Madagascar

by Stephen Holgate

  I tell Samuel to get us as close to the gates as he can.

  The driver sighs, “Monsieur Knott …”

  “It’s going to be fine. Go.”

  Like a salmon swimming upstream, the embassy car crawls through the swarm of fleeing prisoners. The healthier ones are running as if chased by demons. Others, gaunt with hunger and illness, are barely able to walk.

  While we’re still twenty yards short of the gate, a guard spots the embassy car and, like a traffic cop at any busy intersection, puts up a hand to stop us while he continues to wave the prisoners through.

  I open the car door into the mass of escaping criminals. “Samuel, turn the car around and point it back toward town. Keep the engine running.” I’ve started toward the prison gates before I think to add, “I mean it this time.”

  Over the hubbub of the escaping convicts, I hear a car door slam. I look back to find Gloria running up beside me.

  “Get back in the car,” I tell her.

  Her chin set at a determined angle, she says, “I want to get him out of here myself.” It occurs to me we aren’t talking about the same man, but it doesn’t matter. There’ll be no stopping her.

  Together we plunge into the crowd, scanning the faces of the escapees streaming past us. Ignoring a guard’s shouted warning, we shove our way through the gates.

  Inside, we find a few feeble prisoners bringing up the rear of the exodus. I look in every direction, but see only the burning buildings and the empty prison yard. In a couple of minutes the fierce heat will do what the guards couldn’t and force us to run. I tell Gloria, “They must have got past us. Maybe we can find them along the road.”

  I’ve started back toward the gate when I hear Gloria shout, “There he is!”

  Like a mirage, two men appear through the shimmering heat of the burning buildings. The shorter of the two has thrown an arm across the back of the larger, struggling to hold him up. Raising my arm to shield myself from the heat, I run across the courtyard and get a shoulder under Walt’s other arm.

  Exhausted, his eyes unfocused, Walt lets himself be dragged across the open ground. Gloria has a different idea of how to help. She tucks herself under Speedy’s shoulder and puts an arm around him. Caught between Walt and the diminutive Gloria, the young Malagasy lurches back and forth like a teeter-totter, laughing as we struggle toward the gate.

  While Gloria and Speedy pile into the car, I throw Walt into the back seat, slam the door after him and jump into the front. “Okay, Samuel, let’s get out of here.” I look back over the seat at Walt. “Well, cowboy, it took burning down the prison to do it, but you’re a free man.”

  The embassy maintenance crew removes the desk and file cabinets from an unused office and bring in a cot for Walt, who is pale and exhausted. Bill Tuttle from our economic development office brings him a sandwich he’d brought for lunch. Doctor André frowns when he listens to his heart, palpates his stomach, and regards his dehydrated frame, but eventually declares him in decent shape, everything considered.

  It seems that half the embassy wants to squeeze into the room to visit the redeemed captive. Pete Salvatore brings bottled water and magazines. Lynn brings a few candy bars from the commissary. One of the Marines has scrounged up a set of clothes that fit him well, and Walt can throw out the rags he’s been wearing. Ambassador Herr has him raise his head so she can fluff his pillow for him.

  When Walt has taken all the kindness he can bear for the moment, the Ambassador clasps her hands in front of her and smiles. “We’ll get you to someplace a little more comfortable this afternoon, where you can rest up for a few days. Then we can get you on a plane home. In the meantime, you have to tell us what caused this fortuitous fire.”

  “The fire?” Walt makes a rueful smile. “It was set, ma’am.” Pete Salvatore raises his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty desperate escape plan.”

  Walt looks up in surprise. “It wasn’t the prisoners who set it.”

  “Then who—”

  “It was them guards.”

  The DCM looks as if he must have heard wrong. “The guards set fire to their own prison?”

