Book II: The Ride of the Night

I’d been feeling as blue as blue can get. No one uses that term since the fifties but blue was what you’ve got left when life has nothing in it but emptiness.

The bars were closed and I was cruising… not even looking for a ride. It was what I call “The Magic Hours” between three and four AM. It’s “the Blue Hour.”

Red’s the company’s radio code for when you pick up a fare. Green’s for when you’re free for the next one. Purple was universal code for entirely something else. But Blue… well Blue was a special code I have between myself and the dispatcher for, “leave me the fuck alone a minute”. The Blue Hour was when the lonely hearts, the drug dealers, the drug users, and people going to the hospital E.R. with real or fake ailments… fake or real pain to get a shot of something good. It had been a couple of months since I got off the bus in Santa Barbara. I no longer hoped for a new start. At best, I hoped to merely plod through the night and blot out the memory of Celeste, Ariel and even Kuka. B.B. King was on the C.D. player: “Born under a bad sign… if it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…”

An old man flagged me down. I didn’t want to pick him up but the cab had a mind of its own. The guy got in the back seat and I immediately recognized the smell.

“Take me to the California Hotel, young man.”

“Sure thing,” I answered as I hit the button to roll down all the windows. “Do you remember me?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

I was sure it was the same old man from the bus so I ventured to refresh the impish old-fart’s recollection, “The Greyhound… the bus?”

A blond with a short skirt and legs to match it a block away from the California Hotel gave out a loud, New York City-style-cab-hailing, whistle that could have cut through time and space a half-mile away.

“Never been on a bus. You can pull-over now… stop.” He paid the fair plus a five-dollar tip saying, “Here, buy yourself a drink when you get off.”

I pulled over to the curb at Rocky’s where the long legs were standing.

She slipped into the back-seat of my cab. Gracie, I thought, she did it so gracefully. She was pretty as Grace Kelly but sexier. I flipped the flag: actually, pushed the button, as meters no longer had flags. The meter’s running nonetheless. The usual questions… destination and so on. Some anonymous chit-chat… It usually goes like that… fare after fare through the dark night lit by headlights and neon… shady corners of alleyways leading into brick and concrete canyons of obscurity… dumpsters, cardboard blankets on shadow people, eddies of Mac wrappers whirling at the end of ambushes in dead-end alleys. I knew all the bars, hotels, no-tell motels, where whores could be found and where a pint might be obtained from the back of liquor stores after two-am… but you wouldn’t want to ask me where the schools and churches are. I was a graveyard driver and I preferred it that way. The sunrise told me when it was time for a drink and I drank to chase away, or to dive morosely into the pool of memories of a life that once meant something to the Somebody I once was. I rarely drank those days for the mere joy of letting go.

“So,” she says, “What do you do when you aren’t driving cab?”

“Nothing much…” I answered and wondered whether she really wanted to know, or was she just bored, making a stab at wiping out the tedium of ending a night, alone in the back seat of a cab. For her sake I added, “I sleep after a few brews in the morning.”

“That’s it? You don’t look like you think that is all there is to your life.”

“And what does my thinking ‘look like’ to you … Gracie?”

“I don’t know… maybe like you might be writing a book or something… maybe a screenplay,” she answered.

“Naw… I just eat, drink and sleep, Gracie? May I call you Gracie …as in Grace Kelly?” I wanted to change the subject. If the truth was told, I did have a novel in me but I didn’t want to let that demon out. No, I’d save that for later.  I said, “Hell, this is Southern California. Every cab driver has a novel or screenplay in him.”

“Yeh, sure… call me whatever you want.  Anything but Last Call is fine with me.”

She was getting more interesting. I leaned over to the back seat to get a look at her thighs… her short skirt glowing white flesh, flashing neon reflections of the passing lights, “What do you do, Gracie, if you don’t mind me asking? Do you have a book of poetry or something more interesting going on? You know, other than living vicariously through an anonymous cab driver?”

“Hey, watch the road.” She laughed. I liked that. It is far better to laugh at maudlin sarcasm than be insulted by it. She squinted, leaning forward, to get a name off the cab license clipped to the dash, “You ain’t anonymous now, are you Max? I don’t have much going on either.  You know where I can get a schnapps or something better?”

“Something better, eh? I like you well enough… don’t get me wrong, honey, but I have a lease to pay on this cab and I have a flea-bag hotel room a week behind on the rent.”

She climbed over back of, and into the front seat with her butt two inches from my smile on the way over. I laughed, “Yeh, sure, name your poison. You can call me Mickey. You know, as in the Mick.”

