Killing Che

by Chuck Pfarrer

  When Guevara failed to appear at the next halt, Willy came down the trail and found him curled into a ball, his rifle in the dirt at his feet. Around him, the leaf clutter was slick with vomit, and he continued to retch, bringing up small quantities of brown-yellow bile. As he vomited, his abdomen cramped, forcing his bowels to empty. Willy called up the trail for help, and Pombo and Moro jogged back. They looked on helplessly as Moro checked Guevara’s respiration and called for his medical kit.

  “Comandante? Comandante?” Moro shook him by the shirtfront.

  Guevara groaned. His breath came in short puffs, his arms and legs were bent, and he trembled violently.

  The satchel was brought back from the mule train and Moro used a pair of bandage scissors to cut an arm off Guevara’s uniform shirt. He said to Willy, “Get his boots and pants off.”

  This was accomplished, though Guevara remained curled with his legs pulled up to his chest, groaning. He was covered in shit like an infant’s, yellow and runny. Moro asked for some water to clean him, but Willy said there wasn’t enough. The river was more than five miles behind them, and the village of Piray was an undetermined distance to the north. Moro scooped handfuls of dust from the trail and powdered Guevara’s ass and the places where the shit had stuck to his thighs. Moro splashed his own canteen on his hands, wiped down Guevara’s arm with iodine, found a vein, and started an IV. Willy held up the bottle of fluid.

  “I’m going to give you some Demerol,” Moro said. Guevara closed his eyes. “Demerol,” Moro said again, but Guevara did not answer. Moro prepared the syringe. Belching and moaning, Guevara drifted in and out of consciousness. Every now and then, as he heaved to vomit, shit and liquid bubbled out between his buttocks.

  Moro injected the syringe into Guevara’s arm. For five minutes or so, he continued to writhe on the ground.

  “What will it do?” Pombo asked.

  “Kill the pain and maybe tighten up his bowels.”

  Finally, Guevara became quiet and passed into sleep. His arms and legs stretched out, and he was no longer trembling.

  “Get his hammock off the horse,” Moro said. “We’ll make a litter and carry him. We’ll make camp the first place we find water.” He kicked Guevara’s pants into the dust, scuffing dirt over them, then balled them up.

  Others had joined and stood looking down at Guevara. No one noticed that the boy had run off. Guevara looked pathetic, smeared in his own filth, sprawled on the trail; every one of the comrades felt compassion and an equal measure of fear. Moro put away his instruments and carried his medical bag back to the mule.

  “What’s the matter with him?” someone asked.

  “Dysentery,” Moro said. “Maybe shigellosis.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  Moro’s eyes flashed. “No, goddammit, I don’t know for fucking sure, but that’s what I think it is. If it’s something else, that would be bad, so let’s get him into his hammock and carry him to where there’s some fucking water.”

  Moro had never been heard to raise his voice, so the others quickly set about making a litter. The comandante was completely unconscious. His head rolled around, and his mouth dropped open as they put him into his hammock and carried him up the trail.

  Moro followed the stretcher bearers, and Willy walked beside him down the trail. Miguel joined them, and when they were out of earshot of the stretcher bearers, Begnino’s voice was solemn. “How bad is he?”

  Moro scratched his beard. “You saw. It won’t be so bad if I can keep fluids in him. If it’s not shigellae, he’ll make it.”

  Miguel shook his head. “This is all we need.”

  “I’ve been expecting this,” Moro said. “Something like this. He’s been close to physical collapse for almost a month.”

  Begnino touched his friend’s arm. “What happens if he dies? Who takes over?”

  “Joaquin,” Miguel said.

  “We can’t find Joaquin.”

  “Then you take over,” Moro said to Miguel.

  They walked along, and the trees stretched over the path. The light that reached them was aqua.

  “Moro, can I count on you?” Miguel asked.

  “For what?”

  “Somebody needs to talk to Che.”