  “Yessir. They come ’round this morning, opened up the cell doors and told us to start runnin’ ’cause they were going to burn down the prison. Hardly gave us time to follow ’em through the door.” The old cowboy chuckles. “Speedy—he’s my cellmate, or was, anyway—he told me it was all because of that story that got into the papers. When President Whatsisname told the guards they had to stop lettin’ prisoners out, well, they—the guards, I mean—got pretty unhappy and decided to burn the place down.” Walt looks at the unbelieving faces around him and adds, “I think they were pretty drunk when they figured all this out.”

  Michelle Herr says, “I guess we owe a real debt of gratitude to the guards.”

  Walt nods to Gloria and me. “The way I see it, I got free because Robert and Gloria told that story to the newspapers. If it weren’t for that, I’d still be rotting in jail.”

  The smiles on Michelle Herr’s and Pete Salvatore’s faces curdle like a quart of bad milk.

  I don’t need to remind myself that in Madagascar the implausible isn’t just possible, it’s mandatory.

  The same Malagasy maintenance crew that set Walt up in comfort gives Speedy a metal chair in the hallway and tell him to sit. No one brings him food or a pillow or asks the doctor to look at him. Three of the local employees have been burgled in the past year and for all they know it’s Speedy who did it.

  Am I the only one who notices that Gloria doesn’t go straight back to the Cultural Center once Walt’s settled in? She wanders the halls, finding little errands that bring her along the corridor where Speedy sits. She stops with him a little longer each time she passes, refusing the offer of his chair, finally sitting on the floor beside him, her arms wrapped around her legs.

  After passing by the two of them for the third time that morning, the Ambassador asks Pete Salvatore, “Hasn’t that young man got someplace he should be going?”

  Salvatore is about to order a Marine to escort Speedy out when his secretary tracks him down in the hall and tells him someone from the Interior Ministry is waiting in his office. He’s hardly through the door before the official launches into an ill-tempered harangue that ends with a demand that the embassy return Walt to Malagasy custody.

  The DCM leans back in his chair. “If the Malagasy government can’t keep its prisoners behind bars, it’s not the business of the American Embassy to hand them back.”

  Stuttering with rage, the ministry official adds that prison guards saw a Malagasy prisoner leaving with Walt and insists on his return as well.

  Increasingly offended by the official’s manner, the DCM tells him that he will “consider the Malagasy government’s request regarding its citizen and respond in an appropriate manner.”

  The ministry guy recognizes diplo-speak for “go screw yourself ” when he hears it and storms out.

  A few minutes later, Pete describes the scene to the Ambassador, who tells him to arrange for a car to run Walt Sackett up to her residence, where he can stay in a spare bedroom until he’s well enough to go home. Within minutes Lynn and one of the Malagasy security guards are hustling Walt toward the motor pool.

  It’s too late. A loose cordon of half a dozen Malagasy police stands outside the embassy, spoiling to arrest either Walt or Speedy if they come out.

  Walt is hustled back to his converted bedroom office. As punishment for getting him out of jail, I’m tasked with telling him that at least for now he isn’t going anywhere. For the first time since his escape the cattleman’s good spirits desert him. “Robert, just get me into that car and get me out of here. This is an embassy. They can’t stop an embassy car.”

  “Actually, Walt, they can. And while they can’t arrest a diplomat and make it stick, they can arrest you. The embassy will jump up and down and lodge a protest, but in the meantime they’d have you locked up again.”

  Walt stands at the wi
ndow of the small room and for a long time looks out at the blue skies and lush trees on the other side of the embassy wall. “This sort of shit never happens in Oregon.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

  Walt leans his head against the glass. “It looks to me like I just got myself out of one prison and into another.”

  “At least the food’s better here.”

  The mention of food makes a connection in Walt’s mind. “Nirina. Nirina said she was gettin’ ready to get me out of that shithole. Get her over here. If you guys can’t figure a way to spring me out of here, I’ll bet she can. And Speedy. Where’s Speedy? You gonna set him up here with me?” He looks around the office. “Hell, I think our cell was smaller than this place.”

  “We can’t do that, Walt. He’s Malagasy. We can’t shelter him. He’s going to have to take his chances.”

