The Last Match (19 page)

To force her hand, he had burned the mission one night. It wasn’t much of a building, but it had a schoolroom, a little chapel, living quarters of a kind for the missionary and, in this case, the missionary’s husband. She had been letting some of her pupils, illiterate Indian kids, many of them homeless, use the schoolroom as a place to sleep—unofficially. It had no beds or anything, but it was a lot better dormitory for the kids than out there on the
altiplano
at twelve or thirteen thousand feet. The kids didn’t get out of the place when it burned. She was convinced, and I agreed with her conviction, that the wrongo had deliberately trapped them inside. I never saw a bunch of active kids that wouldn’t boil out of a burning building like water coming through a sieve unless they were restrained from it somehow. He wanted to destroy her in Peru. He destroyed more than he had figured on. She escaped the fire, because he saw to that. But everything that was her life went up in the flames; her papers, money, personal possessions, accomplishments, hopes, her reason for being, everything. When she tried to get the kids out, he prevented her. To keep her from sacrificing herself uselessly, he said later. He held her while she listened to the noises that came out of the schoolroom as the kids burned.

The mission had never been more than grudgingly tolerated by the Peruvian church and authorities, all strongly Catholic. The fire finished it as it finished her. The wrongo persuaded her that the only way she could escape prison for arson, murder and several other charges was to break and run with him. Stunned, unthinking, numbed by the horror of the tragedy, she had done it. They had got away and out of the country, as I had, by its Amazonian back door.

“I shouldn’t have gone with him,” she said dully, dopey with the sticky heat of the cabin and the booze I had poured into her. “I should have stayed and faced whatever I had to face. But I couldn’t seem to think straight, those first few days. I thought God had punished me for something I had done or failed to do. Then, when I began to think, I knew it was not the Lord’s work but the devil’s. No merciful God would have permitted those children to burn. The devil himself had burned them.”

She was sitting on my bunk, her face shiny with sweat. I was sweating heavily myself, only partly from the heat. Her eyes closed and her head drooped.

I said, “Do you want to sleep now?”

“Not yet.” She went on talking with her eyes closed, drowsily. “What he wanted was for me to go back to the States with him. When I realized at last that my husband was the devil on earth, I swore I would never go back until he was dead. I promised him I would see him where he belonged first, burning in the everlasting fires of hell. As he had burned those poor children. To punish me, and because I defied him, he—he—he—”

Her head drooped again. Her body swayed. I didn’t know whether she was going to drop off to sleep, fall off the bed or what. She was almost gone. But she stood up—creaking, as she always moved—to lift her skirt, high above her waist. She wore nothing underneath. On the insides and front of her upper thighs, on her belly, I would judge also within the perimeter of her pubic hair from its patchy moth-eaten look, were burn scars; some old and healed, white-puckered cicatrices, some new, still fresh and sore, still leaking serum. They were just the right size to have been put there by the red-hot coal of a burning cigarette pressed into the flesh.

While I stood there staring, my mouth open, unable to comprehend for a moment the awfulness of what I was looking at, she turned around to let me see her buttocks. He had used a whip on her there; something fine and limber, a thin cane perhaps, that had cut the flesh, scarred it and stung it cruelly. When she had let me see what there was to see, she dropped the skirt and sat down again. Creakily.

After a while I could talk again, although it took a heavy shot of lubricator to moisten my mouth for it first. I said, “You must have been able to escape him somewhere along the way. Even here on the boat, you could have turned to any of us for help. We would have protected you.”

“I didn’t want to escape him.” Her voice was as dull and emotionless as it had been ever since she started talking. “I wanted to kill him before he could escape me. I’ll go to hell for him willingly, now.” A moment later she added, “Thank you for helping me do it.”

“Thank me for—
what?”

“You made him drunk. He wasn’t used to drinking. He didn’t realize how strong those drinks were you gave us. You’ve made me drunk, too, haven’t you?”

“It will do you good, help you rest. You ought to try to get some sleep.” I was still shaken by her thanks.

I took her back aft to use the
excusado
before locking her in again. She was almost out before I got her into the bottom bunk. I don’t think she even heard me when I said I’d be back in a little while.

