Lockestep

by Jack Barnao

  "Watch that, don't let the beer break.” I picked up the bag and took out two bottles. They were warm but still not hot, and I opened them and handed him one. He nodded gratefully and glugged it. That was a mistake. The beer foamed, and he coughed and some of it ran over the side of the bottle.

  "Take it easy, sip it. Make sure you wet all your mouth with every drop before you swallow."

  He looked at me angrily, but he was too tired to argue. I noticed he didn't bother with a cigarette. “We'll break for half an hour. If you can sleep, go ahead and do it."

  He grunted and lay flat, closing his eyes, but he wasn't sleeping. He said, “You tired?"

  "Not yet, it takes more than this.” I thought back to training marches in the army. We had carried heavier packs, heavier weapons, and we covered the ground at twice the speed. Train hard, fight easy. That had been the motive that forced us on. By comparison, this was a nature hike.

  I went around the rock and tried to pick out a landmark ahead, but the brush was too thick, so I climbed a little higher, to the top of the rock, and from there I could see a col, a dip between two hilltops right on our course. That was a break, less climbing.

  Amadeo was feeling better by the time I rejoined him. He had opened his eyes and was staring up at the sky like a little boy in one of those old storybooks that were read to you as a kid. He turned his head to look at me as I came back down the last few yards and sat beside him. “Look at that sky,” he said. “Not a goddamn cloud anywhere, an’ hot.” He snorted out a quick, disgusted little breath. “Can y’ imagine being born here, poor?"

  There was nothing to say, so I let him wander on. “My mother was. Her father died, just worn out, when she was twelve. Then a tourist, Jewish woman from Montreal, Mrs. Gold, she took a shine to her and got her mother's permission to take her to Canada. Sent her to school with her own kids."

  He rolled onto one elbow and reached for his cigarettes. I was glad to see that, it meant he had recovered his strength. He lit up, breaking the match afterward, and went on. “She died, the year my mother turned eighteen. One of the other kids in the family was a lawyer, he cut her out of the will real fast, so she went workin’ in a bakery. Hard work, like back here. An’ then she met my father. Now she's, what, fifty, got a big house with a garden, grows everything, really.” He drew on his cigarette and blew out a luxurious cloud of smoke. “That Mrs. Gold, she was some kinda saint."

  "There's more good people than bad in the world. It's just that they're not as organized as the opposition.” There! The biggest part of everything I'd ever learned about life, and it whistled over his head like an outgoing artillery shell.

  He said, “I just wish I could've met that lady."

  She'd have been real proud of you, I thought, a full-fledged Mafia princeling, pushing crack to any kid with ten bucks. Ah, well, it was a dirty job, but someone would have turned up to do it. Don't blame Mrs. Gold's generosity.

  We started out again, moving slowly down the side of the hill toward my landmark. It was after four by now, and the worst of the heat was over. It was warm, the way pale northerners dream of its being when they're sliding home through the slush of a February rush hour. We made good time to the col, rested there for ten minutes, and pushed on, in the shadow of the mountain to the west, making another six miles before nightfall.

  By then we had reached the top of a steep scarp. I knew we would have to get off it before dark, it was too hazardous to rest here, but Amadeo was beat. He dropped his bag lightly on the ground and lay down next to it, breathing heavily.

  "Take care of that bag. It's got all our rations in it,” I said.

  "Yeah, I was gonna say, how's about eating now? I ain’ had a thing since that fruit for breakfast.” Without waiting for an answer, he reached for the bag, sitting up quickly, so that a flurry of loose dirt slipped away from under him, washed around the bag like an incoming tide and gently earned it over the cliff. He swore, and then we stood and listened to the rush of falling earth and the music of breaking glass as our entire supply of fluids was lost to us.

  He turned to me, his face pale in the gloom. “Now what?"

  "Now we prove how much you inherited from your mother's side of the family."

  "Wha's that s'posed t’ mean? Haven't you got any food in your pack?"

  "Never carry it, there's always something to eat."

  "Yeah, like what?"

