The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  Zeppo cried, ‘It is one thing to fight, another to go in a place fit only for goats . . .’

  ‘There are a thousand people behind you. They are not in a cave. They are not eating salmon. They are marching to Guatemala City. They will tell you about strength, and about negotiation and about retreat. Go and ask them, and tell them that you are not feeling well, and want to run away, and want to talk. Only fucking Indians, of course. Perhaps they don’t have opinions. We can get to Guatemala City, I promise you, if . . .’

  ‘If.’ Zeppo rolled the word.

  ‘. . . if the weather holds for us . . . Why have we not met a blocking force? Because the weather helps us, they do not know where we are. Why must we force the march? Because they do not believe we are capable of crossing this ground at this speed.’

  ‘We should consolidate,’ Harpo said.

  ‘Coward’s talk.’

  ‘We should negotiate,’ Zeppo said.

  ‘Failure’s talk.’

  ‘We should quit while we have the strength,’ Groucho said.

  Gord had hold of Jorge’s shoulders. He shook the young man. He shook him as a cat shakes a rat, cruel.

  ‘What do you say?’

  Hands off Jorge’s shoulders. His fists grasped Jorge’s beard. He pulled Jorge’s head up. Cavern eyes staring up at him. Slow words.

  ‘In the morning . . . I decide in the morning . . . the morning will be time . . .’

  ‘Oh, no, no way . . .’ Gord dragged Jorge to his feet. ‘With me now. You come back with me now, and you tell a thousand fucking Indians, and a few others, that you’ve had enough. You tell them, men from Nebaj and Acul and Playa Grande, that you’re chucking it. You tell them that you’re going for retreat or negotiation. You tell them they can go back to where the army’s waiting for them, at Playa Grande or Acul or Nebaj, or whatever bloody hole they came out of . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jorge said hoarsely.

  Gord growled, ‘For nothing.’

  They went together back up the mountain slope.

  ‘I apologize.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologize to me, Jorge.’

  ‘I apologize because I have abused you, Gord, and because I have failed those who follow me. Because it will not happen again I can, in sincerity, apologize.’

  Never explain and never apologize, what they taught the officer entrants at Sandhurst Academy, what they spelled out on the regiment’s induction course. The anger ran from him. He wondered what they would make of Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez, the instructors at the academy who knew it all, and the officers at Hereford who had seen it all. Leadership material or wet shit? Well, Gord Brown, if he were asked, could tell them that Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez could lead several hundreds of men on a journey of madness into the mouth of bad hell.

  After Gord had dropped down, drained, he watched Jorge’s light move amongst the huddled, sitting men. He heard the low voice, calm. He heard the chuckled laughter. He saw the figure shrouded by the blanket slip forward, then settle again. His stomach groaned for food, too tired to go and look for it. He lay on his side on hard rock and the rain beat on him. He was asleep before the singing had died.

  Chaos swirling in the terminal.

  The morning light not yet on the avenue in front of his home, Colonel Arturo had started out for the airport.

  Holding the tickets in his hand, queuing and kicking forward the bags each time the counter neared. His wife and daughter behind him, and dressed as if it was Disneyland they were headed for and vacation.

  There had been a general ahead of him in the queue, and there were two brigadiers behind him. He had seen a general in the adjacent queue, and a senator, and an official he knew to be senior in the secretariat of the Foreign Ministry.

  The shouting, the shoving, the whining was around him.

  He reached the head of the queue. He slapped the two suitcases on the scales. He dropped the tickets onto the desk. The young man on check-in looked at him with contempt, moved with studied insolence, glanced in his own time at the tickets. The flight was full. The list was closed. The Arturo ladies had been off-loaded. The tickets should be changed for the following morning. All other flights today were full. He started to shout . . . He was Colonel Mario Arturo . . . He was a colonel in the Kaibiles . . . He had friends on the General Staff . . . The check-in clerk was bored. The face of the clerk showed he had heard it before, that morning, many times, showed that he had heard of influence and power and position. All around, the clipped accents of privilege, money whispered of a rabble swarming towards the capital city and the army in confusion.

