Diego, Run!

by Deborah Ellis

  ‘Remember, lad, there’s nothing in this jungle that you can’t eat, or that won’t eat you. A jungle is one big feast. Just make sure you’re on the eating side of the table!’ He pulled Diego to his feet. ‘Now, pick up those packets. Can’t have the profits flung all over the jungle.’

  Diego scrambled after the packets while the gringo lectured Rock and the others on their stupidity and inefficiency. One of the packets was right by the gringo’s feet. Rock strutted, but this man stood, solid and confident. Diego noticed a gun in the holster hanging from his hip.

  As quickly as he could, he picked up the packet and added it to the stack on the table, then joined the other boys, sound asleep on the soft, empty coca sacks.

  TEN

  When Diego opened his eyes, he was staring right at the gringo’s thick-soled jungle boots. He was also staring at the butt of a rifle.

  ‘On your feet, lad. Let’s go shoot some dinner. What’s your name?’

  ‘Diego.’

  ‘Well, Diego, call me Smith. These fools have ordered the wrong amount of sulphuric acid, and we won’t be able to get any more until tomorrow, so tonight, we feast. How’s the arm?’

  Diego’s arm was better, but Smith didn’t seem that interested in an answer. He kept talking.

  ‘When we get back with dinner, we’re going to have a little lesson on hygiene in the field. Just because we’re in the jungle doesn’t mean we’re animals, right? Hop to it, lad. One of God’s creatures is about to die.’

  Diego looked around for Mando. He didn’t want to go off by himself with this large man with a large gun. But Mando was lighting a cigarette for Rock and not looking up.

  Fine, Diego thought.

  ‘I’m coming,’ he said to Smith.

  To his surprise, Diego actually enjoyed himself. They headed off down a trail he didn’t know, then they veered off the path. Smith pointed things out to him in a low voice, the way his father had taught him how to spread coca out to dry, or how to plant beans and potatoes.

  ‘I hope you’re not ashamed of fainting earlier, or of being afraid,’ Smith said. ‘Passing out is just our body’s way of giving us a rest, and any man who tells you he’s never afraid is a liar. The trick, Diego, is to make fear your friend. Learn to love it. Fear is better than food. Gets your heart pumping, makes you feel alive! I’ve been afraid for nearly forty years, and I dare you to find anybody who’s had a better life.’

  As they came to an opening in the trees, Smith put out his arm as a signal to stop. He pointed at the edge of a water-hole. A family of capybaras was taking a drink, their large, round brown bodies bent low over the water. Smith raised his rifle, took one shot, and the jungle seemed to explode. All but one of the capybaras sped off into the bush, and an ocean of birds rose from the trees, squawking. The sound was deafening, but it was exciting, too.

  ‘Hear that, Diego? Can’t find a noise that pretty in Manhattan. Come on!’

  The dead capybara was on the far shore of the little pond. Smith handed Diego the rifle. ‘Shoot anything that comes near me,’ he said, as he waded into the water. Diego raised the rifle like he had seen Smith do. It was heavier than he had imagined it would be. It made him feel bigger. He watched Smith heave the giant rodent over his shoulder and wade back.

  ‘Feels like a hundred pounder,’ Smith said. ‘I’ve seen them twice this size. Lead the way back to camp, Diego. Let’s see how good a tracker you are. See if you can find signs of where we’ve been.’

  Diego turned around. At first the jungle looked like a big green mess, a chaos with no pattern. Then he spotted part of a footprint in the mud, and some broken branches. Bit by bit, and with Smith’s occasional help, Diego led them back to the trail.

  At camp, Smith shouted out orders for firewood, for a spit to be built, and a pit dug for the carcass outside camp. ‘While you’re at it, dig some latrines. What distinguishes men from beasts? Toilets.’

  Diego and the other boys worked hard, but so did the men, who looked a lot less happy about it.

  ‘Go wash,’ Smith ordered. ‘I’m not feasting with a bunch of stinkers. Your smell will ruin the taste of the food.’ He made the men fetch water and clean clothes from among their own belongings so that the boys could wash theirs. Bars of soap appeared. ‘No excuse for being dirty,’ Smith said. ‘You can take a bath with half a cup of water if you have to.’ He kept up a steady stream of advice and orders while he skinned, gutted and butchered the capybara. The smell of roasting meat soon filled the camp.

