The Compass of His Bones (And Other Stories) Read online

  The sweat, the itchiness of his suit became unbearable. He wanted to hit someone, but there was only Conrad.

  "Christ, Conrad," he said. "If we need a jolly green giant or a medivac, we are out of luck. We're out of luck anyway."

  Conrad stared at him from eyes that never blinked and waited for instructions.

  "No use turning back," MacDiarmid said. Conrad nodded, a puppet parodying strings. "But let me try HQ first."

  Static on the shortwave. He adjusted the dial.

  The silkiest, smoothest Latin voice he had ever heard cut through the static: "Soldiers. This is the voice of Bananama City and if you want peace come down to La Siesta De La Muerte and we will kiss you. We will lick you. We will love you until you are limp."

  The voice gave him an erection. He thought of Guatemala, of corpses stacked together like knots of firewood. He changed the frequency. No use.

  "Soldier," the voice crooned, and he shivered. "We love you," and his body tensed, his eyes half-closing. "Soldiers, come to us at La Siesta De La Muerte," and MacDiarmid shuddered, almost fell. He put a hand to his crotch, thought better of it, and danced on one leg as he untangled himself from the shortwave's wires. Finally, he managed to turn it off.

  His heart quivered against his ribcage. He tried to slow his breathing. He could see the woman's face as clearly as if she had been standing beside him. He could see her face superimposed over images from his dreams: the desolate places on the edge of nowhere towns, miles of wheat where he could hide and be safe.

  "All right," MacDiarmid said, taking slow, deep breaths. "All right." Moistness spread down his leg. The woman's voice echoed in his memory and he shivered.

  Conrad nodded, a blade-length grin spreading across his face as he turned on his own shortwave, a slightly older model, and held it to his ear. MacDiarmid knew he was listening to the woman, could probably hear her more clearly, understand her on an intuitive level. He wanted to hear her voice, but fear stopped him. If he listened to her again, he might never listen to anything else.

  Fifteen minutes later, they had still seen no one. Not a single drunk or bag lady or beggar. The hairs on MacDiarmid's neck began to rise. Conrad's nervous tic had come back from its Guatemalan grave, so that his head twitched from side to side, lessening only when he pressed the short wave to his ear. Sporadic small arms fire flared up in the distance, rose to a fevered pitch, and ended abruptly. To MacDiarmid, it felt like the calm before a storm, when the pressure drops and electricity crackles across the skin.

  They came upon a courtyard overhung with banana trees and furnished with benches. A flashing neon sign advertised La Siesta De La Muerte and gave directions to the place in Spanish. The street lamps kept humming and going out.

  About two dozen dead Santas lay sprawled across the far end of the courtyard in knots and tangles of limbs; army-issue flashlights shone against their faces. To one side, a portable radio played Madonna's "Material Girl."

  MacDiarmid crouched under the courtyard archway, Conrad so exactly mimicking his position that he might have been MacDiarmid's shadow. They waited. Five, ten minutes. The La Siesta De La Muerte sign sparked red, crickets jumping up against it.

  At nineteen minutes, a shape stirred among the bodies. MacDiarmid and Conrad both shot it, though MacDiarmid believed only he had been on target. Conrad covered MacDiarmid's back while MacDiarmid examined the body.

  "Shit!" He rocked back on one knee and laid down his M-16. "It's a GI, Conrad." A Santa Claus. A real sailor-boy type in MacDiarmid's book: blue eyes, blond hair, perfect teeth, with two M-16 rounds buried in his guts. The flashlight gave him a shadow smile. Friendly fire. Every time it happened, MacDiarmid recoiled, had to remind himself that the weapons were too deadly to kill just the enemy. But it never helped much. What he hated as he rose was that it had begun to seem routine, that as he turned to face Conrad, he was already thinking of other things. What Julie and Mark were doing on Christmas Eve. Probably bundled up next to the fireplace like a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Conrad laughed his head off as MacDiarmid took the grunt's pulse. A dry, soundless laugh as MacDiarmid let the arm drop to the tile floor: laughing until the tears glistened on his midnight face, the eyes so distant MacDiarmid could see only a hint of pupil against the bone of forehead and orbit.