  He knew the answer.

  No more shouting, no more posturing importance.

  His voice softened. His hand was at his wallet. He paid the mordida. The bribe he offered was, first time, one hundred American dollars, pocketed by the check-in clerk. The tickets still lay on the desk. A second hundred-dollar note. A third . . . The check-in clerk tore at the ticket pages, hammered with his stamp, reached with the baggage tags for the handles of the suitcases. The tickets and the two boarding cards were passed back across the desk. The check-in clerk looked past him for the next passenger.

  He watched his wife and daughter through the passport examination.

  He stayed at the airport until the aircraft took off, rising into the low cloud off the shine of the tarmac.

  He strode, bullocking his way out of the terminal building, away from the fetid stench of defeat.

  12

  The dream left him.

  Gord woke.

  The dream was of rotted flesh and the wheelbarrows of decayed bodies and shovels that scraped up the flesh and the bodies. The dream was of the fire that hissed, sparkled, as the flesh and bodies of the salmon were swung by the shovels onto the pyre. The flesh and bodies of the salmon fish hit the petrol-driven fire and he saw the carcasses of children. The fish were dead children. The dead children were butterflies. The butterflies tried to rise from the climb of the flames and were caught, and their wings were withered. The bright colours of butterflies’ wings crumpling in the fire heat, and there was the shriek of children and the spit of the fish flesh. The bodies of butterflies fell back into the fire heat . . .

  He woke.

  He started up.

  The light of the day, grey-white under the cloud, pricked at his eyes. Should have been dark, should have been night. Should have been the blackness around him, and the phlegm cough of men roused from sleep. He lay beside the track and there was a lip of rock a yard high into which he was huddled, and which took the weight of the falling rain. He looked back up the mountain slope, the way they had come, and he saw the trail beaten by feet, and its emptiness . . . Christ . . . He swung his head. He could see down the same slope, and there was the same emptiness before the track merged into the short misted horizon. The sag in his stomach . . . Christ . . . Gord bloody Brown, whip master and taskmaster, sleeping on past the time of the loading up and the moving out. A terrible stillness in the silence. Gord bloody Brown, sharp tongue and hard tongue, lying down on the job . . . Christ . . . They were sitting above the lip of the rock.

  The cart and the wheelbarrow were with them.

  They were waiting on him.

  There was the Archaeologist, eyes closed as if he remembered distant music. There was the Academic, brow furrowed as if he took a calculation in his mind and worried it. There was the Fireman, lips pursed in concern as if he cared. There was the Street Boy, gazing on the open blade of his knife as if he remembered the slashing blow against a sentry’s throat. The silence clung in the air. There was the emptiness of the mountain slope ahead of him and behind him.

  Gord started to push himself up. The load of the backpack crippled his effort, and there was the weight of the machine gun across his waist, and there was the binding of the ammunition belts across his chest. He pushed, he writhed, and he fell back. It was a haze in his memory, dropping to the side of the track in the darkness, not having the will to shrug out of the con
straint harness of the backpack, falling in sleep as Jorge had moved away further from him . . .

  ‘You bastards.’

  The Archaeologist said, ‘You had to sleep.’

  The Academic said, ‘Without rest you kill yourself.’

  The Fireman said, ‘If you lose your strength then none of us have strength.’

  The Street Boy said, ‘You snore like a pig, you know that, like a big mother pig.’

  He was on his feet. The taste of the night was in his mouth, and the ache was in his legs, and the pain held in his lungs. He used the stock of the machine gun to hold himself upright. Gord looked down the track, where the beat of the feet had been. His clothes dripped water. He squinted his eyes to clear the fire of the dream and the blank grey-white of the cloud base.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Two hours since the men moved off,’ the Archaeologist said.

