Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

They were scrawny, sun-darkened, lying face down with their ragged hair hanging in a fringe off the hood; their skins were pocked by infected mosquito bites, and the flesh around the bullet holes was ridged-up and bruised. Judging by their size, Mingolla guessed them to be about ten years old; but then he noticed that one was a girl with a teenage fullness to her buttocks, her breasts squashed against the metal. That made him indignant. They were only wild children who survived by robbing and killing, and the Guatemalan soldiers were only doing their duty: they performed a function comparable to that of the birds that hunted ticks on the hide of a rhinoceros, keeping their American beast pest-free and happy. But it wasn’t right for the children to be laid out like game.

The soldier gave back Mingolla’s papers. He was now all smiles, and—perhaps in the interest of solidifying Guatemalan-American relations, perhaps because he was proud of his work—he went over to the jeep and lifted the girl’s head by the hair so Mingolla could see her face. “Banditas!” he said, arranging his features into a comical frown. The girl’s face was not unlike the soldier’s, with the same blade of a nose and prominent cheekbones. Fresh blood glistened on her lips, and the faded tattoo of a coiled serpent centered her forehead. Her eyes were open, and staring into them—despite their cloudiness—Mingolla felt that he had made a connection, that she was regarding him sadly from somewhere behind those eyes, continuing to die past the point of clinical death. Then an ant crawled out of her nostril, perching on the crimson curve of her lip, and the eyes merely looked vacant. The soldier let her head fall and wrapped his hand in the hair of a second corpse; but before he could lift it, Mingolla turned away and headed down the road toward the airbase.

There was a row of helicopters lined up at the edge of the landing strip, and walking between them, Mingolla saw the two pilots who had given him a ride from the Ant Farm. They were stripped to shorts and helmets, wearing baseball gloves, and they were playing catch, lofting high flies to one another. Behind them, atop their Sikorsky, a mechanic was fussing with the main rotor housing. The sight of the pilots didn’t disturb Mingolla as it had the previous day; in fact, he found their weirdness somehow comforting. Just then, the ball eluded one of them and bounced Mingolla’s way. He snagged it and flipped it back to the nearer of the pilots, who came loping over and stood pounding the ball into the pocket of his glove. With his black reflecting face and sweaty, muscular torso, he looked like an eager young mutant.

“How’s she goin’?” he asked. “Seem like you a little tore down this mornin’.”

“I feel okay,” said Mingolla defensively. “’Course”—he smiled, making light of his defensiveness—“maybe you see something I don’t.”

The pilot shrugged; the sprightliness of the gesture seemed to convey good humor.

Mingolla pointed to the mechanic. “You guys broke down, huh?”

“Just overhaul. We’re goin’ back up early tomorrow. Need a lift?”

“Naw, I’m here for a week.”

An eerie current flowed through Mingolla’s left hand, setting up a palsied shaking. It was bad this time, and he jammed the hand into his hip pocket. The olive-drab line of barracks appeared to twitch, to suffer a dislocation and shift farther away; the choppers and jeeps and uniformed men on the strip looked toylike: pieces in a really neat GI Joe Airbase kit. Mingolla’s hand beat against the fabric of his trousers like a sick heart.

“I gotta get going,” he said.

“Hang in there,” said the pilot. “You be awright.”

The words had a flavor of diagnostic assurance that almost convinced Mingolla of the pilot’s ability to know his fate, that things such as fate could be known. “You honestly believe what you were saying yesterday, man?” he asked. “’Bout your helmets? ’Bout knowing the future?”

The pilot bounced the ball on the cement, snatched it at the peak of its rebound and stared down at it. Mingolla could see the seams and brand name reflected in the visor, but nothing of the face behind it, no evidence either of normalcy or deformity. “I get asked that a lot,” said the pilot. “People raggin’ me y’know. But you ain’t raggin’ me, are you, man?”

“No,” said Mingolla. “I’m not.”

“Well,” said the pilot, “it’s this way. We buzz ‘round up in the nothin’, and we see shit down on the ground, shit nobody else sees. Then we blow that shit away. Been doin’ it like that for ten months, and we’re still alive. Fuckin’ A, I believe it!”

Mingolla was disappointed. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

“You hear what I’m savin’?” asked the pilot. “I mean we’re livin’ goddamn proof.”

“Uh-huh.” Mingolla scratched his neck, trying to think of a diplomatic response, but thought of none. “Guess I’ll see you.” He started toward the PX.

“Hang in there, man!” the pilot called after him. “Take it from me! Things gonna be lookin’ up for you real soon!”

The canteen in the PX was a big, barnlike room of unpainted boards; it was of such recent construction that Mingolla could still smell sawdust and resin. Thirty or forty tables; a jukebox; bare walls. Behind the bar at the rear of the room, a sour-faced corporal with a clipboard was doing a liquor inventory, and Gilbey—the only customer—was sitting by one of the east windows, stirring a cup of coffee. His brow was furrowed, and a ray of sunlight shone down around him, making it look that he was being divinely inspired to do some soul-searching.

“Where’s Baylor?” asked Mingolla, sitting opposite him.

“Fuck, I dunno,” said Gilbey, not taking his eyes from the coffee cup. “He’ll be here.”

Mingolla kept his left hand in his pocket. The tremors were diminishing, but not quickly enough to suit him; he was worried that the shaking would spread as it had after the assault. He let out a sigh, and in letting it out he could feel all his nervous flutters. The ray of sunlight seemed to be humming a wavery golden note, and that, too, worried him. Hallucinations. Then he noticed a fly buzzing against the windowpane. “How was it last night?” he asked.

Gilbey glanced up sharply. “Oh, you mean Big Tits. She lemme check her for lumps.” He forced a grin, then went back to stirring his coffee.

Mingolla was hurt that Gilbey hadn’t asked about his night; he wanted to tell him about Debora. But that was typical of Gilbey’s self-involvement. His narrow eyes and sulky mouth were the imprints of a mean-spiritedness that permitted few concerns aside from his own well-being. Yet despite his insensitivity, his stupid rages and limited conversation, Mingolla believed that he was smarter than he appeared, that disguising one’s intelligence must have been a survival tactic in Detroit, where he had grown up. It was his craftiness that gave him away: his insights into the personalities of adversary lieutenants; his slickness at avoiding unpleasant duty; his ability to manipulate his peers. He wore stupidity like a cloak, and perhaps he had worn it for so long that it could not be removed. Still, Mingolla envied him its virtues, especially the way it had numbed him to the assault.

“He’s never been late before,” said Mingolla after a while.

“So what he’s fuckin’ late!” snapped Gilbey, glowering. “He’ll be here!”

Behind the bar, the corporal switched on a radio and spun the dial past Latin music, past Top Forty, then past an American voice reporting the baseball scores. “Hey!” called Gilbey. “Let’s hear that, man! I wanna see what happened to the Tigers.” With a shrug, the corporal complied.