord.’

  ‘When you were at Playa Grande . . .’

  ‘Please, no.’

  ‘When they held you at Playa Grande, when the interrogator had you . . .’

  ‘It is gone, it is behind. I survived.’

  ‘What did you learn of him, the interrogator?’

  He heard the sharp breath drawn in. Her fingers were tight on his hand.

  ‘Does it matter, what happened before . . . ? It was evil. It was wrong because it was not in anger. If you hurt someone and you are cold, if it is just work and routine to hurt someone and then to kill them, that to me is evil. I could not see him at first because the light was always in my face and he was behind the light. He had a beautiful voice. A clean and gentle voice. A soothing voice, lovely, and each time that he drew breath then he hit me. That was the evil, the beauty of the voice and the way he hit me. When the attack started, when they came shouting for him, when they opened the door of the cell, then I saw his face. It was their mistake that I saw his face. He was a young man, younger than you. He had eyes that were green-blue and deep. He had hit me and punched me and not a hair on his head was disturbed, and he had a moustache that could have been drawn by one pen stroke. Before they opened the cell door, before the light came on him, they called his name from the corridor . . . I was supposed to tell people who are in danger to have courage. I had no courage. He broke the courage in me. If you hadn’t come, Gord, I would have told him everything that he wanted to know, I would have betrayed the people I loved . . . You called him Groucho, funny name, funny man, and he tried to tell you about the fear, and you shot him because he bent to the fear, as I would have bent to the fear. Would you have shot me, Gord . . . ? Would you have shot me, and justified it as necessary? Think of them, Gord, those that had the courage to join you, and then the courage to leave you and go home to be with their family, the Fireman, to be with their people, the Priest, to be with their friends, the little Street Boy. He will come for them, Gord, with his sweet silk voice . . . I don’t want to talk of it ever again . . . They called his name, his name was Benedicto . . . Where there is no evil, if there is such a place, I want to find it . . .’

  He kissed her, gently, brushed his lips on her forehead.

  It was past four. He ruffled the neck of her dog.

  Gord made the last heap of brush and branches and dried old grass.

  The Antonov came straight in over the Cays.

  If his navigation was correct then he was headed over Long Coco Cay. The pilot thought he had seen the white surf of Gladden Spit in the moon darkness, but it was difficult for him to be certain, navigating alone and flying Echo Foxtrot alone. If he was right then the light ahead, intermittent, was the lamp on the Bugle Cays, and after the Bugle Cays would be Harvest Cay and then the Belize shoreline north of Rocky Point South. It was a chance that the pilot took, to cross Belize, but it saved him fuel. It was a chance because they had the Harrier jets at Belize and they had the big radar dishes and they had the links with the fuck yanquis. He was low down on the water, and when he went by the lamp on the Bugle Cays then he would be at level height with the top of the tower. If he found the strip, if he could put down, if there was no ground fire, if they were there, then the going back would be easier because he thought that the Englishman would help him with the navigation.

  By the pilot’s estimate, he was on schedule.

  The call came through. The radio was distorted. Hard for Arturo to hear the location message against the beat of the generator.

  So tired. He wrote down the message. The tiredness ached in him. The map in front of him was blurred. He should have been sleeping, it should have been a lieutenant who monitored the radio, but a lieutenant might have let him sleep. He peered down onto the map. The symbols of the map and the contour lines rose to him and fell back. He ground the nails of his fingers into the palms of his hands. He squeezed the tiredness from his eyes. He made the mark.

  He drew the line.

  The line that Arturo drew bisected the ground between the village marked as Tzimatzatz and the village marked as Chuchucá. The line ran forward. The line, if extended, would reach the village of Canillá. The red circle symbol beside the mark of Canillá eddied and came again. He saw it and he lost it. The shiver in him. The cold trapped him through the weight of his camouflage coat and the thickness of his tunic top. The cold knifed the flesh on his spine. The red circle symbol was an airstrip.

  He was shouting into the radio.

  How far from the village of Canillá? Six miles.

  When could they reach the village of Canillá? Not before 0630, maybe not before 0700.

  What time was first light in this fucking place? About 0500 . . . The cold gripped him. He stared down at the red circle symbol that was an airstrip. Arturo ran. He weaved down the road, between the tents and the parked jeeps, past the sleeping soldiers, past the armoured personnel carriers.

  He ran to the helicopter.

  He ripped back the hatch door. He groped inside. He felt the sleeping bag. He shook the body frantic, in the sleeping bag.

  ‘What the . . . ?’

  ‘We have to go . . . Now . . . We have to fly.’

  The drawled voice. ‘Shit . . . Fly where?’

  ‘Just fly. I’ll tell you where to fly. Please . . .’

  And the flier climbed down through the hatch door and stretched himself and yawned and belched, and walked to the ditch and bent and splashed water over his face, and stretched again. And the flier went with his torch and shone it up at the tail rotor, and then at the transmission of the main rotors. An agony for Arturo as the slow and precise flight checks frittered the minutes.

