Authors: Jill Barnett
“Tell that to the men. Now let’s go. I’ve got to get back.” He walked away, moving past some supplies crates and around another corner. He heard her gasp and stopped and turned.
She stood staring past the crates. He followed her gaze to the cock pens where eight rough wooden hutches stood in a line, each one containing a fighting cock.
“Oh, you poor birds! I feel so sorry for them.” Her voice caught.
He was damned sorry he’d been stupid enough to come this way. He grabbed her arm. “Do you want something to do or not?”
She nodded, but kept looking at the cages as if they were filled with sick babies.
“Come on.” He pulled her with him, determined to give her something to keep her busy, and away from him.
Those poor birds.
Lollie sighed and stirred the big black pot of boiling clothes. She kept glancing toward the men’s barracks, unable to get those cages out of her mind. She’d grown a special fondness for birds in the last few days. Medusa had become almost a constant companion since she’d first lit on Lollie’s shoulder. The bird slept on a crude wooden perch Gomez had carved for her, and many times Lollie had crossed to the cook hut with Medusa perched on her head. The men were nice to her, smiling and bringing her little things, peanuts for the bird, pails of fresh water, ripe papayas and mangoes. Everything had been pleasant until she’d seen those birds and realized what the loud distant cheers had been the night before.
She swiped at her sweaty forehead with an arm, an arm sore from stirring, and then she looked at the other five boiling cauldrons. In an attempt to forget the birds, she’d tried to concentrate on what she was doing, stirring cauldrons of brewing clothes like a laundry witch. She’d switched utensils, from the stirring paddle to a long wooden thing Sam called a dolly. It looked like a small stool, but rising out of where the seat would have been if it were a stool—which it wasn’t—was a long wooden stick, not unlike the handle of a broom. At the top of the stick were two wooden handles that she was supposed to hold and then twist. The wooden legs that stuck out of the bottom would then mix up the clothes, spinning out the dirt.
She grabbed the dolly. What a silly name. She drew her arm across her forehead, wiping away the sweat and bits of damp hair. A dolly was something you dressed up in pretty clothes and placed on your bed. It was a toy, a plaything. She moved to the next pot and churned the clothes. This was anything but a game. It was hard work. She blew out a tired breath, then glanced toward the men’s quarters, picturing for the hundredth time those poor little roosters. They were used for games, too. Cruel games.
It made her angry that they could do something so cruel and call it a sport. She got chills just thinking about it. Of course once again it was a male sport, and men seemed to dictate what was acceptable. But she didn’t find cockfighting acceptable, and she doubted any other woman would, either. The whole thing just didn’t seem right, and someone should have done something about it.
She chewed on her lip for an indecisive moment. Dare she? One mental picture of what a cockfight would be like was enough. She dared. The immediate area was deserted, the men occupied elsewhere.
Sam hadn’t said anything about how long to cook the clothes. They had been pretty dirty, so the longer they cooked, the cleaner they’d be. It made sense. Yes, perfect sense.
She returned the paddle and dolly to their hooks on the side of the building. Then she checked to see if anyone was around. Still no one. Must be divine intervention, she decided.
With the Lord on her side, she strolled to the corner and peered around, looking over the wide dirt center of the camp. A few soldiers milled about, moving what she assumed were gun crates and supplies. She waited until she was sure their backs were turned, and then she scurried across the compound trying very hard to be quiet. If Sam saw her, he’d know exactly where she was headed. The man had an uncanny knack of showing up when she least expected him.
She made it to the first barracks, leaned her back against the wooden wall so she was well hidden, then peered around the corner. No one walked her way. The men were still busy talking, laughing and working. She gave a silent prayer of thanks.
In a few seconds she stood in front of the cages watching the birds. She moved to the closest cage. A deep brownish red rooster fanned his feathers, gurgling in his long throat and shaking that dangling red thing under his beak. He lifted his feet, shifting his weight just like Medusa. Lolly’s mind was made up. She stepped forward and reached for the wooden latch.
“Ouch!” She drew back her hand. The rooster had pecked her. She pressed on the spot of blood and glared. “You ungrateful thing, you.”
The bird stared back.
“But then, fighting is all you’ve ever known, isn’t it?” The rooster cocked its head.
“I understand,” she said, looking around for something long enough to spring the latches but still keep her hands from getting pecked bloody.
Spying a stick she retrieved it and went back to the cages. One by one she unlatched the doors.
There was one thing she hadn’t considered, and it happened.
They were fighting cocks, and true to their training, they fought, pecking and clucking right out there in the open. Feathers flew and dirt splattered upward, and the most horrendous noise erupted, squawks and clucks and screeches. It was just awful!
They squawked and she panicked. Stick still in hand, she swirled and ran toward the birds.
“Shoo! Shoo, you all!” She jumped up and down, waving the stick, trying to chase the birds into the jungle where they’d be free. Some of them scattered, some flew to the bushes, some disappeared.
It worked!
“Son of a bitch!”
Uh-oh.
She froze. It was Sam’s voice, she’d have known that swearing anywhere.
“Those men’ll kill you! And if they don’t, goddammit, I just might!” Sam closed the distance between them, intent on hauling Lollie out of there before he had a riot on his hands.
