Life During Wartime (15 page)

‘Don’t you want to listen?’ Izaguirre sounded amused.

‘Naw, un-uh.’

‘Are you sure? We have time.’

Mingolla shook his head no, continued to shake it, trying to get rid of all his nos, all his negatives, each shake more vehement, and when Izaguirre put an arm around him, he was most grateful, desperate to be led away from Tel Aviv and Prowler, ready now for his injection.

A crunching in the brush. Mingolla looked this way and that, thinking it must be Tully, but spotted a scrawny black man standing about twenty feet away: one of the islanders who inhabited the outbuildings. They had taken to following him around, retreating whenever he tried to confront them, as if he possessed some dread allure. The man slipped deeper into the thicket, and Mingolla relaxed, stretching out his legs. An alp of cumulus edged across the sun, transforming its radiance into a fan of watery light; wind flattened the tops of the bushes. Mingolla closed his eyes, basking in the warmth, in a heady sense of peace.

‘You a damn fool, mon,’ said a rumbling voice above him.

He sat up with a start, blinking. Tully was a black giant, looming into the sky, hands on hips.

‘A true damn fool,’ said Tully. ‘I wastin’ my time teachin’ you dat block, ’cause dere you sit, winkin’ on and off like a fuckin’ caution light. What you doin’, mon? Daydreamin’?’

‘I …’

‘Shut your fool mouth. Now dis’ – he tapped his chest – ‘dis a good block. And dis ain’t.’ As if a furnace door had been slung open, Tally’s heat washed over Mingolla. ‘And dis what you doin’.’ The heat ebbed, vanished, flared again. ‘I should put my foot to you!’

The sun hung directly behind Tully’s head, a golden corona rimming a black oval. Mingolla felt weak and weakening, felt that threads of himself were being spun loose and sucked into the blackness. Panicked, acting in reflex, he pushed at Tully not with his hands, but with his mind, and he was panicked still more by the sensation that he had fallen into a school of electric fish, thousands of them, brushing against him, darting away. Tully’s fist swung toward him, but that electricity, and the attendant
feelings of arousal and strength, was so commanding that Mingolla was frozen, unable to duck, and the blow struck the top of his head, knocking him flat.

‘You ain’t got de force to war wit’ me, Davy.’ Tully squatted beside him. ‘But, mon, I just been waitin’ for you to make dis breakt’rough. Now we can really get started.’

Mingolla’s head throbbed, grass tickled his lower lip. He stared at the tips of Tully’s tennis shoes, the cuffs of his blue trousers. He struggled up, leaned against the wall, groggy.

‘Caught me by surprise, mon, or I stay from bashin’ you.’ Tully grinned, gold crowns glittering among his teeth, his good humor given the look of a fierce mask by the deep lines etched around his mouth and eyes. He was huge, everything about him huge, hands that could swallow coconuts, chest plated with muscle, and had about him an air of elemental masculinity that never failed to unsettle Mingolla. His hair was flecked with gray, his neck seamed, eyes liverish, but his arms – straining a white T-shirt – had the definition of a man twenty years younger. Above his left eye was a pink hook-shaped scar, startling in contrast to his coal-black skin, like a vein of some rare mineral. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘You goin’ to be somethin’ special! You almost ’whelm me wit’ dat touch.’

Mingolla turned his gaze to the hotel roof, watched a string of pelicans flying above it, appearing to spell out a string of cryptic syllables.

‘I know you wary, mon,’ said Tully. ‘You like a little boy, and you got to be strong ’fore you go to facin’ up to me … and dat’s natural. Dese drugs, dey put you in a new world, and dat’s a trial for anyone, ’specially somebody been t’rough it like you. But I for you, Davy. Dat you can count on. I just got to be hard wit’ you, ’cause dat’s how you goin’ to get hard ’nough for dis new world.’

Mingolla’s distrust must have showed in his face, for Tully let out a laugh as guttural and toneless as a lion’s cough. ‘Dis t’ing ’tween you and me gettin’ to be a bitch,’ he said. ‘’Mind me of me and my father. Now dere was a harsh mon, lemme tell you. He come home drunk for he supper, and he say to me, “Boy, you so ugly you make me lose my appetite. Get under de table! I no want to be lookin’ at you while I chew.’’ And I don’t do what he say, he
put me under dat table!’ He gave Mingolla a friendly punch on the leg. ‘S’pose I tell you get under de table? What you goin’ to do?’

‘Tell you to fuck yourself,’ said Mingolla.

