Switcheroo

by Robert Lewis Clark

  “Well, that’s true, in a way. It is a mission of a kind. I will definitely be in hell if I can’t get this truck back to the States.”

  I peeked into the box. Two blanket rolls, bottles of water, peanut butter, crackers and oranges. Glancing at the water, I remembered the truck and its leak.

  “We're gonna need a lot more water. The truck is leaking coolant. Do you have a bucket?”

  Jake's mom left and came back with a small bucket. She spoke to Jacobo.

  “Mother says she would like to see the leak. She used to work on tractors and farm trucks before she moved to the city with father.”

  I trudged down the stairs behind Jacobo and his folks. The heat of the stairwell did not bother them. Their bodies sliced through the air as if it was, well, air, but the humidity pressed on me like a vise.

  The four of us emerged and followed the alley to the truck. My radar was up, scanning for any scary-looking banditos, but none were visible. Paranoia was healthy after the earlier events: grand-theft auto, shooting and what not. I struggled to be cordial since Jacobo and his folks knew nothing about all these events.

  Jacobo’s Mother opened the truck door and popped the hood. She swatted at the rising steam and squinted at the wounded motor. I peeked. Green coolant was oozing from a radiator hose, no doubt nicked by a bullet. She touched different hoses and spoke to Jacobo.

  “She say you do not need a heater in Colombia. She will take the hoses from the heater and use them to replace the radiator hose.”

  As I watched her, I was impressed with the street smarts of this woman. She removed the hose that lead from the heater core to the motor. She took the end of the hose that exited the engine and looped it back around to the engine on the other side, bypassing the heater core.

  “No more heat, see?” He said.

  I was drenched and dehydrated; dashboard heat in a vehicle in Colombia was the last thing on my mind.

  “It is low on fluid. Let’s get some water.”

  As his mom replaced the broken radiator hose, Jacobo and I brought two buckets to replace the coolant. No danger of the engine freezing. I noticed Jacob’s mother had removed the driver’s side door panel.

  I looked at Jacobo questioningly

  “She say trip to Turbo is very dusty. She is fixing window so we can keep dust out.”

  “Cool.”

  What a woman. I have got to find a lady like this. I wonder if Wendy Forsyth can work on a car.

  After the lugging of water to the truck and the hugging and the Spanish goodbyes, we were finally out of downtown and moving through the outskirts of Cali. The buildings were getting lower with some one story, single family homes mixed in. Strips of small stores became the occasional free standing neighborhood grocery. I had a plastic bottle of water and was sweating a little less going fifty miles an hour with the windows down, dust be damned. Jacobo was struggling with the truck’s plain-jane factory radio trying to find his preferred station.

  “This is a cheap radio, no satellite.”

  “You have satellite radio in your car?”

  “No. I do not have a car. But I still like nice radios.”

  Well, at least he appreciates the finer things. He settled on a pop station out of Cali and I tried to tune out the sound while Jacobo drummed his fingers on the top of the door, sometimes bobbing his head.

  After more than an hour the station was starting to snap, crackle and pop, and I was starting to fade, too. I received a jolt of temporary adrenalin when my head nodded forward. I snapped awake, swerving a little.

  “You tired, Padre?” Jacobo gave me a sideways glance.

  I nodded, I was beyond tired. Wiped out, I had been running on fumes from the stress of the shots fired and the worrying possibility of more shots to come. I would let Jacobo drive, I had to. Unable to continue I pulled over and changed seats with Jacobo. I have a vague memory of drooling onto the passenger seat for about thirty seconds, then nothing.

  Chapter 43

  I woke up with that ‘I-got-wasted-last-night-and-now-I-don’t-know-where-I-am’ feeling. The feeling took me back to college days (or maybe college daze) when a friend introduced me to a new liqueur that tasted like water and had flakes of real gold floating in it. The events of that evening began as a blur that faded to black. What I do remember was the next morning I awoke with vision that was tinged with gold and the hot sun burned my retinas and my skin as I was lay naked in a puddle of vomit on the campus tennis courts.

