The Last Great Road Bum

by Héctor Tobar

  * * *

  14:00 HRS. Killing spree canceled pending further assessment of political situation. After scanning skin mags, Danny Boy and the politicos decided to cool it on the executions. Apparently, such killings are the domain of platoon leaders who have quite a bit of autonomy for such decisions. Didn’t seem like much of a day for slaughter and killing. Lucas and Sparky went out to patrol for milk and chicken instead, joined by a new young fighter. A fourteen-year-old girl who looked so much like Sparky that Joe dubbed her “Sparkette” in his journal. She was quiet, not a little afraid, but her smile was bright and spoke to some grown-up pearl of secret wisdom she possessed. Her wordlessness was eerie, however, as if born from some deep trauma. Finally, after a day on the march, Sparkette began to tell a story. “I saw this American movie once, Lucas. It had people who look like you. They were going up and down the mountains. They carried packs and long ropes, and wore caps. They had pants tucked into their boots, just like you wear yours. And they had lots of tools. They looked just like guerrilleros, except they didn’t have rifles.”

  Sparky was moved to hear the Sparkette speak for the first time. He felt the need to say something too.

  “The other day I had a dream that was like a movie,” Sparky began. “In the dream I’m walking toward a house. A house out in the fields like the one my tío has, but this house isn’t my tío’s, it’s a stranger’s house. I see a bunch of cuilios are standing nearby. I start shooting at them. Pah-pah-pah-pah-pah! But nothing happens. For some reason my bullets can’t hit them, they just fall in front of their feet. And so they start to circle me. They have me surrounded. I keep on firing, and my bullets keep missing…” His voice trailed off, and Joe realized that was the end; it was an anxiety and vulnerability dream. But the Sparkette was waiting for more.

  “And then what happened,” she asked.

  Sparky looked into the hopeful eyes of the Sparkette, and said something Joe knew wasn’t in his dream at all. “I just started killing them all. And they fell like toys.”

  * * *

  BEEN MOPEY AND MOURNFUL as I hobble around camp with my bad back, Joe wrote. As a consolation prize I was allowed to turn in my Jaguars for a spiffy pair of Lee jeans with a 32-inch waist. Simple pleasures. On April 10, the day after Good Friday, they entered a village near the railroad tracks that was home to a family of devoted supporters of the guerrillas, for what turned out to be an Easter Eve holiday party. Compas in high spirits in anticipation of a few extra treats. “Una torta para los montaños!”5 On the way, we “ambused” a friendly truck driver, who supplied watermelons and big slabs of homemade sweet bread. The compas listened to Latino rock on a transistor radio, and then to Radio Venceremos, sitting on the roadside. Night had fallen and the guerrilleros once again controlled the countryside and the thousands of small villages where the soldiers of the army feared to tread. Moses, Giovanni and Fidelito were some of the names of the rebels in this group. Fidelito was a comandante. When a group of children approached, Fidelito played the big uncle to them and told a series of nursery rhymes about birds and papayas and the final triumph of the revolution. Finally, they all ended up in the home of the family they’d heard about: a gray-haired patriarch with arms muscular from endless labor, and the matriarch, his señora, the brains behind Pa, who stood behind the king at the table and wrapped her arms around him affectionately. They offered the rebels some homemade moonshine, and for the first time in more than a year Joe took a swig of alcohol. The family patriarch then guided Lucas to a hammock he had on his porch, and invited the gringo rebel to “rest, relax,” and Lucas did so, taking another swig of moonshine, which burned his innards pleasantly, and he clinked glasses with the old man, who sat on the ground next to him. After a few pendulum swings of the hammock, a reclining Lucas said the first thing that came into his head: “There are no mosquitoes here.” The family patriarch responded with a long lecture on the mosquitoes of El Salvador, and of the spread of malaria locally. It turned out he was the area Anopheles6 expert. An amateur entomologist. After another drink the old man started talking about something beautiful he had for Lucas’s enjoyment. “Something to delight and enchant any man after a long day of work.” The old man grinned meaningfully in the moonlight.

