by Jill Zeller
Phlegm clogged my throat, and I seemed to have lost the power of movement. Just then the sun topped the ridge behind us and sprayed silver light on the rifle barrels aimed directly at us.
One of the men strode forward. Small but compactly built, he wore a large-brimmed, black wool hat, trimmed with silver medallions. He carried no rifle, but a pair of pistols on his belt, both holstered. With a nod of his head he motioned to one of the men, who approached the Deck Officer.
Please don’t do anything stupid. I sent the thought to the young man. Hand over your weapon without a fuss.
“We’re Americans. Americans.” The Deck Officer pointed toward the Leopardo, and at the motion of his arm the Mexican rebel soldier raised his gun. Belts of fear tightened around my chest.
The Deck Officer and the rebel stood between me and the rest of the passengers. If he were shot, would I be next?
Another gasp rippled through the passengers huddled under the palms. A handful of male passengers stepped out; I could see they were third class passengers by their shirts and caps, hands balled into fists, ready for a fight, but they were halted by rifles trained on them.
“Americanos,” the man said. His skin was sun-darkened, and I could make out the dark shadow of a mustache. I noticed one of his arms was bandaged tightly to his chest, a smear of blood on the white cloth of his shirt under his armpit.
The man nodded slowly and grinned. “Mucho gusto. The storm. I see. Lo siento.”
He speaks English. I felt a little less afraid. They wouldn’t hurt us, would they? We had nothing to do with their revolution.
Later, I would find out how wrong I was.
The rebel relieved the Deck Officer of his gun. Angry muttering filtered through the passengers under the trees.
“Surrender all of your weapons. Rapido!” The leader, the one with the pistols, motioned again, and his men approached the crowd. Could any of these passengers be armed? But a pile of knives and two handguns appeared on the sand at the leader’s feet.
Then they set to work. The rebel commander gave out a string of orders in Spanish, and his men fanned out. Three kept their carbines trained on the passengers and crew. The rest gathered up stores: sacks of flour and beans, a crate of live chickens, a rack of bananas.
I watched all this from my place in the sand. No one seemed to pay any attention to me, although I could see Asher gesturing as if trying to get me back into the crowd of passengers, but I thought, to my later regret, that it was better not to attract the attention I did not at present seem to have.
But, from my place on the sand I could hear Mrs. Pantone crying. Keeping my fist around my lucky shell, I started to walk slowly toward the passenger camp, hoping at least that I could comfort her.
A Mexican rebel stood between me and Mrs. Pantone. The next moment Arnold stepped out of the crowd.
“Let her come to us. Just let her come!” His voice was strident, commanding. The rebel, his back to me, faced Arnold, said something in Spanish and it didn’t sound conversational.
“Whatever you’re saying, that’s hogwash. Let her come back to us!”
The rebel spoke again, pointed at Arnold, and motioned him to move back, but Arnold, stubborn, silly Cavendish, stepped toward the rebel, fists up.
It all happened so fast. The Mexican soldier lifted his rifle and crashed the butt into Arnold’s face. Arnold dropped like a stone.
Sickness washed through me, turning my knees to water. I struggled to stay upright, stay where I was, as I watched blood pool and drip on Arnold’s face. I prayed he was still alive.
Someone screamed. Mrs. Pantone was moving, pushing past passengers, rushing to Arnold’s side. The Mexican soldier didn’t stop her as she knelt beside her nephew. I watched it all, frozen, as if it were a play. If there was wind or birds or the smell of the shell in my hand, I didn’t know.
Then someone had me by the elbow. Turning, I saw the rebel commander; he smelled of leather and oil, his face cragged by sun and wind, eyes a startling golden topaz. He nodded politely, then pulled me with him, away from Arnold and Mrs. Pantone and along the sand-scoured stones toward the northern end of the beach where the crew assembled, hemmed in by ten or so Mexican soldiers.
Could the rest of the crew, the captain and officers, still onboard Leopardo a mile or less offshore know what was happening? If they were looking through a glass surely they could see the Mexican soldiers and their guns. My chest tightened, and I closed my hands into fists. If rape was what these ruffians had in mind, I would fight and scratch until I bloodied their faces and throats.
