Thai Horse (3 page)

‘Gimme your hand, kid,’ Cirill
o
ordered. Hatcher reached out very slowly, stretching toward the cop’s bulging arm. He felt Cirillo’s callused fingertips, felt his hand slide across his palm, felt the powerful fingers enclose his wrist.

‘Okay,’ said Cirillo, ‘swing free.’

‘What!’

‘Do it now, I can’t hang on here forever.’

The kid closed his eyes, swallowed, and freed his other hand. He was hanging in midair with nothing below him but space. Cirillo gritted his teeth and slowly lifted the kid’s dead weight.

‘Okay,’ Cirillo whispered, ‘hang aro
u
nd my neck.’

Hatcher reached up and wrapped his arms around Cirillo’s thick, bulging neck as the co
p
chinned himself on the ledge.

‘God Almighty,’ he whispered as Cirillo hauled himself over the lip of the ledge and rolled to safety. Hatcher lay on his face, his breath blowing little billows of dirt away from his mouth. His heart was beating so hard his teeth hurt. Then suddenly he started laughing hysterically.

‘Damn,’ he said, ‘we’re alive! We’re a-fuckin’ live!’

He had confronted and cheated death, a new and seductive experience for him.

‘I did it!’ the kid yelled at the forest and it echoed back:

I
did
it!’

‘Just remember, kid,’ Cirillo said. ‘
Y
a can’t quit in this life. Quit and yer dead. Ya take a job, ya do it. Ya don’t hold back nothin’, ya put it all on the line. Ya don’t leave yourself any outs.’

Hatcher turned to Cirillo. ‘Let’s do another one,’ he said eagerly.

And Cirillo had smiled.

‘We still gotta go back down,’ he ans
w
ered quietly.

Yes, Hatcher thought, these old walls would be a piece of cake. Getting through the jungle, that was the tough part.

Then the rains came. The face of the prison became a slimy river of muck. The rainy days became rainy weeks and then months. With each passing day, climbing the wall became more treacherous.
h
e drew rough maps on the floor, trying to remember directions and distances from the trip upriver. And finally he accepted the reality that without weapons or even a c
o
mpass, without maps or any knowledge of the area, escape was suicidal. As the rains continued, the challenge slowly faded.

And so he imposed upon himself a daily regimen:

calisthenics to keep his muscles from atrophying; mental exercises to keep from going mad, although gradually madness and sanity became one.

To postpone insanity, he thought about the women he had known. Sometimes names eluded him and he associated them with events in his life. He tried to reconstruct his first high school romance
—
what was her name, Haley? He remembered touching her the first time, in the backseat darkness of Cirillo’s Chevy, groping, feeling her soft down and feeling her rise to his touch, moving his hand to her breasts, those soft buds just beginning to bloom. He was terrified, she was impassioned. But after the first time, their fervor approached insanity. They did it everywhere, in the darkness of the balcony of the town’s only movie house, rolled in blankets in the green Massachusetts forest, and once, late in the afternoon, in the girls’ locker room at the high school, abandoned for the day, the tin rattle of the locker door providing rhythmic cadence as they stood against it, thrashing in the agony of youthful passion.

Then he had gone off to the academy and she had fallen madly in love with the high school wrestling champ.

The loss of his innocence haunted his fevered memory as his mind wandered freely in time, back to the alleys of Boston, where Cirillo had nabbed him. Hatcher was a tough, crafty street orphan, and Cirillo a just-as-tough cop who had taken him in hand and changed his life forever. It had been Cirillo who had forced him to go to high school, challenged him not only to climb walls but to show his best, and finally arranged the appointment to Annapolis, where Harry Sloan had discovered
him.
Sloan. Hatcher’s torment was that he could no longer imagine life without that treacherous intrusion, could not remember the precise moment when he had traded truth for expediency, had traded light and beauty for the shadows of the shadow warrior, and in his desolation, Hatcher, like many men and women in less desperate conditions, futilely cried out to relive that moment and change his destiny.

At first, hate was all Hatcher had. Sitting in his box at night, he would imagine every conceivable kind of torture he could
inflict
on Harry Sloan. But as time passed he began to look elsewhere, to shift the blame to someone else. But in the end it always came back to the same thing. Sloan had betrayed him, had set
him
up and condemned him to a living death.

Cirillo had been Hatcher’s salvation, Sloan his destruction.