  On the radio, the song ended and the voice of the seductress, ten times more alluring than Madonna caressed the airwaves: "Poor, confused soldiers. So confused. So alone. You should come to us to relax. Put down your weapons and come to La Siesta De La Muerte. In the red lights, waiting for you."

  MacDiarmid groaned and fell into a crouch beside the body. This time the feeling went deeper, into the core of who he imagined himself to be: love, not lust. The voice was sugar on satin, sweeter than he could imagine; yet it turned him inside out. In her voice, he saw the faces of the thousand women he had desired in his lifetime. In her voice, he saw the women he had made love to. He saw a fallow field, the ridged lines of dirt reaching to the horizon. He saw himself walking in the field, the wind blowing through him. Far, far away from the battles and the marching boots and the uniforms starched tight. The Dream. It made him tremble. It made him doubt his sanity as he knelt over the dead G.I.

  He shot the radio, and felt better. The neon sign hissed and spat. He shot that, too.

  Silence.

  Except for Conrad, laughing as if he really were Santa Claus.

  MacDiarmid's hatred of Conrad boiled over and he knew that he wanted—needed—to shoot Conrad. Conrad was part of the problem. But shooting Conrad wouldn't solve anything. He had already shot Conrad, in Guatemala, and it had only made things worse.

  "Shut up," MacDiarmid said. Just that small rebellion, "Shut up," and it did not feel like nearly enough. A ghost at his back. A ghost on his back. A ghost on his shortwave with a voice like deep penetration.

  As they left the courtyard, the night pressing in around them, MacDiarmid tried not to think about the dead men. None of them had even a flesh wound. Just a GI with two M-16 clips in him.

  And still, not a soul on the streets.

  A half-mile later, MacDiarmid heard a hissed word, "Chingada!," from ahead of them, and hit the ground, Conrad beside him. Conrad pointed past a wall lined with ragged Rambo posters. He held up seven fingers, shadow-puppeted a rifle.

  "Seven armed men. Regulars, right?"

  Conrad nodded.

  "Disciplined. Tight formation?"

  Conrad nodded again.

  "Cover?"

  A shrug. Conrad indicated a door ten feet ahead, across the street. It was open a slit.

  "Let's do it."

  As they sprinted for the doorway, doubled over, MacDiarmid cursed the army engineers whose job it had been to cut the power lines; the yellow glow from emergency generators still strobed over them, concealing, revealing, and concealing them all within seconds. Each time the light hit, MacDiarmid flinched, expecting enemy fire.

  Inside, air conditioning pressed against MacDiarmid's skin and he fought an urge to sneeze. The antiseptic coolness took away the itchy, hot irritation. It made him sleepy.

  Their flashlights revealed a long hallway with doors on either side. White stucco over wood. MacDiarmid turned off his flashlight as he pushed against the first door on the right. It opened.

  "Perfect," MacDiarmid whispered to Conrad. A double-paned window at the room's far end reflected uneven yellow light. As they moved toward it, MacDiarmid stumbled over what appeared to be sacks. MacDiarmid edged up to the window and peered out onto the street.

  The seven soldiers were disciplined types, no doubt taught in the U.S. when the President and Zapata were cock-to-balls close. Each soldier had a poultice tied around his neck, edged with feathers and pig's teeth, and they secured each foot of ground before advancing. MacDiarmid, palms sweating, found he feared their thoroughness. Their faces were blank and grim, set without compromise. The night became blacker in their wake and MacDiarmid let out his breath when they moved on, out of sig
ht. Conrad even cracked a smile.

  MacDiarmid never understood what happened next. Like his dream of wheat fields, it was something dimly luminous, diaphanous as the flickering lamps or the light in Conrad's eyes.

  As he stepped away from the window, meaning to walk through the door, the room felt stuffier, rank, lived-in.

  A voice said, "Feliz Navidad, Santa Claus."

  MacDiarmid flicked on his flashlight. He shone it toward the voice. He saw disheveled black hair framing a pale, boyish face.

  "Mark!"

  It couldn't be Mark.

  Someone—Conrad?—laughed and the boy's face fell away from the circle of light and MacDiarmid emptied his magazine, as though Conrad's laughter had decided everything for him, and when he finished with the first magazine, he clicked in another and kept firing until the second magazine was spent and his finger jammed on the trigger.

