The Fighting Man (1993) (27 page)

She had not thanked the bloody man, filthy and unshaven and smelling and husbanding the death cart, for the life of her dog. She had not thanked the bloody man, organizing and ordering and cursing, for the gift of her handbag. She had not thanked the bloody man, hard eyes and cold mouth and fighting chin, for her life.

The bloody man . . .

He had changed buses at Santa Cruz del Quiché, and the second bus had dropped him after dark in the plaza at Nebaj. The Fireman had walked through the night, going north on the mud dirt road. It was the weight of the big boots that had finally killed his progress. He sat at the side of the road and the wide brim of his hat kept the rain from his face. The Fireman had no doubt that it was the right place to wait because now that the dawn had come he could see further ahead on the road, and back behind him, that small groups of men had gathered, and some had brought machetes, and he had seen a pick-axe, and more had the long-handled forks for turning cut grass, and two had old bolt-action rifles.

He had driven his car, the old Fiat, up through Chichicastenango and on through Santa Cruz del Quiché. Peering through the rain-washed windscreen he had crossed the high ground to Nebaj. And on from Nebaj, straining for the potholes and subsidence slips, until he reached Chajul. He had left the car at Chajul, paid a man too well to keep it safe and in a shed behind the church of the Christ of Golgotha. Past midnight when he had banged on the post office door until the sleep-ridden face had come, and with the help of more money, he had been told where a pack pony might be hired, and a guide.

He was bruised and chafed now. It had been a release, a sacred release, when the first light had come and he had paid off the guide and watched him trail away, leading the horse.

Sore and aching, the Academic sat at the side of the road, just as he had seen other men sitting and waiting. He nibbled a small piece of cheese. He had no idea how long he would have to wait, an hour or a day or a week. There was more cheese in the pocket of his raincoat. The cloud was barely a hundred feet above the road track but the mist had cleared enough for him to see the man who sat thirty paces from him. He could recognize the boots that the man wore. He pushed himself up and went to share his cheese with the Fireman.

And with the dawn a brigadier from Cobán had reached Playa Grande and brought with him a company of troops.

He had been told of a silence wall behind which the villagers of Playa Grande had sheltered, those who had not already fled. He had been shown the bodies of those who had not broken the silence wall. He met the young officer from G-2 who had failed at the silence wall. The brigadier had pronounced decisively that the raiding party responsible for the attack on the garrison camp would now be fleeing for the Mexican border. The border was five miles, direct, to the north. There was a road from Playa Grande towards the border and then twisting to run parallel to it. The brigadier gave orders for the border to be sealed.

It was a logical decision.

A block on the border and more troops fanned out to drive towards them. Guns and beaters, the way it was when they hunted the jaguar cat. Logical . . .

Colonel Arturo led the men, who slithered on the field’s mud, weighted by the jerry cans, one on each shoulder, each holding five gallons of aviation fuel. The young officer, Benedicto, had hung back behind him. Arturo gestured to the flier, saw him jump down and go to the fuel point. The flier steadied each can as they poured the fuel. There were 150 gallons to be loaded. The flier looked at him, puzzled, and he grinned back. The young officer, Benedicto, sloped towards the helicopter.

‘Shall we go, gentlemen?’ Arturo clapped his hands.

‘How did you know . . . ?’

‘That you wanted fuel? Because I have eyes and when we came down you were without fuel.’

‘How did you know I would have fixed the problem?’

‘Because you are an American. I understand that even if an American cannot run on water at least he can repair a damaged helicopter. Am I right?’

‘I fixed it.’

‘What I expected, of an American.’

They sized each other up. He gazed into the face of the flier, challenged him, broke the eye hold. The flier looked past him and towards the young officer, Benedicto.

‘Who’s he?’

‘A colleague.’

‘I’m not a taxi run.’

‘And I am not a gasoline pump attendant. Can we fly,
please
?’

The flier shrugged. It was about small victories.

‘The weather’s shit.’

‘You are an American combat pilot . . .’

He navigated. They lifted off into the grey cloud mass. They had a mountain cliff ahead of them that climbed to more than 10,000 feet, they had an engine capacity to get them an altitude ceiling of 9,900 feet. They could not climb it and clear it. They flew with the grey-white blanket around them, they were hit by the wind eddies slipping at them through side valleys. Arturo strained to see ahead, through the slash of the wipers, and he could see nothing, and the cloud barrier seemed to close in on him and pressure against him. The worst flight of his life. He scribbled the calculations on the pad on his knee, rocking hand, clumsy figures, speed and compass direction and height. Twice, once over the Reserva Natural Cerro Bisís and once over the road from Uspantán to San Cristóbal Verapaz, he had screamed. The land mass looming at the cockpit glass. Grey cloud to broken cloud to the flash of trees to the rock formation filling the cockpit screen. The scream because there wasn’t the time to be quiet-spoken. The scream and the wrenching turn and tilt of the Huey bird. The sweat water gathered in the fold of his gut against his waist belt, and the shake of his hands so that he could not hold the pencil for the navigation calculations. He thought the calm of the flier was exceptional. Half an hour out from La Aurora the flier radioed their arrival schedule, matter of fact, no particular deal. He could think about it afterwards, when they were clear of the Sierra de Chuacús, and on the plateau running for Guatemala City, that the evasive turn was already in place each time he had screamed to warn of the rushing rock face. They broke the cloud when they were above the airport tarmac. He tore up the sheets of paper he had used for direction, altitude and speed, and pocketed them. They bucked in the wind as they came down. He felt the hit of the skids.

He sat limp.

Into his headset . . . ‘Personally I’d prefer a crap and a shave and a shower, but being Guatemalan you’d probably prefer to sit there all day . . .’