  “Why would he listen to me?”

  “You’re his doctor.”

  “And you are second in command.” Moro shook his head. “You think I don’t know how fucked up this is?”

  “We have to do something.”

  “We have no idea where Joaquin is. We’ve got the entire Fourth Division of the Bolivian army behind us. We’re wandering around in circles,” Coco said.

  “That isn’t news.”

  They walked for a while, Moro lagging a few steps behind. Exhaustion followed him like a shadow. He’d been sick, too, for days.

  “I say we swing south back for the storage caves,” Willy said. “We get the reserve radio and tell Havana to send help.”

  “The army’s there,” Miguel answered.

  “We need to get a radio working,” Begnino said.

  “And what if the CIA monitors the radio?” Moro asked. “What if they send an airplane to drop napalm on the transmitter?”

  “We need help,” Willy said.

  “You think Havana’s going to send help after ten goddamn months? We’re on our own.” Moro said this so calmly that it astounded his listeners.

  Coco did not believe that they were on their own, nor did Miguel. They believed that Havana would send help if only they knew how desperate the situation was. Willy also thought, though he did not say it, that Guevara was too sick to continue. The comandante was making wrong decisions. The decision to ambush the column so close to the base—that was a mistake. The decision to allow D’Esperey and Sandoval to leave at Muyupampa, another mistake.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Coco said.

  “First thing I do is get him healthy. Then you can say to him whatever you want,” Moro said.

  “You agree with us? That we have to do something?”

  “We have to do something,” Miguel agreed.

  “Don’t count me in on anything,” Moro said. “The comandante’s in charge.” He walked away from them down the trail.

  Moro could not say it to anyone, but he wished he had never come to Bolivia. He was certain he would die in this place; perhaps not today or tomorrow, but he was convinced he would never see his family or Cuba again.

  SUDDENLY, GUEVARA REALIZED he could see a face. Moro’s face. There were voices around him and the sound of wood being chopped and the pack animals stamping at their pickets. He had lost track of time; it was late afternoon. He had forgotten that it would ever come, afternoon. The morning had been one prolonged agony and was a blur. Moro touched a stethoscope under Guevara’s shirt and listened. Guevara turned in his hammock and saw Pombo and Willy sitting cross-legged nearby. They seemed anxious and grief-stricken. Both men smiled when they saw Guevara open his eyes. Guevara remem bered falling on the trail and being pulled over by the weight of his pack. His tongue seemed coated in dirt and he was able to swallow only with difficulty.

  Moro held a canteen to Guevara’s lips, and he drank. The water seemed to bring him back. He realized that he had been moved and that camp had been set up around him. He could see only forest, but he heard the burbling of a creek and could smell the strong odor of shit. With embarrassment, he rolled out of his hammock and apologized to the others. Someone lent him a pair of pants and he was finally able to wash himself in the creek. After he’d bathed, he felt enormously better, and everyone was happy and relieved to see him up and about. None let on how bad he looked, or how gravely they had been worried.

  Guevara asked to be handed his map. Using a straw, Miguel pointed out the location of the camp. Three hundred meters to the east was a sketchy trail that led in tortuous switchbacks to a little village called La Florida. Guevara made sure to walk about the camp, as much to show himself to the comrades as to inspect the d
efenses. The encampment was not well situated; it was too close to the trail, but it would do for the night. He organized a four-man group to slip into the village and purchase supplies. As the foragers departed he seemed much better, and Miguel and Begnino did not think the time was right to speak to him. Nothing was said about how sick the comandante had become or the missed rendezvous.

