Thai Horse Read online

  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 time 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, ‘You 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 have 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 cooked 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 of hand.’

  Hatcher had no idea what 126 was raving about.

  ‘Time to say good-bye.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’ve been here twelve years, old 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 blossoms. 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 company, 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 line between sanity and madness be judged by what’s in the mind, Hatcher was indeed mad during his years in Los Boxes. It would be two more years before he recovered enough from the brutal, dehumanizing experience to admit to himself that there was no ho
le 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.

  MADRANGO

  The boat came once a month, bringing supplies as well as whiskey and whores for the guards. Its doleful horn announced its arrival with three bleats as it neared the last crook in the river. There was no outside work when the boat came. When the horn sounded, the prisoners were quickly herded back into the boxes. They were not allowed to see the women, although those on the southern side of the citadel could sometimes catch a glimpse of them through the narrow slits in their cells. The boat always stayed three days and then left. A few of the men always went crazy. Like dogs in heat, they lay in their boxes and bayed in agony.

  Hatcher was on the north side of the structure. He had not laid eyes on a female since the day he arrived. But when the wind was right he could smell their perfume, the musk of their sex, even the bitter odor of the alcohol, and he would summon the Mushroom People and stay mad for the whole three days.

  This time the boat came just before dusk. The men were already inside and dinner was being doled out when the foghorn moaned upriver. Hatcher was confused. He immediately checked the primitive calendar scratched on the wall. It had been only sixteen days since the last visit. Maybe they were going to come every other week, give the guards an extra ration of sex and booze. Maybe they were bringing someone special in, some big shot.

  Hatcher, who was eating, slipped a rock away from one wall and reached behind it, pulling out a small bag of magic mushrooms. He broke one of them into small pieces and sprinkled them on what was left of his meager meal. He chewed the rubbery bits well, knowing that the easier they were to digest, the faster and better he would react.

  When he finished, he lit a cigar made of crumbled palm leaves stuffed in bamboo shoots. The acrid smoke burned his nose and lungs. He lay back and waited for the Mushroom People. Outside thunder rumbled across the sky and he could hear the first drops of rain splatting against the wall outside his window slit. A cool breeze seeped through the narrow gash in the wall, soothing him. The drab earth colors of his box began to change, growing brighter, and he closed his eyes as patterns took shape and danced on the back of his eyelids. He began to chuckle softly to himself and his stomach began to tickle deep inside.

  They were coming. He could almost hear them sneaking down the narrow corridors toward his cell, and he wondered which of the Mushroom People would be visiting him tonight. Not that it really mattered, he loved them all

  — passionately. They had never seemed more real. He could hear them outside his cell, hear the door groan open. One of them kicked the bottom of his foot. He giggled with anticipation.

  ‘One twenty-seven,’ a thick, guttural voice said in Spanish.

  The Mushroom People had never spoken to him before. He opened one eye and peered out cautiously. A guard was standing over him.

  ‘Come,’ the guard said. He reached down, pulled Hatcher to his feet, and led him out of the door. A cold wind, damp with rain, sighed down the stairwell and moaned through the corridors. Hatcher knew better than to ask where the guard was taking him. But the mushrooms were working on him. Colored light patterns blazed around him like shooting stars. He tried to keep steady, but he kept lurching against the wall as they climbed the stairs. On the top level they stopped, and the guard beat on the door. It swung open. Bright lights scorched his eyes and he reeled back, blinking. He squinted and stared up to the top of the second stairwell. Haloed in shimmering bright lights was an enormous hulk of a man, a mastodon in a white suit clutching a briefcase to his chest with both hands. The garish white light turned red, then yellow, then broke into shards like broken bits of colored glass.

  ‘Mr. Hatcher,’ the apparition in white said, ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  Hatcher fell against the wall and leaned there for a moment, then slid down into a crouch and began to howl like a hyena.

  ‘He hasn’t said a single damn word since we took him out of that pigsty hellhole,’ Pratt said to the captain. ‘Just lies down there staring at the ceiling.’

  The captain, who was standing above him in the thatched wheelhouse, peering intently through the driving rain, shrugged. ‘Hey, what you expect, señor? He doesn’t spoke to another human being for three years. You want him to jump up and down, sing the “Star-Sprinkled Banana” or somping?’

  ‘You filthy illiterate,’ Pratt snapped, ‘it’s the “Star - Spangled Banner”.’

  The captain laughed. ‘Okay, amigo, Star-Spangled Banana, whatever you say. That guy, he’s loco as a jumping bean, at least, watchacall, maybe more so.’

  ‘Christ, whoever told you you could speak English?’ Pratt shook his head and poured another stiff scotch. He had taken off his jacket and pulled his tie down. Rain seeped through cracks in the bulkhead and dripped on the table. Sweat turned his white shirt and pants gray. A crazy man staring at the ceiling, an illiterate seaman with green teeth and breath like a jackal’s, and a rainstorm that would probably sink the filthy scow before they got to the main river. This was it for him. When he got back he was going to call Father and get the hell out of Madrango. Screw the service, screw the State Department, screw Hatcher and Los Boxes and this rotten, leaky crap of a tub. He knocked off the glass of scotch and poured another.

