Libra - Don Delillo [133]
He looked from one face to the other, laughing.
“ ‘Tomorrow, my brothers, the crippled child climbs the hill’ ”
They were all laughing.
“They disarmed us and fastened our hands in one big looping chain and put us in troop trucks to go to the nearest militia camp and there’s a plane passing right overhead and I call out, I tell our men, ‘Don’t shoot, boys, it’s one of ours.’ ”
His eyes were fierce and happy. He looked from Leon to Wayne and back, laughing cockeyed, hitting the table hard. The tin plates jumped. When they were quiet again he looked at his home fries and eggs for two full minutes. He brushed his mustache with an index finger, then began to eat.
“We are actually eating tree bark,” he said again, without the wild-eyed glee this time, chewing his food slowly.
Later they saw T-Jay coming through the downpour, a wavy windblown rain. Behind him the trees were leaning. He had a duffel bag on his right shoulder and another under his left arm. Inside he worked the bags open. There were two leather cases in one bag, a single case in the other. Each case was lined in billiard cloth and fitted with a pair of high-powered rifles. The men hefted the guns, mumbling, and passed them hand to hand. The window sheeting billowed and snapped.
“Scopes are in the car,” T-Jay said.
They sat and talked about the guns. Wayne believed there was friendship in guns. This might or might not be a paradox. His experience in life and in the movies told him that peace can wear away the bonds of friendship. This was the lesson of the samurai. Action is truth, and truth falters when combat ends and the villagers are free to go back to their planting. Again we survive, again we lose, says a character in Seven Samurai.
T-Jay had water still running down his face. He sat in a puddle. He had his right elbow on the table, arm up, and kept clenching and unclenching his fist. He was more talkative than Wayne had ever known him. Raymo was talkative. The guns were a language and a memory. Wayne happened to catch some sideline dialogue between T-Jay and Leon. To the effect that Leon would not be using one of the new rifles. To the effect that he would be using the Mannlicher he’d come into camp with. It was clear this was mutually agreed.
The wind was battering the shack. They talked for hours, telling funny and bloody stories. Wayne felt sweet and light as Jesus on a moonbeam.
Frank Vásquez was on the road in Mississippi driving Raymo’s Bel Air decrépito. Driving was not natural to him. He was literal-minded about speed limits and grew tense when road signs appeared, not always understanding the symbols and fearing he would enter upon misfortune. He’d had car trouble twice since Miami. He’d taken wrong roads twice. He spent a night in a motel where a fight broke out in the parking lot among four or five men, their feet crunching on the gravel, breath coming heavy, a woman crying in a white convertible, somewhere near Pensacola.
He was not used to being out here in the U.S., away from Spanish-speaking people, without Raymo by his side.
He had news for T-Jay. Alpha was planning a major operation. Miami, November. At first he could not guess the nature of the mission but it had to be unique if it involved an American city and not some Cuban port or refinery.
Frank had spent two and a half weeks in Alpha’s camp off Highway 41 along with men from other groups and factions, running obstacle courses through the slash pines. One day he was approached by Alpha’s secretary-general. This man wanted Mackey to take part in an operation that would go a long way toward paying back the failure of Playa Girón. Mackey was held in highest esteem. The mission leaders believed he should have a hand in this action.
No place or date was mentioned. Frank gleaned