The Scared Stiff

40

The body of the beer truck was divided into walled compartments on both sides, each the width of two cases, each with its own door that could slide up out of the way or slide down to be locked. I don’t know how deep those compartments were, but I was wedged into the space available when the front stack of cases is removed. One inch in any direction and I met a wall or a beer case or the door.

And I wasn’t alone. Faintly I could hear voices around me, and I realized at least some of the cousins would be traveling in this manner too, except not tied up in a laundry bag. That’s the way they had gotten to the hotel and the way we all would leave.

I don’t know how the cousins felt about that journey, but I hated it. The beer truck rocked a lot, even on the decent access road of Casa Montana Mojoca, and the ferry, when we got to it, didn’t merely rock, it also rolled. I truly did not want to throw up with a bag over my head, but it was a close thing.

We reached the other shore, and the beer truck ground its way through the gears as it went up-slope from the ferry landing. Hands up to my face, sock spit out, I was now trying to undo the knots in that nasty tight cord with my teeth, but being jounced around so much by the beer truck meant I was mostly biting myself on the wrists. Still, I kept at it, having no other course of action I could think of, except to fill my pants, which I was trying very hard not to do. Let’s let everything on the inside stay on the inside and everything on the outside stay on the outside, and let’s see if I have any wits at all to keep about me, because somehow or other I have got to get away from these people.

Sure. Tied hand and foot, knotted into a laundry bag, locked in the compartment of a beer truck driving thirty miles an hour through the jungle. Over to you, Mr. Houdini; what I’m mostly doing is biting my wrists.

The beer truck slowed. It tilted way over, bouncing me into the door. Was it going to capsize? You can’t capsize on dry land. What the hell was it doing?

Coming to a stop. On the side of the road, obviously, the right side — we drive on the right in Guerrera — and I was in a compartment on the right side, so when the truck stopped, since I had neither hands nor feet to help me support myself in here, I sagged helpless against the door.

Which, a minute later, opened. That was painful. The door was a series of connected slats, like an overhead garage door, so it could follow its track on a curve up under the truck roof, and every one of those slats shaved my entire body on the way by. But what could I do? I was off balance; I couldn’t get away from it.

And then the door was open, so naturally I fell out. Fortunately, the rocky ground stopped me, starting with my head. I rolled over, stunned, and hands pulled me up to a sort of seated position: what would be a seated position for Humpty-Dumpty immediately after the fall. There was a tiny pause, and then I was hit hard on the side of the head, just above and behind my right ear.

Everything before this had hurt, but that blow hurt. However, I was quick enough, thank God, to realize at once that the purpose of that hit, with a piece of wood or something, was not to chastise me for misspelling quesillo but to knock me out. Therefore, if I moved around or yelled ow or anything like that, they would know I was still conscious and they would hit me again. So I did the only thing I could do, which was flop over onto the ground and play dead. Or play unconscious, anyway.

They accepted the idea. They believed I was unconscious, so they didn’t hit me again. I had been bound and gagged and bagged, I hurt all over, I was developing a truly terrible headache, I was on the ground amid six brutal maniacs determined to kill me, but I didn’t get hit again. We take our victories where we find them.

They picked me up, a lot of them, not gently, and carried me over uneven ground awhile, not gently, and then dropped me onto a hard metal surface, not at all gently. The hard metal surface then dipped a couple of times. Boots made ringing noises against it near my ear.

Their pickup truck. I was lying in the bed, and my kidnappers were boarding. In the distance, I heard the beer truck drive away. And then some sort of tarp or something was thrown over me, making it much darker inside my bag, and the truck moved forward, and all of a sudden, some kind of delayed reaction took place, and I wasn’t conscious.

The sound of rain. No, not rain. I was still in the bag, in the bed of the pickup, covered with a tarp, but the truck was not moving. And that sound I heard was six men pissing.

I worked my wrists up to my mouth again. I’ve got to get out of this. I don’t want to die, I’m already dead, I want to live. I can’t give up; we never say die, do we? Do we?

The truck dipped and bounced as they all climbed back aboard. The truck jolted forward, and I felt the cord with lips and teeth.

The knot is too tight, I can’t pull it loose with my teeth. If I try, they’ll see my head moving, and they’ll clobber me again to keep me quiet.

Can I bite it? Can I gnaw it, like a rat? If I can’t I’m a dead man, so the answer better be yes.

There was one little area, between my wrists, below my thumbs, where the cord did not stick into my flesh but stood out plain. By loosely cupping my hands around my eyes and sticking my nose into the space between my thumbs, I could just get to that cord with my front teeth, the sharp ones. Sharper. I kept licking the rope, licking my teeth, licking my lips, and in between I chewed on the rope, which tasted something like Shredded Wheat without the milk and sugar.