But apparently there was no thought of this, at least right now. The rebel leader pushed me to one side, where a sailor, a heavy man with a thick white mustache and bald head caught me with bandaged hands and held on to me as if to protect me.
Another soldier approached. Inside the lean-to fashioned from what looked like old sail canvas were stashed crates and sacks of stores, bundles of linen, kegs of water. To the left of this, sheltered under the trees, was another canvas lean-to, an infirmary with two cots, one occupied by a sailor whose leg was being wrapped by the ship’s assistant surgeon.
The rebel leader walked across the uneven sand toward the infirmary, the other soldier following, and sat heavily on the empty cot. Now, for the first time, I noticed that he was in tremendous pain—and likely weak from loss of blood.
Without having to be told, the assistant surgeon rose and turned toward the rebel leader.
Wiping his hands on a towel he said to the soldier, “Tell him to lie down.”
“You can tell me yourself,” the commander said. “But I will not lie down.”
The young man sighed. He was very young, I thought, not more than eighteen or nineteen, black hair slicked back with pomade and a pale face, clean-shaven, almost delicate.
Standing beside the commander, the rebel soldier had the same startling hazel eyes as the commander. A younger brother? Burly, large hands holding his rifle, he stood protectively at the foot of the cot.
“Don’t you touch him, sir. Let the scum die.” This from the old sailor who had shoved me behind him. I looked at his broad back, sweat staining the smudged white cloth. But I was taller than he, and could see the scene easily over his shoulder.
“Unfortunately, Hammer, I can’t do that. Dr. Door would help this man if he was here and not on the ship, whether he’s a murderer or worse. So I must do the same.” The Assistant Surgeon’s voice was deeply edged with fatigue.
I could see Hammer’s jaw tighten, but he said no more.
Heat brought sweat out on all of us; the breeze was cloying, damp. The rebel commander sat quietly on the side of the cot, sweat beading his forehead and chin.
I felt strangely remote from this tableau, as if I were floating above it, ghostlike and numb. They became figures in one of my drawings illustrating the lurid stories that made The Splash so popular. As the assistant surgeon knelt beside the wounded man, I set the entire scene into a tableau.
Then several things seemed to happen at once. From behind us, among the palms where the passengers gathered, came a shout. Followed by a gunshot.
My heart threw itself against my ribs, and my guts contracted. Hammer, my protector, pushed me further back against the canvas lean-to.
At this moment the rebel commander slumped and nearly fell forward. For a panicked moment, my breath frozen, I thought someone had shot him, a sailor or the deck officer, or even one of the passengers.
Catching the commander, the young surgeon struggled to push the man back onto the cot. Before I knew it I had slipped around the massive Hammer and lifted the rebel’s feet, encased in worn leather riding boots, onto the cot.
More than once I had helped a fainting patient in my father’s clinic. I knew what to do. Rolling up the blankets, I raised the rebel’s legs.
Loss of blood, I thought. Who knew how long he had been holding on, draining his strength for the sake of his men?
Voices, raised, angry, floated
into the infirmary tent.
Who was shot? Why? The realization hit me as I knelt beside the wounded rebel commander. This man I was helping headed a gang of murderers. Why am I doing this?
I got to my feet, tearing my skirt. Blinking, I tried to understand what I saw out on the sand.
A man dressed in a pale linen suit, a straw boater on his head, knelt on the sand, hands in the air. Behind him stood one of the soldiers, carbine aimed at the man’s head.
The burly soldier with the gold eyes turned, but stayed near his brother. He shouted a string of words in Spanish to the rebel standing behind the man.
The rebel answered back, and then so did the passenger, in what sounded like perfect Spanish. In one raised hand he held a card, waving it as if it were a flag of truce.
A silence followed. Only the palms whispered to one another in the breeze, shaking off bits of rain onto the ground. The birds had gone silent.
