by K. Walker
“I want some of that, boss. No holding out.” God, he was mean.
“She has work to do. Tonight she sleeps.” Tomas stared him down. I thought there would be trouble, but Juan eventually turned away and went to the other side of the camp. I stretched out on the blanket, fully expecting Tomas to fuck me. But he didn’t. He just kissed me once, hard, and then lay beside me with his back to mine. It was a long time before I could sleep.
Late the next day, after another long hike, Carlos sounded his bird call and everyone stopped. Tomas went forward with the chief. The forest cleared ahead, and in the near distance they could see fields of pineapple. We drew back a ways and set up camp, this time by a spring. I washed, which made me feel better. Another cold meal of bread and fruit – no fires, of course. When it was full dark, Tomas suddenly appeared out of the blackness. He lay down wordlessly beside me and began to stroke me as he had so many times before. As before, my body did not recognize fine distinctions of free will, and began to open to him. He paused.
“I am sorry,” he whispered. “I do what I must do to survive in this hell hole. But I never meant to hurt you. Well”, he amended honestly, “Not much, anyway. And I will try my best to get you out of this. If you want me to go now, I will sleep elsewhere.”
I thought about the last month. The thing, looking back, that bothered me the most was his willingness to share me. Like two or three frat brothers going to the Bunny Ranch and sharing a whore. But I also saw his point about me being like a bag of gold, and if he said No to Juan very often, somebody would probably get shot.
What the hell.
“Go ahead. I will pretend this once that we are lovers.” And one more time I felt the exhilaration of his expert soft touch, and the fullness of him sliding inside me, the way he varied his pace and his angles, the way he teased my body to the very edge and then drew back just enough, until finally he let me topple over the cliff of orgasm and we crashed together so hard that I momentarily passed out. I woke up in his arms, and there I fell peacefully asleep.
Next morning, after breakfast at dawn, we crept nearer to the edge of the forest. Most of the Indians were well-hidden. Tomas, his men, the chief and I were just barely within the trees, hiding behind bushes, waiting for Don Ramon’s men to appear. We were looking due north, across the fields. The vast forest, unbroken behind us, was in front a scattered thing, a remnant only. In the far distance we could see open ranges and cattle grazing.
Several men began working their way through the field, weeding and trimming, whatever it is you do to a pineapple field. One of them came within maybe fifty yards of us. Tomas nodded, and with his other men he stepped into the sunshine. The chief and I, by the plan, stayed hidden. Tomas called out to the worker, a stocky character in jeans, a plaid long-sleeve shirt and a floppy straw hat.
“You, you there! Look here!” The man goggled.
“Listen to me! Go now to Don Ramon. Tell him the police are here, and unless he is here in half an hour, there will be trouble.” The yokel stood with mouth open. Tomas waved his rifle at him.
“Go, damn it. Run! Half an hour, or there will be trouble.” The man broke and ran, toward a modest wooden house maybe a half mile away in the midst of the flat fields. It had a tin roof and a chimney that smoked. Near it were several outbuildings and a large barn, two pickup trucks and a Toyota Land Cruiser. We waited. A man came out of the house, shading his eyes against the sun to look at the four apparent policemen standing near the trees. Then he called, and two men came out of another building, and the three got into the Toyota and took a dirt road around the field to us.
“What’s this all about?” Don Ramon’s bodyguards had shotguns. Tomas and his men had modern automatic riles. But Ramon did not appear very concerned or impressed. I guess he was still buying the police thing, and he was not frightened of police.
Tomas waved his hand, and suddenly a dozen or so Indians, and I, stepped into the sun. Don Ramon did a classic double-take. He looked stunned.
“What does this mean? Who are these people? And who the hell is she? ” The chief replied to him.
“You cheated my people, you worked them for no pay, and when they complained, your men shot at them, and one died. We demand justice!” Don Ramon looked angry rather than intimidated.
“I am well-known to Captain Garcia at the police base. You, I have never seen. These Indians have lied to you. They did bad work, they broke things, I fired them, I owe them nothing. And who the hell is she?” He had a sudden calculating look in his eye, that I didn’t like.
“She is the most powerful bruja in the jungle”, said Tomas. “Her spells can turn bullets. She can wither your flesh with a word. She is here because the Indians wish it. You owe them $3000 American or” and he named a big number in Bolivares, “and another $1,000 for the Indian who died.” There was silence for a long time. They stared at us. We stared at them. The Indians fingered their bows. Finally, Don Ramon spoke in a soft, reasonable tone.