  In the east there was the first smear of dawn.

  He would hear it before he saw it.

  On the horizon of the trees a fainter shade of grey made a knife ribbon across the blackness.

  Gord wheeled the cart to the end of the line of the fire heaps that he had made.

  There were birds calling now and a dog had started to bark in the village that was across the landing strip from them. When he reached them they were a
ll sleeping. He moved quietly amongst them, and he woke each one of them. He moved amongst them for the last time. He shook each one and had his hand poised to slap over their mouth if they should cry out in the moment of waking. Jorge who wanted to sell Ferrari cars, and Harpo who wanted to catch salmon off the Vancouver coast, and Zeppo who wanted to open a coffee bar in the Little Havana of Miami, and Alex who wanted to run from evil, and Eff who wanted a doctor bad, and Vee who wanted a surgeon quick before the gangrene set, and Zed who . . . He woke them each in turn. Good men, and a good woman . . . He had tried for them, and he had failed for them.

  Not a mosquito.

  Gord strained to hear above the bird chorus.

  Not a sweet honey bee.

  Struggling to separate the sound from the barking of the village dog.

  He knew the sound, the old engine’s throb.

  Coming slow and coming low, unseen but coming . . . They all heard it. They were around him, and Harpo took Gord’s face in his hands and kissed his cheeks, and Zeppo pumped his hand, and the laughter came as tears in Jorge’s eyes. Trying to be curt, hissing at them for quiet. They were to wait where they stood. No movement until the landing and then the taxi run. Eff to be lifted forward in the wheelbarrow, and Vee to be helped. Snapping the instructions . . . They all saw it.

  A shadow, black, across the dawn light, grey.

  Gord sprinted.

  There was the high roar of the engine power as the plane banked, searching for the strip.

  He saw the plane for a moment again, then lost it.

  Down behind the cart. Jerking the lever. The fuel gushed. The black cascade was leaping forward into the dark. He hit the trigger ignition and the fire jumped after the cascade. A corridor of fire caught the line of the heaps he had made of cut brush and branches and old grass. The line blazed.

  He stood. His hands rested on the handle of the cart, and he could hear the engines swarming to power for landing.

  She came in quick, almost over him. She wavered above the end of the landing strip then dropped.

  Gord watched.

  She hit and she bounced and seemed to fly again, then dropped. She raced and bumped the length of the strip until the hammer of the reverse thrust trapped her. They were running towards the plane, whooping in their excitement, and Harpo led and Alex had the wheelbarrow with Eff slumped in it and the dog bounded beside her. The aircraft, night-black, slowed and stopped the forward run and began to turn, cumbersome, near to the trees. No slackening of the engine power. He could see the pilot with his face close to the cockpit window and see the hurrying gesture of his gloved fist that they should come faster.

  Gord knew his mind.

  The door was pulled open. The wheelbarrow was lifted inside. Jorge climbing in. The dog jumping. All of them crawling and pushing to win the way into the aircraft. Alex waving to him to come, from the hatch, frantic. He was at the far end of the strip and he stood with his hands loose resting on the cart’s arm.

  Gord saw the helicopter.

  It was the flame that guided him.

  Arturo was shouting, and he seemed not to hear him.

  Tom was drawn to the flame line, the guide lights to a landing strip.

  He was close to the tree canopy, and it had been shit flying off the instruments to get there in the darkness, until he had seen the line of fire. He was slowing the forward speed and dropping the altitude.

  Arturo no longer shouted, Arturo pointed.

  He had been taught to recognize aircraft, and he had seen the burned shell of the same aircraft type at the landing strip south-east of the finca Santa Amelia. Antonov, AN-2, designated ‘Colt’.

  Staying cold.

  There was a drill for preventing an unarmed aircraft from becoming airborne.

  Staying cold.

  It would be the escape from the debt, the tearing up of the debt chit that hammered him every last goddamn morning that he woke.

  They were all in the Antonov and the big brute was starting to move, and the door was open and he thought that he saw a woman in the hatch, the blonde hair of a woman. The routine was pretty damn simple against an unarmed aircraft. Tom scudded the bird low across the trees and across the cleared area until he sat above the runway . . . Arturo, dumb mother, hooked in at last, Arturo understood. No pilot would take off through a helicopter that hovered over him, that blocked his lift moment.

  Arturo shrieked his happiness and he bounced in his seat, and he punched the cockpit air.

  The oncoming path of the Antonov wavered, like the pilot was unsure, like the message had gotten to him. Going nowhere, nowhere fast. He thought, difficult to be certain, hanging over the strip, that the Antonov’s pilot had the big shit doubt, would chicken. They’d all be hollering inside, all messing.

  He would owe Gord nothing. It was the tearing up of the chit to Gordon Benjamin Brown. His sort of freedom.

  He thought the Antonov was slowing in the take-off run.

  The cockpit screen misted.

  The curtain came up to the cockpit screen.

  Diffused through the mist on the screen, Tom saw the fire pumping up at him, rising, falling back, rising further. The fire reached for him, groped for the mist on the cockpit screen.