  The sun went down, and everyone feasted. Boxes of chicha were passed around, and the capybara meat was tender and good.

  ‘This reminds me of Cambodia,’ Smith said. ‘Jungle just as thick, but even more deadly because it was crawling with Commies as well as snakes. Nothing like a feast in the jungle, enemies all around, death at every snapping twig. It’s like partying during the plague, the last meal before execution, that last cigarette before a battle. Is anything again ever so sweet?’

  Smith lapsed into silence, but only for a moment. ‘I envy you boys, just now discovering all the things I’ve grown used to. That freshness, that sense of wonder! Turning your backs on soft city living! I want you boys to get excited, to grab onto life with both hands!’

  Smith slapped Julio on the back in a good-natured way, but Julio almost fell over, even though he was sitting down. Smith didn’t notice. He kept on talking.

  ‘Even this is fancier than I’m used to. Try making heroin in the rainforests of Laos! Try escaping from a drug lord’s private jail in Afghanistan! Oh, the things I’ve done to keep my countrymen stoned and stupid. Even given up my name. Do you know the story of Rumpelstiltskin?’ Smith kept talking without giving anyone a chance to reply. ‘Ugly little dwarf, spun straw into gold. Well, that’s what I’m doing here. Weeds into gold, lads. Weeds into gold.’

  ‘Coca is not a weed,’ Diego spoke, his mouth acting before his brain, again. ‘Coca is a gift to the Inca and the Aymara from Pachamama, from Mother Earth, to keep us well and strong.’

  ‘Ah, local myths and legends. I respect that. Now here’s one for you. Comes straight from the mouth of our Lord. A man had three sons, gave them each a gift. The oldest son tripled the value of that gift, the middle son doubled it, and the youngest son buried his in the ground. Your people have had the gift of coca for thousands of years, and what have you done with it? Chewed it and made tea. First the Spaniards fed it to you so that you could work without complaint or pay in the silver mines of Potosí, and now we gringos have turned it into an empire, the Empire of Cocaine. Weeds into an empire. Straw into gold. No wonder we run the world.’

  Smith kept talking, switching from cocaine to running guns in Nicaragua, to killing people in places Diego had never heard of. Diego left the fire and lay down out of Smith’s eyesight. Mando joined him.

  They lay quietly for a moment, listening to Smith drone on and on, like the woman in prison who always talked to herself.

  ‘He’s loco,’ Diego whispered.

  ‘Sure, loco, but also rich,’ said Mando.

  Diego turned his back to his friend and tried to sleep. He wanted to dream about kind people, so that he wouldn’t forget that they still existed.

  He awoke during the night to a strange sensation around his ankles—kind of a tickling and kind of a nibbling. He put his hand down to scratch, then sat up with a start.

  Bats were crawling around him, on feet that were not really feet. They joined other bats, feeding on the legs of the boys.

  Diego sprang to his feet and waved them away. Bat wings filled the air. Diego went from boy to boy, wiping away trickles of blood and covering their bare legs with any bits of cloth he could find.

  ‘Vampire bats,’ a soft voice said. Smith was wide awake, sitting alone in the dark, watching the boys sleep, watching the bats feast. ‘Just like Dracula.’

  Diego lay back down, close to his friend. Mando was whimpering in his sleep. Diego put his arm around him, to protect them both from the mo
nsters of the night.

  ELEVEN

  ‘What happens to that?’ Diego asked the next morning, nodding at the stack of foil packets on the table.

  ‘None of your business,’ snarled Rock.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ Smith said. ‘Diego is a smart kid. Maybe he wants to learn the business.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Diego said.

  ‘Good answer. Don’t give a lot away. These packets get taken to a laboratory outside Bolivia, where the paste is further refined and turned into that white powder that my countrymen are so eager to shove up their noses. And all along the way, people get rich.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Diego said.

