by Lou Cameron
He laughed and asked, “I take it you didn’t stop screwing after Rosita was born?”
She moaned. “Do I look like a nun? I love it! Pero in God’s truth it has been some time since I met such an understanding friend and, oh, faster, faster, I am mad for your big camote and I wish for to be filled with your wet lust!”
That was easy enough to accomplish. She was a fantastic lay, and he could feel it down to his toes when he exploded in her. But as he stopped to get his second wind, enjoying the warm pulsations on his still hard shaft, Rosa sobbed, “Oh, why does life slip so swiftly by us, Ricardo? I never wished for that to end. But now it has, and now you will think me old and ugly again.”
He kissed her wet eyelid gently and assured her, “Don’t be silly. The best is yet to come, querida.”
She gasped, “You still speak words of love to me after the shameless way I just behaved? My mother warned me, long ago, that to give oneself completely to a man was a sure way to be despised.”
He kissed her again but growled, “The only thing to be despised in this sack is the way you or perhaps your mother talk, Rosa. I mean, with all due respect, we’re both a bit, ah, mature to carry on like a couple of kids in the back of a buggy.”
She sniffed and said, “I knew you would bring up my stretch marks and dark nipples if I let you undress me all the way.”
He fondled a big breast and kissed the firm nipple before he told her, “You have a lovely body and you know it. Speaking of lovely, let’s see if we can get your knees a little higher this time.”
As he hooked an elbow under a plump knee to haul it higher, Rosa gasped, “Madre de Dios, you still want more! I am still hot, and it is driving me loco en la cabeza, pero I fear I cannot get my thighs around you any higher. I am sorry. I used to be much thinner. You would have loved me when I was still a virgin, pero …”
Then she gave a strangled scream as he got her all the way up and open, her knees even with his shoulders, and proceeded to pound her hard and deep. A distant male voice called out, “Dick?” and he called back, “Mind you own business, Gaston. If this is a wet dream, I, don’t want to wake up.”
Gaston laughed and fell silent again. Captain Gringo told Rosa to keep it down to a roar. But she couldn’t. She moaned and groaned like a wounded animal, or a woman climaxing, as she rolled her head from side to side. He craned his head down to kiss her, French. It helped a little, even if it was hell on his tongue by the time they came together again.
Rosa didn’t believe the third time could really be happening. So perhaps that was why she didn’t object too loudly to doggie-style, though she said she was sure she was going to wake up in hell in the morning but didn’t care. That was as perverse as he thought he ought to push things with such an unsophisticated partner, however.
According to Rosa’s late mother, they’d already sinned beyond all possible hope of redemption. So he dismounted and suggested that she might like to puff a real cigar with him for a spell.
Rosa sighed and said, “I shall never forgive myself for not having the courage to spend the whole night here with you, Ricardo. It would be a joy forever for to wake up in your strong arms in the dawn and do more wicked things, even if you saw my stretch marks. Pero I must think of my children. I am more afraid of inspiring them than shocking them. My Rosita, as you know, has begun to bud, and there are no other children around here for my sons to play with.”
It was nice to know that Juan and Juaquin weren’t motherfuckers. The thought had crossed his mind when she’d told him her husband had died a couple of years back, leaving her to handle a tribe of young adults alone. He put the claro back, unlit, and let her pull her shapeless sack back on. She kissed him adios and asked if he liked eggs for breakfast. He kissed back and didn’t answer.
He’d only been alone a few minutes when he heard yet another someone creeping up on him. Before he could get his gun or another erection, Gaston called out, softly, “Dick, we have to get out of here. Now.”
Captain Gringo sat up but replied, “Oh, I don’t know. Somehow I feel sure they like us here.”
Gaston joined him, fully dressed and dragging his made-up roll to reply, “I heard. Some women are like that when they are climaxing. The one I was enjoying at the same time has learned to be more discreet. Mais I still think we’d better get out of here before Rosita tells her brothers Mamacita likes to screw too.”