“Maybe there was some injustice. My men fired because they attacked us, but we never meant anyone to be badly hurt. You say one died?
“Yes.” Don Ramon appeared to think it over.
“I don’t keep that much money by me. I will have to go to town, and that takes time.”
“Send a man now, he can be back by tonight.”
“The banks will be closed, he can’t possibly be back until tomorrow.” Tomas whispered to the chief, then replied.
“Noon tomorrow, $4,000 or we burn down your house.”
“You are very curious police. I think you must be FARC. But I will pay. I have paid before. Noon? I agree.” Without another word, he climbed back in his Toyota and they drove to the house. Within minutes, the vehicle was on a dirt road heading west.
The Indians, when the chief explained things, were very happy. They sang and danced as we walked back tour camp. But Tomas insisted that a guard be set up with a man near the fields and two others always ready at camp.
“He gave in too easily. I don’t like the feel of it.”
“What if they don’t pay?”
“We burn the house as we promised, and run away.”
That night, Tomas made my bed anew, in a gully between two immense trees. He wouldn’t say why. After dinner he disappeared for a time, checking to see that people were on watch. I was almost asleep when he slipped quietly beside where I lay.
“Katie,” he whispered.
“Yes”
“Katie if something bad happens, my name is not Tomas. It is Julio Cesar Samper. An honored family name in Colombia, although my part of it has no money. You can find my mother easily enough in New York, she is in the phone book, Maria Eugenia Samper.” He added wistfully, sadly, “Will you tell her about me, and maybe, if you can, that you forgave me?”
“What do you expect to happen? Why did you change my bed?” I heard him moving, mysterious sounds, than felt something close softly on my ankle, then Click! I sat up angrily.
“A chain, you chain me, after all this, after speaking as you did, you chain me!”
“One of the Indians thinks he saw a man in the forest. I think Ramon has betrayed us. No big surprise. If I have to run, I don’t want the police to Patty Hearst you. Do you remember that case? They said she had joined her captors, become a criminal herself. I want to protect you from that. If things go well, I will release you in the morning.”
“What if they go badly, are you going to leave me to die of hunger, chained?”
“Good point” he replied. “Touch this!” I felt the lanyard on which he kept the key, normally around his neck. “I am hiding it under a flat stone here. Use it if you are abandoned. But you won’t be.” He reached out for me in the darkness, and found my lips unerringly, a long intimate kiss, tongue to tongue. It left me breathless. But he stood up.
“Will you call my mother?”
“Yes, I owe you that much.” And then like a ghost he was gone.
Minutes later, before I could sleep, I heard s
omeone moving toward me. If it was Juan, I swore to myself I would scream. But it was Fatty.
“Katie,’ he asked, “Katie, are you alright?”
“As much as I may be. Tomas chained me.”
“I am sorry for that. Katie, it’s been a long time since we were together. Katie, I know I’m not handsome like Tomas, but I think I love you. I am sorry for some of the things we did to you. I am afraid, Katie. Afraid something bad will happen tomorrow. May I make love to you, Katie, please, one more time?”
Poor Fatty, who should have been at university. Like me, if it comes to that. I don’t do pity fucks, but there’s a first time for everything.
“Sure, Fatty. Lie down beside me.” He made love, and if he didn’t do it very skillfully, at least he did it for a long time, and finally I felt my heart open to the poor boob, who had never once asked me to do the cooking or wash the pots or do any other menial thing because, he said, those were his jobs. Who always thanked me. And as my heart opened, my body warmed, and at last I came, I actually came, hard enough to cry out for the joy of it. I felt him kiss me, mutter his thanks and good-bye, and slip away as I fell asleep.
I awoke before dawn. The forest was hushed, the earth still black under the trees but a faint hint of gray to the sky between the branches. Birds sang, and in the distance I heard a monkey chattering.
And then a steady noise high above, a sort of “whop, whop, whop”. Someone called an alarm, figures near me began scrambling to their feet, and the world exploded.
It was a helicopter, and it was launching rockets at us. Shrapnel whistled among the tree trunks. Not far away, an intensely bright flash left me momentarily dazzled. I hugged the earth. I knew now why Tomas had put me in a gulley between two trees.