People had to get to know me… close friends, taxi dispatchers, and great cab fares, knew me as Max. Casual cab fares on first introduction were given any one of my fiction characters’ names, the Mick, Mickey.

 “Sheeze, Mickey sounds like a mouse. I like Mick. Mick sounds like a gangster, I like it.”

Ah, the way she said, “I like it”,  arose from her throat as juicy as a ripe tomato... Ahhhh, I surrendered.

I told my friend Jimbo about her as we took another toke during a break at the taxi stand, saying, “I'm no Humphrey Bogart and she’s… well, she’s as close to Lauren Bacall or Grace Kelly as I’m ever going to get.”

Jimbo laughed, “Yeh, film noire. I’m surprised you don’t know her. She’s the patron saint of the graveyard shift.”

“Nadya? You know her?”

“Sure, just haven’t had a taste of it yet.” Jimbo pointed to the gold band on his finger and continued, “Be careful, Two-O and Six-two both fell head over heels for her. Six-two went broke keeping her in cola.”

The patterns of light cast on the wall told me it was late afternoon. I was alone and Nadya was gone. My wallet was still there… it must have been love. Naw, it was just a break in the isolation. A note was held down by an ashtray on the dresser, “Max, I’ll be in L.A. a week or two. It was fun… Maybe we’ll get together when I get back.”

I've Kafka-ed myself into a
cock-a-roach

I knew we weren’t likely to get together. At least in the form of any plan. It was a one-night stand for both of us.  Still, I was impressed with her. She had no inhibitions at all. At one point that night she had to take a leak. She could have gone down the hall to the can but she just climbed up on the corner sink, squatted Japanese style and let it flow. The acrobatics of this simple action was one thing but it was the contrast that intrigued me. Of course, I couldn’t imagine Grace Kelly doing that… but it was brazen boldness of it that I admired.

“Sheet,” I moaned when my fascination caught up with me, “I’ve Kafka-ed myself into a cock-a-roach.”

“What Hon? Here’s a roach.” She lit it and passed it to me and poured two fingers of Jack into the plastic cup that served as an amenity in the Virginia Hotel.

“I need a greasy hamburger to calm my guts,” I changed the subject.

“I don’t suppose they have room service here.” She clung to me like an innocent child as we passed out for the rest of what was left of night.

The morning after the next day I went straight to the bar after my shift. It must have been two in the afternoon before I got back to my flop. I had a tacit agreement with Claire, the bartender. She called, Last Call! For me if I stayed until two in the afternoon on the nights I planned to work. That way I’d at least get enough sleep to take the night shift and show up reasonably sober… well, as sober as anyone like me might expect. I wasn’t so sure my blood-alcohol-level ever got below point oh-eight before midnight in those days, but, I usually made my way into the hack by nine PM regardless.

I got to the flop after my shift, pulled back the covers, and curled up in the fetal position. My heart ached from the isolation and the cold emptiness of it all. Worse than that was the knowledge of the certain reality of knowing that life was going to be nothing but downhill from there. This was the best, the absolute best, I could’ve hoped for… after all, hadn’t I gotten good and drunk and laid the night before. There was nothing else I wanted. I shoved up a prayer to the void, “Damn you... You Bastard… leave me alone!”

Whatever they want to call it…. God? I don’t know what that is but I did know that this prayer was answered long ago. The Koi, that beautiful bottom feeder, was indeed alone.

At the Remington I poemed a dream:

Woe to you, humankind. You have lost your aspirations and thus your wings.

Now, psyche plucked and feather-bare, with no legs to compensate where glory flew above the tedium of earth-bound mediocrity, you crawl in sulfur fumes… exactly like a worm.

Exactly like a worm…

Devouring the putrid waste and wasting what is not.

Genius dead and mourned

You’ve become a democracy of worms…

   wingless, legless, writhing twisted masses,

   mired inside of computer banks and throttled

   by tentacles of robot-mothers serving up

   toxic memories

   of a castrated deadbeat father.

Be not afraid. Poor genius is not dead and still owns wings.

A worm is no worm if it owns a set of wings… tattered or not.

With’s and with-outs… Doubts,

Fears, Loves, and Hopes.

“Oh, Christ! The Devil is Old,” says the sage,

“Grow old and know him!”

Wingless and full of woe, charging headlong on rubber legs… iron willed… Upon this molten rock I’ve found my principle, if only for the sake of endurance… I die.

Chapter 8. The Miskito Coast (pt 2)

"This is a children's crusade...
no matter our age."

