War Baby (16 page)

Mickey sat on a stool beside the bed, holding the boy’s hand. He lay quite still, staring at the ceiling. He could have been dead except for the slow blinking of his eyes. The Huey’s strafing run had been productive; an old man, a child, and one of the
correos
had been killed; a woman and a young boy had been badly wounded. Ramon had been forced to amputate the boy’s leg.

The only light came from a candle in a corner of the room. Grotesque shadows danced on the bare, stained walls. Ryan stood in the doorway, watching.

‘What Salvador cannot understand,’ she said at last, ‘is how a man like you can become indifferent to human suffering.’

‘What does he think I should have done?’

‘He told me that Marguerita held her arms out to you, pleading with you to help her.’

‘My job’s to record what happens here for the outside world. One photograph could help a thousand Margueritas.’

‘Is that how you see it?’

‘I’m not a doctor. I’m a combat photographer. It’s what I do. If I don’t take photographs I might just as well be a tourist.’

He watched her, in profile. She looked so pale in this light, almost opaque. Even her voice was thin. ‘I remember a few years back, I was in Biafra. There was this woman. She looked ancient, but she couldn’t have been that old because she was nursing a little kid. She followed me around for hours while I took photographs, just kept touching me on the shoulder, on the arm, whispering something, Christ knows what. I knew I wanted to do something for her but I couldn’t think of anything that would make that much difference. I gave her something in the end, though.’

‘What?’

‘Her picture on the front page of Time. Then it wasn’t just me she was following me, it was the whole world.'

Mickey shook her head.

‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’ he said.

‘Not really. Where’s Hugh?’

‘He’s borrowed an old typewriter from Salvador and he’s tapping away, every flying insect God made crawling over his head. Me, I take my snaps and that’s it. He saves his up for later. Like a squirrel with nuts.’

‘If he’s a squirrel, what does that make you?’

He shrugged. ‘A jackal, I suppose?’ He came and stood at the foot of the bed. ‘Don’t mind me saying this, but you look like shit.’

‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

‘How long have you been in this dump?’

‘All my life. Or maybe it’s just thirteen months. I can’t remember.’

‘What the hell made you come here?’

‘I wouldn’t know how to start to explain.’ The boy moaned and twitched. She stroked his forehead. ‘You enjoy this?’

‘I don’t like seeing people get hurt but they’re going to, whether I’m here or not.’

‘That wasn’t my question.’

‘You want some hypocritical bullshit about wanting to change the world? All right, I like the danger. I get a buzz out of it.’

‘Did you enjoy today?’

‘If I’d stopped filming to pick up the kid, would he have lived?’

‘Half his brain was missing.’

‘There you are, then. All right, now it’s your turn.’

‘My turn?’

‘I’ve told you why I’m here. What about you?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘When I got back from Vietnam I tried to pretend that that part of my life never happened. I wanted to forget everyone I ever knew there, everything I’d seen and heard. I did a year in Walter Reed, left the army as soon as I could, got a job in New Orleans, doing pediatrics. A year later I found myself back working in emergency rooms. Just couldn’t leave that shit alone, you know? I was drinking a lot, but what the hell, right? Spent a lot of time in singles bars, put a few notches on my lipstick case. Then one day, I guess I took my eye off the ball or something. I met a real nice guy. Jesus, don’t know how that happened. And glory be, he was a paramedic. Match made in heaven, right?’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘We got divorced in 1980.’ She made a face. ‘Maybe it would have lasted if we could have had kids. But probably just as well. I would only have screwed them up.’

‘So you’re running away?’

She gave him a look of contempt. ‘This is running away? Frag wounds? Traumatic amputations?’

‘So what’s the story?’

‘Every night for maybe a year after I got back from Vietnam I had this same dream. It was a mas-cal at Bien Hoa, and there was this guy, real bad head wounds, they put him in with the expectants. I gave him the speech, you know: ‘I’m Mickey van Himst, you’re at Bien Hoa Field Hospital, we are going to make you as comfortable as possible.’ Then you jack ’em up with morphine, put them in the room, come back a bit later to tag ’em and bag ’em. The mas-cal was ten, maybe twelve hours, and when I came back that kid was still alive. He was looking at me with these eyes - softest, deepest damn eyes I ever seen. It was like he was pleading with me to do something. I called one of the surgeons but when he got there he said the kid was dead.’ She stopped, wiped the sweat off her face with her arm.

‘Maybe you imagined it,’ Ryan said.

‘Maybe I did.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘I can’t... I just can’t get back to a normal life. It’s been twelve years and I still can’t forget that kid’s eyes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I was following what was happening down here in the papers. Oh God, I thought, another Vietnam. Then after the divorce I decided maybe this time I’d join the good guys. I applied to the Peace Corps but they said it was too dangerous here for a woman. Like Vietnam wasn’t dangerous! So I took a crash course in Spanish, went down to Cuernavaca in Mexico, got in touch with the FMLN, and they smuggled me into El Salvador. So I’m not running away. I’m running
back
.’

