The Best of Lucius Shepard (6 page)

It’s foolish
to draw simple conclusions from complex events, but I suppose there must be
both moral and truth to this life, these events. I’ll leave that to the
gadflies. The historians, the social scientists, the expert apologists for
reality. All I know is that he had a fight with his girlfriend over money and
walked out. He sent her a letter saying he had gone south and would be back in
a few months with more money than she could ever spend. I had no idea what he’d
done. The whole thing about Griaule had just been a bunch of us sitting around
the Red Bear, drinking up my pay - I’d sold an article - and somebody said,
“Wouldn’t it be great if Dardano didn’t have to write articles, if we didn’t
have to paint pictures that colour-co-ordinated with people’s furniture or
slave at getting the gooey smiles of little nieces and nephews just right?” All
sorts of improbable moneymaking schemes were put forward. Robberies,
kidnappings. Then the idea of swindling the city fathers of Teocinte came up,
and the entire plan was fleshed out in minutes. Scribbled on napkins, scrawled
on sketchpads. A group effort. I keep trying to remember if anyone got a glassy
look in their eye, if I felt a cold tendril of Griaule’s thought stirring my
brains. But I can’t. It was a half-hour’s sensation, nothing more. A drunken
whimsy, an art-school metaphor. Shortly thereafter, we ran out of money and
staggered into the streets. It was snowing — big wet flakes that melted down
our collars. God, we were drunk! Laughing, balancing on the icy railing of the
University Bridge. Making faces at the bundled-up burghers and their fat ladies
who huffed and puffed past, spouting steam and never giving us a glance, and
none of us - not even the burghers - knowing that we were living our happy
ending in advance…

- from
The
Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule
by Louis Dardano

<>

*
* * *

Salvador

Three weeks before they wasted
Tecolutla, Dantzler had his baptism of fire. The platoon was crossing a meadow
at the foot of an emerald-green volcano, and being a dreamy sort, he was idling
along, swatting tall grasses with his rifle barrel and thinking how it might
have been a first-grader with crayons who had devised this elementary landscape
of a perfect cone rising into a cloudless sky, when cap-pistol noises sounded
on the slope. Someone screamed for the medic, and Dantzler dove into the grass,
fumbling for his ampules. He slipped one from the dispenser and popped it under
his nose, inhaling frantically; then, to be on the safe side, he popped
another—”A double helpin’ of martial arts,” as DT would say—and lay with his
head down until the drugs had worked their magic. There was dirt in his mouth,
and he was very afraid.

Gradually
his arms and legs lost their heaviness, and his heart rate slowed. His vision
sharpened to the point that he could see not only the pinpricks of fire
blooming on the slope, but also the figures behind them, half-obscured by
brush. A bubble of grim anger welled up in his brain, hardened to a fierce
resolve, and he started moving toward the volcano. By the time he reached the
base of the cone, he was all rage and reflexes. He spent the next forty minutes
spinning acrobatically through the thickets, spraying shadows with bursts of
his M-18; yet part of his mind remained distant from the action, marveling at
his efficiency, at the comic-strip enthusiasm he felt for the task of killing.
He shouted at the men he shot, and he shot them many more times than was
necessary, like a child playing soldier.

“Playin’
my ass!” DT would say. “You just actin’ natural.”

DT
was a firm believer in the ampules; though the official line was that they
contained tailored RNA compounds and pseudoendorphins modified to an inhalant
form, he held the opinion that they opened a man up to his inner nature. He was
big, black, with heavily muscled arms and crudely stamped features, and he had
come to the Special Forces direct from prison, where he had done a stretch for
attempted murder; the palms of his hands were covered by jail tattoos—a
pentagram and a horned monster. The words DIE HIGH were painted on his helmet.
This was his second tour in Salvador, and Moody—who was Dantzler’s buddy—said
the drugs had addled DT’s brains, that he was crazy and gone to hell.

“He
collects trophies,” Moody had said. “And not just ears like they done in ‘Nam.”

When
Dantzler had finally gotten a glimpse of the trophies, he had been appalled.
They were kept in a tin box in DT’s pack and were nearly unrecognizable; they
looked like withered brown orchids. But despite his revulsion, despite the fact
that he was afraid of DT, he admired the man’s capacity for survival and had
taken to heart his advice to rely on the drugs.

On
the way back down the slope they discovered a live casualty, an Indian kid
about Dantzler’s age, nineteen or twenty. Black hair, adobe skin, and
heavy-lidded brown eyes. Dantzler, whose father was an anthropologist and had
done fieldwork in Salvador, figured him for a Santa Ana tribesman; before
leaving the States, Dantzler had pored over his father’s notes, hoping this
would give him an edge, and had learned to identify the various regional types.
The kid had a minor leg wound and was wearing fatigue pants and a faded COKE
ADDS LIFE T-shirt. This T-shirt irritated DT no end.

“What
the hell you know ‘bout Coke?” he asked the kid as they headed for the chopper
that was to carry them deeper into Morazán Province. “You think it’s funny or
somethin?” He whacked the kid in the back with his rifle butt, and when they
reached the chopper, he slung him inside and had him sit by the door. He sat
beside him, tapped out a joint from a pack of Kools, and asked, “Where’s
Infante?”

“Dead,”
said the medic.

“Shit!”
DT licked the joint so it would burn evenly. “Goddamn beaner ain’t no use ‘cept
somebody else know Spanish.”

“I
know a little,” Dantzler volunteered.

Staring
at Dantzler, DT’s eyes went empty and unfocused. “Naw,” he said. “You don’t
know no Spanish.”