He took off his helmet. He could hear the gentle crying of the young officer, Benedicto, behind him. He thought the flier was a genius, and told him.

‘Flier, you are an ugly shit. You are an awkward, obstinate, poor-mannered, mutilated shit. You are also the finest flier that I ever rode with. Understand me, I go short in giving out compliments . . . You are the best.’

He thought that, for a carved fraction of a moment, the brooding face of the flier cracked in pleasure.

He scrambled for the waiting staff car.

It was the decision of the High Command, gathered in the dark wood-panelled office of the minister, to endorse the orders given in the field by the brigadier from Cobán. Older men, and stouter, and peering through the spectacles they now needed, and gazing without approval at the filthy uniform of Colonel Arturo, and hearing him out and dismissing him.

Drinks were poured. The maps were studied. Bold chalk lines were drawn. The subversives would be driven north from Playa Grande towards the waiting blocking forces. A soft metal nail caught between the anvil and the hammer.

He was escorted down the corridor by a major, Operations. The mud from his boots, dried now, scattered on the corridor’s floor.

‘What if they have gone south?’

‘Really, colonel, what for? If they go south they can only meet bigger garrisons, more heavily armed defences, greater obstacles. To go south for them would be suicide. No, colonel, they will have hit and they will have run north for the border. I think, colonel, what you need is sleep . . .’

‘How did they know?’

The Archaeologist had run to catch Jorge at the front of the march. They had come through the trees and climbed the loose rock to the road track. The squeal of the cart wheels was behind him, and the scrape of the barrow’s wheel was ahead of him. They had been less than a mile on the road track and there had been four men, quite separate, who had stood as the head of the column had passed and then, quietly and without explanation, had joined it. Two more men stood now, and the Archaeologist saw the heavy boots and rough clothes of the one, and the dark but cared-for trousers and shoes and raincoat of the other.

‘How did they know?’

A broad smile from Jorge was his answer, and at the back of the march, again, was the shout in English for speed.

The new boots had rubbed the blisters raw on the Archaeologist’s heel and on the upper skin of his toes. The march pace was harder than it had been the previous days, and the shouted voice at the back was merciless.

They were away from the shadow facade of the church that had no roof. They were clear of the few buildings that had survived a long-ago battle. They had come to the old graveyard, had trampled the undergrowth flat, and they listened.

Gord was at the back, and a little apart. Just Vee with him. He looked over the dimmed heads and shoulders of the villagers and in front of them a single small torch beam shone into the face of Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez. Vee told him that Jorge spoke the language of the triangle, and tongue of the Ixil Indians. Above them, on the higher ground, damped in the rain cloud, Gord could see the occasional swinging lights over the tin roofing of the new village, and higher still were the brighter lights on the perimeter fence of the army’s compound. Vee told Gord that Jorge stood at the head of his mother’s grave.

The rain fell. The wind beat the force of the rain onto their faces.

The voice of Vee was soft in his ear, and beyond was the voice of Jorge that was rich and penetrating in the night, and between the voices were the coughing of throats and the mutter of words and the fidgeting of bodies and the quietening of children.

Gord listened rapt.

He needed the men.

Without the men . . .

‘. . . You knew my mother, special to me, but suffering as your mothers suffered. You knew my father. My father tried to lead you to freedom beyond the reach of the guns and tanks and aircraft of the army. My father failed. He did not die as your fathers died, in the fire of the church. He died lonely in exile with the dream of returning unfulfilled.
I
have returned. I have come back to Acul, to my village and to your village, to break for all time the hold of the army over your lives. You are the majority and you are not heard, and it will not be the same again. March with me . . .’

In the torchlight Gord saw the excitement flush the face of Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez.

‘. . . We came to the Petén. Did you hear that we fought a battle in the Petén? Did you hear that the soldiers crumbled from our attack? Did you hear that?’

Gord heard the clucking of agreement, waves on a pebble shore.

‘. . . We came to Playa Grande. That is a big garrison camp, a huge camp, many soldiers. We destroyed the camp, we broke the will of the soldiers. We burned the camp, as the soldiers once burned the church of our village where our fathers and your brothers and your husbands had been put. Did you hear that we fought at Playa Grande? Did you hear that they screamed for a mercy they had never shown to your fathers, brothers, husbands? Did you?’

The response was gale-whipped water on a loch’s shore.

‘. . . We go from here to Guatemala City. We go to the office of the President. We go to his office and we tell him of the new Guatemala that we want, and he will listen. If you have heard of the big battle in the Petén, and the victory that was ours at Playa Grande, he will have heard also. He will listen . . . Come with me, my friends. I want you with me when I walk across the plaza, up the high steps, through the great door of the Palacio Nacional. I want you with me, all of you, when I speak our demands in the office of the President. Will you come . . . ?’

The murmur of talk, fast, excited, the blow of the gale amongst forest pines.

‘I trust you. I am here for the night. For all the night I am at the grave of my mother. I am here with those who fought in the great battle in the Petén, and who fought at Playa Grande. You can go to the soldiers in their camp, any of you who have forgotten what the soldiers did to your fathers and brothers and husbands. Any of you can inform on me . . . I am a part of you and I trust you. Are there any amongst you who would wish to go to the camp of the soldiers and inform them, be their ears and be their eyes, that Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez is at the grave of his mother? Are there . . . ?’

No movement, only a stilled silence as when the gale died across the slope of Sidhean Mor.

‘I have with me a man that you should love. You should call him Gaspar. All of us from the triangle know the story of Gaspar. He is of us. They see him and they stamp on him, but he is not there. They throw him in the water and they push him down with sticks, but he is on the other side of the river. Gaspar is with me. He has come from far away, but he is with me now. The army will lose and Gaspar will survive. Gaspar has brought the fire with him . . .’