by Lou Cameron
“I guess so. How come they have to wall themselves in if there’s a police curfew after dark?”
Gaston laughed and said, “My more uncouth countrymen are inclined to scoff at regulations, which would seem to be how most of them got here. The inmates paroled here to the mainland as day labor are not under lock and key after dark, but, of course, consider themselves imprisoned and, naturally, want out! The discussion about the surrounding country that we just had is the reason they can’t leave; unless, of course, they somehow obtain arms, money, and hopefully a boat. The droll situation makes for a tendency to lock one’s door after dark, if you have anything of value to worry about.”
Gaston suddenly touched the tall American’s sleeve and murmured, “Ah, see what I mean?” as Captain Gringo, too, spotted the six or eight dim figures in the gloom ahead.
They were on a lane running along the back wall of the housing on the edge of town. To their left, the country seemed open fields of something soggy. The guys blocking their route north-east had to be dressed in white to be as visible as they were. He could see by the way they were standing, warily, that they’d spotted him and Gaston, too.
He asked the Frenchman, “What’s the form?” and Gaston replied, “We could go back the way we came and hope they could not run as fast.”
“Don’t like that, much. We’ve both got guns.”
“Oui, but guns make noise and attract the attention of the police, who, I gather, you are not anxious to discuss our affairs with?”
Captain Gringo nodded and answered, “Yeah, we’d better just bull on through ’em and hope for the best. If they had arms enough to matter they wouldn’t be prowling around out here. They’d be trying to escape the colony, right?”
“Merde alors, what do you mean arms enough to matter? If they have one gun between them we are in a sticky pickle, my old and rare. I wish I could break you of your stubborn streak. Come, let us scamper gaily back to safety, hein.”
“Safety where? I’m heading for that town to the north, Gaston. Are you in or out?”
Gaston swore and kept step with him as the tall American strode thoughtfully toward the line of prison inmates. The guys in the white pajamas waited, ominously. As the two parties got within earshot, one of the prisoners growled in French, “Well, well, what have we here, two sweethearts going for an evening stroll?”
“Listen, my children,” Gaston replied, “you are making a big mistake.” Another inmate said, “Let’s take them!”
Captain Gringo knew enough French to get the message and, even if he hadn’t, it would have seemed obvious that eight guys coming at you with sticks and homemade knives weren’t on your side. So he dropped into a club fighter’s crouch and, as he hoped, the first untrained street brawler walked into a sucker-punch wide open. Captain Gringo caught his roundhouse right on his own left elbow and decked him with a right cross as Gaston feinted with his small boney fists, rose on one toe, and kicked another one under the ear.
But this was a French prison colony and Gaston was not the only gutter-fighter from Paris who knew la savate. So the next guy coming at Captain Gringo tried to kick his face off.
But Captain Gringo knew from watching Gaston how la savate worked, even though it wasn’t his usual style. He grabbed the attacker’s ankle in both hands, holding him in the position of a can-can dancer caught in mid-air, and brought his own mosquito boot up to kick the son-of-a-bitch in the wide open groin before dropping him like a used contraceptive, with just about that much fight left in him.
Meanwhile, Gaston had put another on the ground with a well-aimed kick and the survivors were dropping back to think things over. The one who’d started the conversation had held back to see how easy they’d be as he let his less experienced pals find out the hard way. But the leader of any gang is supposed to know his onions and anybody can suggest a hasty retreat. So the boss bully grinned piratically at Gaston as he drew something that glittered in the dim light, saying, “Well, well, well, I see we have a prima ballerina dancing for us tonight, boys. Where did you learn la savate, my little beauty?”
Gaston said, “Somewhere between the Left Bank and Place Pigale, you cocksucker. Do you wish to continue this lesson or have you had enough?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough. How good are you with a knife, Left Bank? Just you and me, man-to-man?”
Gaston laughed, “Oh, I have always wanted to duel like a student prince. Stay out of this, Dick. But cover me in case we are not among gentlemen, hein.”
