by R. M. Green
Henri could not believe it. He felt the goosebumps spring out all over his skin and cold thrill run down his spine. Buenafortuna, in the country where his great grandfather Li-Han had run his bar and brothel; the land where his grandfather, for whom he was named, had become a wealthy businessman; and where his poor father Pascal had been born only to be deported before he was two months old. This must be Fate, Henri reasoned and went to bed certain that his fortune was finally secured and that his ship was literally, about to come in.
The next morning, shortly after dawn, the Spirit of Colchis, aided by a slightly tipsy harbour pilot, clunked its rusty soon-to-be carcass against the dock of Buenafortuna and for the third time in four generations, a Cheung stepped onto this tropical soil ten thousand miles from Hong Kong.
With a little over eight thousand dollars in his pocket, his head full of dreams of making good and his unshakeable belief in his own talents and abilities, Henri Cheung could feel success in his bones. And for the first time in his life, he exercised a little self-discipline. Instead of heading to the capital with its casinos and bordellos and opportunities for easy money soon lost, Henri bought an old motorbike and armed with his six-month visa (purchased unofficially at the harbour for four hundred dollars which was fifty more than he paid for the motorcycle) he set off to find the perfect spot to make his fortune. He spent the next three months criss-crossing the provinces in search of the ideal place to set up. He even visited the little failed Belgian colony of San Cristobal to pay his respects to his great-grandfather’s enterprising spirit. When the Belgians left, the town had been renamed Independencia but by now it was practically deserted and overgrown as the jungle reclaimed its former realm. Henri didn’t really have an exact idea of what he would do but he knew it would be retail of some sort. His only plan was to find somewhere fairly remote where whatever he did would be a certain monopoly. So, he avoided the growing coastal cities and the large provincial centres, and one blisteringly hot December lunchtime he pulled into a filling station with one lonely pump on the edge of a large village. San Juan consisted of perhaps two hundred single-storey white plaster houses with corrugated iron roofs; a handful of more imposing two-storey brick houses; dusty streets full of stray dogs; barefoot children kicking an old football around; mothers with babies gossiping outside the laundrette; rusty pick-up trucks full of old tyres and scrap metal; five bars; one restaurant; a police station, which looked boarded up and abandoned; a town hall which doubled up as the school; and a place where no one seemed in a hurry and even the flies were too lazy to be much of a nuisance. In fact, there were only two real employers in the town, a beer-bottling plant some two miles away and a stone quarry that was five miles beyond the village and had its own small fleet of buses to ferry the workers to and fro. While Henri was waiting for some sign of life from the garage, he wandered down the only paved road in San Juan which ran for about five hundred yards through the middle of town and looked at the few shops: an ironmonger, a bakery, a hairdresser, a kiosk selling newspapers, a small bank, two tiny, under-stocked general stores (a third general store was closed and looked as if it had been for a while) and the little filling station whose owner emerged from his booth yawning and scratching his behind through his overalls.
Henri filled his tank but left the bike at the garage and returned to the centre of San Juan and into a bar with iron grilles on the windows. It was a dark and dingy cantina, lit by a single naked lightbulb swinging softly in the slight waft created by the three-bladed ceiling fan that provided no relief from the oppressive heat. There were four old men in the bar, sitting on deckchairs at a wooden table playing cards and each was nursing a rapidly warming bottle of beer and occasionally exchanging a word with the unshaven barman dressed in paint-spattered jeans and a grubby white vest. A radio was producing a tinny salsa in the background and Henri half expected it to stop as he walked in like the piano at a Wild West saloon. In fact, he was rather disappointed that the old men barely looked up from their game and the rough-looking, unkempt barman, who introduced himself as Paco, asked him very politely what he could get him. Two hours later, Henri emerged from the bar, blinking in the fierce sunlight and several dollars lighter having stood a few rounds of drinks and let himself be ‘taken’ at a few hands of cards. He had a hint of a smile on his face and his eyes were shining. He had found his El Dorado.