  ‘Drugs are the way to do it,’ Smith said. ‘Drugs buy guns, guns buy people, and when you buy people, you can buy power.’

  ‘Power for what?’ Diego asked.

  ‘For whatever you want. Isn’t there something you would like?’

  ‘He’d like to get his mommy and daddy out of prison,’ Rock said in a mocking voice, but that was exactly what Diego did want.

  ‘With enough power, you can buy your own prison,’ Smith said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to lock away your enemies? With enough power, you can even buy a president.’

  ‘A president of Bolivia?’ Diego had a vague image of a man in a suit. What would he do with a president?

  ‘Not Bolivia. The campesinos are too organised here. Every time they don’t like something, they protest and shut the country down. No, you’d want to buy a president of a country where people are too poor and too scared to know what’s going on, or too rich and busy watching television to care.’

  Smith looked at his watch. ‘Supplies should be coming in soon.’ He took two of the men and went down a trail.

  There was cold rice and leftover meat for breakfast Diego scooped some food onto a palm leaf and joined the other boys. They were staring at something on the ground. Diego looked, too.

  A parade of ants was going by. Each one carried a leaf five times its size. Julio put a rock in their path. The ants were confused for a moment, then continued on their way.

  The boys watched the ants for awhile before they turned back to their food. Smith had ordered the men to be sure the boys got enough to eat, and to let them drink whenever they were thirsty.

  ‘We’ve got gringo legs,’ Roberto said, ‘and hands.’ The chemicals were bleaching the natural brown colour out of their skin, leaving a washed-out white. White and red, actually, because of the blisters and sores that stood out against their pale, wrinkled skin.

  ‘You’re spending a lot of time with Rock,’ Diego said quietly to Mando. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘He’s got it all,’ Mando said. ‘Money, power. He takes orders only from Smith, and one day he’ll be even richer than the gringo. He’s a good guy. You should give him a chance.’

  ‘These are not nice people,’ Diego said. ‘Rock is like a bully in the prison, and Smith is like a prison guard.’

  ‘They’re businessmen, tycoon, just like you and me.’

  ‘We are not like them!’

  ‘Well, maybe we should be!’ Mando replied. ‘Who would you rather be like—these guys?’ He jerked his head at the glue boys, who moved from smoke to sleep. ‘Like our parents, stuck in a cage? Or like Smith and Rock? They have money. If we stick with them, we’ll have money, too.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any money yet,’ Diego said. ‘You said we were going to get rich on this job. Well, the job is half over. I’d like to know just how rich I’m going to be.’

  The other boys were listening. They wanted to know about the money, too.

  ‘They’ll pay us when they’re ready,’ Mando said, but he didn’t sound so sure.

  ‘Go ask them when that will be. Rock is such a good guy. Go ask him.’

  ‘All right. I will.’ Mando got to his feet. Diego went with him.

  Rock was sitting at the table with the other men, drinking chicha.

  ‘Excuse me, Rock,’ Mando said, keeping his voice casual. ‘My friends and I were wondering about our pay.’

  ‘What about it?’

  Mando didn’t seem to know what to say next.

  ‘Well,’ Diego said, ‘we want to know how much we’ll get, and when we’ll get it, and when we’re going back to Cochabamba.’

  Rock lit a cigarette. ‘You want to know how much you’re getting. You don’t ask about how much you owe us.’

  Diego was stunned. ‘We don’t owe you anything!’

  ‘Ten days of food and shelter, transportation from Cochabamba, and all that coca paste you’ve smoked. Somebody has to pay for that.’

  Diego looked around for the other boys. He wanted them to join him. He wanted to feel backed up, even if they didn’t say anything. But they stayed where they were. Even Mando had taken a step back.

  ‘How much are we getting?’ Diego asked again.

  ‘We’ll have to figure that out, won’t we? How much do you think you are worth?’

  The other men joined in. ‘Prison trash asking about their wages? How much did you sign on for, boy?’

  At that moment, Diego realised his grave mistake. As a taxi, he never took a job before settling on what it would pay, and what exactly he would have to do. He’d leapt into this job blindly, without even thinking to ask.