  The feeling was the same, but now I was squashed down on the seat of Tammy’s Ford Ranger and looking up into bright halogen lights. The truck was inside. Jacobo was gone; I was alone in the truck. This was all wrong. The pain of kinks and cramps shot down my neck into my back and hip. Too much discomfort for this to be a dream. I moved to sit up, and then froze. I could hear voices. I looked up again. I was in a school gymnasium.

  I was in a panic. I looked at the clock. The green LCD read-out glared: 3:18. I took a breath of the dank air. I noticed the truck windows were closed. According to William Madison, this sealed the deal and opened the way for the previously stalled teleportation. Where was I?

  Now that my mind had cleared, I could hear voices talking loudly and footsteps approaching. With my left foot, I mashed the button to lock the driver’s side door. I locked the passenger door with my left hand. I knew what I had to do. My right hand tore into my pocket. No keys. Jacobo had them. I dropped the glove compartment door and tore through it, finding a click pen. I opened it and sat up. I saw Partee, Slink and too other guys approaching from the stage of what appeared to be an abandoned school gymnasium. I jammed the pen into the clock set button on the trucks dash. The digital read-out began speeding ahead. It felt like trying to pump $50.00 of gas without going to $50.01. It stopped on 3:15 and I hit it two more times.

  I took a final look at my surroundings. A worn wooden basketball court. Purple and yellow everywhere. A mural of a mountainside and a purple panther painted on cinderblock wall over the bleachers.

  Partee jumped forward and pulled the door handle, tearing off the cheap chrome fixture. He tossed away the door handle and charged forward again. I waved at him as everything started to glow and crackle. I could see him right through the fingers of my waving hand as it was splintering to its basic atomic form. His face, twisting into a curse, disappeared as my retinas and optic nerves disintegrated and flushed down the wormhole with the rest of me.

  Chapter 44

  I came to and knew I was somewhere else. That was my second trip through the looking glass. I wondered if I was becoming farther removed from myself, after being copied twice now. Had the original me been destroyed in the process? These questions welled up and began to devour my mind like too many hot wings and beers on poker night. I shook off the questions and looked around. I was in the truck by the side of a dirt road. In the light of a camp fire to my right, I could see two men struggling. I opened the door quietly and looked into the truck bed for something heavy. Just as I decided that a soup can would not do the job, I remembered my Saturday Night Special. It was still tucked in at the small of my back. As I rushed forward, I yanked out the gun. I quickly identified the man that was not Jacobo and whacked him on the temple with the butt of the gun. As he fell to his knees, I backhanded him across the face with the barrel of the gun. He dropped with a puff into the roadside dust.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Si, Padre. Just scared.”

  Jacobo was on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  “Yeah, I can’t blame you,” I said, helping him to his feet.

  “What do we do now?” Jacobo said, holding his elbows and looking down at the bleeding redneck on the ground.

  “I think we just dump him at the nearest bus station,” I said; trying to make a new plan. “First, we need to roll the windows down on the truck before the same thing happens again.”

  Thirty minutes later. With Jacobo driving, we rolled into Medellin, the next big city along the way. �
��Cisneros Station’ said the sign on the huge train station.

  “The Metro,” He said.

  “That’ll do,” I nodded. This would do perfectly. He stopped in the drop-off lane behind a couple of sleeping taxi drivers. It was four in the morning, so we hit the flashers and parked out front. There were few people around, and no cops in sight.

  I paid a piss-bum ten dollars American for a two dollar bottle of cheap wine. Back at the truck, I pocketed the thug’s cell phone, took his wallet and removed the cash (close to five hundred dollars) and threw the empty wallet in the trash. I dumped the cheap wine liberally down his front. Then I threw one of his arms over my shoulder and pretended to help a drunken friend into the bus station. I set him down on a bench, and positioned him lying down with the wine bottle in his limp hand. To slow him down even more, I took his shoes. Jacobo watched all this in puzzled amazement.

  “You treat him bad, but he is a bad man. God works his mysterious ways, Padre.”

  “Yeah, remember I said I’m not really a priest.”

  Maybe now he would believe me.