It was about a week until my chaotic reunion with Kuka took place. She was in the midst of staff, nodding and agreeing to logistics and commands with maps or inventory lists spread out on a table in a cinder-block hut beyond the San Juan in Costa Rica.

After the others left the hut she relaxed a little and became the woman I knew in Santa Monica a lifetime ago, apologizing, “I’m sorry I brought you down here Max. Sit with me for a while.”

We sat on the cot in the back of the hut. I wondered how we would have sex on a small cot. “You led me to believe you were a school teacher,” I felt the anger of betrayal welling up.

“I was given this command after we landed in Tegucigalpa. My fund raising in Santa Monica was but a start. I won’t be with you very much from here on but we have made arrangements for you to leave. In the meantime, I trust I left you in good hands with the Bird Dog?”

“I haven’t seen him since Waspam.”

“You surprised us with your knowledge of weapons back in Honduras or the Old Dog would have sent you packing. He was dead set against you coming here at all but La Penca distracted us.”

“What, he was impressed that I could point a rifle?”

“No, anyone can do that. He respects your ability to keep things to yourself. It’s a talent for survival better than marksmanship.”

“You knew I wouldn’t make much of a journalist?” my anger settled down and I realized I loved it in the humidity and danger of the coastal rainforest. It was the adventure of my life, “but I’m glad you let me come here, Kuka?”

“I saw something in you under the cover of that drunk I met back there, Max.”

“What, that I’m pliable?” I countered, faking anger. “You said you were a fucking teacher, not a Contra leader!”

“Yes, you had a romantic image of a school-marm teaching children in an Indian school-house,” she responded with unexpected sarcasm. “That abandoned village where you were ambushed… That village was where I was going to teach school.”

“When did you find out you had no school to teach… that you knew it was empty?”

“I wasn’t told about my village until after we landed in Tegucigalpa. Then there was La Penca. I’m telling you, I never expected that to happen to Pastora.”

“You could have told me while I sat isolated in Tegucigalpa.”

“The Bird Dog was sent to take care of that. He brought you to camp so that I could say good-bye.” She almost pouted, “I’m only a small player here and not a guerrilla leader.”

She changed the subject back to me, “The others were impressed with how well you adapted to the jungle. But, under fire, you never used your weapon.”

“I couldn’t. They were only kids,” I tried to explain. “They were kids… teens that should be playing baseball.”

“Max, they play baseball and they kill Miskitos,” she rebutted fiercely, reminding me of the woman I saw that slammed her fist down in the sand an eon ago, “this is a children’s crusade, naïve children, no matter our age. One moment the C.I.A. promises us candy, and the next? Who knows.”

“I’m still glad you brought me here,” I confessed. My eyes searched hers for any sign she would pull me back into her arms. Kuka closed the door to the hut and rolled out a blanket on the floor where our passion could fully unfold. A couple hours passed and we lay on the floor smoking a cigarette, passing it back and forth while the wet season’s rains pounded out all other noise on the tin roof.

She put both hands on my shoulders to shake me, “Max, because you didn’t fire, you’re a marked man.”

“But I’m supposed to be a journalist and not a soldier. That isn’t proof.”

“It is proof enough to take you out. There are no judges or juries here. Everyone is a judge, jury and executioner.” She then said quietly, “I will be expected to take you out. You must know that, Max. If I don’t do something my life is in danger.”

“Do you think I’m a child, Kuka, to be frightened?”

She compassionately, as though to an abandoned child, affirmed, “We are all children, Max, and so are you. But make no mistake about it, we are fighting for our lives while you are on but an adventure; a teenaged boy’s fantasy. And, when it’s over, you will go back to tell exotic war stories in the bar or maybe even publish them. If you stay, however, you’ll have to become a killer… like those children you helped to ambush.”

The bile of anger arose from my gut and I understood I was being sent off by her. She stood before me in fatigues and I tried to imagine the woman in the colorful embroidered shirts she wore in Santa Monica. That was then but a vague memory.

“Shit, yeh, the Bird Dog. Who is he anyway?” my heart agreed with her. The realization that, at any moment someone could… that someone could even be Kuka… that someone would put a round in the back of my head. I knew in my heart, and it began to percolate into my mind, that I needed to get the fuck out of there as soon as I could.

“Do you think… do you believe for one minute that I’d rather lead a futile children’s crusade over leading them in a classroom? I was in Santa Monica to muster support for us… for our schools. Now all our villages are in so-called refugee camps and I’m a marked woman. We don’t give a shit about Ronald Reagan or his mercenary Somosista goons up north…”

Before I could answer, the jungle flashed from tracers and grenades. The rattle of gunfire suddenly burst from the direction of the perimeter. No sooner had we both picked up our rifles, a blast smashed the door… nearly vaporized from the frame and several shadows powered through the smoke and dust.