  ‘We were promised good wages,’ he said. ‘We would like those wages now, whatever is coming to us up to this point. You can pay us the rest when the job is done.’

  ‘You’re after my money, aren’t you, smart boy, just like I said you would be.’ Rock stepped forward and pointed his gun at Diego’s head. Diego saw Smith and the other men come back into the clearing, loaded down with containers of chemicals.

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ Diego stressed, keeping his voice calm. ‘I just want my money, what I’ve earned, what we’ve all earned.’

  ‘And what do you think you’ll spend it on, out here in the jungle?’ the men laughed.

  ‘We’d just like to have it, you know, because we’re boys, and we’d like to pretend we’re rich.’ I am not a threat to you, Diego told them in his mind, but neither am I going to back down.

  ‘You’d like to pretend you’re rich.’ Again, the idiotic laughter.

  Diego smiled and looked back at the other boys, to get them to smile as well. ‘You know, like we’ll all buy bicycles and fancy clothes and ride around Cochabamba looking like big shots. We want to impress the girls.’

  The men laughed again. Some made obscene gestures. Diego pretended not to notice.

  He spoke over their laughter, as friendly and as respectful as he could be. ‘So, if it’s all the same to you, we’d like our money now.’

  The firmness in Diego’s face and voice stopped their laughter.

  ‘We don’t have your money now,’ Smith said. ‘First we sell the coca paste. Then we pay you.’

  Diego saw all kinds of problems with that. Would the boys have to hang around the jungle until the paste was sold? How long would that be? Would they have to keep paying for their food and shelter while they waited? If they went back to Cochabamba without being paid, would the men come to the prison to pay them?

  No, it was no good. He was a businessman. He’d lost his mind for awhile, but he had it back now, and he wasn’t about to be lied to.

  ‘He has money,’ Diego said, nodding at Rock. The barrel of the gun came closer. ‘He paid the farmers, and he can pay us. You can pay him back when you sell the paste.’

  ‘The cocaleros are organised,’ Rock said. ‘They have a union. We have to pay them. You have nothing. You are nothing. We could shoot you, dump you in the jungle, and by dawn your bones would be stripped clean. Nobody knows where you are, and no one will care if you disappear.’

  ‘And you would lose a good worker,’ Diego said. He was way beyond being scared. Rock could easily carry out his threat, and that would be that. Diego could meet that fate a lot more easily than he could go back to his mother empty-handed. ‘It would not be good bus
iness. Good business is when everybody wins.’

  ‘Put the gun down,’ Smith said to Rock. ‘We are not generally in the business of shooting boys. We are in the business of making cocaine. You’ll have your money when the work is done and we decide to pay you.’ He turned away, barking orders about where the chemicals should be stored.

  Diego went back to the other boys. He was still alive, but there was no money bulging in his pockets. The others started sweeping the old coca leaves into the jungle. They didn’t look at him. Not even Mando would look at him.

  Diego didn’t have any money, but he did have answers. They just weren’t the answers he wanted.

  And the worst part was that it was his own fault.

  It was time to stop being so stupid, and time to start being a taxi again, watching for dangers, watching for opportunities, and watching for his chance to come out ahead.

  TWELVE

  The more attention Diego paid, the more he noticed. It helped that Smith had them stomping coca during the day, too, with just a couple of hours of rest between refilling the pits. It meant that Diego was awake during the day to see things.

  He noticed that men came and went on different trails from the one he and the other boys took from the village. Some men were less tired and sweaty when they arrived, and their clothes were cleaner. That meant their trail must be shorter.

  All roads led somewhere. All trails would lead somewhere, too. That was the point of having a trail, to get from one place to another.

  He paid attention to the stream, which brought water to the camp and took away the chemical sludge from the paste-making. A stream, like a trail, went from one place to another. It was another way out.

  He noticed the packages of coca paste, tightly wrapped in foil, stacked neatly on a table. The pile grew every day.

  A wild, crazy idea began to take hold in his head. The more he tried to shake it loose, the more firmly it held on.

  ‘They’re not going to pay us,’ he whispered to Mando when they were both off in the bush gathering firewood. It was hard to have a conversation that wasn’t noticed or overheard.