  I suddenly thought: “Jesus gawd, this character has a muchacha hidden away in the woodshed, and he’s making with the old tribal hospitality. I wonder what she looks like, how old she is. Ohmygawd whatamIgonnado?” Didn’t take me long to figure out what I was going to do, especially after another belt of moonshine. So Lucas followed the old man into the darkness, only to discover my generous host was offering me the use of his brand-new latrine! White porcelain, toilet paper on a roll and towel hanging on a rack. Luxury! Comfort! “Thank you, señor, thank you.” And Lucas took his turn on the commode, with a couple of other compas soon outside waiting, and he had just finished a gloriously luxuriant bowel movement when he heard voices yelling outside.

  A rebel sentry had raced up to report to Danny Boy that a thief had been captured by the compas. With that, Joe wrote in his journal, We began A Rough Night in Jericho. The Good Saturday life-and-death saga of “The Nocturnal Guerrilla Theater.”7

  THE NOCTURNAL GUERRILLA THEATER

  by Joseph D. Sanderson

  The culprit was hunkered in the road dust with his thumbs tied behind his back. Shirtless and shoeless, lanky, easily six feet tall, dirty-faced—yes, he even looked like a thief. He talked in a slow, slurred voice, pleading and whining and appropriately humble. “¡Yo soy pobre! ¡Pobre! Soy un pobre pescador.”8 But he had been caught red-handed with a pilfered live duck and chicken. The villagers had complained to the compas often enough about local ladronismo.9 Gangs of thieves, “mañosos,” who had guns and machetes and kept the village folk terrorized. The compas were excited to capture him. A vigilante fervor spread quickly. We had the opportunity, now, to display revolutionary justice and power to the village, and to repay their hospitality and collaboration with us. In the countryside, especially by night, we were the law. The stolen poultry was confiscated, and the compas fashioned a hood for the “Fisherman” and consulted with Fidelito. “A delicate situation,” Fidelito said. The Fisherman quickly put the finger on the three guys he lived with—an old man and his two sons. They were just borrowing the poultry, they said, and planned to pay for it later, etc., etc. Complicating matters was the fact that being a thief, in these parts, is synonymous with being an ear for the government. A crowd gathered, and even Señor Anopheles got into the act, blurting out, drunkenly, that bad blood ran in this family of thieves; such and such was a member of the hacienda police, another had wounded someone with a machete, another had fingered a compa to the National Guard. The vigilante fever spread and it looked like we had the makings of a necktie party.

  I watched the compa Nero lead the Fisherman away from the railroad tracks, the purloined duck left on the platform—the chicken had fled. Figured Nero would chop the guy up with a machete and that would be the gruesome end of the whole incident. But instead they both reappeared, and we all started walking with the hooded man down the tracks toward his house. Moonlight and railroad tracks on the edge of town, and a tied-and-hooded thief and a dozen armed silhouettes. My heart was pounding like it never did in combat. We reached the house in question, surrounded it at close quarters and shouted for the occupants to come out. Voices, whispers. One by one they emerged into the moonlight, one older man in his early fifties, two young men in their early twenties, all in their underwear. We ordered them up against the wall as the compas ransacked the house—a poor squatters’ shack filled with the usual campesino clutter. Just four men living together, with no women present—all the more suspicious. The compas were brusque, harsh, no-nonsense, and though they often seemed on the verge of slapping the suspects, none did. The three men were led away from their house across the tracks and ordered to lie facedown along the railroad embankment. One by one their thumbs were tied behind their backs with twine, then later their uppe
r arms with rope. The questioning commenced, the threats, and all they could respond was, “¡Por dios! ¡Somos pobres! ¡No somos ladrones!” About thirty minutes later all four were lifted and we began the return march to the station platform, myself guarding the prisoners along one flank. A group of compas took a separate path with the Fisherman, I felt for certain to kill him. Expected to hear a pair of shots or a burst of automatic rifle fire at any moment, or screams from the victim. The other three were questioned some more; no compas made any open threats; they weren’t really necessary. The men knew the revolution had no way of imposing jail sentences. Freedom or death were the only options. One of the suspects picked up on the revolutionary context of the interrogations and began saying he wanted to get a gun and join the guerrillas. And suddenly all of them were in agreement with this. Up to that point, I was feeling sympathy for them. Feeling miserable. I figured we might be making a big mistake. And I still had no way of knowing if the comandantes had already decided the issue.