Within three months of that first morning in San Juan, Henri had been quick to act. His two-hour chat in the bar had yielded him with the information he needed about the local population, the neighbouring villages, the proximity of the nearest large town and shopping centres and the amenability of the local mayor and police to unofficial welfare contributions. He rented an empty two-room shack from the bar owner and then took a week to go to the capital, call his uncles and aunts and apply for temporary residency. His family wired him an additional fifteen thousand dollars over four days and he gained a four-year-residency permit from the Immigration Department and all it cost him was a bottle of Chanel perfume and a swing set for the daughter of the chief of the residency department. Before he left the capital, he went to one of the major distributors for the grocery sector; a few notes and the odd bottle of Johnny Walker black label changed hands and all was set.
Arriving back in San Juan, Henri leased the disused general store, which he planned to convert into his home, and then went to visit the owners of the two other general stores in town. As it turned out, they were owned by the same family: headed by Carlos Lopez; assisted by his wife, Nora; two sons who worked in the quarry but helped out when they could; and three daughters, sixteen-year-old twins, Maria and Marta who were fat, jolly and always singing along to American pop songs blaring out from an old cassette player, and Constanza, a pretty girl, able and quick-witted. However, at twenty-six years old, Constanza was still single and rather than admired for her strength and brains was pitied by the population of San Juan as she was unmarried and childless. Henri introduced himself to Carlos Lopez and within a month, Carlos, Nora and the twins left town in a rusty blue Hilux bound for a new life running Nora’s ageing parents’ lemon farm some seventy miles away, and with Henri’s help, the boys were offered their own little house in the tiny village that was just being built at the quarry. That left Constanza in the Lopez family home and manager of one of the general stores and Henri as manager of the other and owner of both. Three months after that and Henri gave up the lease on the disused store and was living with Constanza in her family home. Henri sold both the remaining stores and had two twenty-foot containers shipped in and placed just behind the filling station as he reasoned it was strategically better placed to catch whatever passing trade there might be, however meagre, and as it was only a couple of hundred yards from the main street, and now the only general store in town, the local residents would learn to live with the minor inconvenience.
Within a year, Constanza was expecting Henri’s baby and although they hadn’t bothered getting married, they were happy and their business, the Angel Mart, was thriving because it was a virtual monopoly. More than that, because Henri was a wizard at getting just about anything that anyone needed and Constanza was so hard-working; and since the two of them were careful to be generous to the local school and the mayor’s fundraising efforts to bring a clinic to town and they regularly gave out little candies and gum to the neighbourhood children, Angel Mart was turning an decent profit. The only fly in this rather pleasant ointment was the visits Henri occasionally had to pay to the capital to organise resupplies or to keep his immigration officer sweet. Constanza didn’t mind the absences but she did worry that Henri might spend time and money in the casino. He had told her a little of his past and to Constanza, it seemed she should be more worried about Henri’s gambling rather than womanising. In fact, she was right, Henri loved to flirt but since meeting Constanza, he was more than content to leave other women alone but it was true, he did visit the casinos in the capital and although he was not reckless, he
steadily lost more than he won and once little Clara was born during a torrential rainstorm one April, Constanza confronted Henri and he was put on official warning about his love of games of chance.
A few years passed and Henri and Constanza made a considerable success of the Angel Mart and Henri was able to pay back his family but although with Clara they had a comfortable life, there was never much spare cash at the end of the month because Henri was still not fully cured of his gambling. Clara was growing into a chatty, lively girl who spoke Spanish and Cantonese with easy charm and was her parent’s pride and joy.