“Cubano motherfuckers!” she whelped as a crimson patch burst against the wall behind her against cinder-blocks. Concrete shrapnel shards splattered across the room exploding from pockmarks of rounds from AKs.

Remarkably, Kuka fired a burst, holding her weapon’s butt somehow wedged with the bad arm against her side… “like in a fuckin’ Rambo movie!” I thought.

Even though she didn’t hit anything but the ground in front of her, she certainly cleared the door.

I fired back without thought. I was protecting Kuka and not fighting for a cause. I didn’t freeze this time. I saw their faces when they entered and fired into their chests. These raiders were men, trained soldiers, real soldiers, and not children like those I stepped over back in the cypress swamp. They weren’t supposed to be in Costa Rica. I had no time to think about that as I helped Kuka sling her good arm with a forty-five in her hand over my shoulder. I took the forty-five from her just as a grenade was tossed into the hut from out the left side.

"Go!” She commanded. Only a brief fraction of a second left room for the decision to be made: stay inside, where we were sure to be blown up, or dash out the door firing, hoping anyone there lying in wait would take cover. I braced myself against her and we leaned towards the door. I emptied the clip of the forty-five in the direction the grenade came from out the door... a sting, a searing stab, punched my gut.

Several of our own joined us as we hobbled to the cover of the bush. I tore off her skivvy shirt and packed an improvised field dressing on the wound on the right side of her chest above the breast. I didn’t know what to do with the exit wound. Nothing hit an artery but, judging from the mangled back, where pieces of bone, blood and tissue gaped from the back of her shoulder, the wound was serious enough to demand immediate attention. I wasn’t a medic but I knew enough. My mind was on one thing and one task alone. Her scapula was smashed, the bleeding had to be stopped... someone pulled me off her screaming, “lay down... you’ve been hit!” and then my vision faded into darkness.

The Cubans were gone. It was a hit on Kuka’s staff; retaliation for last week’s ambush on the patrol. The Cubans didn’t follow up on the attack and the perimeter was secured. I wasn’t aware of all this. I was oblivious to anything that was going on about me. Noises first began to filter into my consciousness. Then I faded out. I was digging in the soft soil... a grave? The Cubans I’d killed joined me after cutting off an ear from each corpse. It was a vision... a fearful vision of Mayan Priests in Jaguar masks presiding over a sacrifice... my offering. The priest raised an obsidian knife and cut open my bowels, pulled out my intestines and bathed them in perfume. It was okay with me. Everything was okay with me.  I loved the priest and bid farewell to the Cuban soldiers and Kuka. Where was Kuka? Anywhere else the Cubans and I would have been left to rot in the jungle but Mayan priests took reverence for the fallen and the tribe’s women buried them proper. Where was Kuka!

The field surgeon and medics had taken over working on Kuka and me all through that night. She was knocked out the whole next day and recovered quickly. However, it was a week before I came to. I came to just as I was asking the Mayan priest for Kuka... the priest became a field surgeon.

“Kuka’s okay,” the priest answered.

“Your fever broke last night,” the surgeon was saying.

“Fever?”

“You have been asking about Kuka,” the surgeon assured. “She is recovering well.”

Kuka entered my sight and put a hand on my forehead, “You’ve been gone for a week.”

“Gone?”

“You begged us to bury the Cubans.”

The old Bird Dog appeared two days later after I began recovering. He was a phantom of sorts and appeared and disappeared almost always alone. He sat on the bench inside of the dinged-up hut next to where I was laying. I sat up when I realized he was there.

“Well, Max, it looks like you lived through it.”

“What do you know about the attack?”

“They are already singing about Kuka’s American lover who saved her, guns a blazin’ like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Romance and machismo are a heady combination here.”

“Shit, I didn’t save her.”

“I know. Legends don’t give a crap about that. If it makes for a good story, it gets sung,” he laughed, “over and over, ad infinitum.”

He put an arm over my shoulder and, when he did so, the weight of it testified to the muscular bulk of it. “So, Max, it’s time for you to go.”

“But Kuka…”

“Kuka, Kuka, Kuka,” The old man moaned, “You know, you were going to be taken out because of your previous performance. The truth is that you barely proved yourself and there are those here that trust performance over legends. They struggle for their homeland and they have no home to go to until they win… thoroughly wipe out the enemy. The Sandinistas wish to do the same to the Miskitos.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Kuka’s the one that called for me to scoop you up while you were out of it.”