  He started to move, but they were faster. They were around him. He should eat. Had to make up ground. He must eat. Had to recapture lost time. He would eat. Had to hurry . . . They were around him and blocking him. It was a conspiracy. He struggled and heaved with his shoulders and could not break the hold of the Archaeologist and the Academic. He thrashed with his legs and the Street Boy kicked him smartly on the bones of his shins. The Fireman fed him, like he was a child, like he was a sick patient. While they held him, and while the Street Boy dared him to try to take a step forward, the Fireman forced the dry wedges of tortilla down his throat. Gord submitted. A lump of tortilla at a time. Swallowed, gagged, belched, swallowed . . . The food fell to the pit of his stomach. He knew the boy would kick him again if he struggled again.

  He felt their love.

  ‘You should not have allowed me.’

  He saw in his mind the great column loading up, taking on their shoulders the mortars and the bombs and the machine guns and the ammunition and the launchers and the rockets.

  ‘The men knew you had to sleep,’ the Archaeologist said.

  He saw in his mind the men sliding in darkness down the mountain slope under the burden of what they carried.

  ‘The men believe in you,’ the Academic said.

  ‘It was Alex who said you snored like a big mother pig,’ the Street Boy said.

  Gord wiped his mouth. He was freed.

  ‘Do it again and I’ll break your bloody backs . . .’

  He thought that he felt their love and the blood ran again in him.

  He led. They were the children. They careered down the mountain track. The wheels of the cart and the wheels of the barrow bucked and jumped on the rock stones. Going fast. They were the children who yelled and shouted. They were the butterflies dancing. A sort of joy with them all, as if hunger were forgotten, as if fatigue were gone. All liberated, and charging down the rough track where the column had gone before them. The mist was around them and the rain splashed at their faces and ran from their clothes. A wildness in them all, and a madness. Twice the cart turned right over, and once the wheelbarrow toppled to lose the petrol cans and the air cylinder . . . it was the third day of Gord’s week.

  He was the survivor, and he alone stood his ground.

  The rifle with the five rounds of ammunition in the magazine was on the ground by his feet.

  The Civil Patroller raised his worn and calloused hands until they were straight above his head.

  The echo of the rifle shots beat in his ears.

  The others at the roadblock had run. It was very clear to him, everything that had happened. He had been coming from the bush scrub at the side of the track that led away to the cloud-hidden mountain ridge. There had still been grass stems in his hands, from what he had used to wipe between his buttocks. He had seen the first men coming fast down the fall of the slope. Tightening the rope that held his trousers at the waist, scraping the last grass from his hands on the thighs of his trousers, whistling the warning to the others who still slept in the shelter of the high trees. He had seen a mirage of men, bearded and filthy, coming like hunting dogs towards him. Out of the mist, hazed in the rain stream, and he had shouted. And endless march of men emerging from the invisibility of the cloud, and he had shouted and then frozen. The swarm powering closer and no gap behind them in the ripple of advancing men. Five other men on the roadblock, and the sleep still in their minds, and running. The volley of shots, past him to the right and by him to the left. The crack of the gunfire around him.

  He stood so still, and he held the trembling in his legs. He wondered if he would be shot himself, and whether it would hurt to be shot, and he wondered if it were a punishment for the killing of the tree that was beautiful.

  He heard a voice. He thought it was the voice of the spirit that his brother and his cousin had told him of. The spirit was given the name of Gaspar. He saw a man who was fairer than the Ladinos around him and who carried a heavy machine gun and was swathed in ammunition belts and there was a cart pulled on wheels behind him, and a barrow. He thought that the voice of the spirit, Gaspar, had saved him from the rifles at the head of the column.

  As far as he could see, behind the voice of the spirit, the mountain moved with men advancing from the cloud.

  The questions were barked at him.

  Of course he would join. Of course he would guide them.

  He was permitted to lower his arms.

  He could look now behind him. He could see the bodies of the men from his village on the Sacapulas to Uspantán road. He had known each of the men all the days of his life. He had worked the fields of maize with them, and gone down on the lorries with them to work in the sugar fincas, drunk himself insensible with them on atol at the fiestas, seen the killing of his father by the army with them, danced with them . . .

  Of course the Civil Patroller would join the march, guide it, and survive.

  ‘You are paralysed. It is an impertinence for me to say so, but it is necessary to say it.’

  It was a liberty that Mario Arturo took. There was the fourth cigarette of the day in the general’s fingers and the room smelled of stale whisky. The rain beat steadily on the windows.