I don’t know how long we traveled, but a long time. An hour? More. I was wearing my Rolex, but under the circumstances I couldn’t exactly consult it. If they were taking me home to Tapitepe, that would be a trip of 200 miles. In this pickup it could take four hours. It seemed to me horribly likely they’d prefer to get rid of me sooner, but on the other hand, they did have to go home to Tapitepe anyway, and they might know the countryside better around there, have more secure places to stash me where I’d definitely never ever be found.

So, after one long time, they stopped and only one or two got out, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on until I smelled gasoline. Then, being as egocentric as anybody else, my first thought was, They’re going to burn the body! Before it’s dead!

But then I realized, No, they were just filling the pickup’s gas tank. Which they did, and we rode on.

This was boring work, gnawing through hairy cord, but I didn’t have anything else to occupy my time, so I kept at it. Every once in a while, somebody would poke me with a foot to see if I were conscious and ready to be slugged again, but I always lay doggo and spared myself further punishment.

Up until the stop for gas, I had no real feeling of accomplishment with the cord. I had it nice and wet, and it was less hairy, while my teeth were more hairy, and it seemed thinner and more wirelike, but I wasn’t noticing any loss of strength. Sometime after the stop for gas, however, I felt it start to give. A faint loosening around the wrists. The ability to move my thumbs just a tiny bit farther apart. Encouraged, damn near elated, I gnawed on.

This kind of cord is not one rope but a lot of thin twines braided. I suppose I must have gnawed my way through half of those twines before I felt that first slackening, but after that it all went much faster. Sprong! Sprong! I could feel them on my lips as they popped apart, losing their tension. And all at once, my hands were free.

Oops. I must have moved, because here came that probing foot again. I lay still, but it wasn’t enough. I’m going to get hit, I thought. The side of my head is against this metal truck bed, and coming down from above is this—

Stop. Bounce. Dip. Jerk. Darkness. Conversation. Men farting.

Memory and horror returned together, hand in hand. The truck had stopped somewhere, and they were getting out. Are we here? My hands were free, but my ankles weren’t, and I was still inside the bag, and they were still six to my one, and they were armed at least with clubs and machetes while I was...

Feeling doomed, is what I was.

The male voices and fartings receded. A screen door somewhere to my right opened and slammed.

What was going on? Was I alone? Very hesitantly, because I didn’t want to get whomped again, I moved my left hand until I could see the Rolex, and the little numbers gleamed in the dark: 10:09. This dear little machine would tell me the time in other places, too, if I wanted to know; Madrid, say, or Adelaide. It could not, however, tell me how to get to one of those other places now, right now.

Four and a half hours on the road. We must be in Tapitepe, at one of their houses. They’d come for the shovels and things they’d be needing soon, unless I figured something out this second.

How strong was this damn bag? I poked it, and I felt new frays, new scratches in it. That would mostly be from when the beer truck door was opened, doing as much damage to the bag as to its contents. I poked at a weakened spot down below my chin, scratched at it with nails I was glad I hadn’t gotten around to trimming recently, and after a few little scritch-scritches, my finger went through.

A hole. I widened it, first slowly and then rapidly. I widened it until my head and shoulders could fit through, so there was nothing above me any more except the tarp. I wriggled and wriggled and got the bag off the rest of me, and then spent five frustrating minutes working the knots of the cord holding my ankles before I finally managed to loosen the damn thing and free myself.

And now what? Cautiously I moved under the tarp to the right, the direction from which I’d heard that screen door slam. I found the edge of the tarp, peeked out from underneath it, and saw a million stars in an indifferent sky. It can look cold even in the tropics. A mosquito buzzed me, and I blew on it, and it tumbled away somewhere.

Beside me was the side wall of the pickup. I snaked over to it, and lifted my head, and looked out at a many-windowed shack lit by some candles and some kerosene lamps. To left and right, some distance away, were similar shacks. I saw no electric light anywhere at all.

Tapitepe. It’s a very poor town, Tapitepe, and I suspected this was one of its poorest neighborhoods. These people wouldn’t mind at all trading some gringo’s life for their share of millions and millions of dollars.

Movement in the house. They were all in there, talking together, perhaps arguing about where to bury me. I saw a couple of them drinking beer. I saw a couple of them eating what looked like burritos. On the other hand, I also saw one of them carry a shovel over and put it down next to the screen door.

They’d driven four and a half hours, and they were tired and hungry. They’d have dinner, and deal with the inconvenient but trussed-up Barry Lee later.

I lowered myself to the truck bed. On top of the tarp now, I squirmed myself forward. I had two options. If they’d left the keys in the truck, and in these rural places people mostly leave the keys in the truck unless they’re staying in for the night, then I would try to escape by stealing the truck. If they had not left the keys in the truck, even though that would be uncommon and unfair, I would try to escape by climbing over the side of the truck away from the house and scampering into the darkness.