A rifle fired very near. By the muzzle flashes, it was aiming up, not sideways. Tomas or one of his men, shooting at the helicopter. I heard shouts from the side nearest the plantation. Streams of automatic fire lanced through the forest. The helicopter stopped shooting, to avoid hitting the government forces that were attacking from the plantation. This was surely too big for police. The Venezuelan Army had arrived. I pulled the nylon sheet over my head and waited to die.
Within minutes, the shooting stopped. Somewhere a man was crying in pain. The loud voices of soldiers, calling to one another. A softer voice, very near.
“Senorita, are you injured?” I lifted my head. It was a young fellow in a tailored fatigue uniform, obviously an officer. Behind him stood two more soldiers.
“Please don’t hurt me,’ I said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” The officer looked down at me with genuine tenderness.
“I know that, I was in the forest last night scouting. I heard you scream when they raped you. You are safe now. Please, put this on,” and he handed me a rolled up garment, which turned out to be a voluminous rain poncho, made for a grown man. As I stood, my chain clanked.
“Brutes, to chain a woman!” I almost looked for the key, but remembered in time that I was a helpless victim.
“Cover your ears,’ he said, and he shot through the padlock that made the connection to the tree. That still left me with a handcuff on my ankle, attached in turn to a slender steel chain. But it was light enough to carry. I pushed my arms into the poncho, which dragged on the ground behind me and quickly became intensely hot.
“I have something to show you that will please you,” said the officer. He led me to the other side of the camp. A man was kneeling, blood trickling from a grazed head, his arms helplessly handcuffed in the small of his back. Tomas.
“This one unfortunately survived.”
“Fatty and Juan are dead,” Tomas said quickly. “And the village chief. I’m not sure about Carlos. Most of the Indians got away. Officer”, he said to his captor, “The Indians did not know that this girl was kidnapped. They came here to collect a just debt from the farmer Don Ramon. They had no guns.”
“I don’t care what you say”, interrupted the officer. He handed me his Uzi.
“You should have the privilege of killing him yourself. It will save the Republic many years of prison time. We have unfortunately no death penalty here.” I took what was given me, and walked toward Tomas.
He looked up at me without fear. I looked at him without hatred. But I brought the muzzle almost to his lips.
“Suck it,’ I whispered, “Or I’ll shoot.” He laughed quietly.
“I’m a man. I don’t suck cocks, not even steel ones. Remember, that’s why I killed that narco.” I thought about what he had done to me, and what he had let others do, but also what he had done to save me. It wasn’t even close. I turned to the officer.
“I am not a killer. Let him rot in jail.” As we walked away, Tomas called out to me –
“I’ll get out! No jail can hold me!”
“If you do”, I replied, “Don’t come to the States, or I really will shoot you.” That was the last I saw of him. I understand he is still awaiting trial.
There was an army vehicle, in fact several, parked beside the pineapple field. In five minutes we were at a broad open pasture, where a helicopter sat, a passenger model. Among others waiting there was a policeman. He had a set of handcuffs, and his key fit mine, so I shed my chain. As we climbed in the helicopter, I thanked the Army officer.
“You are giving me very kind service.” The helicopter flew rapidly toward an airport in the nearest city
“It is only natural, senorita. You are one of the most famous women in the world.” I could not imagine what he meant, and said so.
“It was the picture, the beautiful terrible picture. Everyone in the world has seen it, nearly. Newspapers. Television. Internet. The government announced a reward. A large sum was raised in America for your ransom, but meanwhile an immense hunt has taken place, here and in Colombia and in the Brazilian Amazon. We had no idea where you were until Don Ramon came to the police yesterday. He had seen your picture in Diario. Now, he will get the reward”.
Like Tomas said – the public loves a blonde victim. And poor Fatty was dead, and that cheating Don Ramon would get a reward. What a world.
A billion people had seen me naked. I was famous. And now I was sweating in an ugly rain poncho, ugly and ridiculous. If a billion had seen me, how foolish to be shy now?
“There will be press at the airport. I hope you can bear it. And someone from your Embassy, to escort you to Caracas for a flight home.”
“Yes, I can bear it.” What to do, what to do? We landed; a dozen or more reporters and photographers were in a cluster, a van with satellite dish to beam video to the waiting world.
As I stepped from the helicopter, I flung the ugly poncho from my shoulders, ignoring the officer’s shocked face.
Naked, amid a storm of shutter clicks, I walked across the tarmac to meet my public.
If I don’t get a movie deal out of this, my name’s not Katie Sornsen.