by Ben Fountain
BOOM.
“Jesus Christ!” Sonny cried, ducking.
“Mortars,” said Hayden, unfolding a topographic map and orienting himself. Dr. Maung was at his side with sketchpad in hand, busily scanning the terrain with binoculars. Machine-gun fire began rattling in the middle distance.
BOOM BOOM, two explosions in quick succession. “What the fuck!” Sonny cried, ducking again. The impact was just amazing, like trash-can lids banging down on his ears.
“It’s farther away than it sounds,” Hayden said, giving Sonny a casual glance. Small-arms fire clattered in catchy snare-drum rolls, and after the next mortar rounds the only thing that Sonny really wanted to do was lie down in the grass and twitch for a while. The battle seemed to be happening on the next hill over.
“All right, Sonny,” Hayden said, “here’s the deal. We’re acquiring everything from the top of this hill down to the high-tide line. Our northern boundary”—he glanced at the map, then pointed to a distant saddle ridge—“is there, and our southern line runs somewhere along that valley. That’s around nine hundred hectares in all, which gives us more than enough area for a first-class destination resort. Dr. Maung, what’s your assessment?”
“Excellent,” announced the architect. With the binoculars at his eyes, sunglasses atop his head, he had a buggy, mutant look. “Is mined?”
“No mines that I’m aware of,” Hayden answered.
BOOM BOOM, the next bundle of mortar rounds left a tingly, empty feeling in Sonny’s balls. The helicopters were strafing the ridgeline now, guns nattering in the distance like band saws. Smoke drifted across the hilltop in rags and tatters, leaving a bitter aspirin taste in Sonny’s mouth.
“Merrill,” he observed with all the calm he could muster, “there’s a war going on out here.”
Hayden laughed. “You mean this never happened when you were on the Tour?”
“Well,” Sonny began, but he lacked the heart to finish.
“Relax, Sonny, everything’s under control. The good guys have the situation well in hand.”
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Sonny would have given all his hair for a beer just then. Instead he trailed after Hayden and Dr. Maung as they tramped around the hilltop surveying the country, Hayden expounding on the big-picture themes while Dr. Maung supplied the details. There would be dhoob grass on the fairways and serangoon on the greens, Harrison bunkers, Old Course hummocks and swales—they seemed to be working off a design anthology of golf’s greatest hits. “Tanks,” Maung kept saying, driving Sonny to despair until he realized that the doctor was talking about ponds. Or was he? Reality was doing a taffy-pull with Sonny’s brain, twisting his mind into gooey tag ends and strings, but something was happening here that went beyond mere madness. He could accept that either he was nuts or they were, fine, but this wasn’t how you went about designing a golf course. You brought in engineers, you brought in surveyors, you slogged through the muck of the forest primeval and mapped it out yard by tedious yard, but to stand up here and conjure holes out of thin air—no, this wasn’t real, this was a joke of some kind.
BOOM BOOM.
But maybe that’s what being crazy is, Sonny thought, it’s when everybody gets the joke but you. And if you slipped and let them know you didn’t get the joke, what then? A phalanx of helicopters thundered low overhead, stuffed to the skids with government troops. Flare smoke fumed around the crest of the hill, a candy-purple cloud with a toxic glow. Somewhere a two-way radio was ranting to itself.
“So what do you think?” Hayden had turned and was smiling at him.
“By God,” Sonny gushed, “it’s just gorgeous up here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better place for golf.”
“Sonny, I’m so glad you agree. What do you think about Maung’s idea for saucering the greens?”
“Hey, it works for me.”
BOOM BOOM BOOM. Sonny grinned, even made a suggestion or two. He might be nauseous and faint with nervous shock, but he could maintain, absolutely he could maintain, he could fake like his life depended on it. Presently they made their way up to the crest of the hill, where the generals and their aides were surveying the battle. General Myint lowered his binoculars.
“Are you happy, Mr. Hayden?”
“Yes, thank you, General, very happy. We’ve accomplished what we came to do.”