Most of the back window of the truck was gone. I looked through the space, but it was too dark in there. I couldn’t see if the key was present or not.

All right. All right. We don’t have time to stall around here, they won’t keep eating forever. I made it to the left side and went sliding over like a snake, riding down, clinging to the door handle and whatever other parts I could find to keep me from falling straight to the ground yet again.

Out. Knees on the ground, left hand on the driver’s door. When I opened this door, I knew, the interior light would go on, alerting the six in the house. So I wouldn’t have much time, whichever option I got. I took a deep breath, held it, and opened the door.

No interior light. Of course not. This was a no-frills truck. On the other hand, I still couldn’t see if the goddamn key was in the goddamn ignition. I leaned into the truck, feeling around the steering column, the dashboard... the key. There it was, in the ignition. Dangling from it by a little chain was a key-ring decoration shaped like a sombrero. How nice.

Quickly I slid up behind the wheel. I didn’t even bother to shut the door; acceleration would do that. I put in the clutch and ground the accelerator.

Pandemonium in the house. They came barreling out of there. The engine coughed into life, sounding as though it would prefer death. But I would not; I shoved the gearshift into first, ground gears like mad, and the truck jolted forward just as the first of them got to the right side door. He clung to the door, he got his arm inside, he was trying to climb in the open window.

Where were the goddamn lights? I was driving in the dark, no idea what was out in front of me, hand pawing all over the dashboard, turning on the windshield wipers — then huzzah! Light!

I was on a dirt road, flanked by scrubland featuring broad-trunked, wide-leaved trees, with shacks spaced here and there among them. Such a tree was just up ahead to the right. I steered for it, pointing at it, yelling, “You’re gonna die!”

The guy half through the window looked out his side of the windshield, yelled, and decided not to try to live without his bottom half. He shoved himself backward and disappeared from the window; I swerved to avoid the tree. Looking in the truck’s only mirror, its interior one, I saw that my recent passenger did not avoid the tree; his momentum kept him rolling along the dusty ground until he smacked straight into it. He stayed there, arms around the tree, kissing it, and moved no more.

The others were moving, though. They’d given up chasing the truck on foot, which did not mean they’d given up chasing the truck. Engines roared back there, and here came two more pickups and one motorcycle.

A wider road was up ahead. Which way was which? I had no idea. I hung a left because it was easier to make the wider turn without slowing down.

Still no electricity anywhere in this neighborhood, still just kerosene lamps and candles making small warm glows in the darkness. No other traffic either, except me and my retinue. The other two pickup trucks were as beat up as this one, but the motorcycle was faster. I could not stay ahead of him, he was catching up, he was trying to pass me, I was swerving left and right to keep him from coming around me.

I didn’t know which one he was, but he had a machete, and he was using it like a polo player, trying to swing it at my tires. I veered this way, veered that way, and he was constantly there, trying to disable me by destroying my tires.

So I did the only thing I could. I veered right, and he angled left behind me. I veered left, he angled right behind me, and I stood on the brake.

The truck squealed to a near stop. The motorcycle didn’t. It crashed into the back of the pickup and went I knew not where, while its driver flipped up over his handlebars, over my tailgate, and crashed into the bed of the pickup.

That must have hurt. True, the tarp and my ex-bag were there to cushion the fall, but they couldn’t have helped much. In any case, he just lay there, spread-eagled on his back, and didn’t move, which was fine by me.

Past him, in the mirror, in the headlights of the oncoming pickups, I could see the motorcycle still on its wheels, weaving drunkenly this way and that in the road. The first of the pursuing pickups tried to avoid it and therefore hit a tree instead. The second pickup juked like a basketball player around everything, motorcycle, first pickup, trees, whatever, and kept coming — but farther back.

There was more darkness around me now, fewer of those warm little lights. I was on a reasonably good blacktop road, and I appeared to have chosen the right direction. Tapitepe is a border town, abutting both Venezuela and Brazil, and clearly I’d been in the outskirts, so my choices would be either to go toward the border, which would mean I’d first have to pass through the center of town, or to go northward, back toward Marona. Since the town was petering out along here, I was northbound.

So was that pursuing pickup truck, of course, but he was still well back. And my passenger seemed to be asleep, which was nice for him.

That other pickup truck was apparently in even worse condition than the one I’d stolen, which was why this was the one they chose for cross-country voyages. Whatever the reason, every time I looked in the mirror those slightly wall-eyed headlights were a little farther behind, and at last, one time that I looked, there was nothing back there but night.

I smiled a very shaky smile, full of hairy rope. I’d got away.