  Waiting for dinner, the comrades listened to the radio about details of the trial of D’Esperey and Sandoval and then more glumly to the report of a battle between the army and a guerrilla detachment along the Iquria River. The guerrilla unit had killed five soldiers and captured a colonel and seven enlisted men. Following the clash, the prisoners were stripped of their equipment, then released. This was definitely the guerrillas’ technique. Guevara knew this could only be Joaquin’s column. The announcer crowed that one “antisocial” had been killed and a corpse was being brought by helicopter to Lagunillas. The euphoria about the report seemed to indicate some truth. Joaquin’s column would be hard pressed to fight, burdened as it was with both the sick and the resacas. Morale slipped a bit at this news. The comrades shared Guevara’s frustration at having no communication with Joaquin and no way to support him.

  At full dark, the supply party returned. They’d managed to purchase a calf from one of the farms near the road, and brought back the news that fifty soldiers and carabineros were stationed in La Florida. Guevara thought it likely that the farmers would soon inform, but he did not worry that the troops would sally forth. They surely would not do so in darkness. He ordered the calf slaughtered, and the rest of the night was spent cooking beef and locro. Guevara ate his share but picked out the meat. Despite his careful eating, his asthma dogged him all night. Unable to sleep, he relieved Willy on sentry duty sometime in the small hours and sat listening to the steady hiss of the creek.

  Guevara wondered what Joaquin would do after his contact with the army; if he had been hidden, he would now be forced to move, and this would not be easy, dragging the sick and guarding the resacas. Guevara cursed himself for bungling the rendezvous, and for a brief instant he imagined Joaquin’s column and then his own surrounded and annihilated. No. That would not happen. The army continued to be hapless, though Guevara realized that they must inevitably get better.

  What worried him was the way the peasants fled from the guerrillas. They were met with fear in most of the villages; those who did not run away stood with flinty indifference. It was a vicious cycle. To achieve more recruitment, they needed to carry out operations in populated territory. And to do that, they required more men. The actions thus far had all been successful, though Guevara knew that each time the guerrillas lost a man, it amounted to a serious defeat. Until they could recruit fighters to replace their losses, his men and his mission were in dire jeopardy. On the good side, the radio yammered constantly about the guerrillas and their legend was growing like wildfire. As far as Guevara could tell, the comrades’ morale continued to be firm, though he understood that his illness was a concern to the men.

  Guevara shivered, and the ache in his guts resumed like a belt pinched too tightly around his waist. The pain was like a nagging voice, chastising him for separating the column, panging him for innumerable failures. He did not doubt his leadership or his own sagacity; he could not imagine that anyone would question his ability to lead. Pride again, and pride compounded. Yet still the column was isolated, from Joaquin, from the network in La Paz, from the Party, and from Havana. The war that Che Guevara had made mirrored his own reality—it was a thing set apart from the entire world.

  He decided that in the morning he would turn southeast and send out scouts again to try to locate Joaquin. Looking up at the sky, Guevara saw ten thousand stars and realized just how grand were his plans. He thought of Aleida and his family but pushed away memories of happiness and comfort; his responsibilities were to the world. Though he was unfailingly wary of self-centeredness when it existed in others, he did not see it in himself. He was proud, he knew, but did not comprehend that his pride was of the most dangerous sort, the sin by which the angels fell. It never once occurred to him to ask if his dreams were too grand to be made real.

  53

  THE DOG BARKED outside, half a dozen high, sharp yaps, and Honradez Rulon turned to look out the door. He could not see much beyond the small patch of light that spilled onto the mud of the front yard, but he heard the barking again, this time away and behind the house. Rulon’s wife turned from the fireplace, and the children looked down from the loft as their father leaned toward the door. There was a stirring in the darkness, and he saw men, armed, bearded men standing in front of the house. Their clothes were caked with mud, and they were soaked through. Squatting by the fire, his wife picked up their infant, and her mouth opened to form some word, but Rulon lifted a hand to silence her and carried the lantern toward the door.

  “Hola,” called a voice from the darkness, and Rulon made his face as cheerful as could be.