The unconscious leader’s brother uttered a command to the soldier with the carbine. Turning back to the Assistant Surgeon, he barked a string of words. None of us understood a word.
From the sand came a shout, in Spanish, and the leader’s brother stiffened, nostrils flaring in anger. Turning, he stared at the passenger in white. My bowels turned to ice at the look on his face—eyes narrowed, lips parted and almost smiling, but it was not a smile. He lifted a hand; my throat closed and my breath clogged my throat. I thought of my mother and father, our home in Brooklyn and the sycamores, golden with the scent of fall.
“Don’t kill him, please,” I murmured.
Beside me the assistant surgeon took my hand. Squeezed tightly. Looking up I saw him, eyes closed, mouthing a prayer.
But whatever signal passed between the two soldiers across the sand, there was no death order. Turning my head, I dared to look.
Seizing the passenger in the white suit by the arm, the soldier pulled him up and shoved him forward. The man stumbled across the beach, feet tangling in pebbles and sand. He was tall and thin, and as he came close into our lean-to, I could see the craze of age on his ruddy cheeks, gray-green eyes bright and unfearful.
The tall man spoke to the golden-eyed rebel in Spanish. After a moment, the rebel responded with a nod. Relief began to unwind the twisted muscles of my stomach and neck.
Thank god he is not to be killed. Beside me, the assistant surgeon released my hand. I had almost forgotten the feel of his hand around mine.
Then, obeying yet another signal, subtle and unseen, the rebel who had brought over the passenger leaned down and seized my arm.
Tight, iron fingers yanked me to my feet. On reflex I tried to pull away, raised my other hand to slap him. The sailors muttered, shifted; I stumbled on my torn skirt and the soldier pulled me away from the lean-to, forced me across the sand, released me, stepped a few feet away and aimed his rifle at my chest.
E
It was odd, the look of the barrel, a dark circle from which death would come. Everything slowed; the wind and the voices, weeping and shouts lasted for minutes rather than seconds and I stood numb, wondering. Does it end here? Will anyone tell of my death?
I would never see my home again. I would have no future and a past remembered only by those who knew me. Loved me. Sorrow screwed itself into my chest as I looked up at a blue sky and silken clouds and sun coming over the mountain.
But the shot never came. I heard voices from the infirmary as I stood and softly the world resumed itself. II realized what was happening, what the rebel soldier with the golden eyes had done.
The man in the white suit and the soldier were in conversation. Then I heard English, from the man, clear and even.
“He wants his brother patched up and ready for the journey in an hour.”
An interpreter. The man had been telling them he could interpret, he could help. My weight shifted as I realized I was not to be killed, only held as hostage to make certain the man in the suit would not lie, would interpret exactly. My feet and legs heavy and weak; I wanted to fall to the sand, sit, but I forced myself to remain standing.
The assistant surgeon replied, “I doubt that’s possible. He’s lost a lot of blood. I can clean the wound and re-dress it, but—”
The interpretation of this did not please the brother.
“He says do it. Or that lady will die.”
And so I stood on the beach, alone and stared in horror as the assistant surgeon worked. Hammer, the sailor, leveled his gaze on my soldier as if he could burn holes into the soldier’s brain.
I will not fall. I will not faint. I will live.
As sweat pooled under my arms and across my forehead I repeated this over and over to myself, mixed in with the few bits of rosary I’d heard my grandmother utter when I was a child.
The passengers stood and sat in shocked silence. The only movements were rebel soldiers carrying stores into the palm wood and returning for more, back and forth, orderly, wordless.
Eons of time passed, during which I recounted my life to myself: games of hide and seek in the cemetery near our house, the time I left my doll outside and she drowned and I resuscitated her in my father’s examination room, the smell of my grandmother’s dresser of powder and cologne and the pins she stabbed into her hair and the arcane articles of womanhood I only now understood.
My mother’s letter, and Silas, and all that went before.
It seemed like eons, but was likely only several minutes while the Assistant Surgeon worked. I forced myself to concentrate on his technique, having seen my father do the same service over and over. It was very good—showed an efficiency that even Dr. Brenton Lynch did not possess.