  “What chances? They’ll arrest him soon as he sticks his head out—”

  Before Walt can finish his thought, Gloria appears at the door, grasping each side of its frame as if she might fall down. “Robert, they’re going to push Dokoby out the door.” There’s real fear in her eyes.

  “What is it you think I can do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, her voice rising to a righteous pitch, “but you’ve spent months telling me how you’re one of the old bulls in this organization. Now show me what it’s good for.”

  Gloria sinks into the back seat of the embassy car and wrinkles her nose. “I feel ridiculous,” she says. But the smile touching the corners of her mouth makes clear that other emotions are also in play.

  “Just sit up straight and act like everything’s normal,” I tell her. I lay a hand on the blanket-covered bundle lying beside her on the floor. “And, Speedy, don’t you even move until Gloria tells you it’s all right.”

  Curled up on the floor, Speedy grunts affirmatively.

  Gloria frowns. “Shouldn’t you tell Security what we’re doing?”

  “I’ll write Esmer a memo and send it to him through Washington. He should get it by Easter.”

  I lean through the window and say to the driver, “Gabriel, the young man will give you directions to his home. Then take Miss Burris back to the Center.”

  Looking like a man strapped into the electric chair, Gabriel gulps and nods.

  With Speedy under wraps, Gloria allows herself to gaze at him with unguarded fondness. Then she remembers I’m watching and covers it with a decisive nod of the head. “All right. Let’s go.”

  As the gate rattles closed behind them, I see the embassy car slipping past the policemen, who barely look up from their game of “cops and robbers.”

  By the time I visit Walt in the afternoon, his cot is made up into a proper bed with sheets and blankets, and admin has found an old armchair, in which he is reclining, a cold beer in his hand and a smile on his face.

  “Hey, Robert, do you think if they brought a TV in here, I could catch the Trailblazers game?”

  “You can read the score online.”

  Walt chuckles and says, “I guess that’ll have to do.” But his smile fades and the toll of his months in prison show in his pallid face. “I’m not going anywhere for a while, am I?”

  I sit on the edge of the cot and say as gently as possible, “Doesn’t look like it, cowboy.”

  “Speedy still around?”

  “I snuck him out in a car with Gloria.”

  A glimmer of hope lights Walt’s face. “Why don’t you do the same with me? I could at least get up to the Ambassador’s place.”

  “Speedy couldn’t stay here. We had to do something. And, frankly, I was willing to risk his skin to sneak him out. So was he. If they stop you, you go back to jail.”

  “If they stop him, so will he.”

  I don’t need to tell him that, of the two of them, Speedy is the one who would probably live long enough to finish his sentence.

  Walt leans back and stares at the ceiling for a long time. A glint of light appears in his eyes. “Robert, you think there’s something going on with those two—Gloria and Speedy?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  We take a moment to remember the roller coaster of young love.

  In an offhand tone Walt asks, “Any chance Nirina’s going to come by tonight?”

  I shake my head. “I’ll send a driver for her in the morning.”

  “The driver knows where she lives?”

  “I do.”

  Walt reads my face and everything goes quiet for a moment.

  “Y’know, I think she figures I’m going to take her back to the U.S. with me.” He gives me a look. “I never told her anything like that. Not exactly.” He lays his head back and gives a long sigh. “My God, she’s a beautiful woman. Why she should be interested in an old—” But he knows the answer to that one and doesn’t finish the question. “I gotta tell her, don’t I? That I can’t …” His eyes redden, and I look the other way.

  Outside, the afternoon clouds are piling up like mountains. In a few minutes they’ll let go, but for the moment everything is poised in a tense equilibrium.