“I don’t get it,” my mind stilled fogged, protested, “I’m just starting to get the hang of things around here. She needs me.”

“Max, she needs you all right. She needs you to leave. Kuka will be killed if you don’t go.”

“What? Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why when you’re both rotting in shallow graves. Look, I’ve been doing this since before you were born. Once you’re in it as deep as we are the exit door is locked,” he said, showing no emotion.

“And Kuka would be killed too?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “I have the job if you don’t get on the plane that waits for you.” I detected a sadness in the old man’s voice.

I was curious then, more curious than ever about the man. I asked, “How did you get the name Bird Dog?”

“It’s an OSS code name that stuck.”

“Shit OSS? That’s Dubya-Dubya Two. You’ve been at this awhile then.”

“Before then and long enough to know that you aren’t cut out for this, Max. You’ve had your baptism in blood and now you think you are one of us. But, my boy, you ought best get out while you can.”

“But Kuka…”

“Yeh, Max, I haven’t seen it before. She cares for you.”

He wasn’t done yet so I let him finish.

“That’s why she ordered your transport out of here at her own peril. C’mon now, pack your sack and let’s get goin’. The plane leaves in one hour and we have a hike to get to the strip.”

She was sitting up on a chair at the table. To immobilize it, her torso and shoulder was wrapped up with her right arm secured in a sling over one arm, across, and under the left arm, flattening her breasts. She was pale and feverish with sweat beading on her face. Three NCO’s stood at the table when I entered the hut to gather my stuff. I wasn’t expecting her to be awake and doing business.

“I need to go now…”

She lifted her free hand as if to say; “I know. I’m busy.”

I packed up my gear and bid her adieu, “Good bye, Kuka.”

One of the lieutenants glowered, nodding as I left the room. I understood with that nod from the officer meant. I was supposed to be dead by now… still alive and always the foreigner… I was a stranger in a strange land. She said nothing but held up her hand. Her eyes met mine but she wasn’t there with me at all. The fire was gone from them as though she was a prisoner of war awaiting her own execution. She dared not speak but set her face on the maps and plans on the operating table we had been laid out on for surgery the week before. The last time I held her in my arms was when I carried her out of the hut and set her down in the bush. I wouldn’t hear from her again.

A week after I left, Kuka was taking care of urgent business with ARDE in Tegucigalpa when an assassin came up from behind and put a bullet in the nape of her beautiful neck. It was as painless as it was meaningless... symbolic of the bloodshed of those jungles. A Mayan priest in a jaguar mask greeted her at the top of a temple with an obsidian knife and she went home, an offering to the sleeping gods.

The Piper Cub took me to San Jose where the Bird Man parted company with me. From there the Chilean pilot smoked Cuban cigars, talked and sang all the way to Ilopango Airport in San Salvador. I was in a morphine haze and listened to the pilot’s voice as though it was the background noise, the rhythm behind the music, of the engine’s musical purr.

“Where are you going from El Salvador, Senor?”

“Santa Barbara, I think.”

“Chile! Oh yes, the Bio Bio. I had a cousin from…”

“There is no river in Santa Barbara…. Santa Barbara, California,” I corrected.

“Ah-ha! California,” the pilot laughed, “Beautiful city, I have a cousin there too.”

I smiled thinking about how damned near everyone down here was a cousin to anyone damned near anywhere in Nuevo Hispaniola no matter where the borders were drawn.

The Cub made another connection where I hitched a ride on a Southern Transport C-123 to Miami. It was loaded with bales of coffee and a handful of rough looking characters from Medellin Columbia. From Miami, I caught a Greyhound back to Santa Barbara. I was burnt out and had no idea where else to go. Trains and Greyhounds were my favorite ways to travel. I looked forward to the long-assed ride… to getting a chance to sit and not think. I call it not thinking, thinking… just to sit and digest what had happened since last New Year’s Eve.

My gut wound, since the field surgeon’s efforts, was becoming infected. A gnawing ache grew from under the stitches left by the emergency operation to clean the shit from my stomach. An eight-inch slit down my abdomen was covered with a large bloody gauze patch wrapped around my torso. The passenger next to me most of the way was an old man that stank to high heavens. However, his soothing tone almost made up for his sulfuric presence.

“My name’s Lucky, some call me Lucky because they think of Lucy’s a girly name,” he finally introduced himself after a couple of hours. “Where you goin’, young feller?”