And yet the cord was difficult to break. Sloan had been more than a friend, he had been Hatcher’s mentor, had exposed Hatcher to experts in every conceivable field of lawful and unlawful endeavor, from lock-picking to murder, had taught him how to survive under the worst conditions. In a strange irony, Sloan had prepared him to survive Los Boxes.

Yes, Sloan had delivered his promises. His silver tongue promised adventure and romance, spiced with words like ‘patriot’ and ‘duty’ and ‘country’. Well, there had been plenty of both. There had been a lot of good times. Tokyo, Singapore, Manila.

Hong Kong and Bangkok.

He always thought of them together, remembering Cohen and the weekends when he would fly to Hong Kong from Bangkok just to get away from the hell of the river wars for a little while.

And the special suite he had at the Peninsula in Kowloon, shared only with Daphne.

God, Daphne. What a memory
-
Was she still alive? Was she still as beautiful as ever? Daffy, he had called her and it fit.

There was also Sam-Sam Sam and Joe Cockroach and the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, the secret lair of the Chinese river pirates. And there was Tollie Fong, the triad assassin who had sworn a blood oath against Hatcher for killing his father, his uncle and four of his most trusted gangsters.

He could never go back to H
o
ng Kong and Bangkok. Too many ghosts. Too many enemies. Too many unsaid good-byes.

And so Hatcher always thoug
h
t of Sloan with mixed feelings. The bond between ment
o
r and student was almost as primal as that between father and son. In his misery, his feelings toward Sloan wavered. One day he thought of Sloan with affection, the next he damned him to hell.

What he eventually learned was that there was no precise moment when his values changed. When he met Sloan he was young and impressionable, easily charmed by Sloan’s omnipresent smile, and seduced by his soft-spoken promises. It was what Sloan did
b
est, spinning images of mysterious worlds with that silver tongue of his. In the end, Hatcher had to accept the responsibility for what he was and where he was, a house of his own making.

Life in Los Boxes became Hatcher’s penance.

Then one night he heard a scratching on the wall. He thought it was a roach or perhaps a rat until a small stick punched through the wall,
augured
for a moment, and was withdrawn.

‘Psst.’

Hatcher leaned over and put his
e
ar close to the tiny hole. And heard a voice, an ancient voice, hoarse with disuse. ‘One twenty-seven?’ the voice said.

126

Hatcher would not answer, could not answer. Paranoia and fear prevented any response. Suppose it was a guard, testing him? He would not risk having his tongue ripped out. He leaned against the wall, his ear against the pinpoint, listening.

Again the hoarse whisper: ‘One twenty-seven?’

His mouth was dry with suspicion. He sat for a moment, then he coughed.

‘Ah, very good, very clever,’ the voice whispered in Spanish. ‘I am one twenty-six. I knew your predecessor for many years. He was a journalist in my country. A famous journalist. Green berries and belly worms got him.’

My God, to hear a voice, a friendly voice, was like a postponement of his madness, and
f
inally
Hatcher asked himself, What good is a tongue, anyhow, if you don’t use it?

‘I am here,’ he whispered back, and immediately, reflexively, stuffed his fist in his mouth.

‘Ah,
’whispered 126. ‘Salvation.’

‘I am Hatcher, what is your name?’

‘Immaterial, immaterial,’ 126 said in flawless English. ‘There is no parole from here, no pa
r
don, no escape. I am one twenty-six. I will be one twenty—six for eternity. You are one twenty-seven.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Since God created cockroaches.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘A lie for the convenience of the state.’

‘And I, too,’ said Hatcher.

‘To give such a lie relevance is to perpetuate it. Why I am here, why you are here, that is no longer material. By now even the courts have forgotten us. And if nobody else cares, what matter is it to ourselves? It is, quite simply, a lie.’

‘It helps me to think about it. It gives me a sticking place.’

‘There is no vindication in hatred. Besides, we are all products of our own devils.’

‘I’m not sure I agree with that. My devil had a silver tongue.’

‘Ah yes,’ answered 126. ‘Show me a devil who doesn’t. Forget hatred, it will drive you mad.’

‘If something else doesn’t first.’

And so in the ensuing months and years, Hatcher had decided that if he ever saw Sloan again, perhaps he could forgive him. Forgive but never trust him again. He knew Sloan very well, well enough to know that Sloan would betray him again if he thought it was expedient.

‘Did you kill?’ 126 asked one day
-

‘Yes, but it was my duty.’

