Callahan's Crosstime Saloon Page 4

  The not-cheating comes right there—in not hamming it up just to be the winner (unless, rarely, that's the real issue), and in admitting you've been topped.

  That's why when Mary brought God into the argument—a highly unfair, last-ditch gambit for a minister's wife—I gave in and agreed that we would spend my vacation visiting her sister Corinne.

  I had given up a congregation over in Sayville, not very far from here. Frankly Mary and I had had all the Long Island we could take. We hadn't even any plans: we intended to take a month's vacation, our first in several years, and then decide where to settle next. I wanted to spend the month with friends in Boulder, Colorado, and Mary wanted to visit her sister in a little fly-speck banana republic called Pasala. Corinne was a nurse with the Peace Corps, and they hadn't seen each other for seven or eight years.

  As I said, when a minister's wife begins to tell him about missionary zeal, it is time to capitulate. We said good-bye to my successor, Reverend Davis, promised to send a forwarding address as soon as we had one, and pushed off in the winter of 1963.

  We divided the voyage between discussing the growing unpleasantness in a place called Vietnam, and arguing over whether to ultimately settle on the West or East Coast. We both gave uncertain, shaky performances, and the issue was tabled.

  Meeting Corinne for the first time I was terribly struck by the dissimilarity of the sisters. Where Mary's hair was a rich, almost chocolate brown, Corinne's was a decidedly vivid red. Where Mary's features were round, Corinne's were square, with pronounced cheekbones. Where Mary was small and soft, Corinne was long and lithe. They were both very, very beautiful, but the only characteristic they shared was a profundity of faith that had nothing to do with heredity, and which went quite as well with Corinne's fiery sense of purpose as with Mary's quiet certainty.

  Pasala turned out to be a perfect comic-opera Central American country, presided over by a small-time tyrant named De Villega. The hospital where Corinne worked was located directly across the Plaza de Palacio from the palace which gave the square its name. De Villega had built himself an immense mausoleum of an imitation castle from which to rule, at about the same time that the hospital was built, with much the same sources of funding. Pasala, you see, exports maize, sugar cane, a good deal of mahogany . . . and oil.

  As Corinne led us past the palace from the harbor, I commented on the number of heavily armed guardias, in groups of five each of which had its own comisario, who stood at every point of entry to the huge stone structure with their rifles at the ready. Corinne told us that revolution was brewing in the hills to the north, under the leadership of a man named Miranda, who with absurd inevitability had styled himself El Supremo. Mary and I roared with laughter at this final cliche, and demanded to be shown someone taking a siesta.

  Without cracking a smile, Corinne led us around behind the hospital, where four mule-drawn carts were filled with khaki figures taking the siesta that never ends. "You cannot deal with the problems of Pasala by changing the channel, Tom," she said soberly, and my horror was replaced by both a wave of guilt and a wistful, palpebral vision of Boulder in the spring—which of course only made me feel more guilty.

  We dined that night in a miserable excuse for a cafe,

  but the food was tolerable and the music quite good. Considering that the two women had not seen each other for years, it was not surprising that the conversation flowed freely. And it kept coming back to El Supremo.

  "I have heard it said that his cause is just," Corinne told us over coffee, "and I certainly can't argue otherwise. But the hospital is filled with the by-products of his cause, and I'm sick of revolution. It's been worse than ever since De Villega had Miranda's brother shot."

  "Good God. How did that come about?" I exclaimed.

  "Pablo Miranda used to run this cafe, and he never had a thing to do with revolution. In fact, an awful lot of militant types used to drink in a much more villainous place on the other side of town, rather than embarrass Pablo with their presence. But after El Supremo blew up the armory, De Villega went a little crazy. A squad of guardias came in the door and cut Pablo in half.

  "Things have been accelerating ever since. People are afraid to travel by night, and De Villega has his thugs on double shifts. There are rumors that he's bringing in trucks, and cannon, and a lot of ammunition from the United States, for an expedition to clean out the hills, and the American Embassy is awfully tight-lipped about it."