All was well until Henri’s latest trip to the capital to renew his rolling residency. This time, he stayed away from the casinos but on arriving at the Immigration Department, to his dismay he found that his usual amenable contact was away on extended sick leave and try as he might, the replacement section chief was not a man to be encouraged financially or through flattery to assist in Henri’s residency renewal without a full police background check. In fact, it was worse than that, the section chief insisted that if Henri wanted to stay in the country (since he and Constanza were not married, he could not claim a spouse visa – Henri swore he would marry her as soon as he got back to San Juan), he would have to return to Hong Kong and apply through the consulate there and obtain his police report locally. Henri groaned. Although it would be nice to see his father and his family again, he did not want to leave Constanza, Clara and the Angel Mart and he couldn’t take his family with him and just close up for however long the bureaucracy would take.
Talking it over with Constanza that evening, Henri heard two things from Constanza that he was not expecting: the first was that she would not marry him until he sorted his residency out and gave up gambling for good. The second was that she thought he should invite his father, Pascal over to stay with her and Clara while Henri returned to Hong Kong to sort his paperwork out. Constanza reckoned that it would be lovely for Clara to meet her grandfather and for her to meet her de facto father-in-law for the first time. It would also be an extra pair of hands in the Angel Mart and Clara could interpret for Pascal and it would also give the old man a chance to see the land of his birth.
When Henri arrived in Hong Kong he spent the first three days in a social whirl visiting friends and family and spending time with Pascal who was overjoyed at the prospect of flying out to see his granddaughter and of being some use to his son. Father and son went to the consulate to visit Sr Canto, the visa officer and that is where there was bad news and good news: the bad news was Henri, having come to an accommodation with Sr Canto regarding his lack of police certificate, did not want to approach his family for this financial accommodation as he had led them to believe that all was in order. However, he found himself with just a thousand dollars in his pockets since Constanza had insisted he leave all the rest of his cash with her. The good news was that, although deported when just a few weeks old, the years had seen revisions in the constitution and, ironically, Pascal was granted permanent leave to remain in the land where he was born. So, Pascal left Henri to his various money-making schemes in Hong Kong and the meeting at the airport with Constanza and Clara was appropriately touching with just the right combination of tears and laughter.
And while Henri sweated away trying to come up with the cash and paperwork needed for the meticulous and unscrupulous Sr Canto, Constanza ran the Angel Mart and Pascal chattered away to Clara and made her a beautiful wooden doll’s house and rocking horse. He also had time to start his magical, surreal carvings again and an occasional passer-by would stop and look and one or two even offered to buy a piece of two but Pascal just smiled a smile of non-comprehension, shrugged apologetically and carried on carving. Pascal would help with the shelf stacking in the mornings and play with Clara in the afternoons while Constanza was busy in the shop, and he enjoyed cooking in the evenings while Constanza did the books or read to Clara and they would talk about Hong Kong with nine-year-old Clara interpreting, both adults marvelling at the easy manner in which she happily chirped away in two such different languages.
About a month after Pascal arrived, there was still no sign of Henri’s immediate return and supplies were running low in the Angel Mart since Henri had not paid the distributer his usual ‘handling fee; and Constanza was getting worried. So, one morning, she decided that action was needed and taking a bundle of cash, she headed for the bus stop for the four-hour journey to the capital to arrange for resupplies. She would be gone overnight and was happy to close up for the day and leave Pascal to keep an eye on Clara. But Pascal would hear none of it. He insisted that he could keep an eye on the shop and Clara (who was on her summer holidays) and make sure Angel Mart stayed open and earning. So, reluctantly, Constanza kissed her daughter, embraced Pascal and set off for the bus.
It was seven-thirty in the morning. Two hours later, poor Pascal was enduring the verbal onslaught from the angry customers outside the Angel Mart and Clara was doing her nine-year-old best to keep the ship afloat while Pascal floundered and flustered and wished he had never had the idea to open the shop.
Denis Ryan was drunk. Not even hungover, just still plain drunk from the night before. He had been out in Santa Cruz and Matthew had left him in some tequila bar in the company of a retired marine colonel and a couple of local hookers and they had stayed up and drank and smoked a few joints until the sun was almost up. Now, at a little after seven in the morning, Denis was awoken by the phone ringing in his hotel room, Denis was dry-mouthed and light-headed and the voice on the other end of the phone seemed to scream at him.