Billows of smoke were rising off the hills to the east, blotting the jungle like clumps of dirty soap suds. The helicopters kept making runs through the valleys, their heavy guns chattering in dense counterpoint. The rebels, whoever they were, were getting slaughtered—Sonny pulled himself together for a careful face-check, noting the bland, almost bored expressions of everyone around him. So maybe that was the joke, not being horrified. Pretending that all this was not simply good, but normal. Maybe you felt the urge to scream and rage around, maybe you even felt like that would be the normal thing to do, but you sucked it up and stayed cool. Because out here the critical thing was to play it straight. To go along, to get the joke. To concentrate, he realized with something like revulsion, on golf.
Two weeks later the Myanmar New Light announced the deal in a front-page story, Tesco’s acquisition of the drilling rights to Block Number 8. “A glorious transaction in which all patriots rejoice,” reported the New Light in its usual court-eunuch prose style. “In their wisdom the cherished leaders of our guardian Council have ensured the fulfillment of the People’s Desire.”
The monsoon season had begun, bringing deluges the likes of which Sonny had seen only in Biblical-epic movies. Banded kraits and pit vipers sought out the high ground of the greens; frogs choired outside Sonny’s window at night, serenading him like Mormons on a rapturous drunk. He passed the days hanging around the clubhouse, doing card tricks for the caddies, staring at the rain, and helping Tommy Ng with the pro-shop inventory, tallying up their stock of overpriced golf clubs and polo shirts. The opposition continued to ambush the clubhouse fax machine, their broadsides appearing at all hours of the day. SLAVE LABOR ON UNOCAL PIPELINE read the headline on one; someone had scrawled MURDERERS across the top.
“Is it true?” Sonny asked.
“Is what true.”
“Murderers. Slave labor.”
Tommy considered this as he shredded the fax into pencil-thin strips. “You know, Sonny, this is what I think. I think most days the truth is just another possibility.”
“Dear Girls,” Sonny wrote in his third postcard to Carla and Christie, “it is the monsoon season and it rains all the time, my dandruff is starting to turn green and yesterday I saw a guy with a bunch of animals, two of every kind ha-ha. I miss you miss you miss you and I love you this much, how far it is from here to Texas, that’s how much. Send towels, love Dad.”
Sonny supposed that he was depressed, or terrorized, or post-traumatically stressed, some condition of a dire psychological nature that was supposed to happen only to other people. He’d felt like this ever since his day at the war; that adventure was never totally out of his mind, and he found himself replaying it at various speeds and angles, trying to get at the slippery essence of it. Which was, he began to guess, a transaction of sorts, a meeting of the minds. The joke he’d failed to get. Once the shooting stopped they’d choppered over to the next hill and joined the generals for a tour of the battlefield. The rebel bodies had been placed at the edge of a clearing, eleven or twelve in all as best Sonny could tell, although “bodies” seemed much too civil a word to describe the things he’d seen up there.
Ground beef was more like it. Human roadkill. Blood sausage. What he dreaded more than anything was being dragged out there again, which was why, the few times he’d seen Hayden since, he hadn’t mentioned the resort. Several days after the Tesco announcement Hayden showed up again, late on a Tuesday afternoon when the rain had slowed to a stupefying drizzle. The course was too wet to play, but the range was open, and as Sonny filled a bucket of balls, he offered his congratulations on the Tesco deal. Hayden smiled and nodded, graciously
modest, then took his bucket and headed for the practice tee. Twenty minutes later McClure walked into the pro shop.
“Yo Sonny.”
“Hey, Kel.” McClure was wearing a coat and tie. He had the keening, bright-eyed quality of a dog about to be unleashed.
“Is Merrill still around?”
Within a moment, more or less, Sonny had organized his thoughts, figuring people like Kel just knew these things.
“Ought to be. He went up to the range a few minutes ago.”
McClure nodded. “Come on, Sonny. I want you to see this.”
They followed the stone path out to the practice tee. A couple of maintenance men were squeegeeing water off the putting green, the mist swirling around them like shower steam. Farther along they could see Hayden alone on the tee, methodically hitting balls. He stepped out of his hitting stance when he saw them coming.