‘Dat right?’ Tully scratched his neck. ‘Lessee if dat’s de case. You stay outside tonight, Davy. Don’t come back to de hotel. Stay out here and t’ink ’bout what’s ahead.’

‘How’m I supposed to know what’s ahead?’

‘Got a point dere. All right, I give you a glimpse of de future. Once you t’rough wit’ trainin’ dere will be a test. We be sendin’ you to La Ceiba, and you goin’ into de Iron Barrio and kill a mon wit’ de force of your mind.’

The concept of killing as a test left Mingolla unmoved, but Tully’s mention of the Iron Barrio drained him of belligerence.

‘Stay clear of de hotel tonight, Davy.’ Tully stood, un-kinked his back, twisting from side to side. ‘Study on how you goin’ to deal wit’ de Barrio wit’out my help. And if I catch you inside ’fore mornin’, it will go hard for you. Dat much you don’t need to study on.’

Tucked into a corner of the concrete wall was a tin-roofed shed that had once been a dive shop, and later that afternoon Mingolla entered it, intending to wait there until everyone was asleep and then sneak into the hotel. As he stepped through the door, a ghost crab scuttled from beneath the wooden table that centered the shed and vanished down a gap in the boards, leaving a trail of delicate slashmarks in the dust. Golden light slanted from rips in the tin, painting splotches of glare on the floor; dust motes stirred up by Mingolla’s tread whirled in the light, making it appear that something was about to materialize in each of the beams. Resting on the table were four rusted air tanks, bridged by spans of cobweb and looking in the gloom like enormous capsules of dried blood.

Mingolla sat against the rear wall of the shed next to a stack of yellowed scuba diving magazines. To pass the time he leafed through one and was amused to discover ads for various of the island’s resorts in the front pages. Pirate’s Cove, Jolly Roger’s, and such. Their buildings now abandoned, beaches cordoned by patrol boats, tourists driven off by the threat of rockets …
though the island had never come under attack. Which was perplexing. Roatán was a logical target, being isolated, home to a CIA computer base, and well within range of rockets, bombs, or even an assault. The fact that there hadn’t been an attack made no sense, but sense, he thought, was not something war made in any great quantity, and he supposed that some absurd reason underlay the island’s security, some meshing of Marxist and capitalist irrationality, maybe a trade-off of immunities, an agreement to leave each other’s computers alone in order to provide both sides with the capacity to mete out death and destruction along predictable lines. That he could have this thought, which seemed a very adult thought, the type of caustic and dispassionate judgment that people often characterize as symptomatic of a mature disinterest, was, he decided, a sign that he was on the mend, that he was growing inured to the corrosive passions of war, becoming capable of clear-sighted progress.

He turned to a photo spread of divers in red and yellow wet suits floating in a turquoise depth, lost among thousands of brightly colored fish. Something about the photograph struck him as familiar, and he recalled his experience with Tully earlier that day. That was how it had been: he had been a driver in Tully’s mind, hovering in those electric depths, surrounded by the fish of his thoughts. And he was certain there had been a greater depth beyond. A place he imagined to be as labyrinthine as a coral reef, housing thoughts as intricate as sea fans.

Dusk made it impossible to read. Storm clouds blew in from the north, a freshet of rain spattering the roof; darkness slipped in under cover of the clouds, and moonlight filtered through the ripped tin, daubing the floors with lavender gray. Mingolla noticed a light fixture above the table. He went to the door, flipped a wall switch, and was surprised when the bulb flickered on, shining a white radiance into every corner of the shed. Moths began batting around it, casting a shrapnel of shadow over the walls. He sat back down and returned to reading, half-listening to the wind, the crashing on the reef. Then something creaked, and, glancing up, he saw a thin black woman standing at the door, wearing a threadbare dress that had bleached a pale indefinite brown. Alarmed, he reacted as he had with Tully, pushing toward
her with his mind. Again that feeling of immersion, of power and arousal. But this time, meeting no resistance, he found himself swimming – it was the only word applicable – swimming in a pattern, a convoluted knot, and instead of penetrating an unknown depth as he had imagined, it seemed he was tunneling, that the stuff of the woman’s thought was aligning around his pattern, hardening into form that he was dictating. He moved so rapidly, he was unable to trace the complexities of the pattern; however, satisfied at last by some intuitive criteria that it was complete, secure in this, he pulled back from the woman. An erection was ridging up his trousers.