  Chapter 45

  We skirted the big city of Medellin and made our way out to the country toward coastal Turbo, Colombia. We blew through small town after small town and a couple of large cities. Sometimes we were on divided four lane highways and sometimes small rural roads without even a yellow dotted line down the middle.

  It was dusk and I could see the amber lights of a smallish town through gaps in the trees. Jacobo told me that Turbo was a small port town; oppressed in turn by government, drug cartels and banana corporations. Almost no place in Colombia was completely safe. In some ways it was the most dangerous country in the world. It was number one in kidnapping and probably in the top five for murder. The wealthy, people with government influence and folks who were cogs in the drug distribution machine were the most common kidnapping targets. Jacobo had schooled me on Colombia in general, stating that most of its people were like him and his folks: hard working, good people who loved life.

  Being the smallest of the ports, Turbo was less regulated and I hoped my bribe money would go farther than in the larger shipping towns to the east. Theoretically, Turbo was perfect for me to sneak this truck back to America.

  As we sped toward the outskirts of town, a grayish flash ran in front of the truck. I jabbed at the brake pedal but heard a fleshy ‘thunk’ before I could stop. In the rearview mirror, I saw a pile that looked like a person lying in the road. I locked the brakes down.

  Jacobo and I burst out of the truck and ran back down the road. The motionless form of a boy lay on the dusty pavement. Lord, please let him be all right, I prayed mentally.

  I skidded to a stop and knelt next to him. He was shaking a little and his eyes were rolled back into his head. His blue shirt was dark with blood on one side. Blood and dirt were smeared down one leg. Just then several other small children ran up shouting in distress and accusation in Spanish. I ignored them and grabbed the boy’s wrist. There was a pulse, fairly even. But something else was wrong.

  “Ketchup?” I exclaimed. “I smell ketchup.”

  “Huh?” Said Jacobo.

  I swiped the boy’s leg and sniffed the ‘blood’. The smell conjured visions of Burger King. Now, not only was I pissed off about this prank, I was also hungry, thinking of Whoppers.

  “Juan Pedro?”

  “Si?” One little boy froze, eyebrows raised, mouth in a tentative circle, sort of an ‘oh shit’ face.

  Jacobo stepped forward and began lecturing the boy in loud Spanish. The boy looked down at his bare feet in shame. The others tried to look anywhere but at Jacobo.

  “This is my cousin Juan Pedro Martinez. My momma’s brother’s kid,” he said, frowning at the boys.

  One said a single word in Spanish and bolted, the others moved to follow. Jacobo reached out and grabbed his cousin’s shirt. The rest ran away, including the boy with the ketchup poured down his side and smeared on one leg.

  Gripping the back of the boy’s neck, Jacobo muscled his cousin to the truck, tough guy fashion. At about a hundred and thirty it was easy for him to bully his seventy-five pound relative.

  Knowing the boy would leap out of the truck bed at the first stop sign, Jacobo stuffed him into the cab between us. They talked back and forth as we cruised down the truck road toward Turbo. Jacobo talked to him like a dog that ate the newspaper and pooped on the rug. Still looking down, Juan mumbled replies.

  We drove through the rundown downtown area of Turbo with its network of power lines on leaning sun-bleached poles and local businesses marked by colorful, hand-painted signs. Jacobo had me turn onto a side street and we parked at the curb across from the coastal strip.

  This area consisted of a row of outdated office buildings, crummy bars and restaurants and cheap weekly apartments. A rough town. If you were here you were most likely stuck or you were on your way somewhere else. Leaving by boat was still safer than traveling through Panama, according to Jacobo. The early evening street was like a hot tunnel crowded with bicycles, motorcycles and trucks; all splashing through potholes filled with the afternoon’s leftover rainfall.

  In spite of being economically challenged, the city of Turbo had a beautiful view of the sea. To get this view you had to look north, averting your eyes from the shabby buildings, faded signs, and wilting piers of the city’s waterfront. Turbo was like a lady who looked sexy from the rear and ugly from the front. Jacobo spoke as we were parking.

  “Juan Pedro knows a boy whose father is a Captain. He thinks the boy’s father will help us. He has a fishing boat. It is old, but big enough to hold the truck. We can lower it into the hold using a winch and a fishing net,” I nodded, this sounded so easy.

