The Middleman and Other Stories Read Free Page A

Indians put down their machetes and make signs to me:
Hi, mom, we’re Number One.
They must have been watching Ransome’s tapes. They’re all wearing Braves caps.
    The road to San Vincente is rough. Deep ruts have been cut into the surface by army trucks. Whole convoys must havepassed this way during the last rainy season. I don’t want to know whose trucks, I don’t want to know why.
    Forty minutes into the trip Maria says, “When you get to the T, take a left. I have to stop off near here to run an errand.” It’s a strange word for the middle of a jungle.
    â€œDon’t let it take you too long,” I say. “We want to be back before hubby gets home.” I’m feeling jaunty. She touches me when she talks.
    â€œSo Clovis scares you.” Her hand finds its way to my shoulder.
    â€œShouldn’t he?”
    I make the left. I make it sharper than I intended. Bud Wilkins’s pickup sputters up a dusty rise. A pond appears and around it shacks with vegetable gardens.
    â€œWhere are we?”
    â€œIn Santa Simona,” Maria says. “I was born here, can you imagine?”
    This isn’t a village, it’s a camp for guerrillas. I see some women here, and kids, roosters, dogs. What Santa Simona is is a rest stop for families on the run. I deny simple parallels. Ransome’s ranch is just a ranch.
    â€œYou could park by the pond.”
    I step on the brake and glide to the rutted edge of the pond. Whole convoys must have parked here during the rainy season. The ruts hint at secrets. Now in the dry season what might be a lake has shrunk into a muddy pit. Ducks float on green scum.
    Young men in khaki begin to close in on Bud’s truck.
    Maria motions me to get out. “I bet you could use a drink.” We make our way up to the shacks. The way her bottom bounces inside those cutoffs could drive a man crazy. I don’t turn back but I can hear the unloading of the truck.
    So: Bud Wilkins’s little shipment has been hijacked, and I’m the culprit. Some job for a middleman.
    â€œ
This
is my house, Alfie.”
    I should be upset. Maria’s turned me into a chauffeur. You bet I could use a drink.
    We pass by the first shack. There’s a garage in the back where there would be the usual large, cement laundry tub. Three men come at me, twirling tire irons the way night sticks are fondled by Manhattan cops. “I’m with her.”
    Maria laughs at me. “It’s not you they want.”
    And I wonder,
who
was she supposed to deliver? Bud, perhaps, if Clovis hadn’t taken him out? Or Clovis himself?
    We pass the second shack, and a third. Then a tall guerrilla in full battle dress floats out of nowhere and blocks our path. Maria shrieks and throws herself on him and he holds her face in his hands, and in no time they’re swaying and moaning like connubial visitors at a prison farm. She has her back to me. His big hands cup and squeeze her halter top. I’ve seen him somewhere. Eduardo’s poster.
    â€œHey,” I try. When that doesn’t work, I start to cough.
    â€œSorry.” Maria swings around still in his arms. “This is Al Judah. He’s staying at the ranch.”
    The soldier is called Andreas something. He looks me over. “Yudah?” he asks Maria, frowning.
    She shrugs. “You want to make something of it?”
    He says something rapidly, locally, that I can’t make out. She translates, “He says you need a drink,” which I don’t believe.
    We go inside the command shack. It’s a one-room affair, very clean, but dark and cluttered. I’m not sure I should sit on the narrow cot; it seems to be a catchall for the domestic details of revolution—sleeping bags, maps and charts, an empty canteen, two pairs of secondhand army boots. I need a comfortable place to deal with my traumas. There is a sofa of sorts, actually a car seat pushed tight against a wall and