His mood changed when I reminded him of the photographs. A quiet tension enveloped us. After a few minutes, he spoke. “Who is the naked girl in the shower?”
“A woman I know.”
“I thought you had a girlfriend. She is not the same as the dark-haired girl in the shower. I would say the one Chaco is in love with is Venezuelan.”
“Yeah, well, my girlfriend isn’t too happy with me.” I snorted derisively, wondering why I still pretended to have a relationship with Teresa.
He laughed, finally offering me a cigarette. As I lit up, I recognized Vladimir had a quality of civility that his comrades lacked. Or maybe a quality of ruggedness stood out in the others that Vladimir showed little of.
“Where did you learn English?”
“University.”
I didn’t want to risk further hostility, but I sensed Vladimir was glad for my company, so I took a chance. “I’m just guessing, but you guys are revolutionaries, right? So why in the world did Carlito kidnap us?”
“We wanted the truck.”
I heard in his abrupt answer the implication of Johnny’s and my fate. A shocked whisper escaped on my next breath. “You planned on killing us.”
He stubbed out his cigarette. “Let me tell you something. I am the only one here who does not think you are a CIA agent. I believe you are an artist like you say. The others do not believe a Yanqui with a camera would be so close to our area of operations for any other reason than to learn more about us.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“Carlito informed us that your employer is Esso. They are the capitalistic cochinos that steal oil from our country. The CIA is their tool.”
“That’s insane, man. If anything, I sympathize with your ideals. I just don’t believe in violent revolution. I’m against my government’s thievery of any country’s natural resources and their interference in other countries. Like Vietnam. Hey, man, I don’t like what my government is doing to my own country. I’ve worked for the peace movement. The difference between you and me is that you pick up a gun while I try to live a lifestyle that is removed from what the establishment tries to shove down my throat.” I tried to sound like I was philosophizing with him in an intellectual debate, but I could only hear the incredulous desperation that shaped my voice.
He lit another cigarette. Nora came and sat across from me, her presence emanating menace. I regretted that my outburst had aroused her attention. Not being able to see her well in the dark but sure she had a pistol in her hand, I cringed, and for one petrifying moment considered leaping to my feet and crashing into the jungle.
Because now I saw it. This band of guerrillas had condemned me. Vladimir was trying to know me better, question my motives, find the one fact that would convince the others of the truth in a last chance effort to save my life.
“Christ, Vladimir, I’m no spy.” My voice shook with a frenzied whimper.
“Your friend killed our comrade, and Carlito will probably die also.”
“We were trapped. Johnny did what he had to. You think I came into the jungle to hunt you down like James Bond or something?”
Vladimir floundered for a response. Nora, not liking Vladimir’s tone, snarled at him, then leaned in close to my face. Our eyes locked. Her twisted stare and my wide-eyed terror danced for a terrible moment like a black widow sexual entanglement. A hungry smile worked the corners of her mouth. Christ, she was glad the snake hadn’t poisoned me, that the jaguar hadn’t ripped me apart, because she wanted the pleasure of killing me herself. When she knew I understood her, she spit a glob of sticky mucus that hit my left eye, then scooted herself up and left.
Vladimir handed me a canteen, held out an oily rag to me. I waved him off and wiped my face with my T-shirt.
“So you see how she feels. Chaco doesn’t want you dead. You saved him without considering your own situation.” Vladimir let out a short laugh. “And he likes your gift of the naked woman pictures.”
I waited. He was giving me the verdict.
“I believe you should travel with us. I know about the protests against the Vietnam war in the USA. I think we could convert you to our cause.”
With my hope climbing, I tried to sound like I was sharing an everyday revolutionary act and said, “Last year I helped a North Vietnamese spy escape the FBI.” I needed Vladimir to believe I was practically a commie already, that I was an asset, that Fidel would love to meet me.
“You are full of surprises. Tell me about it.”