“Kel. Sonny.” He took in McClure’s office clothes. “Something wrong?”
“Not at all,” said McClure, crossing the tee with a definite spring in his step. “I was just passing by, thought I’d congratulate you on your brilliant deal.”
“Oh, well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much for saying that, Kel.” Hayden smiled, the corners of his lips folding down as if to signify irony, indulgence. Surely he knows McClure is crazy, Sonny thought.
“Pretty soon you’ll be richer than Bill Gates,” said McClure.
Hayden chuckled, a feathery social sound. “I can’t say I’m unhappy with our compensation, but what really pleases me is seeing the deal come together, getting all the pieces to fall into place. For me that’s where the real satisfaction lies.”
McClure laughed. “I bet it is. But I was just wondering, what happened with the golf course?”
“The golf course.”
“Your development, the big course down in Dawei.”
“Oh, that.” Hayden frowned and looked away, gave his club a poky Bob Hope swing. Whenever any of them moved, the turf squelched underfoot like sloppy sex.
“Well, that’s on hold for now. We hit a few snags.”
“Oh my. Tell me about it, maybe I can help.”
“I really don’t think—”
“No, please. I insist.”
They were still cordial, Sonny noted hopefully. You could still pretend it was a normal conversation, though there was an edge to it, a nervy undertone like a key sliding back and forth along a wire. “Well, you know,” Hayden began, “we all run certain risks doing business here, it’s just the nature of the beast. Certain elements of society—how should I put this? What you’d call the gangster element, for lack of a better word. The people who make their living outside the rules. Still, you know, I thought we could deal with that. We took precautions, we thought we had the right people in place. But when we funded the purchase money into escrow…” His voice trailed off; he swiped the grass with a one-handed swing. “What can I say? The deal changed, but nobody told us. The bottom line is the wrong people got that money.”
“The wrong people,” McClure said in a bright voice. “Sonny, do you know who the wrong people are?”
Sonny shook his head. It was like an invasive medical exam, you just wanted it to be over.
“The wrong people, Sonny, those are the guys you and Merrill play golf with. The fucking wrong people were supposed to get that money.”
“That’s not what happened at all,” Hayden objected, trembling, his face turning pale and fierce—it was, Sonny thought, a fairly dead-on display of righteous indignation. “Absolutely not, this was a clean deal. We went over those funding instructions with a fine-tooth comb—”
McClure was laughing. He stood there with his hands on his hips and laughed at Hayden.
“—every step we took we had our lawyers sign off and I’ve got the documentation to prove it. Nobody can claim we weren’t dealing in good faith.”
“I’m sure that’s true, Merrill, I’m sure you jumped through all the hoops. I just wanted Sonny to know he was your window dressing. I think people should know when they’re being used.”
“Nobody used Sonny.”
“Right. You just hauled him out to a combat zone for his own good.”
“We contracted for Sonny’s services in good faith. And he was well-paid for his time, I might add.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true, Sonny did get a check out of it. Good for Sonny, but what about your investors, Merrill? What do you say in a situation like this, how do you make it up to them? Or, hey, maybe you already did. Maybe there’s a bigger picture I’m missing here.”
Hayden was curt. “Everyone understood the risks.”
“I bet they did.” For a moment it seemed as if McClure might grab Hayden’s throat, but then he laughed, a kind of bark like a chain saw starting up. “All right, I’m done. I think I made my point. Come on Sonny, I’m sorry I dragged you out here.”
But he wasn’t sorry, not really; he seemed quite pleased with himself as they started toward the clubhouse. Halfway down the path a thought occurred to Sonny.
“Should I give the money back?”
McClure laughed. “No, Sonny, you keep that money. I’d rather you have it than those assholes.”
Sonny was confused. “But aren’t I in trouble?”
McClure had almost stopped laughing, but this set him off again. “Nah, you aren’t in trouble, nobody’s in trouble. Look, I don’t give a damn how Merrill got that deal, I just don’t want him thinking he can pull that shit without me knowing. Unh-unh, not on my watch. That’s the one thing I won’t give him. Plus, you know, I sort of hate the son of a bitch.” With an amiable, stinging slap to Sonny’s back, McClure veered off toward the parking lot. “Later, pro, I’ll give you a call. We’ll get together sometime and hack it around.”