Captain Gringo reached under his jacket and drew his snub-nosed .38. A more sensible member of the gang blanched and said, “Hey, mais amis, this is getting serious! Why didn’t you guys tell us you were able to take care of yourselves? We thought you were tourists! Drop it, Marcel! The wise fox hunts the rabbit, not another fox!”
But Marcel, if that was the leaders’ name, shook his head and insisted, “Left Bank and me have a deal. Isn’t that right, Left Bank?”
Gaston said, “If you say so. But I strongly suggest you listen to your friends.”
Marcel’s answer was to move in, crouching over the blade held between him and the dapper Gaston as he said, “You’re too cute to live. Where’s your blade, Left Bank?”
“God preserve me from ignorant children,” Gaston snorted. “He asks to see my blade. Can you believe it?”
And then Gaston sort of toe danced into Marcel in a bewildering blur and as the bully slashed wildly in the faint tricky light, he suddenly gasped in numb surprise and muttered, “Oh, no!” as Gaston held him on his feet with one arm, holding him in a tight bear hug, while his other hand gripped the hilt of the knife he’d driven into Marcel’s lower chest just under the ribs. Marcel’s own blade dropped to the dirt behind Gaston as the bully tried to say something more. But he couldn’t say anything. Gaston could feel the pulse beats with his own knife handle as they faded away. So he let go, stepped back, and quietly asked, “Anyone else?” as Marcel crumpled at his feet, dead.
There were no takers. The first man Captain Gringo had clobbered sat up, holding his head as he asked, “Jesus, what happened?” One of his pals came over to help him up, muttering, “Marcel just made a mistake. We’ve got to get out of here before the police find his body. I’m already doing twenty-to-life and I don’t need anymore.”
He saw Captain Gringo looking at them thoughtfully and asked, “Is that all right with you, M’sieur? We just want out!”
Captain Gringo nodded and Gaston said. “We’ll be on our way while you revive the others and get them back for bed check. If I were you boys I’d hide the late Marcel somewhere; but one sees you seldom listen to your elders, so—”
“M’sieur, we are listening!” another cut in, adding, “How were we to know you were an old Apache? Listen, if you guys need a gang, you just showed this one you know the way it’s done!”
There was a mutter of agreement. Gaston noted, “They want to join up with us, Dick? What do you think?”
Captain Gringo said, “Fuck ’em. Who needs half a dozen guys who can’t take on two? Let’s get out of here. We have enough on our plate without a bunch of sissies tagging along!”
~*~
Gaston had been right about the mangrove swamps. The way north-east from Cayenne had been open field and cultivated plantation for the first few hours. But long before sunrise the trail they were following petered out against a drainage ditch and all they could see on the far side was black as pitch. The night was moonless and the trades had even blotted out the stars with cloud cover. Captain Gringo pulled a clump of dead weeds from trailside, twisted it into an improvised torch, and lit it with a match. The weeds were soggy and gave a dull flickering glow, but he could make out the stilt roots of mangroves growing out of water and wet inky goo on the far side. A couple of big red eyes were gleaming in the torchlight from the drainage ditch, not moving as they stared unwinking at the light. He grimaced and said, “Cayman or crocodile over there. I can’t tell which, but it’s a big one.�
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“Oui” Gaston said, “I see it. Tell me, my old and rare, is there any important difference between a cayman and a crocodile once it has you in its jaws?”
“Only to a zoologist. I think we could jump that ditch, if there was anything on the other side to jump to.”
“Merde alors, one does not jump into a mangrove swamp. I told you this would happen, Dick. What do we do now?”
Captain Gringo held the torch higher as he stepped away from the cayman infested water. He looked around and said, “We’re miles from town and nobody seems to be chasing us. What are those little bushes doing all around us, Gaston?”
“They are growing there, of course. What else would you have pepper bushes do?”