I did, peppering my story with the FBI’s questioning and surveillance photography of me, along with further diatribes against corporate powers and the war. When I finished, I hoped my voice hadn’t sounded too pleading, that I had come off as someone who took risks for the needy and the righteous all the time. I didn’t feel like a total fraud because I did believe in the ideals I expressed, but, in contrast to Orville’s obsession about me, I hadn’t been much of a social crusader. My art had always taken precedence in how I dedicated myself. My own mistakes and desires and being an actor in a nonsensical drama with a cast of otherworldly characters had been major distractions from building a better world.
“Look, Vladimir. I don’t live in the jungle fighting government troops, but I’m not hoping that corporations pulverize other nations just for money.”
“I will tell Ezequiel all you said.”
“Okay. Thanks, man.”
“He is an honorable man. He saw how you selflessly thought of Chaco. This behavior is meaningful to him. But, I have to tell you, he does not always listen to me.”
“Uh.” I was taken off-guard, disheartened by this admission.
“You see, he has been fighting for ten years in different jungles around the world. I am just a university student. I go to Berkeley in California. That is why I speak English and know of the anti-war movement. I am only here on my summer vacation.”
I took a long drag on my cigarette.
Fuck. A kindergarten revolutionary is presenting my case to Lenin’s protégé.
Chapter 19
Chaco offered me a hammock, and I awoke at dawn surprised to still be alive.
The tension in camp that day kept me wondering when a bullet would enter my brain. Carlito lay moaning and gasping. Nora and Chaco took turns mopping his brow with damp cloths. Ezequiel had a medical kit and filled a syringe with a medicine that knocked the cowboy out enough to stop him from constantly groaning in pain. To me, it was obvious that if Carlito died, so did I.
Pablo, the red-bearded rebel, took it on himself to hunch down in front of me every few hours, slide a lever on his rifle with dramatic relish, and threaten me by concentrating his twitching eye in my direction while the other weaved around chaotically. His theatrics were unnerving. I almost preferred the evil spit-in-my-face of Nora.
No one talked to me.
I sat in a patch of sunlight, thinking about dying, reflecting on my parents’ dedication to me and my sister Stephanie’s innocence.
I gulped back sobs, letting them turn to silent tears as I thought of the child Sam had probably already brought into the world. Too late, I’m too late to know you.
And Teresa was everywhere I looked. I’ll never touch you again. Maybe love... I hope, I believe… always exists, and you’ll feel mine for you again someday. I’m so sorry I ruined things for us this time around.
I had failed in so many ways.
Some nice drawings, that’s the one thing I did right. You did good, hand, but for what?
After watching the guerrilla band all day, I surmised my execution hadn’t been decided on yet. Ezequiel sat on a metal box, quietly studying a map. I wondered if he was a Cuban, a buddy of Che’s, sent to organize the revolution. How many other groups were scattered nearby? Or was this it? This band of terrorists trying to bring down the government consisted of a psycho woman, two sturdy, mos
t-likely poor and illiterate foot-soldiers in Pablo and Chaco, Vladimir on vacation, Carlito the practically dead cowboy, and their leader Ezequiel, a professional, proletarian believer of the cause, mud-caked and on the run for years.
I had a moment when the blessed part of my soul rushed through me, and I saw my would-be killers with unencumbered compassion. They were people with dreams and pain—breathing, thinking, screwing up, damaged, and demented—making their way through what the fates laid out for them. Could I forgive them for putting a bullet hole through my skull? I remembered the time in the ambulance after Brenda had stabbed me, and my entire existence had become a pure joyous flight towards a wonderful light. If that was death, well, then this jungle valley would be as good as any for a final resting place.
But my feeling of acceptance and peace was fleeting. Pablo came and knelt in front of me brandishing his weapon and rolling his eyes recklessly. Nora sat across the camp, her stare condemning me as she whipped a knife into the ground, pulled it out, then with another snap of her wrist, let the blade fly once more into the earth. She repeated the action over and over, watching me, not the knife.