  He hit the left foot control pedal. He took the cyclic control stick into the pit of his stomach. Going for power . . . He felt the bird shudder as the Antonov went by them, airborne.

  He turned his bird away.

  Climbing beyond the reach of the groping flame. The debt was paid, forgotten.

  He felt sick, small.

  They held her in the hatch doorway.

  She would have fallen.

  The Antonov banked over the trees. Jorge had both his arms around her waist and his hands were locked together on her stomach. She didn’t fight them. Harpo had one of her arms, and Vee hung on to her thigh. She saw him standing beside the cart, him a doll and the cart a toy, at the end of the runway.

  He was standing with his arms folded, comfortable, and watching their going.

  He, the doll, turned. He was walking for the tree line.

  The cart, the toy, was clear in the grass at the end of the strip.

  The Antonov straightened, to find its course, and she was thrown hard back onto the floor of the fuselage.

  She sat on the floor and she held tight to her dog.

  The thunder roar of the engines was around her.

  Epilogue

  They stood amongst the stones.

  Some of the stones were broken and some had toppled in the hurricane winds that hit the island most years, and the cemetery was a place of the past, of old dreams, and was not tended. It did not concern the authorities if stones were broken and had fallen, and if the weeds grew amongst the stones.

  Jorge towered in front of the grave of his father.

  It was the fifth time after their return that they had gathered in the cemetery, the second Friday of each month.

  One of them, his father’s friend, held the faded flag of Guatemala that hung lifeless because there was no wind. One of them, his father’s friend, had in his hand the small bunch of flowers that would be laid on the raised earth before they left, and the flowers of the last month had been tossed aside onto the path, dead.

  There had been more the first month, the first of the second Fridays, more who had known his father. The last two months it had only been the kernel of the group, those that had made the flight in and those who had made it out. Jorge said a few words, something about keeping the faith, something about hope, something about a return. The two men, fatter now, heavier now, their skin fleshed out to spread the lines at their throats, were on either side of him, and behind him were the three Indians. It was only on the second Friday of each month that he could take the time away from the big hotel at the Varadero resort where the Transtur buses brought the tourists that he waited on in the restaurant.

  He laid the flowers that would be withered within a week, dead when he next returned to the grave.
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br />   She didn’t fit. The police constable thought that she did not have the grey pallor of the rest of the bastards. All the police were in their public order gear. They wore the helmets with the visors, and held shields and batons, had the leg guards strapped to their shins. Too much colour in her face, too much weathering on her cheeks for her to fit, and her hair was bleached to soft corn.

  She yelled, defiant, at the advancing police and bailiffs.

  ‘Kaibiles . . . Kaibiles pigs . . .’

  The police constable muttered to the colleague nearest, ‘Silly bitch, privileged cow, should get off her arse and do something with her life, put something back. What’s she on about?’

  ‘God only knows, and He’s welcome.’

  They escorted the bailiffs into the shambles of old caravans and broken-down cars and Transits and trailers. The farmer was at the gate to the field and urged them on, shouted at them, to get the bastards out of his field. There was a dog, a big mature Alsatian, barking and leaping in the cab of the rusted Land Rover behind her.

  ‘Kaibiles . . . Kaibiles shit . . .’

  She was a full 200 yards from the nest, but she had the good binoculars from work.

  It was the nearest Cathy Parker could be to him, to feel that she touched him. The two young birds, hatched in the late spring, five months old, thrashed in their first flight. She watched them. It was where he would have been, where his heart would have been. The birds flapped and screamed and fell and caught in the blowing wind that came from the west onto the upper rock slope of Sidhean Mor. She did not know whether he was alive or dead, captured or free, her answerphone had no message for her. She felt that she was with him.

  High above her, where they would have seen her, were the soaring and circling parent birds.

  He stood at the back, he was behind the line of ranking officers.

  The sun beat on him and there was no shade on the parade ground at the garrison camp. The sweat ran in the scar pit. He let the sweat lie in the pit of the scar and he stood hard to attention as the jeep that carried the casket went low gear past him. Tom was to attention and the ranking officers, bright in the best dress uniforms, medals catching the light, saluted the casket. It was a big casket, expensive dark wood. He could see it through the shoulders of the ranking officers and through the erect slow-marching soldiers of the battalion who flanked the crawling jeep. It wasn’t funny, not funny at all, but he had to tighten the muscles at his cheek to mask the grin. A hell of a big casket, and a hell of a little of a corpse to stuff inside it. From what he had heard from the embassy people who had given their advice to the detectives from the Brigada de Investigaciones Especiales y Narcóticas, there were precious few pieces, small pieces, to go in the casket. Three pounds’ weight of military explosive, a mercury tilt switch, battery circuit, a wired wristwatch for the connection, a magnet strapped to a plastic box, under the car on the driver’s side, from what he’d heard, left the pieces few and small. The band played slow. The casket with the flag on it, and on the flag the maroon beret of the battalion, went by him.