  "What kind of a ruler is De Villega?" Mary asked.

  "Oh, an absolute thief. He robs the peons dry, rakes off all he can, and I'm sure the country would be better off if he'd never been born. But then, there are some conflicting reports about El Supremo too: some say he's a bit of a butcher himself. And of course he's a Communist, although God only knows what that means in Central America these days."

  I began to reply, when we heard an ear-splitting crash from outside the cafe. Glasses danced off tables and shattered, and pandemonium broke loose. Three men scrambled to the door to see what had happened; as they reached the doorway a machine-gun spoke, blowing all three back into the cafe. They lay as they fell, and Mary began to scream.

  "Tom," Corinne shouted above the din of gunfire and panic-stricken people, "we've got to get to the hospital." "How do we get out?" I yelled back, rising and lifting

  Mary from her seat.

  "This way."

  Corinne led us rapidly through the jabbering crowd to a back exit, at which were gathered a good number of people too frightened to stick their heads out the door. I was inclined to agree with them, but Corinne simply walked out into the night. I glanced at Mary, she returned my gaze serenely, and we followed.

  There were no sudden barks of gunfire; the revolutionaries were not really interested in anyone within the cafe, they were simply shooting anything that moved back in the plaza.

  As I helped Mary through the dark streets behind Corinne I tried to figure the way back to the hospital, but I could not recall where the back door of the cafe lay in relation to the door through which we had entered. But it seemed to me that we would have to cross the plaza.

  I called to Corinne and she halted. As I came up to her a volley of gunfire sounded off to our left, ending in a choking gurgle.

  "Considering what you've told us about Miranda's egregious charm," I said as softly as a heaving chest would let me, "hadn't I better get you two ladies to the America Embassy? It's built like a fort." And it lay on this side of the Plaza.

  "The hospital is very short-staffed, Tom," was all Corinne replied, with a total absence of facial expression or gesture. But I knew I could never equal a performance like that in a lifetime of trying. As she spun on her heel and continued walking, Mary and I exchanged a long look.

  "And she's a rank amateur," I said, shaking my head sadly.

  "She and I used to do summer stock together," she said, and we followed Corinne's disappearing footsteps.

  Crossing the plaza turned out to be no more difficult than juggling poison darts; the few who shot at us were terrible marksmen. By the time it was necessary to cross open space, most of the fighting had centralized around the palace itself, and both sides were in general much too busy to waste good bullets on three civilians running in the opposite direction. But as we reached the hospital, I glanced over my shoulder and saw trucks pulling around the corner of the building into the plaza, towing cannon behind them. As we raced through white corridors toward the Emergency Room I heard the first reports, then nothing.

  The artillery provided by the U.S. State Department got off exactly three rounds. At that point, we later learned, a bearded man appeared on the palace balcony, overlooking the carnage in the square, and heaved something down onto the trampled sward. It was De Villega's head. Sensing the political climate with creditable speed, the uniformed cannoneers worked up a ragged cheer, and the revolution was over.

  But not for us. The maimed and wounded who continued to be brought in through the night gave me my first real un
derstanding of the term waking nightmare, and until you have spent a couple of hours collecting random limbs and organs for disposal I will thank you not to use the term yourself. I had rather naively assumed that the worst would be over when the battle stopped, but that turned, out to be only the signal for the rape and plundering and settling of ancient grudges, which got a good deal uglier. I tried to get Mary to take a few hours of sleep, and she tried to get me to do the same, and although we both put on the performance of a lifetime neither of us would concede defeat.

  It was about three the next afternoon when I heard the scream. I left one of De Villega's rurales to finish sewing up his own arm and sprinted down a crowded hall toward the surgery where Mary and Corinne had been for the past thirteen hours. It sounded as though the scream had come from there...

  It had. As I burst in the door I saw Mary first, in the impersonally efficient grip of the largest man I've ever seen in my life. Then I saw Corinne, struggling with a broad-backed revolutionary who was throttling a uniformed patient on the operating table. The crossed bandoliers over his shoulders rose and fell as he strangled, as though he wanted there to be more to it than simply clenching his fingers. Corinne's flailing fists he noticed not at all.