“Santa Barbara,” I offered …vaguely remembering a Lucky a Luciano or something… like recalling a dream…  the memory of it slipped… de je vu.  Even though I usually regretted starting any bus or train conversations at all, I let Lucky talk. Maybe just to jog my memory, “Do I know you?”

“Maybe you do… maybe you don’t. We meet all kinds of people on a bus. Sometimes they make it; a bus ride…  a ride to, or from, … to and fro, you know, for the hell of it.”

From the beginning, I thought the old man’s cryptic conversation unique enough to hold my interest though I don’t know what was so damned unique about it.

“I love the bus almost as much as a train,” I said, thinking I’d interrupted something profound that the old man was about to say.

“Yes, excuse my pessimism,” Lucky snarked, “It could be a ride to heaven too.”

A tinge of fear entered my heart. Yes, right in the chest so I asked, “What do you mean? You think this bus is going to crash?”

“No,” said Lucky, “But, where you’re goin’, you will.”

I got up to use the toilet. It emitted a sour stench from the long ride beyond Dallas. My nausea at the aroma of the can was enhanced by the syringe and a supply of morphine to hold me over until I could check into the VA Hospital in LA. I anticipated interviews with the police there about where the wound came from and how it got treated. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll just tell them the truth. They won’t believe any of it and, to tell the truth… uh, what can they say about that?”

When I returned to my seat, the old man was gone. The bus hadn’t stopped to let anyone off.

Chapter 8. The Miskito Coast (pt.1)

The dusty, alternately muddy and rutted, back roads were the main arteries through the bush. Diego had a newer model Jeep Cherokee in which we were forced to pull over and off the road several times by passing military convoys on narrow tracks through mountains. I tried to make small talk with Diego and this Old Dog hulk who merely nodded now and then.

Diego dropped us off at a forest track where we were met by armed guerillas and led a few hundred yards to a field where a Piper Cub awaited. Everyone seemed to know who I was and where I was going. Everyone except for me, of course.

When my escorts spoke, it was in Miskito Creole that was almost English I’d already begun to pick up on. But no one in these parts seemed to be into casual chit-chat.

“You will be taken to the Northern camp,” the pilot said, as he took me by the arm to help me into the plane.

“Northern Camp? Not Commander Zero? Edén Pastora… the Contra?”

The pilot laughed. It was the first sign of levity since arriving in Tegucigalpa, “Dee school teacha can answer any questions y'have.” He smiled, “And, Periodista, you’d best learn to frame your questions bettah.”

I didn’t know what he meant and wondered if he was in league with the old Bird Dog.

The pilot was of a Cuban/Miskito mix named Reynaldo who wore a 2506 Bay of Pigs patch adorned with a pre-Castro Cuban flag over a white cross on a shield. He spoke nonstop to anyone that would listen and I was the only passenger... a captive audience.

“You’re a periodista from California? Write dees down. You tink dees a war of Communists verses Falangists, or dat dee Contras are reactionaries and Fascistas against democracy. Dees ees a war of deceptions and foggy mirrors of ideas, una guerra ideológica. But eet ees really a war of the city fockers who want to fock over the campesinos. Eet ees true everywhere here in Central America from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras… everywhere!”

He let go of the rudder and didn’t mind at all that the plane pitched, swerved and dove before he recovered it. I was grateful for the seatbelt as Reynaldo continued, “The Spanish speaking assholes in the cities would rather see us go away. We are a bother to theem. We are in the way of their plans whether they are Mafiosi dictators or Sandinistas. Half these Contras helped overthrow Somosa and the rest are Somosa family’s officers and ex-National Guardsmen. Dey needed a job." 

"So, why did you join them?"

"The Sandinistas were organized and sat their asses down in Managua, smoking Cuban cigars, but we all went back to our villages thinking we won."

"Then you joined the Contras? Aren't they what you fought against?" 

"Contras? We aren’t Contras. We are Miskitos that could care less what happens een Managua. There's oil in Bluefields. Ha, they’d like to get rid of us for dat. And shit, mon, the Contras… they are led by old generals who want to put the Somosas back in. You see it happen in the U S A… you heard it first here. Agra-businessmen wit armies of lawyers in El Ay and New York wit pink hands make dee laws dat fock-over campesinos in fly-over country. Your precious democracy will get sucked up wit it. You’ll see…. Here we are. Look down.”

It was the first time I’d heard the term, Fly-Over Country.

The Piper Cub bounced through turbulence worse than Diego’s Jeep on the ground. By the time we landed near Waspam on the Rio Coco, I was ready to kiss the ground. The cub swooped, turned barely above the trees and slapped itself down perfectly within a narrow swath cut out of the jungle. From the landing-strip I was hustled away and out through the mountains surrounding the ruins of the once vital Miskito village. 

