Junta...by kenshiro
The wooden handle of the hoe made his hands itch, the sweltering heat of the
day drawing up sweat that made the itching worse. His button-up shirt was
already heavy from it. Dirt and dust clung to the sticky moisture on his
brown skin, and his back was sore from the hours that had come before. The
blinding sunlight glared from the dry, hard earth as he turned it, stirring
the fringes of a headache. He looked up for a moment, across the field at
the other laborers turning the soil as the soldiers with their rifles looked
on, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The jagged resentment stirred in his
heart again, and Diego returned to his work with new vigor. The thought
burned away the discomfort like chaff in the wind.
Where had these years gone? In the eyes of history, they were but a blink,
but to a man, they were long.
He remembered his father leaving that day, so long ago. Then, Senor
Martinez, as the villiagers called his father in those days, had owned this
field. He remembered his father well at that moment, the only image he could
remember of the man. His father had stood in the doorway of the house,
larger than life itself. The light streamed in from torches carried by men
outside, sillouhetting his father. His father carried an old hunting rifle
in one hand. He remembered the bulk of the man, huge and strong in the eyes
of a child, as he had knelt down to his level.
"Diegito," his father had said, "be strong for your mother. You must not be
a child now. You must be a man. Make me proud of you."
His father turned and walked out into the torchlight, and closed the door.
His father had not come back.
The hours passed quickly, the fiery ball of the sun gradually sinking beyond
the horizon. As the light began to melt into the dusky purple of twilight, a
whistle sounded, carrying far across the field. It was the end of the day.
Cool air blew across his cheeks as he lifted the hoe and stuck the spade
into the ground one last time. As the laborers stopped, the soldiers snapped
briskly into the position of parade rest. Diego leaned on the handle of the
tool and watched the ritual, as it happened every evening.
Speakers crackled to life on poles spread along the corners of the fields.
The grainy hiss of a recording began playing, and the commander of the
soldiers called his men to attention. Their anthem began to play, ludicrous
and foreign even after all the times he had heard it. The soldiers saluted
their foreign salute as the music began, the notes echoing oddly as they
mixed out of synch with sound from speakers further away.
Diego closed his eyes, and let the fatigue drift from his body, carried away
over the trees and hills on the wind. The winds whispered to him the sound
of home. The wind would never belong to them, and the anthem drifted from
his ears in it. The anthem played its course, and ended.
Soon, mi Papa, he thought. Soon, you will be proud of me at last.
The trucks came pulling up, ugly green military workhorses the soldiers had
brought with them, rumbling diesels that periodically belched clouds of
black residue. Diego joined a line of laborers, tossing the dirt-caked tools
into one of the trucks, and boarding the canvas-covered back of another.
Quickly the line diminished, and the last man climbed aboard and sat in
along the hard bench seat. Two soldiers got in and clipped their harnesses
to the canopy, standing guard, as the engine's growl grew to a roar and the
vehicle began to move.
The bounce of dirt roads beneath the tires began to jostle him as the truck
headed back to the villiage. It was nearly dark, with only the dark purple
of the sky beyond throwing light into the truck from the opening in the
back. He could see the black outlines of the standing soldiers, and the
barest glimpses of the faces of workers near him. No one spoke. The soldiers
did not allow them to talk in the truck. But the sound would have drowned
their voices, anyway. A ripple of short glances passed among the men. It was
all that was needed.
Two figures rose up from the benches. Diego saw their sillouhettes against
the fading sky, saw them reaching for the soldiers. Suddenly, hands and arms
were reaching up from everywhere. A muffled shout came as the soldiers
disappeared into the sea of forms, the sound of it lost beneath the rumble
of the truck. An empty strap hung as the forms subsided.
Quickly, the rifles appeared, and were passed forward. Diego felt a rifle
pressed into his hands, and found himself toward the front of the
compartment. He realised what he must do. A slit opened in the canvas near
him as a knife from the darkness cut it, spilling cold air in. He climbed
through the slit onto the edge of the bed, holding onto the metal divider,
as another man did the same on the other side.
Standing on the metal edge, he clambered for footing further forward. He
could see the lights of the second truck up ahead on the road, and the glow
of the headlights across the road. The wind assaulted him fiercely, and the
bouncing threatened to throw him at any moment, but he hugged the truck and
held on for dear life. The dirt road flew by below in the dim of the
twilight, and gravel stung his arms and legs through his clothing as the
front tires kicked it toward him. He found a foothold behind the cab, and
forced himself over the yawning gap beneath him to reach it. Through the
space between the cab and the divider, he saw his companion had also made
it.
The wind lessened in the cab's shelter, and he stepped down onto the frame
of the truck. Finding leverage, he raised up his rifle and smashed the
window of the cab in with the butt, glass fragments spilling into the cab
like a wave, and sprinkling down beyond the frame to dissapear onto the
blurred road. He and the man with him pointed the rifles at the soldiers
inside, and the truck began to slow down rapidly and stop.
Diego yelled for the soldiers to get out, and though they appeared not to
understand, they complied. As the soldiers climbed from the truck to either
side, a rifle blow dropped them to the ground. Up ahead, the second truck
had stopped, and the two soldiers that were in it were already running into
the light of the headlights.
He pointed the weapon toward them, and pulled the trigger. The rifle nearly
jumped from his hands, the recoil bucking the gun hard as it spewed rounds.
A jet of flame flashed against the dim from the front of the gun as hot
gasses escaped, and when it subsided, the soldiers didn't move.
A moment passed. His mind struggled to grasp what he had done.
The other laborers -- no, free men, he thought -- began to appear, their
footsteps crunching in the dirt around him, bringing him back. Diego
realised his heart was beating fiercely, he was breathing hard, and his
hands trembled. One of the men clapped him on the shoulder, and they began
gathering rifles from the bodies and from the inside of the trucks as Diego
watched. The corpses were dragged the into the back of the lead truck, and
the men without rifles armed themselves with planting tools.
Emotion welled inside him. He had killed men, soldiers. He was armed, he had
beaten them, and he was free by his own hands.
As he watched the men work in the headlights, he saw their determination and
felt it growing in every fiber of himself. His people. They were fighting
for their homes, for their lives. They did not have the disciplined look of
soldiers, but they were ready. Men did not need uniforms to be proud or to
fight for themselves.
His father would be proud of him.
Their task finished, the men began to clamber back into the trucks. It was
finally dark, and the soldiers in the villiage would be expecting them back.
Diego hoisted himself into the passenger seat, and they began to move. We're
coming back, my villiage, he thought. Just not the way you think.
***
Three hundred yards down the road, the tank commander watched through a pair
of thermoptic goggles. In the glow of artificial daylight, he watched the
locals climbing into his trucks.
Men presumed dead.
He'd lost at least a dozen men in guerilla uprisings before, and this time,
there was nothing he could have done. That was the most frustrating part.
Sending letters home to grieving parents was a duty he had never relished.
They were American boys, someone's sons and daughters. His men. But his
platoon had gotten the duress call too late, and all they could do now was
"Fire," he ordered.
He silently offered a prayer for the lost.