So, on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum of that day, mostly my thoughts were buzzing with fear and worry as I spent anxious hours plotting my escape, imagining how to kill or maim everyone around me, horrified as I worked out details to slice Nora’s throat and fire point blank between Pablo’s eyes. Concluding I couldn’t survive a firefight against overwhelming odds, I strengthened my resolve to survive and assured myself I would slip back into the jungle the first chance I got.
That night, I woke up feeling my entire mind had disappeared, erased by a power that had permeated the camp. The blackness of the Shadow Creature’s presence was relentless, eclipsing the jungle’s own darkness with waves of its impenetrable energy rippling all around me.
“You are needed.” Its voice crossed eternity, erasing doubts, eliciting wonder.
The lightless void, a hole in the night, coalesced into a vaguely human shape.
I climbed from my hammock, sensing a rustling commotion of jungle life residing within the shadow itself. Plants and flowers grew, vines twisted, predators crept, prey bled. These mysteries moved in a harmonious dance, mirroring the rhythm of wings spreading and fluttering at the Shadow Creature’s shoulders.
It rippled its feathers, revealing a shimmer of stars hidden within them. The jungle nearby became illuminated, pulsing softly with blue, firefly-sized lights. I could see the encampment clearly. Each of my captors lay asleep in their hammocks. With the night’s magic holding me in awe, I felt like a phantom moving through their dreams.
The shadow stood near Carlito’s hammock. Its head was bent, facing down towards the wounded man. It raised one arm and pointed at Nora. Knowing instinctively why, I walked over and pulled Nora’s knife from a sheath on her belt. She didn’t stir.
The Shadow Creature touched my fingers. In that moment, I felt every secret of the universe was gifted into my right hand.
I became a ghost in another dimension.
Understanding what to do, I rummaged through Ezequiel’s medical kit and removed some bandages. Standing on the other side of Carlito, I looked into the Shadow Creature’s face. For the first time, I saw its eyes. They had cried forever. It struck me Shadow Creature was condemned.
I’ve got to do what’s required.
I could see through the surrounding veil of sparkling blue light into Carlito’s body. There was a purple swelling beneath his skin on one side. The bullet had ripped through his stomach, clipped a kidney, and lodged itself in muscle. Blood pooled from a number of ruptured blood vessels hidden in a pulp of torn tissue.
Death swirled above him, ready to descend.
My right hand became warm, and the knife grew hot. Without thinking a logical thought, I sliced into Carlito’s side and pushed the knife in, cauterizing the infected wounds. Pus sizzled and evaporated. I poked my index finger into the hole and gently guided the bullet to the surface. Resting my hand on his stomach and side, searing heat tingled through my palms and fingers.
The disturbance circling above Carlito, no longer hungry for his soul, dissipated.
Then, suddenly, the Shadow Creature was gone, absorbing the blue lights and Carlito’s pain into its silhouette of nothingness. No longer in its spell, as if awakening from a distant world of sleep, I became conscious that I was standing over Johnny’s murderer, still in the night-time jungle guerrilla camp. The killer’s wounds were freshly bandaged, and he was breathing comfortably.
I dropped the knife and old bloody bandaging on the ground and climbed back into my hammock, pocketing the bullet.
I awoke to the commotion of Nora standing next to me with a pistol pointed at my head, Vladimir stumbling up behind her, startled and half-asleep while yelling over his shoulder to Ezequiel, who was coughing and hacking up wads of phlegm as he crossed the clearing. Nora waved her knife and a wad of bloody gauze strips in my face.
Chaco and Pablo soon added to the chaos, grabbing their guns as they awoke and aiming wildly in every direction until they understood the camp wasn’t under attack.
Then, as if it had come from a roar louder than the guerrilla’s combined riot of confusion, we all heard a weak voice. Carlito was asking for some water.
I looked into Nora’s eyes and saw she understood I had operated on Carlito, and he was recuperating. But her desire to hurt me still burned up her soul. That I had helped her comrade didn’t matter, she was so twisted in hatred of all things gringo. Turning away, she went to look once more at Carlito.