  Walt leans forward in his chair and stares down at his clasped hands. “I was always a ranch hand, a cowboy. Worked other people’s cattle. I never promised Kathy anything, ’cept that I’d make a livin’ for her. It’s not an easy life. And maybe I didn’t do everything I could to make it any easier.” He seems to have a hard time getting the next part out. “It’s … it’s a lot more dangerous a life than most people understand. There’s always the risk …” His voice thickens with emotion, and he starts over. “Kathy was always tellin’ me that I never tried hard enough to get ahead. I got to be top hand on a couple of ranches, but it never seemed to last. And I was happy just herdin’ cattle, ridin’ fences. Well, with one thing and another—and a couple of things happened that … Well, I guess she finally had enough. Left me. After thirty-two years.” He looks like he still can’t believe it. “You’d think you’d be safe after that long. I figured maybe she’d think twice about it, take me back—we’re still not divorced yet, not legally—if I showed her I could still make something of myself after all these years. Anyway … We had some money. Not enough to stake me to a ranch in Oregon, but I’d read an article about Madagascar in National Geographic, and I thought … Well, I’m not sure now what I was thinkin’, except that it seemed like a bold idea. So I took what I had and I borrowed some more from my brother, thinkin’ …” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “This was a crazy idea.” He coughs as if his soul has stuck in his throat. “We had a boy. Kathy and me. A cowboy, too. He’s dead now.”

  I wait, thinking there’s more. But this is it. The cowboy has told his story, explained everything, his whole life, if I’ll only understand how to hear it. And if I don’t understand, there’s no point saying more.

  Walt takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We met at a bar, Nirina and me. And, I guess I didn’t want to think about why she was willin’ to spend time with an old fella like me, but things were going well and maybe I just figured I deserved it.” He raises a crooked finger to make his point. “I didn’t mean to lead her on, Robert. But I knew how she was countin’ on me. Well, the longer it went on, the more I wondered how I could take her back to some dusty old ranch in Eastern Oregon. And how to tell her I was still married.”

  The old cattleman’s head drops, his thoughts too heavy to bear. It’s hard, watching the pain in his weathered face.

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much,” I say. “I think in her heart she knew, once she got to the States, it wouldn’t work out. Not for long. She’s very fond of you, and she’s feeling maybe she was deceiving you, too.” I try to say the next as gently as I can. “Walt, she’s a good woman, has the best heart I’ve ever known. She’s just doing what she can with what she has—which isn’t much.”

  Walt Sackett lets out a long sigh, tilts his head back and closes his eyes. “Robert, it’s been kind of a long day. Maybe I’ll rest my eyes for a while.”r />
  “Somebody from Admin’ll bring you some dinner soon.”

  “Thanks for listening to me. Probably you should forget all that stuff I’ve been sayin’ and I just …” He wipes at his eyes, looking very old.

  “Don’t worry about it. Get some sleep.”

  I’ve started to shut the door to give him some peace when he gives an odd little cry, like someone having a nightmare.

  “I want a cheeseburger,” he says with odd vehemence. “Tell them I want a cheeseburger. And I want some French fries. With ketchup.” He slaps at the arm of his chair. “That’s all. I just want a cheeseburger and some French fries.”

  Walt has never tried to describe to anyone the horrors of his months in a Malagasy prison, but he’s somehow managed to squeeze it all into an order for a cheeseburger and fries.

  “I’ll see that you get it, Walt,” I tell him, but the old guy has already fallen asleep.

  Dusk is coming on by the time I work through my inbox and decide to go home. As I head for the stairway I see a light under the DCM’s door. I can tell Pete has shrugged off my tirade up at the Ambassador’s residence, at least more than Esmer or the Ambassador have. He’s been in the service a long time, mostly in Africa, and knows that sometimes you just snap.

  I tap on his door and let myself in.

  The DCM’s working by the light of his desk lamp, its shadows making him look nearly as played out as Walt Sackett. He nods me into a chair. “How’s our desperado doing?”

  I give him a readout on Walt’s health and disposition. “How long do you think it’ll be before the Malagasy throw in the towel and let him go?”

  Pete leans back in his chair, taps a pen against his palm. “They’re madder than hell about this whole thing. The government’s blaming all their troubles on us. The story in Notre Madagascar—yeah, they finally realized the story came from us—then the prison burning down and all. Like you said the other evening, they need a scapegoat and it’s us.”