Ryan didn’t say anything.

‘I guess you think I’m crazy.’

‘No, I don’t. I get it.’

‘Sure you do. Confession time’s over. You’ve had your fun. You can go back to the States now, sell your pictures, pick up a Pulitzer or two.’

Ryan turned away. ‘You know what?’

‘What?’

‘I don’t think I like you either.’

* * *

The next day when Webb went over to the hospital, there were four boys playing with a plastic football right outside, just where the gunship had scythed down the woman and her baby. Ryan joined in and stole the ball. The kids shrieked with laughter trying to get the ball back off him. Ryan slapped his chest, shouting. ‘Pelé - Pelé!’

Mickey stood on the veranda, watching.

‘He likes playing with kids,’ Webb said. ‘He knows he can win.’

There was another little boy sitting on the hospital steps, watching. Ryan called out to him to join in, but he ignored him.

‘What’s with him?’ Webb asked her.

‘His name’s Rogelio. His mother was raped and murdered right in front of him. They shot his father in the stomach and left him to die. He saw all of it. He hasn’t spoken a word since he got here.’

Ryan tried again. ‘Hey, Rogelio, want to play?’

Rogelio stared straight ahead.

‘What do you think, Rogelio? Pretty good, aren’t I?’

Ryan kicked the ball away, and the kids went scrambling after it. He came over. Rogelio kept his large black eyes fixed on the ground.

‘What’s his problem, Mickey?’

‘He’s an orphan.’

‘Does he talk?’

She shook her head.

‘Why not?’

‘His mother and father were murdered by the
chuchos
right in front of him. Great photographic opportunity. Pity you missed it.’

She went back inside.

Ryan knelt down. ‘Hey, Rogelio, you play
futbol
? Pelé. Paolo Rossi. Bobby Charlton. All that good shit.’ He took the little boy’s arm, but Rogelio pulled away. ‘I’ll show you.’

Ryan ran back across the compound, got the ball back by shouldering the biggest boy into the dirt. The boy laughed, got up and kicked Ryan in the leg. Ryan pretended to be hurt. The others clapped with excitement and chased after him. Ryan dribbled the ball to where Rogelio was sitting. ‘Try and get it off me!’

The other boys descended on him. Ryan fended them away, showing off. ‘Rogelio!’

Nothing.

Ryan kicked the ball as hard as he could, into the bushes. He raised both arms. ‘Australia one, El Salvador nil!’ He bent down in front of Rogelio. ‘Hey, Rogelio.
Jogo bonito
, all right! Come on!’

Webb went inside and found Mickey. ‘He’s still twittering away to that kid. Does he speak Spanish?’

‘Not much.’

‘I don’t suppose it matters. Ryan could listen to himself for hours.’

‘You don’t like him, do you?’

‘I know him too well, that’s all.’ He thought back to that night at Ben Hoa, when she walked away from him, felt that same pang again. She was not the first girl he had loved, or the last, but she was the one he had always remembered. ‘I’ve been talking with Ryan,’ he said. ‘We want to try and get back to San Salvador first chance we can. You think Napoleon will let us?’

‘You should ask him. I don’t see why not. You’re a propaganda coup for him. There’s no point keeping you here forever. He wants his name in the papers every bit as bad as you do.’

He let that go. ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Why don’t you come out with us?’

‘Why?’

‘D’Aubuisson’s getting more and more arms from the States. It’s going to get hot up here soon.’

‘I’ve been shot at before. Besides, what is there to go back to? Daytime television. Weather reports. Shopping malls. Up here I get one good cup of coffee a week, and I’ve learned to appreciate it. And I’m needed.’ She pointed to the line of
campesinos
waiting for the morning clinic. ‘It doesn’t take a lot to help them. When I got here most of these people were suffering from anemia because of their diet, too many pregnancies, malarial fevers, parasites. It all drains the iron out of them. So I made them a special medicine. You know what I did? I cleaned some nails with pieces of lemon, soaked them overnight and then made the people drink the rusty water. Suddenly, no more anemia.’

‘I know you’re doing good things here. But you can’t stay here forever.’

Ramon called to her. He was changing the dressings on the boy’s amputated leg and he wanted her help.

‘Duty calls,’ she said, and turned away.

Salvador’s command post was a one-room house that he shared with his brother and his brother’s wife and several bodyguards. They all slept together on the floor. There was a wooden trestle table on the verandah with a handset radio and typewriter and an old wicker rocking chair. A slogan had been scrawled on the wall in red paint:
Por la Sangre Derramada, de Adelante Camarada.

FOR THE SPILLED BLOOD, ONWARD COMRADES

Webb interviewed him in Spanish while Ryan took the photographs. Salvador’s sister-in-law lay in a hammock, breastfeeding an infant. A few scruffy chickens clucked in the yard.