  “Okay, let’s go see the Captain.”

  Following him made me feel quite out of place. I tried to carry myself like the priest I wasn’t but I felt like I was wearing a bull’s-eye and a sign that said “call me gringo, stab me and take my money’.

  For a Yankee like me, trying to decide if a South American sea Captain is honest is like trying to detect color with your nose. We were jammed into a crowded water front tavern that was attached to the Costa Del Sol Hotel. I could not understand anything the Captain said. Juan Pedro and Jacobo were doing all the talking in Spanish, fast Spanish without any interpreting. The Captain was extremely smarmy, but so were all the other sailors in the tavern.

  “The Captain asks, where do you want to take the truck?” Jacobo said.

  “South Carolina.”

  The sea Captain shook his head and said a few words.

  “He doesn’t know where that is. He says Miami would be good,” Jacobo said.

  “Miami has too much Coast Guard and U.S. Customs presence and I’m running low on bribe money. South Carolina is another five hundred miles from Miami but it will be easy to get the truck ashore.”

  More discussion between Jacobo and the Captain. Juan Pedro interrupted. First he received a scowl and then a few coins from the Captain. As the discussion continued, I watched Juan Pedro go to the bar where he bought a small bag of candy.

  “Padre, he says to go past Miami takes more fuel than he can carry. A stop in the Caribbean would be required.”

  “So this means he’ll do it?”

  “He says yes, for $1000, plus fuel and repairs.”

  “Repairs?”

  “Yes, he says his boat will probably not make it all the way without fixing.”

  “Uhgh,” I said, and stared into my beer. I didn’t like it,but what choice did I have?

  “Can we leave now?”

  “The Captain says he has a date with a woman, we cannot leave tonight.”

  “Tell him a thousand dollars sounds good if we can leave in the morning,” I managed, and then headed to the pisser.

  New math. Mass quantities of draft beer pulled through tubes and taps that have not been cleaned since the 1950’s plus salty pork, rice, peppers and black beans equals horrible hangover. This is similar to a
n equation I tried out repeatedly in college. Back then it was really cheap beer, plus hot wings equals mind numbing headaches and spontaneous, scorching gastric anomalies.

  My back was killing me, too. Against Pedro and Jacobo’s advice, I had slept in the bed of the truck. Although the truck bed was hard, the tropical night air suited me. The tropics would be a great place to be if you were homeless, but a canvas beach chair would be a better place to sleep. The word “bed” should not used to describe the back of a truck. My mind was rested, but my limbs were zombie stiff.

  My presence had gotten the mysterious disappearing truck through the night still in my possession. I grabbed my phone just as Jacobo walked out of the back door of the Captain’s house with a mug of strong coffee, a blessing.

  I called home and squeezed a burp in before Mom answered.

  “Mom, it’s Rust. I need your help.”

  “Do you need bail money?” She said.

  “Very funny. No, nothing like that. But this is important. One of my clients is going to be in danger now that I have recovered some of her property. Can she, along with her baby and her Grandma, stay in the guest house for a few days, just ‘til I get back?” I added weakly. “They won’t be any trouble.”

  “If I must. Here, talk to Ruby and give her the details, I was just on my way to the club.”

  I gave Tammy’s phone number to Ruby with instructions for her to come right over. Things were moving fast.

  I felt a tinge of sadness as I handed over a roll of American dollars to Jacobo.

  “Good-bye, Padre.”

  “Good-bye, Jacobo. You are a good boy. I can’t thank you enough for getting me here. If you find yourself in Knoxville, Tennessee, look me up,” Grabbing his shoulder, I shook his small hand.

  “I would do that. You are fun. All the priests here are boring. All Latin and incense. And none of them have guns. ”

  I was amazed to be on the boat with Tammy’s Ford pickup and heading in the general direction of the States. It all sounded good. I was in a wobbly Captain’s chair, periodically glancing at a gauge that kept us on course. The Captain from Turbo (Turbonean? Turbite?)was asleep in a hammock. I looked past him to the open hold that usually would have contained fish, but was now housing a small Ford truck wrapped in fishnet.