‘Many crimes are committed in the name of duty.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Hatcher said.

‘Listen, when one shares the secret of murder, then one is guilty of murder.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Sometimes we can excuse anything in the name of patriotism and so an outcast can only find redemption by claiming to be a patriot. Are you a patriot, one twenty- seven?’

‘I don’t remember. Yes. I think I was.’

‘Well, you are certainly an outcast.’

‘Yes, that’s a fact.’

‘Then it stands to reason that you are probably
not
a patriot. But it’s all relative. I am here because I thought I was a patriot. Then I discovered one man’s patriot is another man’s traitor.
. . .
What I thought was an act of patriotism turned out to be an act of
m
urder.’

‘I can understand that,’ Hatcher replied.

‘Then you have had the experience.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, of course. You see what I mean. Righteous indigna
ti
on comes much easier to the patriot than it does to the felon.’

Hatcher’s lessons came hard. He forgot that in the hell of Los Boxes the rules never changed. One day, he had been working at the edge of the jungle, preparing one of the endless vegetable gardens that surrounded the citadel, when a wild boar had suddenly lunged from the underbrush and charged him. It was enormous, a hulking, stinking beast with curved tusks and insan
e
eyes, snorting and hooking as it ran toward Hatcher.

Hatcher took its first charge with the hoe, smacking it on the snout, but the beast merely backed
off
a few yards and charged again. Hatcher screamed for the guards as he parried tusk with hoe. The large tusks could easily have torn out his stomach, opened up a leg, ripped away his throat.

A guard appeared nearby but made no attempt to shoot the beast. He stood fifty feet away, laughing.

‘Shoot it,’ Hatcher screamed, and the guard instantly reacted.

‘Silencio!’
the guard demanded.

The boar attacked again. This ti
m
e Hatcher swung the hoe in a wide arc and buried the blade in the boar’s thick neck. The hoe handle splintered and broke. The boar, roaring in pain, backed off, and began to circle.

‘For Christ’s sake, shoot the son of a bitch!’ Hatcher screamed as he backed away.

‘Silencio!’
the guard ordered, running toward him.

The boar wheeled, snorting crazily, pawed the ground and came at him again. Hatcher was defenseless. He scrambled to his feet and started to run. Then he heard a shot and the boar’s scream of pain. Another guard across the field lowered his rifle.

Hatcher turned and saw the boar lying on its side ten feet away, its short legs pawing the air, its head jerking back and forth in the spasms of death.

Hatcher’s sigh of relief was shattered by the first guard’s gun butt as it smashed into his throat. He reeled back, clutching his neck, feeling the mangled veins and muscles as blood surged into his mouth. He fell to his knees gagging.

The guard leaned over him.

‘Silencio,’
he repeated, then turned and walked away.

That night, 126 had told him, ‘Y
o
u are lucky you still have your tongue.’

‘I hate that bastard,’ Hatcher’s tortured voice answered. ‘I’ll kill him if I ever get the chance.’

‘No, don’t think about that,’ 126 had answered. ‘Hate comes easy here and hate kills the spirit. You must learn to love. Something
—
a woman, your country, anything. Without love, life is meaningless. To be in love means to laugh, to cry, to feel without touching. Without feelings, one twenty-seven, you are a robot.’

It was true, Hatcher thought, arid yet for a good part of his life, hate had sustained him.

‘Why is talk prohibited, one twenty-six?’ Hatcher whispered feebly.

‘Talk is the seed of revolt.’

‘Ah, that makes sense.’

‘In a very primitive way, everything here makes sense, one twenty-seven.’

‘What did you do on the outside?’ Hatcher’s shattered voice asked.

‘I was a teacher. A mentor. Did you have a mentor?’

Hatcher thought for a moment. ‘I had two,’ he answered.

‘Ah, and what did they teach you?’

‘One taught me the meaning of honor,’ said Hatcher.

‘And the other?’

‘He taught me to ignore it.’

One twenty-six had grown old in Los Boxes and would die there. In a moment of insanity lie had tried to run, but two days in the jungle was all he could bear. Now he was trapped forever in box 126, and to hold on to his sanity he philosophized endlessly.

‘Talk is fertilizer for the brain,’ he told Hatcher. ‘If there is no one else to talk to, talk to yourself.’