After a couple hours on a jungle track, we came upon a clearing with tents pitched strategically under the canopy of the surrounding forest. Taken to one with sides hurled up and a couple of cots, I was finally able to rest after setting down my pack and ten-ton typewriter case on a table in the middle of the space.

A young man holding an AK-47 woke me with a nudge from the barrel of his rifle saying, “Time to move aside. The others will be here soon.”

“Commander Zero?”

He laughed, “No, only the Captain.”

Kuka approached the table wearing camos and a holstered pistol hanging from a strap over her shoulder. As one of two other soldiers set my gear on the ground, she ignored my presence altogether. They spread out maps and talked in military jargon in Spanish and Miskito that I barely understood. One of the soldiers nodded in my direction before she said anything about me, “He’s okay,” then she addressed me, “Max, the Dog will take you from here.”

From my treatment since arriving, I expected Kuka to be important to these people, but not a leader in a guerrilla army. I heard the cracking of automatic weapons firing in synch and went in that direction. My instincts told me we weren’t under attack but that some kind of drill was taking place.

The Old Dog was instructing a group of young men in a file with new, out-of-the-crate, M-16’s. They held their rifles like fearful toys. The Dog barked orders and strolled down the ranks adjusting the posture and grip of the fresh recruits, “Short bursts. Remember what I said!”

Down range, a row of sand-bags with a red circle painted on the front, were set against a berm above a perimeter trench. They served as targets only fifty yards from the line of young men and women in camo-fatigues.  Not one bullet hole could be seen within the red paint circle. In fact, most of the sacks appeared to be untouched. I thought the Contras were mercenaries but, if these were mercenaries, no one would be getting their money’s worth for a while. There were a few professionals from other countries. Pastora’s volunteers were eclectic and not necessarily anti-communist nor entirely Miskito. Eden Pastora considered himself a true Sandinista and wore the Sandinista patch on his uniform the day of the bombing.

“Go ahead, take your pick from the crate, McGee. Fill your clip and join our little party. You do know how to load a clip?”

“Sir, Yes Sir!” I loaded, snapped the clip into place, and joined the ranks to shoot.

I wanted to show this old prick a thing or two so I flipped off the safety, left it on full automatic, and put a neat pattern of three into the red circle of one bag.

“Well now, I am surprised.”

Then with control put four into another, five into the next and six into the last.

“I’m impressed, periodista. You didn’t learn that from the Navy.”

“Mounted fifty caliber drills from the fantail was all I got there.”

“And the M-16, periodista? Where did you learn that?”

“Sir. Basic shit. Sir. One gun’s pretty much the same mechanics, sir.” I put-on the military posture of respect mockingly. The truth was that I’d fired an M-16 and an AK-47 before.

“Cut the drill sergeant crap. What else wasn’t in your profile, goddammit Mr. McGee?”

“Just because I know how to point a gun doesn’t make me a warrior,” I assured him. 

I wasn’t being modest, it was true. A friend from way back had an M-16 and an AK-47. We’d spent more than a couple of clips plinking beer cans several years before in the bayous of Northwest Florida. However, I knew I wasn’t trained for combat and had no experience except for deer hunting and playing cowboys and Indians as a kid. I had, however, dodged a few bullets once, dealing pot and acid in Southern Fla back in the early 70’s, but never came close to actual combat.

“I’m from Northern Idaho. Our graduation gift from diapers is a rabbit rifle,” I lied about being from Northern Idaho, but I did have a membership in the Junior NRA from the time I was fourteen.

Old Dog had other business to attend from there and he knew I wasn’t telling the truth about my experience but I thought he must’ve liked that about me. It meant I could keep some of my shit to myself instead of bragging about crap that didn’t matter. He assigned me the task of training these fishermen, lumberjacks, miners, and farmers, to shoot. Most of whom had used nothing newer than old Springfields hunting rifles left in Bluefields by the Marines back in the twenties.

I spent a week in camp learning commands in Spanish, breaking down and reassembling my piece with the recruits. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no field experience, but, if I was to survive what I was beginning to believe was an ill-conceived adventure, it would behoove me to be as much a student as I ever could be a teacher.

 I was told to leave my typewriter and gear other than a day pack. It would all be packed to where we were going. I wasn't told that tidbit of information and didn't think it prudent to ask. 

I did have the advantage of being in fairly good shape from riding a bicycle twenty-miles to and from our home in Winters to work at CMF in Vacaville. Even though I’d been idle almost a year after cracking my skull, my strength came back to my legs while hiking through jungle and mountain trails.

