Doug Dorst - The Surf Guru

He watches. The girls bob in harmony with each lap of wave. He parts the branches for a better view and reaches into his pants; fear — or hope, or both — has stiffened him.

On the beach, ready to decamp, the general regards his men, who stand before him in a sloppy, imprecise line. Only the ones who have filled their boots with precious foot powder are standing still; the others hop from one foot to the other, their toes and heels and arches all in a misery of burn and itch. “Soon,” the general promises, “there will be powder for all. My friends, our victory shall yield endless supplies of foot powder — plenty for you and all your loved ones!”

“ Friends? Loved ones? ” some whisper in confusion. “ ¿Qué son? ”

The general cuts short his inspirational speech and raises his eyes; he watches, transfixed with wonder, as the southern sky fills with orbs of color: olive and gunmetal and the white of bones. Thin cords extend from each orb, and from each set of cords hangs a man, and together the orbs and their men drift downward and sideward and downward through the blue with the unhurried grace of jellyfish in the deep. Attached to each man is a gun. Angels! Yes! Heavenly reinforcements delivered to him by a higher power whose existence he has never considered! The angels are beautiful, and their firepower much needed — although he wonders, briefly, if a heaven-sent fighting force can be as ruthless as he needs them to be.

His men shout, but he does not hear. They break for the jungle, scattering as they run. Sand flies in lovely rooster tails from beneath the flapping soles of their boots, many of which were recently stripped from the feet of corpses, as they soon will be again.

Only when he is alone on the beach and the gun-toting angels have shed their deflated orbs and are rushing into the jungle and across the beach toward him does his paretic mind absorb the truth. “Puta de muelle!” he barks, cursing the Queen. Wharf whore! It is her army! Pinning him into a corner with the rarely used but potent Schwarzschild Skewer! A savvy endgame modeled on the Karagoosian Mate! Oh, he understands his position: he is in trouble, he is faced with the zugzwang to end all zugzwangs. He should never have sent Alvaro after the kid! Alvaro would have seen this coming! Alvaro would have orchestrated a lethal counteroffensive! He unholsters his sidearm and races toward the nearest thing he can kill.

The battle is a rout. The general’s men are slaughtered, chased by the Queen’s army through the jungle, across rivulets and swamps, through gauntlets of venomous tree snakes. One by one, they are fallen upon and butchered like boars. The jungle echoes with truncated, blood-choked cries of Mamá, Mamá, Mamá .

The general is taken prisoner, bound at the wrists and ankles with barbed wire that has rusted in the humidity. The Queen’s general approaches him with a shining knife, each serration polished to high gleam.

“My orders,” the Queen’s general says, and the general nods, and his ears are sawn off.

“My orders,” the Queen’s general says, and the general nods, and his eyes are carved out.

“My orders,” the Queen’s general says, and the general nods, and a grenade is forced into his mouth. The pin protrudes like a pacifier. Shards of the general’s broken teeth litter the black sand and look at home among the pebbles and the shells and the yellowed remains of tiny crustaceans. His tin nose is unbuckled, taken for a trophy. Someone grabs his hair and holds his head steady as the Queen’s general pulls the pin. The metallic snick reverberates in his skull. The sand spray of fleeing feet stings his lips and his raw eye sockets.

He does not become a reflective man in his final moments. He does not reminisce about the pet espada monkey that he, as a boy, trained to accompany him on guiro while he played marimba. He does not contemplate the futility of war and pillage and politics and rape. He does not even count down the precious seconds he has left with his head in place. All he thinks about is the Queen and her latest rook, writhing in white sheets and candlelight and mating mating mating mating mating.

And what of Sergio’s head? It is several miles offshore, carried by the southeast current that each spring deposits tons of flotsam on the white-sand beaches of some small, nameless cay. The picked-clean skull will, in time, end up on the shore amid a pile of fish remains, desiccated jellies, carapaces of murdered sea turtles, and sour-smelling kelp, all of which will be coated in rainbow slicks of diesel fuel.

Years ago, Sergio might have been saved and resurrected by friendly Nereids. A trio of them might have recovered the head and spirited it away to a shimmering grotto, where they would have conjured a new body — complete with an implanted underwater breathing apparatus — and returned life to him, all the while fondling him gloriously, and he would thereafter have lived with them in benthic bliss. Alas, the Nereids are all gone, scooped up by the trawlers, pressed and vacuum-packed in their own oil.

Instead, the head is feasted upon by marine creatures. Hagfish rasp away pieces of the salt-softened f lesh. Spinner crabs twirl their claws and grind off bits of bone. Screw-fanged eels chase each other through the lank weeds of black hair.

Alvaro hears the explosion. It is but a tiny pop in the distance, filtered through thick layers of vegetation, but Alvaro knows war too well to mistake the sound. “The general is dead,” he tells the tracking party. “We shall need a new one.” He points to a thin man tugging at the ends of his droopy mustache. “Flaco,” he says, “you are now the general.”

“Not you?” Flaco asks. Age-browned scars are crosshatched into both his cheeks, severe reminders of some earlier war. Or perhaps this one. Who can remember?

Alvaro shakes his head. He has no interest in titles, in the burdens of formal command.

“In that case, I would like a hat,” Flaco says. “Something with a plume. I would have respected our general more if he had worn a hat with a plume.”

“We will find you a hat,” Alvaro promises. “With a plume. I will hunt the bird myself, once our mission is complete.”

Flaco stands straighter as the power takes hold. “A brightly colored bird,” he orders. “Preferably orange.”

“The most beautiful, orangest bird on the island. I swear to you.”

“And also, as I am the general, I demand a peek at your novia .”

Alvaro smiles. “This time it is a gift from me,” he says, unbuttoning his shirt pocket with one swift flick of the wrist. “But a good general knows he cannot just take. Like the other men, he must pay, or he must bet.”

The new general nods quickly, comes to him, takes hold of the photograph with greedy fingers and greedy eyes. He angles it back and forth in the sunlight that drains through the trees, as if he is trying to catch a glimpse of the girl from behind, as if he does not understand the laws of two dimensions.

Looking over the new general’s shoulder, Alvaro notices a flaw on the surface of the photograph — a spot in the upper-left-hand corner where the image has no gloss. A daub of what might be the kid’s dried spunk, marring the horizon behind the wave-slapped girl whose name he no longer remembers.

The kid! It is a shame he can only be killed once!

He snatches the photograph from the new general’s hands. “Enough,” he says. “We have a mission.”

“We have a mission,” the new general echoes.

Alvaro runs his thumb along his knife to test the blade, opening a perfect, thin, shallow cut from which no blood leaks. And then they run.

The kid steps out from his hiding place and crosses the beach slowly, with neither stealth nor authority. He removes his shirt and boots, drops his gun in the sand. He is unashamed of his tenting trousers. When the girls spot him, their ball falls uncaught and drifts along the gentle shore break. They watch him closely as he wades out to them.