  Now a fifth suspect was brought up. He said there was another house with thieves, with weapons, including a .38 rifle. I stayed quiet, I left it alone, it was all bigger than me. The compas told the Fisherman to guide us to this house, but he said he was afraid the people inside might shoot him when he approached; too bad, said the compas. I remained on rearguard as four compas surrounded the place. I led the Fisherman out of the direct line of fire and told him to sit down, but he claimed he had a bad leg. Too bad, I said. Sit down! He sat down and started mumbling, until I told him to shut up. I could hear Nero yelling at the people inside. Telling them to stop fucking around or we’d open up on them. The Fisherman tried talking again, and tried to get up, until I leveled La Cabrona at him. Soon enough the compas were inside the house, and I could hear them ransacking it. They brought out three young men, all in their underwear, Nero snorting and puffing and telling them all he was tired of their fucking around. Finally, Nero came out with their “arsenal”—the “.38 rifle,” which was actually an ancient museum piece of a shotgun with a broken stock and attached cleaning rod. And the rest of the guns? “What guns? We don’t have any more, just that one.” Nero told them we were a right-wing death squad and would finish them off if they didn’t produce the other weapons, and then an old woman came out of the house, bawling and wailing. Apparently, she was the mother of the young men; the sight of her sons kneeling in the dirt, arms and thumbs tied behind their backs caused her to fall to her knees too, begging. “Please don’t kill my sons! My sons!” She pleaded to God, to the neighborhood, and to us not to lead her sons away into the night to be slaughtered.

  We brought up the three newest captives to where the others were, and Fidelito recognized them immediately. He told us to set them free, and I helped to cut the ropes; he even allowed one of the three to sneak into the bushes for a nervous shit. Apparently, they were collaborators with the revolution; they had believed Nero’s “death squad” talk, and had kept their mouths shut. But the fact was that, collaborators or not, there was “good” evidence that they had a long record as a family of thieves. Someone had the brainstorm to throw all eight of our suspects together, and we promptly did so—the mumbling and the glares between them seemed to implicate all eight of them as co-conspirators. Danny Boy at times seemed set on a mass execution, but not so much for crimes of theft, as for the threat they posed to the revolution if freed. They could blow the lid off the whole area scene, he said. So now the compas began to debate: kill all of them, kill some of them or let them all go? The revolution was at stake, some said, no time to get personal, feel compassion for the wretched scum of the earth. Fidelito seemed to have made up his mind. All that was left was how to go about it. Only hours remained until sunrise. He summoned the politicos for an informal meeting. During one of their lengthy reflective pauses Moses entered the discussion and suggested all eight be allowed to live, and be assigned revolutionary tasks as proof of their honesty and good faith, their love of the people and solidarity with the struggle. I walked away, afraid that the slightest thing I said might impact their decision, relieved that my only appointed task was to stand guard over the prisoners and watch and listen. From time to time a compa would speak out, saying the revolution meant to stop the spread of crime, which damaged the people, and how dictators used criminals against society; or a captive would speak in his own self-defense.

  Finally, the compas on the platform fell asleep, and even Danny Boy and Moses took short naps, and when they woke up they seemed to understand what they had to do. Danny Boy and Moses began to speak to the captives, one by one, taking turns; talking about the revolution and justice, and all the people who had died in the name of basic human rights and a better country, and their words were so incredible I wished I’d had a tape recorder to get them all down accurately. Listening to them, even the most callous of the suspects must have felt stunned and slightly awed. It was the revolution in its finest hour. The compas had not even finished their lecture before the captives were lifted to their feet, their ropes cut, men and boys given their freedom. None attempted to leave. They knew their lives had been spared. They were told to make no mistake about the revolution being soft—at the first sign of any recriminations in the village, or the slightest theft, they would be held collectively responsible and dealt with accordingly. Incredibly enough, some of the suspects began to slouch and yawn, and at that point I lost any remaining doubt I had about their guilt, and one compa stepped forward, to say maybe we should execute them all anyway. But soon enough the suspects started thanking the compas, blathering mealymouthed gratitude, promising to be good. And the compas? Disgusted but resigned to the outcome. With the lingering resentment that so many good people had been murdered, and the good people continued suffering, and yet these criminals would live, and the struggle would go on without any concrete sign that the night’s drama would bring us a single step closer to victory.

