Lucius Shepard: Life During Wartime

It took both Mingolla and Baylor to drag Gilbey away from the Sikorsky, and he didn’t stop shouting until they drew near the forklift with its load of coffins: a giant’s treasure of enormous silver ingots. Then he grew silent and lowered his eyes. They wangled a ride with an MP corporal outside the PX, and as the jeep hummed across the concrete, Mingolla glanced over at the Sikorsky that had transported them. The two pilots had spread a canvas on the ground, had stripped to shorts, and were sunning themselves. But they had not removed their helmets. The weird juxtaposition of tanned bodies and black heads disturbed Mingolla, reminding him of an old movie in which a guy had gone through a matter transmitter along with a fly and had ended up with the fly’s head on his shoulders. Maybe, he thought, the pilots’ story about the helmets was true: they were impossible to remove. Maybe the war had gotten that strange.

The MP corporal noticed him watching the pilots and let out a barking laugh. ‘Those guys,’ he said, with the flat emphatic tone of a man who knew whereof he spoke, ‘are fuckin’ nuts!’

Six years before, San Francisco de Juticlan had been a scatter of thatched huts and concrete-block structures deployed among palms and banana leaves on the east bank of the Río Dulce, at the junction of the river and a gravel road that connected with the Pan American Highway; but it had since grown to occupy substantial sections of both banks, increased by dozens of bars and brothels: stucco cubes painted all the colors of the rainbow, with a fantastic bestiary of neon signs mounted atop their tin roofs. Dragons; unicorns; fiery birds; centaurs. The MP corporal told Mingolla that the signs were not advertisements but coded symbols of pride; for example, from the representation of a winged red tiger crouched among green lilies and blue crosses, you could deduce that the owner was wealthy, a member of a Catholic secret society, and ambivalent toward government policies. Old signs were constantly being dismantled, and larger, more ornate ones erected in their stead as testament to improved profits, and this warfare of light and image was appropriate to the time and place because San Francisco de Juticlan was less a town than a symptom of war. Though by night the sky above it was radiant, at ground level it was mean and squalid. Pariah dogs foraged in piles of garbage, hardbitten whores spat from the windows, and, according to the corporal, it was not unusual to stumble across a corpse, likely a victim of the gangs of abandoned children who lived in the fringes of the jungle. Narrow streets of tawny dirt cut between the bars, carpeted with a litter of flattened cans and feces and broken glass; refugees begged at every corner, displaying burns and bullet wounds. Many of the buildings had been thrown up with such haste that their walls were tilted, their roofs canted, and this made the shadows they cast appear exaggerated in their jaggedness, like shadows in the work of a psychotic artist, giving visual expression to a pervasive undercurrent of tension. Yet as Mingolla moved along, he felt at ease, almost happy. His mood was due in part to his hunch that it was going to be one hell of an R and R (he had learned to trust his hunches); but it spoke mainly to the fact that towns like this had become for him a kind of afterlife, a reward for having endured a harsh term of existence.

The corporal dropped them off at a drugstore, where Mingolla bought a box of stationery, and then they stopped for a drink at the Club Demonio: a tiny place whose whitewashed walls were shined to faint phosphorescence by the glare of purple light bulbs dangling from the ceiling like radioactive fruit. The club was packed with soldiers and whores, most sitting at tables around a dance floor not much bigger than a king-size mattress. Two couples were swaying to a ballad that welled from a jukebox encaged in chicken wire and two-by-fours; veils of cigarette smoke drifted with underwater slowness above their heads. Some of the soldiers were mauling their whores, and one whore was trying to steal the wallet of a soldier who was on the verge of passing out; her hand worked between his legs, encouraging him to thrust his hips forward, and when he did this, she pried with her other hand at the wallet stuck in the back pocket of his tight-fitting jeans. But all the action seemed listless, halfhearted, as if the dimness and syrupy music had thickened the air and were hampering movement. Mingolla took a seat at the bar. The bartender glanced at him inquiringly, his pupils becoming cored with purple reflections, and Mingolla said, ‘Beer.’

‘Hey, check that out!’ Gilbey slid onto an adjoining stool and jerked his thumb toward a whore at the end of the bar. Her skirt was hiked to mid-thigh, and her breasts, judging by their fullness and lack of sag, were likely the product of elective surgery.

‘Nice,’ said Mingolla, disinterested. The bartender set a bottle of beer in front of him, and he had a swig; it tasted sour, watery, like a distillation of the stale air.

Baylor slumped onto the stool next to Gilbey and buried his face in his hands. Gilbey said something to him that Mingolla didn’t catch, and Baylor lifted his head. ‘I ain’t goin’ back,’ he said.

‘Aw, Jesus!’ said Gilbey. ‘Don’t start that crap.’

In the half-dark Baylor’s eye sockets were clotted with shadows. His stare locked onto Mingolla. ‘They’ll get us next time,’ he said. ‘We should head downriver. They got boats in Livingston that’ll take you to Panama.’

‘Panama!’ sneered Gilbey. ‘Nothin’ there ’cept more beaners.’

‘We’ll be okay at the Farm,’ offered Mingolla. ‘Things get too heavy, they’ll pull us back.’

‘“Too heavy”?’ A vein throbbed in Baylor’s temple. ‘What the fuck you call “too heavy”?’

‘Screw this!’ Gilbey heaved up from his stool. ‘You deal with him, man,’ he said to Mingolla. He gestured at the big-breasted whore. ‘I’m gonna climb Mount Silicon.’

‘Nine o’clock,’ said Mingolla. ‘The PX. Okay?’

Gilbey said, ‘Yeah,’ and moved off. Baylor took over his stool and leaned close to Mingolla. ‘You know I’m right,’ he said in an urgent whisper. ‘They almost got us this time.’

‘Air Cav’ll handle ’em,’ said Mingolla, affecting nonchalance. He opened the box of stationery and unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket.

‘You know I’m right,’ Baylor repeated.

Mingolla tapped the pen against his lips, pretending to be distracted.

‘Air Cav!’ said Baylor with a despairing laugh. ‘Air Cav ain’t gonna do squat!’

‘Why don’t you put on some decent tunes?’ Mingolla suggested. ‘See if they got any Prowler on the box.’

‘Dammit!’ Baylor grabbed his wrist. ‘Don’t you understand, man? This shit ain’t workin’ no more!’

Mingolla shook him off. ‘Maybe you need some change,’ he said coldly; he dug out a handful of coins and tossed them on the counter. ‘There! There’s some change.’

‘I’ m tellin’ you…’

‘I don’t wanna hear it!’ snapped Mingolla.

‘You don’t wanna hear it?’ said Baylor, incredulous. He was on the verge of losing control, his dark face slick with sweat, one eyelid fluttering. He pounded the countertop for emphasis. ‘Man, you better hear it! ’Cause we don’t pull somethin’ together soon, real soon, we’re gonna fuckin’ die! You hear that, don’tcha?’

Mingolla caught him by the shirtfront. ‘Shut up!’

‘I ain’t shuttin’ up!’ Baylor shrilled. ‘You and Gilbey, man, you think you can save your ass by stickin’ your head in the sand. But I’m gonna make you listen.’ He threw back his head, and his voice rose to a shout. ‘We’re gonna die!’