We didn’t see any action at first but we did see the aftermath of Sandinista/Cuban reprisals and removals of entire Miskito villages in the hills. We were protected by popular support most of the way to Greytown. None that lived in the area around the San Juan estuary at the border of Costa Rica cared much for the Sandanistas. This protection got stronger the closer we got to the coast, as we worked our way in separate small groups through the cover of the thick jungle and the cypress swamps. 

I’d almost forgotten about Kuka and stopped wondering where she was. I hadn’t thought much about Myra, Celeste, or Ariel either. My attention was on more immediate concerns. Though I’d begun to question what I was doing in the jungle in the first place, my immediate concerns were simple things like watching that my feet didn’t disturb a Yellow Beard coiled up under leaves and waiting invisible for one careless step in the bush; or, shaking scorpions out of my boots upon rising. 

My note pads were filled with descriptions mused over and embellished with sketches of parrots and frogs pared to fit in dispatches once over the Rio San Juan into Costa Rica where my typewriter and gear had been sent ahead. Only two of my journal entries, under a pseudonym, were published and I received $250 for them. But I was published and I felt like I was no longer acting the part of a journalist but was, un verdadero corresponsal de guerra; a real war correspondent.

Diego had joined the patrol wearing fatigues and the strapped holstered pistol over one shoulder that signified rank after we landed in Waspam. He was the squad leader who filled me in on the Bird Dog and why an American spook would be trusted after the assassination attempt on Pastora in La Penca that happened while I waited in the safe house in Tegucigalpa.

“The Bird Dog isn’t CIA. He’s a contractor and he’s the sort of businessman that’s connected on damned near every level.”

“And you trust him?”

Diego then warned, “No one’s trusted. You might be mistrusted as much as anyone else, Max. Other Contra groups, or the CIA, are just as deadly to us as are the Cubans and Sandinistas.”

“So, why’s he trusted?”

Diego looked at me as though I’d asked the dumbest question he'd ever heard. “He isn’t… a little more than you are though.”

“Me? What about me? I’m new here and have no idea what’s goin’ on.”

“It’s because you are new. Be careful Max.”

“And the Bird Dog?”

“The Bird Dog has as many contacts in Managua as he does in Washington.”

“You mean, with Sandinistas?” I asked incredulously.

“The Sandinistas... Som too.” He then tipped his hat, “and your Kuka has friends. Yes, she was with them in the beginning, with Pastora.”

“She told me as much as that back in Santa Monica.”

“Did she tell you she was fucking Daniel Ortega back then too?”

“What!” I was more than a little jealous.

“Don’t worry, Max. It’s just a rumor… the stuff of legends. Nothing is as it seems down here and the truth disguises itself in wild stories.”

I decided that nothing I would write would have anything to do with the rumors and propaganda of the day. And, besides, because I carried an M-16, no one cared what I wrote.

I challenged Diego’s implication I might be a spy, “I’m not comfortable with the idea I could be dispatched under a false suspicion.”

Diego was unmoved and shrugged, “You should have known that before you came to our little party. Amigos de la Revolución are always the first to go. Did you imagine we would be any different from the Sandinistas?”

The second most significant event that happened was on a foray into the swamps of the coastal Lagunas west of Bluefields. Ours was a patrol on a recon mission to observe the removal of a Miskito enclave by the Sandinistas. We weren’t supposed to make contact with the enemy. The patrol came upon a village. To me, it wasn’t exactly a village in a normal sense of the word. It was more a collection of houses on stilts scattered throughout the high ground beyond the swamp. The Sandinista had already removed the residents into relocation camps. It was a ghost town.

The squad had taken a break under one of the houses when a scout warned Diego of an approaching patrol. A silent choreography of his trained and able squad took perfect positions for an ambush. The point approached close enough for me to see his face. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen… maybe even younger. I surmised he might be the kid in the group and that was why he had to take the point. I was relieved when our squad leader signaled for me to hold fire. The boy walked ahead. It was a revelation because most of these Sandinistas that followed also looked like they couldn’t have had pubic hair yet. 

The signal was given to commence firing. I couldn’t… my trigger finger didn’t respond… confusion set in… a horrifying confusion. A barrage of gunfire opened-up from cover behind me and the kids dropped like rag dolls. They just dropped... sometimes in shock… sometimes still moving forward. I’d seen their faces. Diego swaggered through the mess of corpses dispatching a pistol shot into their heads just in case they were still alive.

He commanded, “Leave them here so that Daniel Ortega will personally be told about it.”