There was also practical advice:

‘If it is so important to you, scratch your name and your age in the wall so you don’t lose your identity. Just remember no one else cares. To everyone else, you are one twenty-seven. Forget what’s happening outside the walls, it’s no longer of any consequence. This place is your reality. To survive, all that matters is reality.’

‘Why bother,’ asked Hatcher.

‘Because hope is the key to heaven, 126 answered.

He became Hatcher’s tutor. Every day when Hatcher returned from the fields around Los Boxes, there were new lessons to be learned.

‘When you are outside, don’t eat green berries. The green ones will kill you.’

And: ‘Masturbate every day, it will keep your emotions alive.’

And: ‘Forget the politics of your agony. Politicians are vermin in the soul. They sway with the winds and keep you angry, and anger becomes madness, and madness is the step before death.’

And: ‘Don’t waste your time on
thoughts
of vengeance. Vengeance is depressing. It requires action, and action is the enemy of thought and the friend of illusion. Here illusion leads to madness.’

‘Ah.
. .
that is tough to do.’

‘It will get easier. Better to forgive your enemies than to invite madness.’

‘What do you fear most, one twenty-seven?’

Hatcher gave it some thought.

‘Cowardice,’ he said finally.

‘Then as long as you’re alive, you
h
ave nothing to fear. Only cowards kill themselves to escape this place.’

And: ‘If you get sick, cure yourself. Otherwise they will kill you to keep whatever you have from spreading. There is no doctor here.’

And: ‘Do not lose your sense of humor. Humor feeds the soul. If the soul starves, so does the conscience, and your conscience is your only true companion.’

And: ‘Do not eat the pork. It is c
o
oked badly. It will put worms in your belly.’

‘Thank you, one twenty-six.’

‘For what?’

‘I’m learning.’

‘I am a teacher. It is a joy for me.

Then there were the Mushroom People.

At first Hatcher thought 126 was merely having one of his mad days. They all had mad days.

‘Look for the blossoms,’ 126 had told him shortly before he died. ‘The big ones that grow in the shade under the tall trees. Chop them and mix them with a meal, never straight. The Mushroom People are friendly, but if you eat the blossoms straight, they get out
o
f hand.’

Hatcher had no idea what 126 was raving about.

‘Time to say good-bye.’

‘No!’

‘I’ve been here twelve years, o
ld
friend. It has been two years since I saw the sun or breathed fresh air. Enough is enough. Besides, my heart is worn out. It skips every other beat.’

‘But I need you,’ Hatcher implored.

‘Nevertheless
. . .‘
He paused. ‘I will miss you, one twenty-seven.’

‘Not half as much as I’ll miss you.’

One twenty-six laughed. ‘Good. You have not lost your sense of humor.’

He first spotted them while chopping out a new area for a garden. Large, bright yellow mushrooms, half a foot in diameter, glowing like jewels in the thick, dank shadows. He picked one, chopped it up, and stuffed it in the pockets of his cotton shirt. That night he sprinkled the pieces on the tin plate of vegetables that was shoved through the slot at the bottom of his cell door. Their taste, a musky, cardboard flavor, overpowered other tastes.

He lay on his pallet and stared at the ceiling, wondering why 126 had told him about the
b
lossoms. Perhaps they provided some necessary vitamin or mineral that would keep his bones from turning to sand.

A dervish mist appeared in the corner of his box, brightening the shadows with soft light, and then, what began as a shimmering aura took shape in flesh and blood, standing in the corner as if awaiting orders.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ he whispered fearfully.

But the Mushroom People never answered, never spoke. They simply kept him compa
n
y, and as he learned to trust them he addressed them as he would visitors, describing his daily monotony.

Sometimes he danced with them, spun and twirled an insane Irish jig in his earthen crypt. He made love to the women and sparred with the men. With 126 gone, the Mushroom People became his only friends.

There were days when Hatcher was lucid; there were days when he spent hours in the company of the Mushroom People, dancing, singing, making love, recounting whatever fragments of history he could remember or make up. He told them jokes to keep his sense of humor alive, sang songs to them because music fed the soul.

When he discovered the Mushroom People, Hatcher no longer needed 126. And if the thin li
n
e between sanity and madness be judged by what’s in the mind, Hatcher was indeed mad during his years in Los B
o
xes. It would be two more years before he recovered enough from the brutal, dehumanizing experience to admit to himself that there was no hole in his cell wall, and no
126
on the other side talking to him. It would be two years before Hatcher admitted that 126 was his own conscience.