“Jesus H. Christ, you just laid little Rosita?”
“Oui, as you are so fond of pointing out, I have been a dirty old man for some time, and you would have done the same had she awakened you with oral sex. I thought at first that it was the older woman, for très obvious reasons. By the time your own passionate peasant was giving your position and her identity away, it was a bit late to tell the lady I was screwing more discreetly that she was too young.”
Captain Gringo laughed like hell. Gaston said, “It is not that funny. Rosita laughed, too, to learn what an easy lay her hitherto respected mother seemed to be. The reason the daughter has learned to screw so quietly involves doing so in the dark with her mother sleeping in the same room.”
“That would make one screw sort of sneaky. Did she tell you which brother she’s been balling?”
“Oui, both. It gets worse. Recently the older one has been eyeing his mother’s handsome figure with a view to expanding horizons. Up until tonight Rosita had convinced him that boys who tried to get up Mamacita’s skirt might get a spanking. Naturally I just warned her not to tell either brother what she just learned about their mother’s passionate nature. Mais, naturally, a maiden who confesses incest—to a kindly old man she barely knows—is not about to keep such a family secret to herself while one or both brothers are ravaging her, hein?”
Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Yeah, this could turn into a real hillbilly hot stuff, either way. Old Rosa may be passionate, but she’s more prudish than she may have sounded. God know what she’ll do when old Juaquin asks to see her stretch marks. It’s quiet enough down that way right now, though.”
“Eh bien, do you wish to stay until things get noisy?”
Captain Gringo groaned and said, “Oh, shit, I’m wide-awake now, anyway. Help me out with this bedroll while I get dressed again.”
They never found out who wound up doing what, with what, to whom, back at the clearing. The morning sun caught them once more on the old cattle trail or what there was of it, covered with pine tar and still spitting bark and needles. It had been a lot easier to walk into a tree than around every one in the dark. The trail was starting to bump into things, too, even by broad daylight. But each time it seemed to dead-end against a house-sized boulder or a tangle of windfall timber, they seemed to be able to pick it up again on the far side. It wasn’t getting easier as they climbed higher. The path was no longer even a narrow ribbon of bare dirt. Someone or something still used the route often enough to keep it more or less open, but grass and vines conspired to weave it into what looked more like a green runner winding on between more impressive vegetation. They were above the banana line now, but Central America didn’t rise high enough—anywhere—to be too cool for mighty tropical greenery, save for the snow-covered peaks of scattered volcanic cones. Where there was greenery there were monkeys and parrots. It was hard to say which screamed and shit on one’s hat most. But at least the parrots couldn’t throw things. Most of the smaller monkeys just threw fruit and nuts—inedible, of course—but the big howlers could launch a lethal length of branch wood and seemed to delight in it. On the other hand, howlers roared so loud as they were winding up, they hardly ever hit anyone but a greenhorn, and as Gaston observed whenever he shot at one, howlers were intelligent beasts who could take a hint. Captain Gringo told him to forget the damned monkeys and watch where he put his feet. Early morning was the time of day pit vipers, giant scorpions, and other cold-blooded nasties crawled out into such sun as there was to warm up. There was not much sunlight to be had on the forest floor to either side of the trail.
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br /> Their luck and the trail ran out entirely when they came to a deep, narrow gorge across which a rope bridge had once been strung. Captain Gringo peered over the edge at the white water threading its way throughout the black rock below and said, “End of the line, folks.”
He sat down with his feet hanging over the edge and got out the map. Wonder of wonders, the impressive gorge blocking their way had been impressive enough to rate a spidery line on the map. He traced an imaginary line east, in line with it, and said, “Okay, that convent is on this side, due east. We said we might drop by, anyway.”