“Yeah, I heard about Cayenne pepper. Okay, if somebody planted them, somebody must live around here. We’re out too far for prison labor, so the owners of these fields are probably simple country folk and I don’t think there’s an alarm out on us.”
Gaston glanced up at the soggy sky and observed, “I, too, see the advantages of a roof over one’s head. But we had that back in town before you proceeded to gallop off through the night.”
“Shelter is the least of our worries, in this climate,” Captain Gringo said. “What I want is a boat. Between all these drainage ditches and the sea just over to our north-east, some villager or small holder might have a dugout or something we can use. How much could he charge us for a lousy dugout, right?”
“Not much, and if he tries we can always shoot him. But I hope you are not planning to paddle by those mangroves in a dugout, Dick.”
“Why not? It beats walking through that bowl of soggy spinach.”
Gaston sighed, “Correct me if I am wrong, but is that not the Atlantic Ocean to our right?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Let me break this to you gently, my old and rare. Atlantic Oceans are not places one should paddle dugouts. The trade winds have had the width of a tropic sea to pile up breakers and one does not like to consider, having to swim in warm shark-infested water even when it’s not coming at one two stories high!”
Captain Gringo said, “Look, there’s a path leading through the peppers. It has to lead somewhere, so let’s give it a go.”
He tossed the torch in the ditch to fizzle out as he headed through the waist-high peppers with Gaston following Indian file, bitching as usual. The tall American in the lead had to navigate as much by feel as by sight in the almost total darkness; but once he was used to the trail he was able to stay on it most of the time. They followed it nearly an hour and Gaston was starting to make unfortunate sense as he complained they were obviously lost. Then Captain Gringo spotted a glimmer on the horizon and, since there were no stars out that night, said, “Hey, I see a light. Looks like the window of a house. So keep it down and follow me.”
The farmstead was further away than it looked, but as they trudged on, the light indeed resolved itself into a square window with a coal oil lamp burning inside a frame dwelling with a corrugated iron roof. Captain Gringo drew his gun and murmured, “Watch your legs. There might be a watch dog and when they don’t bark they come in biting.”
Gaston drew his own gun, saying, “I hear something. But not a dog barking.”
Captain Gringo heard it too, and couldn’t figure out what it was. It sounded like someone in the house was beating wet laundry on a rock, which seemed reasonable. But whoever was doing their primitive laundry at this hour seemed to be moaning a lot about it.
He stepped off the path into the peppers growing almost to the beaten earth of the yard, trying to get a better view through the mysterious open window. He could see movement, now. Something was casting a repeated blur of shadow on the far wall. He kept going and the moans and sounds of wet slapping grew louder as he moved in.
And when he was close enough to see inside, he stopped and muttered, “What the hell?” as Gaston joined him. They could both see a quartet of roughly dressed men in there, giving an old man and a girl a hard time. The girl was in her late teens or early twenties, with features of a pretty mestiza of White and Indian blood. One of the men was holding her from behind, twisting an arm up in back of her. One of her breasts had popped out of her thin cotton blouse above a clean but ragged peon skirt. Her long black hair swished like a horse’s main in the face of the grinning lout holding her as she struggled to get free.
The old man was being held face down across a simple plank table, bare to the waist. One of the slobs was beating him slowly and methodically across the back with a riding quirt. The reason it sounded sloppy was because the old man’s back was already a red hash and the quirt was soaked with his blood.
Gaston nudged Captain Gringo and whispered, “Stay out of it, Dick.”
“Jesus, do you know what’s going on?”
“Oui, they seem to be having a dispute about his rent. Nobody but a … how you say … share cropper would be dwelling in such a little shack, and it may be he’s been late delivering his share to the landlord. Those thugs are the usual bully boys one encounters in backward rural communities, hein?”