  He stepped out the door, holding up the lantern, and saw four men with rifles. Two were close to the door, and another pair stood by the corner of the house. He could not see the faces of the two in shadow, but he could see the glinting outlines of their weapons. The tallest of the men moved forward into the light. Rulon slowly recognized the one his children had called El Oso. The big man stepped toward the door, his rifle hanging on a strap around his neck. Like the others, he was wet and dirty.

  “Señor Rulon,” Joaquin said. “Good evening.” He pushed the rifle back over his shoulder and slowly put out his hand.

  “Good evening to you, sir.” Rulon held the lantern up with his right hand, and he awkwardly took Joaquin’s hand with his left and pumped it. Rulon’s lips pulled back into a counterfeit smile and his head bobbed up and down. Joaquin looked past the farmer into the dank light of the house. He saw the woman squatting barefoot by the fireplace. She clutched at the infant and looked out the door at Joaquin and her eyes seemed frozen in her head; her expression was somewhere between fear and annoyance.

  “I hope not to trouble you,” Joaquin said.

  “How can I help you?” Rulon answered. Behind the house, the dog continued to bark.

  “We’d like to buy a pig, if you have one to sell.”

  “Of course.” Rulon grinned honestly this time, money being the thing dearest to him.

  “Rice, too, if you have it.”

  Rulon tried not to look around obviously in the dark. “I do have rice and canned milk. Canned fish also.” He stepped away from the door and waved the lantern around. He counted four armed men. The cagey peasant knew that there must be more outside the light of his lamp. “How many are you tonight?” he asked.

  “Some,” Joaquin said. He handed Rulon a small rolled bundle of Bolivianos. “That should get us enough,” Joaquin said.

  Rulon fingered the bills with his left hand. “Plenty, Señor,” he said. “My biggest hog and more besides.” He stuffed the bills into his pants and walked around the front of the house toward the pigsty, fairly dancing. When the farmer was out of earshot, Joaquin nodded to Braulio.

  “Stay with the fucker,” he said quietly.

  In the house, the woman heard Joaquin and it made her heart tighten. She did not want to have anything to do with armed men, either the army or the guerrillas. Soldiers had been to the house just two days before, and she’d watched her husband perform in exactly the same manner—he’d smiled and made himself as helpful as possible. This was a dangerous business, and she feared that she would lose her life less than she feared that her husband would be killed or taken away and she would be left this hardscrabble farm and five hungry mouths to feed. She slumped, despairing, against the hearth, and when one of the children called to her, she hushed him sharply. She could no longer see anyone through the door. She strained her ears, sifting the night beyond the open windows, and after several long minutes, she was jarred by a gunshot and the long, screeching howl of the pig. There was another shot, muffled, a cracking sort of pop,
and then silence.

  She sat rigidly until Rulon poked his face in through the door and said quietly, “Don’t worry, Mama.”

  She did not dare answer. In the time between the gunshots, her mind had taken her to terrible places and she started to shake and cry.

  The hog was butchered, and a fire was built beside the house to cook the meat and rice. About midnight, roasted joints of pork were carried back to the camp in the ravine, and the comrades ate their first good meal since parting with Guevara. This had an immediate effect on morale, even on the invalids, Tania and Moises, who ate small portions of rice and drank boiled water. Overhead, the clouds broke apart, and stars spilled across the velvet-dark night. Joaquin and Marcos ate by the fire next to the house, banana leaves heaped with meat and rice, and after they had their fill, they wiped their greasy fingers on their trousers. There was food enough for all, even the resacas, and when the coals burned down, El Negro came from the camp and sat down next to Joaquin.

  “How are they?”

  “They both ate. We’ll see if they keep it down.”

  El Negro watched Joaquin slump forward. For a long time, he sat with his forearms across his legs, preoccupied and silent. After a while Joaquin asked, “Are they going to make it?”

  “Moises should be all right,” El Negro answered. “I don’t know about the woman. I’m pretty sure she’s got internal injuries. I thought she was trying to kill herself this afternoon by walking.”