The woman swayed, righted herself, gaping, apparently stunned. She was young – eighteen, nineteen – and cocoa skinned, with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks; her face was pretty, with a cleverness of feature that reminded him of Debora, and framed by stubby dreadlocks. … He lost interest in the woman, puzzled by his use of Debora as a comparative after all these months. But then he realized that while she had not been foremost in his mind, she had been a subroutine in his thoughts, a place to which he had traveled in dreams, in idle moments. And he realized, too, that his knowledge of her had deepened: it was as if he had been carrying on a dialogue with her, assembling a portrait of her from clues implicit in her words, her smell, her manner.

‘I been feelin’ you come,’ said the woman in hushed tones.

Again Mingolla pushed toward her, aiming the desire he had been harboring for Debora, understanding as he did that desire had a shape he could feel … feeling it like a pitcher who, leaning in for his sign, grips the baseball behind his back, fingering the seams until he has found the proper position: an unconscious yet expert process. The woman’s face went slack, her breath quickened.

‘Been feelin’ you come most all dis week,’ she said, edging closer. ‘You got so much power, mon!’ She fondled a shell that was threaded on a string about her neck, painted with red and green designs.

‘Who are you?’ Mingolla asked, anxious, not really caring who she was, wanting an answer that might shed light on who he was becoming.

‘I Hettie.’ She sank to her knees a body-length away. ‘De power full on you now. More power dan I ever felt, and praise God more de luck.’

Mingolla’s anxiety increased. ‘What’re you talking ’bout?’

‘De power bring de luck. Dat how it be always. De new ones come to power, and dey touch us fah to make dem safe.’

He recalled his sense of security after completing the pattern.

‘We keep you safe, too.’

‘Tell me ’bout the luck,’ he said.

She wetted her lips. ‘De luck ain’t not’in’ to talk on.’

‘Why not?’

‘Talkin’ liable to ’splain it ’way.’

That struck a chord in Mingolla, putting him in mind of his ritual, how he had been reluctant to talk about it … except with Debora, in whom he had seen another configuration of luck. ‘Tell me,’ he said. And I’ll give you stronger luck.’

A mixture of disbelief and glee melted up from Hettie’s face, as if he had promised something both improbable and wonderful, like the promise of an afterlife. ‘You do dis fah me?’

‘Yes.’

She talked in a breathy whisper, fingering her shell, head bowed, offering a litany of explanation, describing lives bound by magical pattern, security guaranteed by the repetition of behavior, and Mingolla began to wonder about the similarity between Hettie’s luck and his ritual of survival, the idiosyncrasies of the chopper pilots and of various other acquaintances back in Guatemala. All these behaviors shared the same delusionary character, and given that Hettie was essentially a test subject upon which fledgling psychics worked their changes, it could be that psychics were responsible in every instance, that the delusions were the product of their influence. He tried to dismiss this as paranoia, but found that he could not.

Hettie sat back on her haunches, silent, waiting for luck to be bestowed; her dress had ridden up, exposing the shadowy division between her thighs. Mingolla had no luck to give her, only desire, the one emotion he knew how to shape. Yet desire was powerful in him now. He was alive with it, alive with the power behind it. Everywhere he looked it seemed that the world was being
enriched by the pressure of his vision. The weathered boards, the light beading silver on the cobwebs, the ruddy wood of the table, all these things seemed to shine brighter than before. Maybe, he thought, if desire was strong enough, it would effect luck. As he directed it toward her, he saw that luck, the feeling of being blessed with good fortune, also had a shape, and he incorporated that into the push of desire.

With an indrawn breath, Hettie arched her back, and, hands spread wide, caressed her belly, her breasts, pressing their rounds flat, kneading them. Watching her, Mingolla understood that his gift of desire and luck could have a return, that he could make love to her, that here among the moths and cobwebs he could commit an act of pure usage, almost of violence, of pleasure taken without toll or penance. And he was tempted. There was a peculiar tension in his body, a mingling of confidence and indecision, the way he had felt after receiving a pass at the top of the key, watching the waist of the man guarding him, not knowing whether to break right or left, leaning forward like a reluctant diver and letting gravity slowly take him, waiting until his opponent had seen – or thought he’d seen – a hint of direction, had shifted his weight in anticipation, placing himself at a disadvantage that would allow Mingolla to penetrate the lane. Hettie’s head lolled, her hips lifted. Sweat beaded her upper lip, the hollow of her throat. Abandon had refined her looks to an animal delicacy, and Mingolla reached for her, thinking of Debora, her delicacy. But at that moment she cried out, went down on all fours, hips thrusting at nothing, crying out again, more softly, hoarsely, and in her mind there was flurrying as of a million fish responding to a danger sign, scattering, their space filled by a lazy current, a sluggish tingling wash.