Captain Gringo growled low in his throat as the man holding the girl noticed the exposed breast and began to paw it, trying to nibble her ear from behind as she struggled with him. Gaston said, “We can’t change the way it’s always been, Dick.” The hell of it was that Captain Gringo knew Gaston was right. He’d promised himself not to get mixed up in any more crusades after learning many times, the hard way, that the little people down here could act just as dumb as the big shots. He’d told himself that was probably how they’d gotten to be little people in the first place. Even those Ashanti slaves had had sense enough to buck the system, damn it!
The man doing the beating stopped, maybe to catch his breath, and Captain Gringo was getting used to the local creole enough to follow the drift as the bully asked his victim, “Well, old man, have you had enough?”
The badly beaten man raised his head from the planks and croaked, “More than enough, if I had what you are looking for! But I swear to God I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
The torturer raised his quirt, grimaced at the awful mess he’d already made, and lowered it. He nodded at the ones near the girl and said, “All right. They want to be stubborn. Let’s work her over, eh?”
The one holding her asked, “Can I fuck her first, Boss? It’s not much fun when they’re all bruised and bloody.”
The boss shrugged and said, “Sure, why not? We can all fuck her! We’ve got plenty of time.”
Then Captain Gringo stepped over to the window, nodded pleasantly, and said, “You’re wrong. I’d say your time just ran out;’
There was a collective gasp as all four of the ruffians went for the side arms they wore. The girl broke free and darted to the old man, throwing herself down on him. As long as there was a free field of fire, Captain Gringo started using it!
He shot the boss and sent him crashing into the far wall with a look of horror in his dying eyes. Before the boss slid all the way down the planks, Captain Gringo had dropped two more and the fourth was cringing in a far corner, hands reaching for the rafters as he gibbered in fear and pleaded, “No, not me! I meant no harm!”
He was the one who’d suggested raping the girl. But Captain Gringo held his fire as he cocked a leg over the sill to join the party. The girl raised her head from the old man’s back. Her cheek was covered with his blood. She stared numbly at Captain Gringo, Who smiled and pointed his muzzle at the last man on his feet, saying, “It’s up to you, señorita.”
The girl hissed like a cat, turned and bent to pick up the bloody quirt, and advanced on the cringing bully as Captain Gringo came inside, still covering him. The girl bared her breast with her free hand, saying, “You admire this, eh? Take a good look, you bastard! It’s the last thing you’ll ever see!”
She meant it. The quirt lashed out and caught him across the eyes, tearing one from its socket and not doing the other a hell of a lot of good. The wou
ld-be rapist screamed and fell sobbing to the floor on his knees with his hands to his bloody face. By this time Gaston had come in more sedately by way of the front and only door. He started to ask the girl what was going on, but the blinded man was screaming too loud for anyone to hear, so Gaston stepped over to him, placed the muzzle of his pistol against his skull, and blew his brains out. As the body thudded quietly to the dirt floor, the girl asked, “Why did you do that? I wanted him to suffer!”
“We noticed,” Captain Gringo said, as he stepped over to the old man still sprawled across the table. He was in bad shape and belonged in a very well-staffed hospital. But he raised his head, groped for Captain Gringo’s free hand, and pressed it to his bruised lips before saying, “If there is a just God in Heaven, he shall reward you for this, my son. You and your brave comrade arrived just in time. They were about to—”
“We know what they were about to do, old timer,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “Can you move your legs?”
“My what? I seem to be able to move them, now that I try. I fear I am not well enough to rise without help, though.”
Captain Gringo put a hand on one of the few places the quirt had missed as he soothed, “You stay just as you are until we can patch you up.” Then he blinked and marveled aloud, “Hey, we’re speaking English.”
The old man said, “Of course. You spoke English when you called out to them from the window. For a moment I thought you were the U.S. Marines, but, personally, I think you do a better job!”
~*~
The old man didn’t make it through the night. The shock would have done in many a younger, stronger man, and he’d been seventy-eight when they started beating him to death. They knew this because he lasted long enough to tell his tale while they tried to help with rough first aid as his life ebbed out of him between their fingers.