And just as the assistant surgeon finished, the rebel leader sat up.
Throwing his legs over the side of the cot, the man looked around; he did not seem bleary and confused, as many might be after passing out like that, and the next moment he was on his feet.
When he saw me standing in the burning sun, he turned swiftly to the man I now truly thought to be his brother, and blasted out a series of angry words.
Several things happened at once. My captor motioned me to go back inside the infirmary tent. Then I saw the leader point at the man in the white suit, Hammer the sailor, and the assistant surgeon.
I tried to walk straight across the pebbly sand, but I stumbled. My feet felt like two lead weights, my throat a prickly horror of scorch, a headache burning behind my eyes. But I stayed upright, found my footing and walked inside.
“Are you all right?” The assistant surgeon looked me up and down with a sharp gaze in his brown eyes, and I nodded.
“A little sunburned by now, but not to worry.” I smiled, and hoped I didn’t look as ghastly as I felt.
There was a general bustle all around. Rebel troops approached the pile of goods, each picking up a crate or a sack to carry. Walking toward the Deck Officer, who stood with a handful of crew members under the watchful eye of an armed soldier, the rebel leader spoke, but I couldn’t hear what he said.
The next moment everything happened very rapidly.
The rebel leader’s brother motioned to my guard and gave him an order.
The white-suited man stood next to me. He answered, protesting, I thought, but the soldiers ignored him. When I realized what was wanted, I felt my knees weaken but I stayed erect.
There was something in me, I realized later, that precluded any thought that I could die. I knew, unreasonably so, perhaps against all the evidence, that I could live through anything.
“They want us to go with them,” the white-suited man said. His voice was velvety, cultured. “You, miss, the surgeon and this sailor here. And me.” He gave us a quick, worried grin. “Don’t worry. These men are not killers for no reason. We’ll be fine.”
A shiver struck me, starting somewhere in my gut and traveling into my chest.
“Go with them? Where?” The surgeon’s voice was strident. “I can’t leave my post, or the men.”
The white-suited man leaned in. “I wou
ldn’t put up a fuss just now, sir. Not unless you want your head crushed like that young man back there.”
Arnold. I had, for the moment, completely forgotten about him. I strained to see him, and thought I did, sitting up beside his aunt, a ragged shred of her slip around his head.
“They haven’t killed any of us yet,” the white-suited man added.
The rebel leader returned from his chat with the deck officer and ordered us all to be given a drink of water; canteens were filled and handed out to us. Pallor limned the man’s golden skin, but his hazel eyes were bright and calculating. If he felt weak or pained, he didn’t show it.
Behind me Hammer cursed and muttered, but I agreed with the white-suited man as they lined us up and set us to following the line of men marching off into the trees.
Best to cooperate. Best to live.
X
After a day and a half of walking we hostages sat together under thatched shade near a vine-laden mangrove. Brilliant red leaves adorned the vine; the trees were sparse along our rocky trail. Heat drained me of nearly all my strength but I kept up with the others, wishing for the soft canvas shoes Hammer wore as my feet blistered in my boots.
As I sat under the tree I started to loosen them, but the white-suited man, who earlier had introduced himself as Edison Lowe, stopped me.
“Leave them on. Your feet will swell and you’ll never get them back on.”
I was weary beyond belief. Likely from lack of sleep, because trying to sleep on dirt and rocks and bits of fallen twigs and leaves, eaten by mosquitoes, in tremendous murky heat, was beyond all of us.
But, at last we seemed to have reached the rebel’s camp. On a flat ridge of mountain, hemmed by tall trees with long, pointed leaves were a series of tents, several more soldiers, and a large brush corral full of horses and mules. Monkeys shrieked in the trees high above us. Odors of hot food wafted from one of the open sheds, where I saw to my astonishment several women cooking and washing. They stared fully at me as the rebel soldiers walked us through the camp, more like a little temporary village, priest with his altar and all, and shuffled us to this small lean-to near what had to be, from the smell of it, the latrine.