Sonny walked into the pro shop with the dazed air of a man trying to remember where he’d left his pants. Tommy Ng was spinning a ball on the face of a sand wedge, a zen thing he could do for hours.
“Sonny, are you okay?”
Sonny sat on the stool behind the counter. He still had his money, he still had his job—so why did he feel so bad?
“I think I’m going crazy,” he said.
Tommy popped the ball into his hand. “Oh, gee, for a second I thought it was something serious. Crazy, sure, that’s nothing, sooner or later everybody goes crazy around here.” Tommy waited a couple of seconds for Sonny’s comeback; when nothing happened he spoke again, more gently now.
“Hey Sonny, you want a beer? It’s almost Happy Hour, why don’t we go get a beer.”
“Yeah,” Sonny said. He was trying to reconcile the two pictures in his head, his daughters side by side with crazy McClure. Why he’d think of his kids just now he couldn’t say, but the pain of their absence seemed to have a different feel—like a tumor in his gut? Like he wasn’t allowed to hope. Outside it had started raining again. Back in the locker room the generals were playing cards. Sonny stared at the rain and decided he would never understand anything.
“Sure,” he said to Tommy. “Let’s drink a beer.”
Bouki and the Cocaine
Syto Charles saw the go-fasts before anyone. They started coming in the spring after the peacekeepers left, always at night, always running very fast, spearing out of the south with a shrill, concussive roar that he didn’t take for anything but trouble. Soon every Haitian on the southern coast knew about the boats from Colombia, how they crossed the sea in ten bone-crunching hours with the payloads of cocaine and gangster supplies that their partners on the Haitian side needed to set up shop. Michelet, the police chief of Marigot, could be heard on the air six times a day denouncing this new and barbarous threat. “Anyone with informa tion should please inform us,” he woofed on Radio Lumière, his voice deep but warbly, lacking tonal weight. “We need every citizen’s vigilance to help us fight this terrible scourge.” Planes came and went from Jacmel at all hours of the night, the planes, people said, that were hauling the drugs to America. Rival gangs were shooting
it out in Port-au-Prince, while in the mountains above the capital, Miami-style mansions were crowding out the farms.
“Ah-ha,” said Lulu, watching a go-fast pass a quarter mile off their bow, streaking south through the soupy predawn light. Syto’s younger brother Louis was a strapping man in the prime of life, by nature both happier and more caustic than Syto. The same gracefulness that made him attractive to women also made him a first-class hand on the boat, though lately he’d been calling himself an artist and had grown increasingly slack about catching fish. “So those are the bums who are ruining the country.”
Syto was kneading a piece of coral out of one of their nets. “In case you haven’t noticed, the country’s already ruined.”
“They just come and go like that and nobody stops them?”
Syto frowned at the net. “You’re welcome to try.”
For a moment they watched the go-fast, an open-hulled flange with a low profile and three podlike heads tucked behind the windshield. Great rooster tails of foam vaulted off the stern; the boat was beautiful in the purplish gray light, beautiful in a cold, cruel, luminous way.
“Fout,” Lulu muttered, then with a bit more malice, “just look at that boat.” He glanced sourly over his shoulder at their own rig, a shallow-draft sloop with a bamboo mast and all manner of junk strewn about—nets, homemade oars, crumbling Styrofoam buoys, a sack of rocks for throwing at the occasional thief. “So how do they do it?” he asked. “They meet their guys on shore and pass it off?”
Syto shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. Sometimes they just leave it there.”
“They leave it there? They just dump it on the beach and hope their guys show up?”
“Well, on the rocks over at Bois Rouge. Up inside the cove.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yeah, sometimes in the mornings. I’ll go over there for chèvrèt and see the sacks up on the rocks.”
“Hell, man, why didn’t you pick them up?” Lulu was padding along the gunnel like a big cat; in a moment he had the tiller and was sheeting in the sail, the mast creaking as it cupped the wind.