About that time the
jaula
was putting into Obidos to unload the body and load firewood. It was getting along in the day and the channel was tricky. I figured the captain would be eager to get in and out of port and back on the river again before nightfall trapped him until daylight. To make sure, I checked with him when I gave him back the padlock key, before he went ashore with the body and the cops. (They would have been just as happy if he had kept the murderee as well as the murderess on board as far as Santarem, but recognized his pressing need to unload one if not both in view of the heat.) He said, Yes, he’d be back just as fast as he could get through the
papeleo.
Anybody else who went ashore could count on one free hour. It would take at least that long to get a load of wood aboard. More than one hour was strictly at the passenger’s risk. The
jaula
would push off just as soon as he could arrange for it to do so, not one minute later.

An hour was plenty for what I had in mind. I went ashore as soon as we tied up, walked into town, made a few purchases, asked a few questions, went back to the river bank with a package under my arm. The deck-crew was loading fore and aft, carrying big loads of three-foot billets up the springy gangplanks on their shoulders. They all wore split-out gunny sacks draped over their heads and down their backs for padding as well as for protection against the fire ants, tarantulas, ticks, centipedes and other wildlife that crawled out of the wood to feed on them during the fueling operation. Most everyone else aboard had jumped at the opportunity to go ashore to explore for something edible. The
práctico
was doing a repair job of some kind on the forward deck, the engineer was at his deathbed watch below decks as usual. Buchisapo was on the river bank checking the wood as it went aboard. I unlocked the padlock with my private key and went in, after first arranging the padlock and hasp in a way to give the impression that the cabin was still locked if nobody gave it more than a casual glance.

She was sound asleep, sprawled half on her side, half on her back in what I supposed was the nearest she could get to a comfortable position. She didn’t wake when I went into the cabin, or even twitch. She was drugged by fatigue, pain, emotional stress,
cachaça
,
you name it. So drugged in fact that she still didn’t wake when I lifted her skirt and went to work on the burns with the ointment I had bought in town. Her breath was bad, her teeth were bad, her skin was bad, her hair was dirty, her dress was filthy, she stank of sour body-sweat, she was as skinny as a starved rat. All in all she was a pretty miserable Christian missionary. I hoped the wrongo had had time to wake up and feel the knife going in before he died. I didn’t have her faith in the fires of hell.

When I had finished with the burns, those I could get at without shaving her pubic hair, and bandaged those that needed bandaging, I woke her. I couldn’t turn her over without hurting her enough to wake her anyway, and I wanted to look at her behind. When she had turned over as instructed, I saw there was nothing much to do for it but put on more of the ointment, which I did. Then I took a pair of panties out of the package I had brought.

“Put these on,” I said. “And this.” I took off the money-belt, which I wore next to my skin, and gave it to her. “Strap it around you under your dress, where it won’t be seen.”

She still didn’t give a damn, one way or another. She put on the panties, wincing a bit, then the belt. But she was curious enough to ask about the belt, “What is it?”

“Travel insurance,” I said. “Cinch it up as far as it will go.”

She was too thin to fill it, even cinched up to the last hole, but she had woman’s hips to hold it up. It wouldn’t fall down to lasso her around the ankles.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Listen close. If I say something that isn’t entirely clear to you, stop me. Otherwise, don’t interrupt. In that belt around your middle is a fair chunk of cash; not a fortune, but enough to carry you a good way; mostly dollars, some
soles,
some
cruzeiros.
In this bundle you’ll find a dirty pair of pants and a dirty shirt like those the crew wear, with a gunnysack hood like those they pull over their heads to load wood. As they’re doing now.” We could hear the thumps and bangs of the billets being dumped on deck. “Your own shoes are ratty enough to pass inspection. Also in the bundle you’ll find a clean dress, another pair of underpants, a pair of sandals that should fit you more or less, a few other things; cosmetics, a comb, soap, a towel. In about one minute I’m going to take you and the bundle to the
excusado.
Lock yourself in there, change into the pants, the shirt and the gunnysack. I’ll allow you the time you need. When things are right I’ll knock twice on the door, like this.” I rapped on the table, one, two, to fix her attention. I could see she was about to interrupt. “When I do that, you come out, hand me the clothes you have just taken off and go down the gangplank like any other deckhand who has just brought a load of wood aboard. Don’t move too fast, no hurry. Keep the gunnysack pulled forward and your face turned left, because the
sobrecargo
will be out there on your right as you come off the plank. He’s nothing to worry about, but look away from him.”