  "You'll see. Come on, lets's get off this cliff face. Follow me, I'll steer by the stars."

  I turned away, fixing my course by the polestar, then relating it back to Arcturus, which was high enough to be visible when we got down below the mountaintops. It was rough and ready, and I would have to adjust my course every time I got a glimpse of the polestar, but it would do.

  Amadeo scrambled behind me, edging nervously away from the cliff edge. “What about the food, we can get that?"

  "We don't have a flashlight, we'd waste hours looking for it, and in that time we can be another six or eight miles on."

  "But what about water?” His mouth was dry, I could tell from the choked sound of his voice. It was over an hour since we had stopped for a beer, our third since starting.

  "You won't dry up and blow away, keep walking, we can cover more ground while it's cool."

  He swore at me in an angry hiss, but I could hear him lurching on behind me as I slashed into the brush and kept on down the hill.

  By the time the last light of day had gone, a quarter-moon had risen, and our night vision had built up to the point where we were easily able to move. I kept us at it for an hour, ignoring Amadeo's complaints. Then I stopped and sat down against a tall tree, satisfied we were still on course. Amadeo caught up to me and collapsed. “If I don’ get a drink, I'm gonna die,” he said hoarsely.

  I checked my watch. It was nine forty-seven. “We'll have a mouthful at midnight, that's only a couple of hours. By that time, we'll be halfway if we keep up this pace."

  "Bastard,” he hissed. “Why in hell I let you talk me into this I'll never know."

  "Greed,” I told him. He was still fresh enough to work without reward. By noon the next day he would be exhausted, even after a few hours’ sleep. That's when I would start using the carrot. For now he needed lots of stick to keep him mobile. But he needed a little help, so I opened my pack and felt inside the breast pocket of my jacket. There's a spare button in there, and I pulled it out and gave it to him. “Suck this button, it'll keep your mouth moist."

  He didn't argue. He accepted the button and slipped it into his mouth. I could hear him clicking it against his teeth. “Don’ do a thing,” he said at last.

  "It helps, believe me. A pebble is good, but the rock around here is all jagged, you'd never find a suitable stone, and it's probably coated with Montezuma's revenge anyway.” I was healthily, glowingly tired, and I sat back gratefully against the tree. “Five minutes,” I said.

  After our rest we marched again, glad of the coolness, alert to the tiny rustlings in the undergrowth, birds mostly and a few local rodents with a metabolism that let them produce their own water from the food they ate. In the morning I would catch something for breakfast, I thought; for now, on toward the leading star.

  At ten to twelve he stopped me, calling out from forty yards back. “Wait up. Hey. Wait up.” He sounded pathetic, his words each separated by a breath, and I knew he was at the end of his rope, so I stopped and whistled softly so he could track me, now he could no longer hear my machete on the brush. He caught up and sat on the ground, swinging his machete around him, using the flat of the blade to make sure there was nothing to prevent his lying down. Then he stretched out. “This is it,” he said after a minute's silence. “I'm beat. We gotta stop."

  "Okay, it's pretty near midnight. Why don't you sleep for an hour or two, here's the blanket.” I pulled it out of my pack and he took it gratefully, not saying anything. He was too tired even to think about being thirsty. I didn't remind him; it would be worse in daylight, and we would nee
d the water I brought with me.

  I lowered myself gently to the ground and stretched gratefully. Two hours should be enough, I thought. By that time it would be as cool as it got. Walking would be better than shivering, and I knew that Amadeo would wake up cold. I set my mental alarm for two and slipped off into a deep sleep.

  It was three minutes to the hour when I woke. Amadeo was snoring. The moon was beginning to slide down toward the hill peaks to the west of us, but there was plenty of light. I stood up and scouted around, keeping within earshot of Amadeo's regular snores. I was lucky, there were two agave cactus plants next to one another. And both had developed the central spike.

  I went back and woke Amadeo. “Time for a dnnk,” I told him.

  He sat up. “Yeah, good.” He held out his hand, but I said, “Follow me,” and he did, mumbling, over to the cactus plants.