‘We have no schools, no hospitals, no land, no art, no culture,’ Salvador was saying in his strange falsetto. ‘Most of all we have no dignity. We watch our children die of hunger because our wages are so low. But if we protest, the government calls us Marxists and their soldiers murder us like dogs. Finally, you realize these people do not understand words. So we have no choice but to mae war against them, it is the only language they comprehend. Look what they did to poor Monsignor Romero, a gentle man, a humble man, a man of peace.’

One of the bodyguards brought them coffee, hot, black and very sweet, in earthen mugs.

‘In the early days it was not easy to make war. On my very first night watch I remember they gave me some firecrackers because they did not have a gun to spare. If I saw the
chuchos
I had to throw firecrackers at them, to make them think it was an ambush. These days we have Israeli assault rifles and M-60 machine guns.’

He leaned to one side and broke wind.

‘I fart. My brother farts. My sister-in-law farts. Even the baby farts. What do you expect from a diet of beans?’ He scratched irritably at his groin. ‘Fucking fleas. You think I like living like this? Once we all had a little land to grow corn or beans. But the
duefios
stole the land to grow coffee or to graze their cattle, they drove many of the
campos
into the city where they starve in the slums or are disappeared by the death squads. What they do not understand is that if you take everything away from a man, he will eventually turn around and fight you to the death, because he has nothing left to lose. Tell them
that
in America.’

Webb ended the interview and switched off the tape.

‘We believe that very soon the government troops will start another campaign against us,’ Salvador said. ‘You are welcome to stay with us for as long as you want, but it is dangerous and we have little food.’

‘I don’t have much film left,’ Ryan said to Webb, ‘and the stuff I’ve taken is growing several types of fungus.’

‘I hope that when you get back to the United States you will tell the world what is happening here in my country.’

‘We’ll tell the story,’ Webb said. ‘I cannot guarantee that anyone will listen.’

Salvador’s expression betrayed his disbelief that people would not care, if they knew. He stood up, unhitched his belt and dropped his jeans to his knees.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ryan said.

‘They did this to me when I was fourteen years old,’ Salvador said. ‘Now you see why I hate them so much.’

* * *

Webb lay in his hammock, weary to his bones. He had not slept for days and the constant nausea made it impossible to eat. He suspected it was malaria and that morning he swallowed a handful of quinine pills in a desperate attempt to halt the progress of the fever through his body.

He felt as if his eyes were going to push themselves out of his head. His hands would not stop shaking.

‘You all right, Spider?’

‘Just tired,’ Webb said.

‘Better get some sleep then, mate. Salvador has promised to take us back to the Suchitoto road in the morning.’

But next morning, when the sun rose, Webb could not get out of his hammock. He was burning up. Mickey hurried over from the hospital to examine him.

‘He’s not going anywhere,’ she said.

* * *

Ryan stood in the dusty compound in front of the hospital, tapping the ball on his foot and counting. Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine ... Rogelio sat on the steps a few yards away, staring at the ground.

The ball bounced away, through the dirt. Ryan retrieved it, held it out to him. ‘Your turn, mate.’

‘You never give up, do you?’

He looked up. It was Mickey. ‘He could learn a lot from me.’

‘I didn’t think Australians played soccer.’

‘They don’t. But I had these Italian mates where I grew up. They taught me. I was pretty good at all ball sports.’

‘Why aren’t I surprised?’

Ryan left the ball at Rogelio’s feet and followed Mickey inside the hospital.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘I approve of what you’re trying to do with Rogelio. Just don’t get your hopes up. We’ve been trying to get him to talk for three months. You’ve been here a week.’

Webb tossed on one of the bunks, lathered in sweat. His skin was a sickly yellow and his eyes had sunken into his cheeks. Mickey took a thermometer from a jar.

‘Want me to insert that for you?’

‘I’d only use that method if I was taking
your
temperature.’

She slipped it under Webb’s arm, held it there, counted the pulse rate as she waited. ‘Hugh. Can you hear me. Hugh?’

Webb muttered something neither of them could understand. She retrieved the thermometer.

‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s pretty sick. Don’t you guys take your tablets?’

‘He got careless, I guess. I missed my weekly dose too. I took two last night to make up for it.’

‘You don’t look too good yourself,’ she said.

‘I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

‘I know. The
sanitarios
told me you were here all night.’

‘Got to look after the bastard. He’d do the same for me.’

‘You’re full of surprises.’

‘I think you’re a pretty remarkable woman, too. I mean, I haven’t met a lot of women that I’ve really admired.’

She brushed a wisp of hair from her face, flustered. She seemed about to say something, changed her mind.

There was a noise from the doorway. They both looked around. Rogelio was standing there. Something rolled across the floor. Ryan looked down.

It was a football.