“No,” she said. Still dull, still dopey, but definite.

“No what?”

“I won’t do it.”

“What won’t you do?”

“I won’t run from punishment. I have sinned. I must atone for my sin.”

“Killing that scum was no sin. You did a public service.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“You consider yourself a Christian, don’t you?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head again.

“No. Not anymore. Christ preached forgiveness. I am an instrument of the Lord’s vengeance.”

“You could be an instrument of the Lord’s mercy as well, now that you’ve completed the other assignment. There are plenty of illiterate Indian kids that need schooling and mothering right here in Brazil. Why throw yourself away? If you want to atone, atone that way. Don’t just quit your job without finishing it.”

I worked on her like a fundamentalist preacher thumping the Bible at a revival meeting. It took some doing and more sweat, but I knew I had her when she said, “What’s going to happen to you when they find out you’ve helped me?”

“They won’t find out. I’m going to fake your presence aboard ship until the last possible minute, then make it look as if you got away on your own just before we reach Santarem. It will give you a fair head start. After you go down the gangplank, keep moving, no hurry, until you can get under cover without being seen doing it. Change to the new dress and sandals, wrap the cosmetics and things in the towel, ditch your shoes. A mile or so to the other side of town there’s a little airport where planes leave now and then for a few other places, all of them on the river. You can’t get out of any of them except by boat or plane, so take the first flight—it leaves at noon tomorrow—for Belem. From Belem you can take another plane to someplace where you can go on by train or bus. You’ll probably have to give a name to buy plane tickets, but—”

“I want to know—”

“You’ll know all you have to know when I’ve done talking. Stop interrupting and listen. You’ll probably have to give a name to get plane tickets. Make it something like Jane Jones, here, but in Belem and afterwards change it to something Spanish. It might be a good idea to change the name from time to time as you move around. While you’re here in Obidos don’t show your face any more than you have to. Staying out of sight until tomorrow and getting out to the airport are your own problems, but there’ll be a ladies’ room of some kind at the airport where you can hide out after you’ve bought your ticket. Use the time to clean yourself up. Wash your hair, comb the rats out of it, put on some lipstick, make yourself look like a human being. Got it all straight?”

She still wanted to argue about running off and leaving me, as she thought, holding the bag. It was a good sign that she had enough spunk left to put up an argument, but time was running out. I beat her down. Any time I couldn’t con a bunch of simple backwoods Brazilians I’d turn in my conning suit. I didn’t tell her that, though. Instead, I lied freely about the money, friends and political clout waiting for me in Santarem (a town I’d never seen before and would just as lief never see again). Still talking, I took a quick peek out the door of the cabin, made sure the coast was clear and led her back to the portside
excusado
after carefully locking the cabin door behind the stolen horse.

She made it. At least I never heard that she failed to make it, and if they didn’t catch up with her during the first few days while they still had a chance—working as they were without a photo, fingerprints, a proper description or even a phony name to go on after she stopped taking planes—they never would. She’d need papers of some kind to get out of the country if she wanted to get out of the country, but I couldn’t help her there. All I could give her was a sendoff and a running start.

This I accomplished by conning the whole boat for the best part of two days and nights, the time it took us to get to Santarem. Working for me I had the advantage a successful hustler always has over the marks; their confidence in the hustler. Particularly the captain’s confidence, which was of prime importance. When he came back from town, still with the key to the padlock in his pocket, I borrowed it so I could look in on the prisoner and see how she was doing. She’d been quiet a long time. Sleeping, I thought, but I wanted to make sure. When I had made sure, I gave him the key back, reporting that she was very tired, emotionally drained, asking to be left alone but O.K. I thought I’d try to get her to eat something a little later on. If it was all right with the captain.