  His hands shook. He heard the woman's voice saying, "In the red lights, in the red lights," Mark asking, "What's the army?," Julie saying nothing at all, staring out a window and smoking a cigarette as they finalized the divorce papers.

  The flashlight hit the floor as MacDiarmid loaded a third magazine. At the sound, he seized up, his finger reflexively twitching like a lizard tail.

  Conrad panned his flashlight across the room. Blood sprayed the walls in violet streaks. Viscera glistened from bellies. Arms had been torn off. Legs were a welter of bullet holes. The child who had spoken appeared to be asleep against a side wall, his brains spackled across his forehead. A mass sobbing rose from the wounded. In the murky light, they resembled ghosts or ghouls more than children. Bile scorched MacDiarmid's throat. The fields, the empty spaces, rushed away from him. For a long moment, he believed he might faint or die. But he did not.

  Only when Conrad started to take trophies did MacDiarmid return, from a place so anonymous and frozen and unalive, that he could only vaguely remember the experience, or that such a place might exist within him.

  "The soldiers!" MacDiarmid hissed in Conrad's ear. He shook Conrad as best he could shake a dead person. "They aren't fools! You stupid fuck! If they heard the..."

  The moans. The crying.

  They ran, Conrad reluctantly following MacDiarmid's lead. They doubled back, waded through streets where the plumbing had failed and rats swam through sewage. They scrambled over rooftops, jumped into backyards strewn with laundry lines. Mortar fire rocked the ground. The swish of helicopter blades cut up the sky. The blaze of neon signs from abandoned shops reminded MacDiarmid of Saigon. It was too dark, the night so thick with humidity that he was choking on it.

  As they ran, Conrad listened to his shortwave. MacDiarmid heard "Love," "...soldiers," "we want you...," the silken thread of her voice, moist and quick.

  Sanctuary took the form of a partly-looted appliance shop. MacDiarmid broke a window and they crawled inside, holed up near two televisions playing at low volume. MacDiarmid panted, his sides aching. He sagged against the wall and listened to the rumble of support planes as they dodged anti-aircraft fire. The phpht phpht of tracer bullets stitched itself into his eardrums.

  "Deep shit," he said to Conrad. His voice, he knew, was lined with fatigue. "We're in deep shit if Southern Command ever finds out."

  Conrad shrugged.

  "Maybe you're right." MacDiarmid struggled out of his Santa suit and threw it to one side. It was flecked with mud and dirt and blood.

  "Feliz Navidad," the boy said, his face shining under the circle of the flashlight.

  MacDiarmid made a choking sound.

  "Should we...we should just stay here until we get support, don't you think?" The sour ache had soaked into his bones. His hands shook, ever so slightly, and he could not control them.

  Conrad shrugged again as he listened to his shortwave. He had turned the volume high and MacDiarmid heard her voice, saying, "You don't want to fight. You just want to lie down and go to sleep. You just want us to comfort you..."

  Comfort.

  "Turn it off, Conrad."

  Conrad's gun-metal eyes bored into him.

  "Turn it off, Conrad. Now."

  They watched T.V. The set on the right showed the President at a press conference. MacDiarmid turned up the volume and realized the President was talking about their operation.

  Even now, the evil dictator dragged from his blasphemous lair. Our brave boys stabilizing the region for democracy. Remember Beirut? Never again! Don't cry for Argentina. Not this cowhand. The United States' best interests are served. By proctating American lives, we relieve the people of Bananama of this disciple of Hitler. Pure evil, guys and girls. I tell you what. His job is sniffing drugs. Well, we can no longer tolerate such a-buses in Central America. Sending them to our young people here in the United States...

  A warm glow settled over MacDiarmid. It was still comforting to be able to listen to the half-truths, as if the President was watching over his soldiers. Once he had believed everything, had even believed he could have the army and a family too—that he had joined the army to protect his family, like a knight in the age of chivalry—believed so utterly that he had had no use for the normal talismans, no use for rabbit's feet or four leaf clovers. And now...now he had Conrad.

