T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

“Can’t go on? What are you talking about? We just left the place!” I crushed mosquitoes against the back of my neck. Something flapped across the darkened road.

“Give me a minute. Let me catch my breath.” I could barely make out the shape of him there in the dense clot of shadows. I heard him slapping at his own host of mosquitoes. “You don’t have one of those sandwiches handy, do you?” he asked.

“Look,” I said, “if we expect to get out of this, to go home — you do want to go home, don’t you? — we’ll need to get to the village and purchase a bus ticket or hire a taxi and be gone before they bring in the morning’s women.”

“Go on without me,” he said. The air seemed to tear through his lungs. “I’ll follow you after I’ve had a bit of rest. And a sandwich. Let’s split up the provisions now. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case we don’t meet up again.”

So I left him there. It was no less than he deserved. The worst that would happen was that they would take him back to his cage, to food and leisure and the manipulation of the flesh. For my part I made it as far as the village, where I found myself distracted by the lights of a cantina. I had to duck to get through the door. Everyone stared. I should say in my own defense that I’m not one of these men who drink themselves senseless, but they didn’t allow us liquor in the compound — for fear it would affect our performance, I suppose — and the taste of it after more than a month without made me want another taste and another after that. I slept somewhere, I don’t remember where. And in the morning, when they came for me, I went along with them as docilely as one of the sheep I’d lifted above my head as if they were no more than woolly clouds trailing across a serene blue sky.

—

The following afternoon, after we’d eaten our lunch and ministered to the women who joined us each day at siesta time, Fruto and I were summoned to the military barracks on the far side of the village. A truck painted in camouflage colors took us through town (ordinary men, ordinary women, bicyclists, street vendors, dogs that were so ordinary even the bitches that whelped them wouldn’t have given them a second glance) and into another compound, this one made of whitewashed brick, with a three-story building at the center of it. Corporal Carrera led us up the stairs and into a big office on the second floor that was presided over by a monumental oil portrait of the President and a dozen limp flags representing each of the country’s provinces. There was a bank of windows, spilling light. Beneath them stood a mahogany desk, very grand in size, though to us it was like the sort of thing children make use of in elementary school, and seated at the desk, in full military uniform replete with epaulettes and layered decorations, was a man we recognized as Colonel Lázaro Apunto, Director of Educational and Agricultural Resources for the Western Region. There were no seats for us, or no seats large enough, and so we were made to stand.

A long moment elapsed, Corporal Carrera stationed at the door, the Colonel gazing up at us with a look caught halfway between irascibility and awe. Finally, he spoke. “So, I’m given to understand that you two have been abrogating your patriotic duties, is that correct?”

I said, “Yes, that is correct.”

“You have complaints — legitimate complaints?”

This started Fruto going in the way that a molded steel crank, in the hands of the President’s chauffeur, might fire up a balky engine. “We are not animals,” he said, “and we want our privacy. We can’t be expected to be, be intimate, in a chicken-wire cage where anyone can see for himself how we go about our business, and the heat is intolerable. And the insects. And—”

“And the food?” the Colonel asked, cutting him off. “Is that not of the highest order, rich in protein, flavorful? And your stipends, the money we send on each week to your families — your loved ones, whose home addresses we scrupulously maintain — aren’t they sufficient? And what of work? It’s not as if we’re asking you to work.”

“The food is excellent,” I said, stifling the impulse to append Your Excellency to the assessment.

“Good,” the Colonel sighed, leaning back in his chair, “very good.” He was a little man, with mustaches. But then they were all little men, everyone in the military, everyone on the street, even the President himself. “For a moment there I’d thought you were going to renege on your contract with the government, but here I see the whole matter is nothing really, just a question of adjustments. You want stucco walls built over the chicken wire? Fine. It will not be a problem. In fact”—he scrawled something on a pad—“we’ll see to it immediately.”

“Tile floors,” Fruto put in. “For the sake of the coolness on our feet. A fan. Two fans. And a radio in each— room —and, and a day off. Once a week. Sundays. Sundays off.” He bowed his head, mopped sweat. His grin was like a grimace. “The day of rest, eh? Our Lord’s day.”

The Colonel tented his fingers, smiled benignly at us. He waved a hand. “All this can be arranged. Your needs are our needs. If you haven’t already divined the importance of the project in which you’re participating, let me enlighten you. The President — the country — has many enemies, I don’t have to tell you that. They are building up their armed forces, constantly building and accelerating, and who can guess what their purposes are — but we must counter them. Do you know your Greeks?”

“Greeks?” I echoed, mystified.

“Homer. Aeschylus. Euripides. They had their heroes, their champions, their Achilleses and Ajaxes, and that is what the President envisions for our country’s forces — and not simply individual heroes but an entire regiment of them, do you see?”

“Like Samson?” Fruto put in.

The Colonel shot him a look. “Not the Hebrews, the Greeks. They knew how to win a war.”

“The President must be a very patient man,” I offered. “It’ll take generations.”

A shrug. “‘Prescient’ is the word. That is why he is the father of our country. And don’t concern yourself: we will breed the issue of your labors — the females, that is — once they reach puberty. And when that issue reaches puberty, we will breed them as well.” He fumbled for something on his desk, sifting through the papers there until he held up a single sheet, transparent in the light glazing the windows. “Do you see this? This is a sample requisition form to be sent out to the boot makers of the future, calling for boots in exactly your size, señor, eighteen, triple E. Just think of it.” He settled back in his chair. “Helmets the size of birdbaths, jerseys like tents. No, my friends, the President is a man of foresight, a futurist you might say, and his vision is all-encompassing. Are you not proud of your country? Do you not want, with all your heart, to protect and nourish her?”

Fruto stood there dazed. I nodded in assent, but it was only for show. Was I seething inside? Not just then, perhaps — we’d already had a pretty fair idea of what was wanted from us and we had, after all, signed on the dotted line, as venal as any other men — but I could see the months to come, years even, stretching out before me like a sentence in the penitentiary.

Corporal Carrera pulled open the door behind us, our signal to vacate the room: our business here was concluded. But just as we reached the door, my legs working autonomously and Fruto heaving for breath and wiping at his massive face with the great sopping field of his handkerchief, the Colonel called out to us. “Now go and do your duty, for the love of your country and of the President. Go to your female volunteers — whose stipends are but half of yours, incidentally, and so it should be — and, in your throes, think of him.”