The Last Bender, Chapter 39

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

          After a while I got used to the guy kicking and moaning in the trunk. It was easier to get used to than the bugs flying in my mouth on the highway back to town. Linda dropped me off and I followed her in my car to her place, listening to the radio, strangely oblivious to everything around me. Sultana Sultan spun sugar with Fry Loom in an a capella number recorded on new year’s eve in the Hotel Metropole in Saigon. Its sentimentality was only surpassed by its cynicism. I didn’t care. It was a voice and I was alive. The broadcast was interrupted by a news report that the Cham Rebel Government had been overthrown by a coalition of military and business forces. The capital was in disarray. Mortars crumped, shells whistled and exploded in the background. TACKATACKATACKA went the machine guns. Inanian troops had landed in support of the coalition leaders, who had encircled Indrapura. A General swore to restore freedom and order to the capital, and punish liars and thieves. He swore to eliminate government. A depressed reporter described the refugees and hospitals. There were reports of executions, suicides and mass imprisonments. A hysterical man screamed incoherently, the translator’s voice calmly describing over it a scene of men kneeling in a line while an officer walked by shooting each in the back of the head. So much for going there. I saw something along those lines once and it left me with a lot to think about. It was after I shot the guy off the horse. All up and down the lines, especially in remote mountain outposts, troops were rebelling. My reign lasted about a week. I didn’t get much done in that time, but no one died, I made sure of that.

          Then a special anti-insurgency team helicoptered in. They arrested me and flew me into the regional command base. There they were holding all the traitors. They assembled a court martial of five generals. The plan was to try us and shoot us all at once. I spent weeks in isolation. They beat me and never turned the lights off. I slept on a concrete floor. They forced me to eat my own shit. 

          The mountain people meanwhile knew Inania was in trouble when the mutinies broke out. They launched an all out offensive and in two days overran the base. They assembled everyone, prisoners included, in the courtroom. The courtroom was a tin building with concrete floors and plastic windows. Most of the time it served as a mess hall. When the dancing girls came they set up lights and a stage. For court martials they put a long desk on a riser and built a plywood witness box. There was a table for the accused and a table for the prosecution. Then about fifty folding chairs arranged in two sections. The Inanian flag hung behind the judges’ desk.

          All of us sat on the folding chairs. The rebel commander was not in a good mood. The first thing he did was pull down the flag and throw it to the floor. A few people cleared their throats and there was a murmur that stopped almost immediately, as he fixed us into place with his eyes. And at that point, the loathing became mutual in a way it had not been all through the war. He called up the ranking general, General Nitze, a renowned putz, and formally requested that he order his troops to surrender. General Nitze refused. The rebel leader then ordered that he be beheaded. An ordinary soldier, in rags, came forward and cut his head off with three whacks of a machete. He called up the next general, General Tamar. Again he formally requested that he order his troops to surrender. General Tamar refused and he too was beheaded. He fell down dead into the blood splattered around by General Nitze. One by one the remaining three lost their heads, till the blood was so deep on the stage, people were slipping in it.

          Next they started to shoot the officers, in groups of three, in the courtyard, where a crowd of villagers had gathered to watch and applaud.

The only officers to survive were those of us who had mutinied. We were sent to the camps. To the mountain people, it was a special shame to us to make us live, when others had died so honorably.

I gave the dial a big twist. Who could make sense of it? I wished the Cham people luck. I wished the Inanian forces would suck a bullet and go down gasping. Those pogue bastards were there to cut a deal for themselves and that was it. More of the same lifeless garbage the whole world over, everywhere the same. I looked out the window. The mood passed. I found some quiet music. Solo piano.

          Unmotivated serenity is a puzzle, like the uncertainty that unsettles slowly into amorphous silence. I had no reason to feel this good now. I felt the way I did at Evalyn’s, draped across her belly and breast. There it was. Borders fading, boundless sphere in orbit.

          With no memory of how it had happened I arrived, behind Linda at her house. She sorted through a bunch of keys. The textured amber window of the front door filled with light. A pebbled face appeared. The door jerked open. Mac stood in his bathrobe, barefoot. His face looked like someone was wringing all of the disgust out of it. He had red eyes. His pockmarked, bluish skin was puffy from crying. Tears soaked his handle bar mustache.

          He didn’t even see me. There was but one person in his eye and my instinct was to run. So I held closer to Linda, who was startled by his appearance and tried to cover it with a smile. “Aren’t you going to let us in?” she asked. Mac breathed hard and tears began to roll freely down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away. She asked what was wrong.

          “Shet ep!” he shrieked. “Jest shet ep!”

          “Hey Mac, ease up,” I said.

          He looked at me for the first time. “Whetsa matta, don’t like to wetch?”

          “Mac, stop. He’s in trouble.”

          “You’re in trouble? I’m so serry to hear it. Now maybe you can explain where you’ve been, you two-timing, cock secking bitch.”   At that he grabbed her wrist and yanked her in the door, slamming it behind them. There was a lot of shouting and banging. I shot off the doorknob. It flew open.

          They were at it hand to hand. Mac cried and snuffled and screamed, slapping at her face. She sank to her knees, blocking the blows with her arms. Only single words scattered here and there in his tirade were discernible–who and feck and big–and from Linda–crazy and drunk and chance and explain.

          “STOP IT!” I yelled, trying to pull him off her but he pushed me away. That gave Linda a chance to crawl a few feet. He grabbed her by the skirt and yanked it down around her knees. She clawed at the carpet, beat at it with her fist, and finally gave him a hard kick in the chest, then two more in the face. That sent him flying. Blood squirted from a cut on his nose and poured out of his mouth and nostrils.

          She stood uneasily and turned on him. “Bastard bastard bastard!” she shouted. “Leave me the fuck alone you, you, you impotent game show watching asshole!  You treat me like trash. Well I’m not trash!”

          “Not trash, heh? Then where are yer fecking panties?”   He swayed back and forth on his feet and pointed at her crotch.

          She pulled her skirt up. “Whoever broke you broke you all the way. It’s too late for us. I’m going.”

          And she headed for the door.

          “Not in one piece you don’t!” His voice rose till it cracked. He ran to the other room. There was a lot of crashing and cursing. He ransacked a closet and came back swinging a twelve gauge.

          Holy shit. I yelled, “Linda!  In coming!”   She ducked and rolled behind a short wall that took a chest full of shot for her. There was a pause and I knocked him down. He didn’t even struggle. He just started to shake and sob and I took the gun from him. He was messed up, crawling around drooling blood and gasping and pounding the floor.

          “Don’t leave me,” he cried. “Don’t leave me babe. I can’t. I can’t live without yeh.”   He stopped, hiccupped and puked between his hands.

          Linda’s eyes bugged. “Let’s go,” she said. We ran out the door. “We’ll take your car,” she said, racing down the walk.

“The prisoner,” I said.

“Oh fuck. Let’s move him.”

He didn’t fit too well into the tiny b00t of my tangerine dream, but at least there was no room for him to kick. We got in and drove off.