“Hey, Den, it’s Matt. Had a good night?”
“Hmm, oh Matt, yeah, yeah, great. You OK?”
“Fine, friend! Listen you go ahead and rest, I am going off for a wander about today and I’ll see you back in the bar at say, seven?”
“You going to be ok?”
“I am a thirty-seven-year-old Oscar-nominated movie star who has played a special-forces hero, a cowboy and a super-hero from Alpha Centauri, I think I can manage a day driving a jeep around the countryside without getting into too much trouble! Besides, I want to get a feel for the places you checked out to see if they fit in with the script.”
“OK, have fun and don’t get lost! The studio will kill me if I lose their multi-million-dollar-spinning leading man!”
“Sure thing, Den! See ya!”
Duel in the Dust was to be a modern Western and represented a personal crusade for Matt Marshall who over the last seven years had established himself as one of Hollywood’s more thoughtful leading men. Born Matthew McKinley in Dundee, Scotland, Marshall had a degree in fine arts from the University of Edinburgh and had only got into acting when his girlfriend at the time, Sandy, was in an amateur production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof playing Maggie. The actor playing Brick got food poisoning the night of the dress rehearsal and the understudy was too scared to go on. Matt had been at most of the rehearsals and had read through the lines with Sandy and, in desperation, the director asked whether Matthew would step in. He agreed and the play was a great success. Matthew was a big hit with his charismatic performance and rugged Celtic good looks and Sandy told him he was destined for great things.
Several years later and after some touring in rep and a couple of parts in TV dramas in UK, Matthew McKinley, now Matt Marshall was the newest brooding heartthrob in Tinsel Town. Oscar-nominated and winner of several newcomer awards, he was on that starry celebrity wave but Matt was not a party animal and lived quietly in the Hollywood hills and chose his parts carefully, directed a couple of independent movies and painted and collected small but exquisite pieces of art. He even put the money up to open a tiny gallery on Rodeo Drive to showcase new artists, particularly from Native American or Inuit backgrounds.
His latest project, Duel in the Dust was one he was very passionate about. He had written the screenplay himself and was set to direct. The Duel was not a shoot ‘em up action mov
ie. It was about a man’s search for his missing wife and the duel was with his conscience and memories of how she had come to be missing. Having cast around for a suitable location to start filming, Denis Ryan, who was not only a good friend but also one of the leading location managers in the movies, had called excitedly one evening to say he had found the perfect place to shoot the movie. Arid and dusty with an unforgiving interior, spectacular coastlines, rich jungle vegetation and one-horse towns all within a single lonely province on the Pacific coast and in a country where labour was cheap and the local governor said he would put his entire staff and police at the crew’s disposal in return for a small part in the film.
Matt and Denis had flown down from LA to Mexico City then taken a small commercial jet on a two-hour flight, then a much smaller single prop plane to a dusty strip cut out of the thorny scrubland about twelve miles from Santa Cruz, and had rented an old Jeep to explore the terrain. Although offered a brand new Ford Explorer by the Governor who came to meet them in person at the landing strip, Matthew preferred to ‘go native’ and experience the land without air conditioning, electric seats or Bose CD player. Denis knew his friend well enough not to complain. Besides, the Governor himself loaded a cooler full of the delicious golden local beer into the back of the jeep.
And it was in this old white jeep with no roof and mismatched tires, with a crackly salsa blaring out of the radio that Matt Marshall set off to explore the area surrounding Santa Cruz and after a couple of hours with an overheating radiator, pulled into the lonely filling station in San Juan.
Luckily for Matt, the garage attendant was there even though the gas station was usually closed on Sundays as he needed to get some petrol for his own car. Using gestures and cursing his ignorance of foreign languages (Matt knew a little Italian from his studies in Renaissance art and spoke schoolboy French but that was about it) and handing over three-twenty dollar bills to Sr Martino, Matt left the car in the care of the fortunate garage owner and wandered off to find a cold drink.