  She was undoubtedly stronger than I—I wasted no time in tugging at the madman's shoulder. I picked up the nearest heavy object, a water pitcher I believe, and bounced it off the back of his skull as hard as I could. He sighed and crumpled, and I whirled toward the giant that held my Mary.

  "You should not have done that, senor," he said in a deep, soft voice, "The man on the bed, he once did a discourtesy to Pedro's wife. A grave discourtesy."

  "Get out of this room at once," Corinne snapped in her best drill sergeant voice, shaking with rage.

  The big man shook his head sadly. "I am afraid not, senorita" he rumbled. Hands like shovels tightened around Mary's biceps, and she still had not uttered a sound since I burst in. "Senor," the giant said to me, "you must please put down that pitcher, or I will be forced to do your own wife a small discourtesy." I started. "Ah, you see? I know who you are; and I would not wish to be discourteous to the wife of a man of God."

  The gorilla on the floor began to stir, and the huge man sighed. "I am afraid it is all over for you, Padre. Pedro, he is a most unreasonable man when he feels his honor is at stake. You hit him from behind."

  Corinne snarled and leaped at him, and I followed suit. Even together we could not budge him or his iron grip, but we kept him too busy to hurt Mary, and I think we might eventually have prevailed. But suddenly something large and heavy smashed into my left kidney, and I fell to the floor gasping with pain. Through the haze I saw Pedro, his tangled hair soaked with blood on the side, step over me and reach for Mary, and my soul died in my chest.

  Then my ears rang with a shot, and I twisted about on the floor to see a tall man with a bristling mustache framed in the doorway, a smoking automatic in his hand. He wore the shapeless khakis of the mountains and there was an easy arrogance in the smile with which he regarded all of us.

  Behind me there was thud as a body hit the floor. Half-blind with pain, I contrived to roll over again and saw that the pistol shot had taken off the top of Pedro's skull.

  "There is that about martial law," said the man in the doorway with sardonic amusement. "It is addictive."

  I finally managed to sit up, bracing myself against a large oxygen bottle. "Who are you?" I managed.

  The lean, mustached man bowed low. "Permit me to introduce myself, Padre. I am El Supremo e Illustrisimo Senor Manuel Conception de Miranda, the current ruler of this republic. You in turn, are the Reverend Hauptman, and I must assume that the charming lady there—release her at once, Diego—is your wife Mary."

  His excellent English bespoke an unusual degree of education, and his bearing was a studied claim to nobility. I began to believe that we three might survive the afternoon for the first time in what seemed like hours.

  "How do you all seem to know who we are?" I asked. "We only arrived yesterday, and I don't think we've spoken to more than a handful of Pasalans. Yet that monster over there knew us... and I'm sure I'd remember him."

  "I know all about the comings and goings of all American nationals in Pasala," he said smugly. "Your country has been a source of much inconvenience to me, and I am a thorough man, as are my lieutenants. Diego is one; Pedro there was another. I cannot abide a lieutenant who loses his head." He holstered his gun and entered the room, and I struggled to my feet with Mary's help. We clung together, and she trembled violently.

  El Supremo looked about, failed to find a place to sit. He strode to the operating table, shoved the wounded and unconscious soldier off onto the hard floor quite casually, and sat down with his legs dangling over the edge.

  Corinne went for him, but before she covered three feet the giant Diego intercepted her and lifted her clear off her feet. She struck at his face with balled fists, but he appeared not to notice. She was sobbing with rage.

  "Diego," said Miranda with a grin, "since you do not seem to be content unless you have a woman in your hands, why don't you take the young lady to my apartment and keep her there until I come, eh?"

  Mary and I both cried out.

  "My friends," said Miranda, still grinning, "this is only justice. I had a woman, Rosa, and she was heart of my heart. She was killed last night, by an American cannon shell. Because of your country, I have no woman. It seems only fair that America give me a woman. I prefer an unmarried woman, and I do not think the sister of a minister's wife will disappoint me." He laughed, a gay laugh that froze my blood.