She froze, her face registered surprise, then guilt. Her arms dropped slowly to her sides, the long stick falling to the ground. Feathers and stirring dust were all that was left behind from the renegade cocks, which had scattered like a retreating army into the jungle brush.
His arm shot out with the speed of a striking snake and hooked itself around her waist, lifting her before she could give him any trouble. With her clamped against his hip, he spun around and made for her bungalow.
She made a sound of protest and he squeezed harder. “Shut up!”
He crossed the camp full bore, stormed up the steps, then threw open the door and crossed to the cot, where he dropped her like a sandbag. She screeched, pushed back the long blond hair that had fallen over her face, and looked up at him.
He moved his face closer to hers, and her blue eyes flashed with worry just before she scrambled up the cot until her back hit the wall with a solid thud. Her wary gaze darted left, then right, then left—her direction of flight.
His arm blocked her before she managed to stand. He threw her back down and planted a hand on either side of her, his upper body hovering over her and blocking her from rising more than a foot from the cot. “You stupid, damn little fool. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
She swallowed hard, shook her head. He moved his face even closer. She stared at his face and slowly nodded. “I saved those birds,” she whispered, adding with a note of ignorant pride, “Now they’re free.”
“Great . . . The damn birds are free. Are you proud of yourself’?”
Her look was unsure, but after a second she gave a slight nod.
“Feel like you’ve done something noble, don’t you? The birds are free, but these people aren’t free. Do you know why those men are here?”
“To fight,” she said with all the surety of someone who thought she knew what she was talking about, but didn’t.
“Yes, they fight, but not for fun, not because they want to kill, which is what you thought. This isn’t a game. They fight for freedom, lay their lives on the line to get what we Americans take for granted. This isn’t Belvedere, South Carolina. It’s the Philippines, a Spanish colony. The native people have no freedom, no say in the government, nothing. Their native priests are hung and left to rot in the town square. The Spanish Dominican priests steal everything of value from these people in the name of the church. Women and children are made slaves on the tobacco and cocoa plantations.”
Her lip began to quiver, but it didn’t stop him. He was too damn mad.
“Those men are here learning to fight to save their country. Many of them will never see their families again. They’ll die for a chance at that freedom you take for granted, the freedom that allows you to hide so luxuriously from the cruelties in this world.
“The only, and I mean
only,
recreation they had was cockfighting. The sport might not be your idea of recreation, it might be ugly to the eyes of fine, upstanding pedigreed Americans, but this is not, I repeat,
not
the United States. You can’t waltz in here and make everyone think like you do, especially when you know nothing about these people.
“Some of those birds were worth over three months’ pay to those men. If they win money, they try to smuggle it home to the families they haven’t seen in over a year. You’ve let loose their only relaxation, the only way they had to forget that they might die tomorrow, that they might never see their wives, their mothers, their children.
“They have nothing here. No family. No
daddy.
They live hidden away and threatened daily with discovery by the Spanish or trouble from another rebel army. You know what the Spanish do to rebels?”
She shook her head.
“Sometimes they roast them on a fire. You can hear the men scream, smell their flesh burn. You know what burning human flesh smells like?” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Do you!”
“No,” she whispered, tears running down her face.
He didn’t care if she cried a bloody river. He wanted to drive home the stupidity of what she’d done.
“If you’d have ever smelled it, you’d never forget it. Sometimes they use other methods of torture, metal needles as long as my arm, jabbed one by one into the victim’s feet, and pulled slowly through the other side. Sometimes they only cut off an arm, a leg, a nose, an ear, sometimes all four. Sometimes they cut off other parts. Sometimes they take out an eye.”
He let go of her. She fell back on the cot, sobbing out loud now. He didn’t care. He just pinned her with a look that masked none of the scorn he felt, because he was tired, damn sick and tired of her stupid mistakes. “So just lie there, Miss Lah-Roo. Lie there and think about those poor birds. I’m thinking about those men and how I’m going to go back out there and try to teach them to fight, so that they can live free. And at night, when they’re tired and lonely and wound up tighter than a trigger spring, I’ll try to find something to ease that strain. You see, I care more about the people on this hellhole of an island than I do about myself or about some goddamn chickens.”
He crossed to the door, opened it and stopped to look back at her. “I don’t know where the hell your father is, and now I don’t even care who he is. All I care about is that you are gone.” He left, slamming the door so hard the walls shook.
It had been a full day
since Sam had stormed from the room. Other than two meals and fresh water—which Gomez had brought to her door, knocked, and handed to her without a word, a smile, or even a look at her face—she had seen or heard from no one.
Lollie peered out the narrow window in her bungalow, afraid to go outside, and if fear wasn’t enough to keep her put, the shame and hurt she felt from Sam’s words were. The sound of boots outside the front door sent her back to the cot.
The door opened and Sam stepped inside, carrying a small box. He was not a happy man. Three soldiers followed him in, their arms loaded with clothing.
“Put them there,” he said, indicating the area on the floor in front of him. The men dropped what soon became a mountain of clothing between them.
She’d forgotten about the laundry. With dread, she watched men deposit the clothes, wondering how they felt about her since she’d let their birds go. Not one of them looked at her. They just did as ordered and left.
The door closed behind the last man, and Sam walked toward her. He bent and picked up a shirt from the top of the pile. Without saying one word he held up the shirt by the shoulders and snapped it once in the air. Buttons flew through the air, bouncing like marbles onto the floor.