  ‘An impertinence, yes.’

  ‘We have to be proactive. It is too late to be reactive. We have to go in there, get them. If we are defensive, hull down, we will lose. It is as if we show them fear.’

  ‘A grave impertinence.’

  The general had taught him at the Escuela Politecnica. The general had commanded him at brigade level in the Firmness ’83 campaign, and in the harrying operations against the subversives of National Stability ’85. The general had stood by Mario Arturo nine years before when he had written the seven-page paper, ‘Belize: Implications of Intervention’, in which he had predicted humiliation and defeat should the Guatemalan armed forces be ordered to invade Belize territory and confront British troops and British strike aircraft; not a popular paper; a paper said by some staff officers to be an insult to the army; a paper said by many unit commanders to be defeatist. The general had protected him.

  ‘If we don’t act we will lose . . .’

  All through the previous day Colonel Arturo had abandoned his desk and tramped the corridors and sidled into anterooms and wheedled with staff officers for access. He had been rejected. Ignored by generals and distanced from brigadiers and held at arm’s length by the colonels who scurried from meeting to meeting, from the conference room of the estado mayor to the war operations room of the Mariscal Zavala garrison camp. Ignored, distanced, held back, minutes into hours, hours into a day, he had been deflected. He was dressed now in his best uniform. He wore his medals for service and gallantry. He had been at the estado mayor from 7 a.m., and he had bearded this general of logistics, in command of G-4, as the staff car had pulled up. He had forced his way past an ADC, he had flicked with his swagger stick at the outstretched hand of a military policeman. He had won the access.

  ‘. . . If we lose and we are still here then we will be swinging from lampposts. If we lose and we are gone then we will be washing dishes
in hotels in Miami. If . . .’

  He broke off. The telephone rang, was answered by the young adjutant. The adjutant listened, and his fist tightened to white on the receiver, and he bit at his lip. The general would be hanging, and high, the general was known in the area towards the south-west strip of the Mexican frontier as the Butcher of Jacaltenango. The adjutant put down the telephone carefully, and spoke in the general’s ear. There was the bleak smile on the general’s face, and the irritated tugging at his moustache.

  ‘If you are not decisive, if you do not go for the throat of this rabble, if you do not crush them, now . . .’

  The hand of the general waved for him to be silent. He saw the old veins on the claw of a mottled hand.

  A quiet voice, the passion exhausted. ‘I have asked the artillery to be brought forward from Escuintla, 75mm and 105mm, but I am told that too many men are under training for it to be an effective response force. I have asked for mechanized infantry to be driven in from Huehuetenango, M-113s and V-150s, and I am told that the personnel carriers are undergoing the annual maintenance programme. I have asked for the light tanks from the garrison battalion at Jalapa, M-41A3s, but I am told the road is washed out. My dear friend, we are a political army and we are in the hands of politicized officers, and politicized officers are content to wait until they see the fall of the coins. It is the time for the excuses of pragmatists . . . What do you want?’

  No hesitation. Colonel Arturo stood forward on his toes. He felt his power.

  ‘I want command of the Kaibil battalion.’

  ‘He is my nephew.’

  ‘Full command.’

  ‘He is married to the daughter of the cousin of the minister.’

  ‘Full support.’

  ‘The officer you would replace has the connection to break you.’

  ‘Full command, full support. Let him try.’

  ‘You ask much . . .’

  ‘Or you will hang from a lamppost in front of the Palacio Nacional, or you will end your days washing dishes in a hotel’s kitchen.’

  He saw the hostility of the adjutant. He wondered who was the uncle of the adjutant, who was the father-in-law of the adjutant. He owed nothing to any man. He had no finca in the Franja Transversal del Norte where the military commanders had scuttled for free land. He had no link to a construction company that built for the ministry. He had no villa on the shore of Lake Atitlán, no share of a hotel, no investment in car parks, no arrangement with the army’s bank. He knew none of the foreign businessmen of the American Chamber of Commerce, none of the Japanese car importers, none of the Taiwanese contractors. He was owned by no man.