  ‘Did Sloan send you?’ a tormented voice growled behind Pratt. He jumped and twisted in his chair. Hatcher, standing shirtless in the doorway leading below, was a living wraith, his green eyes flicking insanely within sunken black circles, his arms as skinny as broomsticks, his matted, filthy hair tumbling down around his shoulders, his thick, gnarled beard covering most of his bone-ribbed chest. Dirt etched the furrows in his forehead.

  Pratt stared at him speechlessly.

  ‘Did Sloan send you?’ Hatcher growled again in his deep, harsh whisper.

  ‘As I t-t-told you, uh, I’m from the embassy in Madrango,’ Pratt stammered. ‘The ambassador arranged f-f-for . .

  ‘Did Sloan send you?’

  ‘Well, I believe perhaps Mr. Sloan. did have something to do with the arrangements. He —‘

  ‘Shower?’ Hatcher’s frazzled voice demanded.

  ‘Shower?’ Pratt echoed, raising his eyebrows with the question.

  ‘The pump she broke, señor,’ the captain answered.

  ‘The pump she broke, the pump she broke,’ Pratt aped.

  Hatcher turned and went out on deck.

  ‘She’s the wind bad blowing, señor,’ the captain called after him.

  ‘Jesus,’ Pratt snapped and followed Hatcher. He stood in the hatchway and watched the ex-inmate crawl out on deck and lie on his back with his mouth open as the rain poured down on him.

  ‘He says to watch the wind,’ Pratt yelled. ‘We wouldn’t want to lose you now, not after all this, would we?’

  Hatcher didn’t answer. Spread-eagled on the deck, he fell sound asleep as the wind and rain laced his emaciated body. Finally the captain lashed down the wheel and crawled out after him, put a slack line around his waist and tied the other end to the rail.

  ‘You keep a look on him,’ he said to Pratt when he returned to the wheelhouse.

  The next day was clear and bright with a northeast wind.

  ‘Stop the boat,’ Hatcher’s tortured voice ordered the captain, who pulled back the throttle and shoved the scow in reverse. In the stern, the engines boiled up the river.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Pratt demanded.

  Hatcher didn’t answer. He peeled off his ragged pants and jumped naked into the river.

  ‘Jesus, there’s alligators all over the place,’ Pratt babbled. He cupped his hands and yelled to Hatcher as he surfaced. ‘There’s alligators in this river, Mr. Hatcher.’

  Hatcher rolled over on his back and floated. Pratt sat on the dilapidated lawn chair and held his head in his hands. ‘That’s all I need,’ he muttered to himself. “Where’s Hatcher?” “Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, sir, an alligator ate
him.”

  Ten minutes later Hatcher scrambled back on board. Pratt handed him a terrycloth towel. The United States crest was embroidered in one corner. Hatcher stared at it for a moment or two, then began toweling off.

  ‘I brought some fresh clothes for you. They’re below,’ Pratt said. ‘Although they may be a size or so too large.’

  Hatcher finished and, throwing the towel over his shoulder, stood naked in front of Pratt, waiting.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Pratt said, jumping up as fast as a man so fat can jump. ‘I’ll just get those clothes. There’s, uh, also a razor and a toothbrush, toothpaste. Some, uh . . . uh cologne . .

  The pants were two sizes too large and the shirt sleeves dangled around his knuckles, but they were cotton and they felt cool and clean. Hatcher stared at himself in the mirror. He had not seen his own face for more than three years. Now clean-shaven, with his hair scissored back to the bottom of his neck and combed, he could have looked worse. His cheeks and eyes were hollow and he was thirty pounds underweight, but it could be worse. He could be dead. He could be sharing heavenly mushrooms with 126. He rolled the sleeves up above his elbows and went back on deck.

  ‘Well, I must say, you look A-one, sir, just A-one,’ Pratt said.

  ‘Smoke?’ Hatcher rasped.

  Pratt fumbled in his briefcase.

  ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir, right here.’ He handed Hatcher a pack of Dunhills. ‘Your brand, I believe.’

  ‘It is?’ Hatcher said, staring at the package. He turned it over a couple of times before he figured out how to peel the wrapper off. He lit one up, took a deep drag, and almost coughed to death. His face turned purple and he gasped for breath.

  ‘Hands over your head!’ Pratt shrieked and held Hatcher’s arms up. He stopped coughing finally and sat down on the gunwale. He looked at the cigarette for a moment and threw it overboard.

  ‘We have some fresh fruit, excellent cheese, wine, uh, sliced chicken and roast beef. Also there’s some beer and Coca-Cola down in the fridge,’ Pratt said and, laughing nervously, added, ‘It’s a regular old cruise ship.’

  Hatcher stared almost quizzically at Pratt and kept staring until the fat man began to feel uncomfortable, then he said, ‘Coca-Cola. Yeah.’