Gaston stared at the solid wall of green in that direction and asked, “Is this trip really necessary? We’ve gone as far as one can go. That is all we promised Hakim, non?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Quit your bitching and let’s break out the machetes. I wouldn’t have packed ’em if I hadn’t expected to use ’em.”
“Merde alors, that convent is miles to the east, uphill all the way, you gay tosser of tropical salads!”
Captain Gringo dug into his pack as he explained, “The brush won’t be as thick once we’re clear of the sunlit trail. Why do I have to tell you that, Gaston? This isn’t your first jungle run by a long shot.”
Gaston sighed as he opened his own pack, got out the short, reverse-hooked blade, and muttered, “I have run some jungles indeed, and every time I have, I’ve promised myself never to sweat like that again!”
They got up and got to work. Hard. The growth on the drier west slope of the isthmus was less thick and lush than the faster-growing stuff on the windward side. But it was a hell of a lot tougher.
Captain Gringo had picked up the more specialized machetes in San Salvador with serious bushwhacking in mind. The all-purpose machete most natives waved at sugar cane, banana stalks, or people did a fair job at a lot of jobs. But since Captain Gringo had had only one job in mind, he’d chosen short, wide blades, hooked near the tips so as to hang in there and keep cutting once they bit into anything. They’d have been lousy in a mano-a-mano machete fight against the more standard model, but who but an idiot was about to get into a swordfight with a peon who’d been swinging a machete all his life when he had a perfectly good .38 strapped to his chest?
The thick growth they waded into, taking turns in the lead every fifty whacks or so, was mostly scrub oak laced with tropic pine and various kinds of hardwood even harder than oak. Said oak, since it was dwarfish and gnarled, was more suitable for carving into pipe bowls than it would have been for furniture. Their blades kept trying to bounce off. But thanks to their reverse curves, they couldn’t. Every time Gaston got hung up, a third of the way through a stem, he swore and said it would be easier the other way. They were working in almost total shade, but they were soon covered with sweat and bark dust. The bigger than usual pinecones and walnut-size acorns showering down on them made them glad their hats were wide-brimmed.
But as Captain Gringo had predicted and Gaston had hoped, they finally cut through to where the shade of taller and more widely spaced trees made it impossible for shorter, thicker crud to grow. They sat on a fallen log for a smoke and a breather before they put their jackets back on, stowed the machetes, and repacked to move on more sedately.
The forest floor was dry as well as open at this time of the year. On the windward slope the jungle was always paved with a black blotter of rotten leaves and monkey shit. Captain Gringo told Gaston to watch where he flicked his cigar ashes as they trudged onward and upward with packs on their backs and carbines carried at their left. Gaston told him to teach his grandmother to suck. He knew that while the trade winds would blow smoke back the way they’d just come, fire tended to creep uphill through forest duff.
The whole day’s hike wasn’t all uphill, of course. The volcanic highlands of Central America were a textbook example of erosion gone loco en la cabeza, thanks to the climate and somewhat unstable geology. Consulting his map from time to time and the sky as often as he could see it through gaps in the greenery above, Captain Gringo went out of the way to avoid a couple of valleys the map said lay between them and the convent of San Pablo. People tended to settle the intermontane patches of halfway-flat hill country. He wasn’t as worried about meeting friendly natives as the gunrunners he was trying to head off would be. He was sticking to the sneaky route because it gave them all a better chance of bumping noses. Or at least it gave them a chance. The more he saw of the actual ground in question, the wilder Hakim’s idea seemed. Central America was a sliver on the world map, and they were only talking about a fraction of Honduras. But a square mile got one hell of a lot bigger than it looked on any map when it was all crumpled up and covered with trees. Some mule trains used bells to keep in line through rugged country. Smugglers probably wouldn’t. There was no way in hell to intercept them once they got over the spine of the sierra and had all this real estate to choose from. The odds were lousy, even if they beat them to the top and waited in a narrow pass. There had to be a way to make a more educated guess which pass they’d be using, if they hadn’t already used it.