  I slashed the leaves away from one side of each one and then cut the central stem. “What now?” he asked.

  "Now put your mouth on the cut part. There's a couple of quarts of sap in there that you can drink safely."

  He did as I said, then swore. “This tastes like hell."

  I was preparing the other one for myself. “Just pretend it's been distilled and you're drinking tequila,” I said.

  We stayed there for twenty minutes, picking up about half a pint of cheesy-tasting sap that did nothing for our thirst but at least put some fluid into our systems. Then I slashed open the two spikes and handed one of them to him. “Rub this on your arms and face, it'll freshen you up."

  He was too defeated to argue. We stood there, washing our hands and faces, like kids on a watermelon binge, sucking at the pulp as we worked. “There. Now you're ready to go,” I said.

  "I am like hell,” he snarled, but I turned away and let him follow as I walked on, over the rising ground toward the pointer of the Big Dipper.

  By four-thirty the moon was gone, and I stopped again. It was cool now, perhaps as low as fifty degrees, and I put my jacket on when we stopped, and wrapped the hotel towel around my shoulders. Amadeo had the blanket and he wrapped himself up in it, and we lay down again and slept until dawn, the true dawn, before the sun had climbed high enough to clear the mountains.

  Amadeo was stiff and tired. It was time for a little of the carrot I had planned. “We've come most of the way, and we're still on track. I figure we'll reach your place by noon,” I said.

  "There's no water there,” he said feebly. “No food, nothing."

  "Don't worry, there's half a million bucks, that'll buy you an ocean of beer and all the pollo con arroz you can put away."

  "Beer, yeah. Chicken and rice, no I want a big steak with four fried eggs on it. And lots of fried onions."

  "No pasta?” I kidded. “No spaghetti marinara?"

  "Steak,” he said doggedly, as if I could come up with one if he fixed his mind on it.

  "First we walk. Let's get started."

  The stars had washed out of the sky by now, and I used the compass to lead us north-northeast over a dry arroyo and on over the hills. We stopped twice more to suck on slashed cactus. Amadeo was weaker now. If this had been a training march with a vehicle trailing us to pick him up and ship him out of the SAS selection course and back to his regular army unit, he would have given up, but there was nothing anywhere but dry country and the endlessly circling vultures overhead, and he knew what they were waiting for.

  By ten-thirty I figured we were three miles south of the track. Two more hard hours would put us there, with perhaps an hour's easy walking after that. I called a halt and took out my canteen. It has a small cup-lid and I filled it and gave it to him. He took it like a sacrament, sipping slowly, rolling the water around his mouth and swallowing gratefully. He tipped the cup upside down on his mouth and tapped the bottom with his fingers, then handed it back to me. “Nothin’ ever tasted better,” he said.

  "You can have another one next stop,” I promised, and took my ration. Then I recorked the canteen, very firmly, and screwed the top back on. We rested for another five minutes, Amadeo sprawled flat on the ground. He was a mess, his chino pants torn from the brush we'd passed through, his T-shirt soaked through and black with fresh sweat. His lips were beginning to peel, and he touched them tenderly.

  "If we see another cactus, we'll stop, okay?” he asked with his eyes closed.

  "For sure. Never pass up a chance to drink."

  He rolled up onto one elbow and looked at me. “You're a tough sonofabitch, ain'cha?"

  "Trained is all,” I said. “You could be the same if you worked at it, there's no trick, you're not born hard, you harden yourself."

  He sat all the way up and hugged his knees. “I'm tryin'a think. I don’ know anybody could've come all this way an’ still look like he could do it again."

  "The trick is to be ready to fight when we get there."

  "You think we'll have to? Hell, no way I could."

  "You could, and would, for your half million."

  He thought about it silently, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess I would."

  Thirteen

  We got up and marched on, over the highest mountain we had come to all the way. Amadeo flopped down on the crest and looked around. “Yeah, I remember this hill. The locals call it El Padre."

  "And we're on course?"

  "Yeah, you can see this from the track, if we keep on the way we're goin', I figure we'll cross the track about a mile east of the shack."