  "There is that about martial law," I heard myself say. "It is selective."

  "Explain," El Supremo barked.

  "I believe the man on the floor over there was shot for attempted rape," I said quietly.

  "Padre," said the tall revolutionary, drawing his gun again, "in the absence of a lawful constitution for Pasala I must do the best I can myself. Occasionally I may be inconsistent, as I am now in sentencing you and your wife to ten years' imprisonment for disturbing the peace.

  "But you will find that there is this about martial law: it is effective."

  The next twenty minutes were the last free minutes I would spend for ten years, and the last free minutes of Mary's life, but I don't remember one of them. El Supremo marched us at gunpoint across the plaza to the palace, down many flights of stairs, to the lowest of the three basement floors which made up the palace's dungeons. There he locked us personally into a nine-by-twelve stone cell, and left.

  We were there for nine years, and I will not speak of those years. After Mary died, I was alone there for eleven months longer, and I will not think of those months. I will only say that in the first weeks, I thanked God for giving Miranda the spark of humanity which caused him to put both Mary and me in the same cell... but soon, as I began to see the subtlety and horror of his true intent, I came to curse him with a black hatred. Ten years inside a stone cube with no heat, no ventilation and a pail for a toilet can do much to a marriage, and that Mary and I survived as long as we did was, I assure you, due only to the depth and strength of her character. And even she couldn't keep me from losing my faith in God...

  The minister was silent, staring into his glass as though he read there a strange and terrible secret which he could not quite believe. The stillness was absolute; no flames danced in the fireplace. I caught Doc Webster's eye, and he seemed to come back from somewhere else with a start.

  "What happened to Corinne?" he asked hoarsely.

  Hauptman put down his glass suddenly, and looked around at us incuriously. "I've been told she died that night," he said conversationally, "and I rather hope it's true. Miranda was... an animal."

  "Couldn't the American Embassy do anything to get you out?" asked Long-Drink quickly, and I saw Callahan nod approval.

  "The American Embassy," replied Hauptman bitterly, "neither had the slightest knowledge of our incarceration, nor cared to know. If anyone a
t all was aware of our presence in Pasala, he must have assumed we had been killed in the uprising, and he undoubtedly heaved a great sigh when he realized he had no idea who to send condolences to." His words came like machine-gun bullets now.

  "We were listed in the prison records as 'Hidalgo, Tomaso and Maria, subversives,' and that was quite good enough for the State Department, if they checked at all. El Supremo was quite an embarrassment to the United States, and when they had him assassinated two years later, the puppet presidentes they installed were far too busy entertaining American oil executives to be bothered inspecting the palace dungeons. The only human we saw for nine years was a perpetually drunken jailer who brought such of our food as he didn't eat himself. I'd be there now, except that when ... when Mary died, th-they ..." He broke off, got a fresh grip on himself and continued, "Someone noticed her body being removed for burial, and became curious as to why Maria Hidalgo looked like an American. It was a year before I was released, owing to, let me see now, 'political complications of an extremely delicate nature in the Middle East,' I think they said. . . my God, I just realized what they meant! It sounded insane at the time, and I hadn't thought about it since." He laughed bitterly. "Well, what do you know? Anyway, for the last six months I was there I had Red Cross food and a blanket, so that was hunky-dory. Turned out there was a man from Baltimore four cells down, part of the hospital staff, and he was released too. If Mary hadn't died we'd both still be there." The minister laughed again, gulped down the rest of his gin-and-gin and made a face. "She was always getting me out of scrapes."

  More gin appeared before him; he gulped it noisily.

  "You know," he said with a dangerous high note in his voice, "in all the nine years the prayers never stopped rising from that filthy little cell. For the first three years we prayed that someone would depose El Supremo. For approximately the next three years, Mary prayed constantly that my faith in God would return. Then, for about a year, I prayed to I-don't-know-who that Mary would live. And after malaria took her, I spent my time praying to anyone who would listen for a chance to kill El Supremo with my own hands.