Vladimir said, “Deets, what did you do?”
“You tell that psycho chick to bug out and stay away from me, okay?”
“Carlito, he’s...? What happened?”
Ezequiel approached, looked sternly at me, then rubbed at his nose nervously and much too hard. He looked like someone had threatened him, and he didn’t know how to gain control of the situation again. He spoke to Vladimir quickly, demanding, but not harsh.
“Ezequiel wants you to ex—.”
I pulled the bullet from my ragged T-shirt pocket. Holding it between finger and thumb, I said, “You tell him it’s about time he trusts me.”
The communists stayed away from me most of the day, talking to each other in quiet murmurings.
Chaco and Pablo were twitchy. I had survived an attack by a mapanare, outrun a jaguar, saved Chaco from the poisoned Spam, and now operated on Carlito, the man who had killed my friend. I more than once heard the word curandero, and reading into their furtive glances, realized they believed me to be some kind of warlock.
After a few brief conversations with Vladimir, I figured that Ezequiel was wondering how a twenty-year-old artist could successfully operate on a dying man in a jungle in the middle of the night.
“Did you use a flashlight?
“Why did you not ask someone to help you?
“Why would you save the life of someone who shot your friend?
“Where did you train as a surgeon? Were you a field medic?
“How did you steal Nora’s knife without waking her? She is a very light sleeper—stealthy and very quick. Watch out for her, she feels humiliated by the theft.”
“She’s a nut. I didn’t try to get into her pants while she slept. I helped her comrade.”
“Yes, but—”
“Christ, Vladimir, I could’ve killed all of you.”
Two days later, Carlito was walking, trying his best to ignore me.
Over the following week, one of the revolutionaries took a shit under my hammock, Ezequiel returned my film and camera to me, Vladimir gave me daily Spanish lessons, and someone, I think it was Chaco, bent Nora over her hammock and fucked her during a nighttime downpour.
One evening, we ate fresh eggs and goat cheese. After Spam, powdered military rations, and mangos that tasted lik
e gasoline, the farm food seemed as manna sent from the gods. The next morning, Chaco, Vladimir, and I gathered all the canteens together and went to a nearby river to fill them. We stripped and bathed in the cold water while washing our clothes. I had little success laundering. Blood and jungle filth had stained a permanent pattern into the denim weave of my pants and jacket.
Sitting on a large rock while our rags dried, we were just three naked guys listening to the river roar. For a short while, the sun and sound swept away the realities of my predicament. When we returned to our enclave, I noticed a metal wire dangling from a tree limb. I guessed Ezequiel had a radio and had contacted Cuba while I was at the river.
I was living in an armed guerrilla camp in South America.
Chapter 20
I checked the community mirror every day. My face was covered with red bite marks and hives. The swelling under my eye had subsided, leaving a slightly caved-in cheekbone. Probing delicately, I deduced some bone must have been chipped or shattered, but it no longer caused me intense discomfort.
One afternoon, as I examined a minor infection on my lip, Chaco came up to me and playfully placed Nora’s beret on my head. He laughed, claiming I looked like a true revolucionario. Vladimir approached to tell me to take down my hammock. We were breaking camp.
Ezequiel ordered the community lean-to destroyed with the pieces scattered back into our surroundings. As we worked, Vladimir was teasing Chaco, embarrassing him about something I couldn’t follow. Finally, Vladimir interpreted the gist of his verbal jesting to me. “Chaco doesn’t understand how you have the photograph of the dead snake. He’s never heard of the instant camera and wondered how you developed pictures so fast after the snake attack.”
“Hey, man, I still have about three pictures left. I could show him.”
“I thought Ezequiel destroyed that film.”
“No, man, everything looked all right to me. Definitely still film in it.”
Vladimir called Ezequiel over, and I handed him the camera, showing him what button to push as he aimed. I stepped between Chaco and Vladimir to pose.
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