They’d hoped to make the convent before sunset. They couldn’t. More than once they came to a stretch where the wind had broken the canopy to turn the route ahead to a green hell of wild pepper, saw sedge, and unspeakable thorny brush that refused to hold still when one swung at it with steel. The sweat bees haunting every sunlit clearing didn’t make it easier. When mosquitoes proceeded to nip them in the shade, they knew it would soon be a lot darker.
As God suddenly switched off the lights Gaston suggested that it was time to make camp. Captain Gringo agreed and was about to strike a match for some light on the subject when he spotted a glimmer of light in the distance and held the thought. It was too yellow and steady to be an out-of-season firefly. When fireflies were in season down here, one could almost read a book in the jungle by their almost constant flickering green light. He told Gaston, “We have company. I make it a lamp or a camp fire. Hard to say how far. But it can’t be much out of pistol range or there’d be more trees in the way. Whatever it is and wherever it is, this is no place to build our own night fire.”
Gaston protested, “Without some smoke we’ll be eaten alive by mosquitoes, if not bats. Perhaps if we moved a discreet distance back or off to one side—”
“I’m not about to climb the same hill again,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “The map says open farmland to our right, and I don’t want to take one step in the direction of that gorge to our left. Why not just mosey over for a closer look-see?”
“I can think of a très good reason. What if they are not nice?”
Captain Gringo levered a round in his carbine’s chamber and said, “That’ll be their tough luck unless they grow in big bunches. We have the advantage of surprise. So shut your yap and let’s surprise ’em.”
They did, and surprised themselves as well, for they found themselves in an open, fallow field before they were close enough to the mysterious light to matter. It was farther than it had looked from the forest because, back among the trees, they’d assumed that more trees were in the way.
The open field they were crossing was covered with a crunchy stubble of harvested com. So they walked slowly. A night bird took off to complain bitterly as they flushed it with their silent stalk. But the crickets chirping all around muffled any noises they made, and They were within easy range of the people camped by the side of a wagon trace before a skinny cur tied to the wheel of a cart noticed that it was time to growl their way.
The campers appeared to be a family of peones who’d been caught on the road by nightfall. Their cart was piled with produce under a tarp. Unless they’d been pulling it themselves, their oxen had been put to graze on the far side, out of sight. The man of the family rose to his feet to stare thoughtfully the way his dog was growling. His mujer and two kids stayed hunkered around the fire and just looked scared. As the peon reached over his shoulder for his machete Captain Gringo called out, “Buenos noches, amigo. Your
dog is right, but we are not ladrones. Permission to approach?”
Since the poor bastard had little choice and knew it, he called back graciously, “Please do. We are very poor. We have no money. Pero we can offer coffee to those of friendly natures.”
He relaxed a bit more when the soldiers of fortune came closer, and he could see that they looked like gringos. It was an established fact that while all gringos were insane and inclined to bully, they very seldom killed women or raped men.
As they all hunkered down together around the fire, the man of the family ordered his mujer to serve their guests. The shy, once pretty woman silently filled tin cups with black coffee, not looking directly at anyone. The two kids stared in innocent, open admiration. Captain Gringo offered both adults cigars. The man took both with a now more relaxed smile. Captain Gringo waited until the three of them had inhaled some smoke as well as coffee before he told the peon that they were searching for the convent of San Pablo. The peon sighed with relief and said something to his woman in Pipil. Later Gaston would explain that he’d told her, “If they are Catholic, they can’t be real gringos, dear heart. We may get out of this safely after all.”
In Spanish he told Captain Gringo that the convent was back up the road he’d just come down with his cart, adding, “It is to deliver vino from the convent that we came up this way, señores. Before you ask if I have vino in my cart, I do not. I only have empty casks. They said they had made no vino this season and turned us away most rudely. I do not know why. We are good Catholics, and the Mother Superior has always treated us kindly up until now.”