  "I had to kill you, Conrad," he said. "I had to."

  He felt himself growing sleepy, tried to fight it.

  "Feliz Navidad," the boy said, his face shining under the circle of the flashlight.

  "You were out of control."

  If only the President could watch over him, then perhaps he could resist the call of the woman, of La Siesta De La Muerte, until it was all over. Only the meaning of the words escaped him...

  MacDiarmid woke from dreams of the woman, interwoven with the flat, desolate landscapes, until it was her body that formed the rolling mesas, her skin that he ached to explore. He had begun his dream thinking of the President and then Mark, whom he had not seen for six months, but they had faded quickly enough.

  He nudged Conrad.

  "Fifteen minutes to rendezvous. Guess we'll have to miss it." The grinning rictus of skull through the weathered skin seemed reassuring, like a stuffed bear or other token of childhood.

  Guatemala. Everything had changed.

  Conrad nodded, pointed to the television screens.

  The President still spoke on the right, but the visage of Zapata himself leered on the left. He looked worse than in his press photos. The man's face was pock-marked and he had adorned his body with the same poultice of feathers and teeth MacDiarmid had seen on the Bananamanian soldiers. Zapata held a chicken's carcass over his head so that the blood could splash down onto his arms and shoulders. He mumbled something under his breath and looked right out at both of them as if he could see into the looted shop.

  Conrad made a whining sound.

  Zapata picked up a doll and drove a needle through it. MacDiarmid realized he was leveling a curse. The doll wore a Santa Claus suit. MacDiarmid could not help laughing then and Conrad laughed his silent laugh, too, more, MacDiarmid thought, because he was laughing than because Conrad found it funny. Zapata stuck more pins in the dolls and MacDiarmid relaxed, slumped against the wall.

  "The dumb fuck. We're in the wrong uniforms. He can't hurt us."

  The President still rambled on, spouting numbers and plans and condolences and well-wishes and one-liners. His brisk, clear speech formed a counterpoint to Zapata's mumblings.

  Suddenly MacDiarmid knew, knew with chilling certainty, that the President was combating Zapata's magic with his own voodoo, that his talk of technology and ships and planes and strategy was crowding out the black magic, protecting all the soldiers in danger.

  "I hope the President has the balls for it," he said, to hear himself say it. The sweat was dripping into MacDiarmid's eyes—again. He saw the boy's pale face in the moment before the M-16 ripped him apart.

  "It's hot," he said to Conrad. "Too damn hot."

  Conrad said nothing.

  On the TV, Zapata scowled and threw
the doll across the room, off the monitor. Conrad nudged MacDiarmid in the ribs, a feather-light touch. Through the window, MacDiarmid could sense the night growing thinner, as if some vast presence, blotting out the stars, had stared in at them, until Zapata dismissed it with the same flick of his wrist that dismissed the doll.

  Zapata took out another doll and another, until he had a dozen on the table in front of him, none with eyes or mouths, and all of them looking like a dog had chewed on them. The drug lord stitched them back together and then stitched each doll to the next until they formed one creature. The President began spouting instructions for microwave ovens—a spell with nonsense words—and the press began to fidget. They wanted world affairs, not cooking, but the President, his speech slurring, plowed on. The Secretary of State, visibly worried, came to stand behind the President. MacDiarmid felt nervousness uncoil from deep inside him. Zapata grinned. He held up the dolls. An aide poured blood over them. Zapata's eyes, small and dark, looked directly into him.

  Then the power clicked off.

  But Zapata's face hovered in the darkness of the TV screen and MacDiarmid heard the woman's voice saying, out of the night, "Soldiers. In the red lights. We love you. We love you..."

  It was only after about ten seconds that MacDiarmid's legs responded to his will and lifted him up and he ran, out of the shop and into the street. Conrad followed close behind.

  On the street, a mob blocked the way: a hundred or so civilians armed with machetes and rocks and baseball bats. Conrad trained his M-16 on them and, after a moment's hesitation, so did MacDiarmid.

  Silent but for the tramp of feet, the mob began to advance. Their faces were pasty white and their expressions blank. Conrad tensed, standing his ground, but MacDiarmid motioned him to step back.

  "Too many, Conrad. There're too many"