Dantzler
ducked his head to avoid DT’s stare and said nothing; he thought he understood
what DT meant, but he ducked away from the understanding as well. The chopper
bore them aloft, and DT lit the joint. He let the smoke out his nostrils and
passed the joint to the kid, who accepted gratefully.

“Qué
sabor!”
he said, exhaling a billow; he smiled and nodded,
wanting to be friends.

Dantzler
turned his gaze to the open door. They were flying low between the hills, and
looking as the deep bays of shadow in their folds acted to drain away the
residue of the drugs, leaving him weary and frazzled. Sunlight poured in,
dazzling the oil-smeared floor.

“Hey,
Dantzler!” DT had to shout over the noise of the rotors. “Ask him whass his
name!”

The
kid’s eyelids were drooping from the joint, but on hearing Spanish he perked
up; he shook his head, though, refusing its answer. Dantzler smiled and told
him not to be afraid.

“Ricardo
Quu,” said the kid.

“Kool!”
said DT with false heartiness. “Thass my brand!”

He
offered his pack to the kid.

“Gracias,
no.” The kid waved the joint and grinned.

“Dude’s
named for a goddamn cigarette,” said DT disparagingly, as if this were the
height of insanity.

Dantzler
asked the kid if there were more soldiers nearby, and once again received no
reply; but, apparently sensing in Dantzler a kindred soul, the kid leaned
forward and spoke rapidly, saying that his village was Santander Jimenez, that
his father was—he hesitated—a man of power. He asked where they were taking
him. Dantzler returned a stony glare. He found it easy to reject the kid, and
he realized later this was because he had already given up on him.

Latching
his hands behind his head, DT began to sing—a wordless melody. His voice was
discordant, barely audible above the rotors; but the tune had a familiar ring
and Dantzler soon placed it. The theme from
Star Trek.
It brought back
memories of watching TV with his sister, laughing at the low-budget aliens and
Scotty’s Actors’ Equity accent. He gazed out the door again. The sun was behind
the hills, and the hillsides were unfeatured blurs of dark green smoke. Oh,
God, he wanted to be home, to be anywhere but Salvador! A couple of the guys
joined in the singing at DT’s urging, and as the volume swelled, Dantzler’s
emotion peaked. He was on the verge of tears, remembering tastes and sights,
the way his girl Jeanine had smelled, so clean and fresh, not reeking of sweat
and perfume like the whores around Ilopango—finding all this substance in the
banal touchstone of his culture and the illusions of the hillsides rushing
past. Then Moody tensed beside him, and he glanced up to learn the reason why.

In
the gloom of the chopper’s belly, DT was as unfeatured as the hills—a black
presence ruling them, more the leader of a coven than a platoon. The other two
guys were singing their lungs out, and even the kid was getting into the spirit
of things.
“Música!”
he said at one point, smiling at everybody, trying
to fan the flame of good feeling. He swayed to the rhythm and essayed a “la-la”
now and again. But no one else was responding.

The
singing stopped, and Dantzler saw that the whole platoon was staring at the
kid, their expressions slack and dispirited.

“Space!”
shouted DT, giving the kid a little shove. “The final frontier!”

The
smile had not yet left the kid’s face when he toppled out the door. DT peered
after him; a few seconds later he smacked his hand against the floor and sat
back, grinning. Dantzler felt like screaming, the stupid horror of the joke was
so at odds with the languor of his homesickness. He looked to the others for
reaction. They were sitting with their heads down, fiddling with trigger guards
and pack straps, studying their bootlaces, and seeing this, he quickly imitated
them.

*
* * *

Morazán Province was spook
country. Santa Ana spooks. Flights of birds had been reported to attack
patrols; animals appeared at the perimeters of campsites and vanished when you
shot at them; dreams afflicted everyone who ventured there. Dantzler could not
testify to the birds and animals, but he did have a recurring dream. In it the
kid DT had killed was pinwheeling down through a golden fog, his T-shirt
visible against the roiling backdrop, and sometimes a voice would boom out of
the fog, saying, “You are killing my son.” No, no, Dantzler would reply, it
wasn’t me, and besides, he’s already dead. Then he would wake covered with
sweat, groping for his rifle, his heart racing.

But
the dream was not an important terror, and he assigned it no significance. The
land was far more terrifying. Pine-forested ridges that stood out against the
sky like fringes of electrified hair; little trails winding off into thickets
and petering out, as if what they led to had been magicked away; gray rock
faces along which they were forced to walk, hopelessly exposed to ambush. There
were innumerable booby traps set by the guerrillas, and they lost several men
to rockfalls. It was the emptiest place of Dantzler’s experience. No people, no
animals, just a few hawks circling the solitudes between the ridges. Once in a
while they found tunnels, and these they blew with the new gas grenades; the
gas ignited the rich concentrations of hydrocarbons and sent flame sweeping
through the entire system. DT would praise whoever had discovered the tunnel
and would estimate in a loud voice how many beaners they had “refried.” But
Dantzler knew they were traversing pure emptiness and burning empty holes.
Days, under debilitating heat, they humped the mountains, traveling seven,
eight, even ten klicks up trails so steep that frequently the feet of the guy
ahead of you would be on a level with your face; nights, it was cold, the
darkness absolute, the silence so profound that Dantzler imagined he could hear
the great humming vibration of the earth. They might have been anywhere or
nowhere. Their fear was nourished by the isolation, and the only remedy was
“martial arts.”

Dantzler
took to popping the pills without the excuse of combat. Moody cautioned him
against abusing the drugs, citing rumors of bad side effects and DT’s madness;
but even he was using them more and more often. During basic training,
Dantzler’s D.I. had told the boots that the drugs were available only to the
Special Forces, that their use was optional; but there had been too many
instances of lackluster battlefield performance in the last war, and this was
to prevent a reoccurrence.