  "Good, then let's have another drink and go on."

  "What I need is food, my guts are hurtin', that's how hungry I am.” He snarled it, angry that the world hadn't laid any breakfast on for him. I doubt if he had ever missed a meal before. I was hungry, too, but I'm used to it. Meals are a bonus in a soldier's routine on active service. Twenty-four hours without is a discomfort, that's all I could have kept on for a day or so more without folding, but his resistance was dwindling. It was time to find food.

  He took the water, and as he drank, I saw an iguana flit along the ground, a big one, eighteen inches long, weighing about two pounds. I flung my machete. It didn't snake out and cut the lizard's head off like it would have done in a movie, it spun in the air and hit the iguana butt-first, not killing it but slowing it down, so I had a second to catch it by the tail and bang its head on a rock. “Breakfast,” I said.

  Amadeo looked at me in horror. “You kidding?"

  I took out my clasp knife and gutted the lizard, stripping the bile from the liver and tossing it aside. “Want this?” I offered the liver to Amadeo, but he shuddered and shook his head. I gulped it down, and he turned and spat thinly onto the dry ground.

  "Jesus Christ, now I seen everything."

  "The meat's like chicken,” I said, and quickly stripped off the scaly hide.

  "I know that, the Indians sell ’em in the market, but shit, we got no place to cook it. We can't light a fire."

  "No need. Cut it real thin and it goes down easy. Want some?"

  He shook his head. “Okay, then you can have one more cup of water, I'll be getting some juice out of the meat."

  He turned his head away while I ate, cutting the meat into silvers and swallowing it without too much chewing. I won't say it's tasty, but if you can handle sushi, you can manage.

  The flies had already found the entrails, and the vultures were clustering again before I finished. I glanced up at them as I shut my knife and put it away. “We could do without those birds, they're a giveaway."

  "We'll leave ’em behind when we move on.” He was getting stronger again, proximity to his money pumping up his sense of importance. He stood up. “If you've finished makin’ like a vulture, let's go."

  Now he led, walking more quickly than he had all night, slashing at the brush impatiently until I caught up with him and spoke softly. “Listen, keep it quiet. If there's anyone up ahead, they'll hear you. We don't want that."

  He nodded and moved more quietly, flanking the bushes wherever possible, cutting silently when he had to I
followed, cranking a round up the spout of the rifle and adding another to the magazine. If García knew we needed a Jeep, he would have made an assessment of where we were going. He wouldn't need to know exactly, he could set men on each of the tracks within range of the town and wait for us. They would wait for weeks if necessary for a couple of dollars a day each, peanuts to a dope wholesaler.

  At last Amadeo gave a triumphant little gasp. “Made it,” he whispered.

  I came up with him and looked. We had reached a track, formerly a road wide enough to accommodate a Jeep, now brushed in on both sides but still a highway in comparison to the route we had taken through the night.

  "How far to your hiding place?"

  He stopped and looked back at the mountain, locating himself. “A mile, maybe more."

  "Okay, we'll walk the track part of the way. I'll go first. You keep on looking around and behind you, check there's nobody following us."

  "You think they might?"

  "If García wants your money badly enough, he'll have men on every Jeep track there is. Keep your eyes open."

  I handed him my machete and slipped the safety off my rifle, then moved on cautiously, scanning every bush, every rock for signs of life. The trail twisted around obstacles, so there was never more than fifty yards’ view ahead of me, but I watched the slopes on both sides, everywhere they might have posted a lookout.

  Insects chirred in the heat, and a few birds clattered in the bushes, pecking at them, but there was nothing to indicate that anyone else was ahead of us, and I moved quietly on for almost a mile before stopping and signaling Amadeo to catch up.

  He came up and crouched beside me, his face glistening with sweat but not streaming, not today; he was dehydrating. “How much farther now?” I asked him.

  "Quarter mile should do it."

  "Okay. It's time to get off the track. Try not to use your machete. We'll work our way out a hundred yards, up the slope to the left here and stop when we can see the place. You go ahead."