  The next morning—that is, a few hours later—as we returned from sleeping in the hills, exhausted from our night of guerrilla theater, we watched the villagers in their crisp white clothes striding briskly toward their chapels, hymn books in hand, to sing out the glory. Easter. Later, the gay blades and the village maidens would surely head to a dance at somebody’s home. The noonday sun climbed overhead and covered us with sweat, and we rested and shared a couple of watermelons among ourselves and laughed and made lame jokes. One of the compas noticed the stolen chicken hiding nearby, among some tree roots. Nero walked up and solemnly spoke to it. “Buenos días, chicken. You can come out now. We saved your life. You owe your life to the FMLN.”10

  * * *

  THE REVOLUTION WAS a series of improvised and arbitrary acts resembling the “nocturnal guerrilla theater,” one after the other. Every decision taken by the movement made perfect Marxist sense, or made no sense at all. When Joe asked up the revolutionary chain of command if and when he might be allowed to leave, no one could give him a straight answer. Assorted comandantes said his fate was in the hands of the top movement leaders in Morazán, who informed him, in turn, that it was the underground political chieftans in San Salvador who had final say. Going through another period of frustration over my blocked exit. Nearly 7½ months on the catbird seat, he wrote in his journal. My present assignment has freedom and mobility, and dramatic experiences and the promise of more to come. Couldn’t ask for more. Regardless, still time to go and has been for months.

  Instead, Lucas and his squad received another new mission: recruiting. They were to draft at least ten youths, from three villages. Brief instructions followed on how to make getting shanghaied by the revolution relatively painless for the victims. No rough stuff, but make sure you keep ’em surrounded, cover the exits of the houses, don’t take any back talk from those punks loitering in front of the village store. And get them away from Ma and Pa, especially if Ma’s bawling or if Pa’s going for his machete. The spirits in Lucas’s squad lifted. Funny thing, Joe noted in his journal: When it came to twisting arms, most of th
e compas love their work. The same man who could be generous and considerate to a refugee or to his fellow fighters could truly enjoy the harshness and sadism that come with dealing with a suspected deserter, informer or thief. I can’t be critical of them, given the circumstances, he wrote. My attitude about these matters is different now. The numbness again. Will I feel it when I’m back home, when I’m with my own Ma and Pa? In the first caserío Lucas was assigned to a rearguard while Nero and his compas rounded up the calves. Nero was pleasantly insistent as he drug some boy away from a very concerned and suspicious and quite large señora—Nero stands about 4 ½ feet high, a bow-legged gremlin with a Solzhenitsyn beard. The compas rounded up a dozen or so youths more, 6 found playing cards (the drugstore cowboys at the local tienda), a few tugged from mommy’s clutches in their own homes, and then a few more hard-core teenage loafers with rock music, sports and señoritas swirling in their brains. They were all gathered on a soccer field (or was it a pasture?), to hear a speech to inspire them to join, to be delivered by the Sparkette—who wasn’t there yet, but on her way.

  Silence hovered over the soon-to-be-shanghaied boys as they sat among dirt clods and cow dung, and finally it became a vacuum that Joe felt compelled to fill with something theatrical, something optimistic and American, like a speech from a Frank Capra movie. I found myself playing the pitchman, softening up the crowd before she appeared, The Star. What to say? Well, the things he knew about. The Christmas massacres. Freedom. Justice. The Death Squads. International solidarity. Americans marching in support. Vietnam. The Christmas massacres again. It was almost as if I, presenting myself to the assembled youths as a “representative of the international press,” was the whole point of the meeting. The rebel fighters and potential compa-draftees looked on with awe, bemusement, confusion and resentment. Nero thought: These village boys already think we’re astronauts who’ve come from the moon, and now we’ve brought our own alien. Danny Boy thought: This is really too much. This man Lucas, as much as I love him, shouldn’t be speaking; he’s a foreigner after all. Fidelito thought: Now these peasant kids will see how vergón we truly are, as they listen to our blond giant talk about “the nobility of the popular uprising.” And when the Sparkette finally arrived and caught the tail end of Lucas’s remarks, his peroration as it were, she saw the youthful audience staring at him with open mouths and perplexed brows, and saw his jeans tucked into his socks, in the style of a rock climber, and she thought: He looks like one of the actors in that movie I saw!