Alfie Carter Read online

  This alarm system worked very well for Mingas. Some soldier boys felt he treated his beloved roosters better and fed them better than they. They were made to catch grasshoppers for all of the roosters on a daily basis.

  The boys knelt and drank at the stream, cupping their hands and bringing the water to their mouths. Jackaleena remembered her father talking at the communal fire about Unita. They were a guerilla group that wanted to take over the country. She heard her father say they captured young boys from villages and made them kill people for the guerilla fighters’ army. These must have been some of those boys. She wondered how they came to be in the band, and the villages they may have come from. They were only a few meters from where Jackaleena always sat and wriggled her toes in the bank mud. She hoped they did not see her footprints, as they would lead them to her tree.

  They slaked their thirst and stood facing away from her. The oldest one lit another cigarette and motioned the others to head west towards the tall trees. They quietly melted into the jungle. She could smell the aroma of the cigarette. It was sweet and burned her nose.

  Jackelena sat quietly for a long while, shaking and trembling. She had an ominous feeling. Maybe she should call on Toto the witchy man again for guidance. He had not taken her out on wings as she had requested. He must have been busy; after all, she was just a girl. The great Toto had bigger things to do, as he was protector of all, not just a scared little girl.

  After the boys had been gone a long time, she inched out of the tree room, squatting outside to relieve the burning from her water maker. Afterwards, she set out for home, not wasting any time along the way, careful to conceal her presence. She must hurry and warn everyone in the village.

  When she was a long stone’s throw from her village, she heard screaming and then the shooting started. Her heart raced as she ran towards the village under the protection of the trees.

  Hiding behind a great tree, Jackaleena held her hand over her mouth, lest she dare to make a squeak. There were several soldiers in the village. All were in camouflage uniforms and carrying guns. Some were grown men, and some were boys, like she saw by the stream. While some stood outside, others would enter the huts with their guns. Some men were dragged out and beaten unmercifully, while others did not come out. She noticed some of the soldiers had blood on their hands and uniforms. Her heart pounded, and she tried to find her mother and father. She could not see them in the torrent of activity.

  The unmistakable and sickening sounds of machetes against flesh could be heard, sounding like a machete when one of the men cut a tree branch in the forest. Loud and fearsome screams filled the air, as all in her village were being tortured and killed. Some of the older women were herded into a group, guarded by the three young boys from the stream. Jackaleena watched helplessly as the soldiers pulled two screaming girls out of one of the huts. She recognized them to be Arao Mvungo’s only children. She played with them sometimes, always in the village but never at her secret place. The soldiers ripped the tunics off of the two girls. Two soldiers held each girls arms down while two others pulled their legs apart and held them to the ground. The girls screamed in agony as at least eight soldiers put their man parts into them, squealing like wild hogs as they humped up and down, throwing their heads back after a time. All of the other soldiers clapped when a new man got on, gleefully blowing smoke from their cigarettes, sometimes in the faces of the girls while they laughed and grunted.

  After they were through, the only sounds to be heard were the weeping of the women and the quiet moaning of the two girls. She heard two men curse the girls for the blood they had on their man parts. They hit both girls with the backs of their hands and told them to quit screaming. The oldest boy soldier was summoned by the leader man, called Mingas. He said, “Come here, shit for brains, and kill these bloody-legged girls. They are no longer of use. They stink like gopher’s shit and you have ruined them. Prove to us you are a man.”

  The young man approached, lighting a cigarette for comfort. “Go ahead, you goat penis, shoot them.” The young man took a couple of smokes off of the cigarettes. His hands seemed to be trembling. He pulled his pistol from his belt and quickly shot both of them in the head. His hands trembled after their heads exploded. He shot them at such close range, Mingas screamed at him as some brain matter got on his boots. “Always aim your bullet the opposite direction from where I am standing, goat penis. Wipe this shit off of my boots.” The young soldier knelt down in front of Mingas and wiped the brain matter off with his hat.

  The soldiers erupted in a chorus of jubilation. Mingas erupted, saying, “You are no longer shit for brains, you are now cow shit, an elevated status. One more kill and you will no longer be shit and can be considered a person. Two or three more kills, and you’ll be a real soldier. One thousand more, a Mingas.” He bellowed with laughter, waving and shooting his gun in the air, crazy-eyed and mean.

  She could hear a rooster crowing somewhere close to the camp. There were no chickens or roosters in her camp. He must be the one the boys spoke of at the stream. Jackaleena’s heart raced. Her body began to convulse and she vomited. She stuck her mouth on the floor of the jungle and tried to keep from making any noise. She did not have much in her stomach, but the convulsions did not stop for a short time. She caught her breath slowly, wiping the dirt and twigs from her mouth with her finger.

  She slowly stood up, trying to comprehend what she was witnessing. Maybe she was dreaming in the spirit world, as she sometimes did. She waited to wake up and see her mother and father, but she was awake. She scratched her face, to see if she felt pain, ensuring she was awake. Her face hurt where she scratched, and she reasoned that everything she was seeing was real.

  Mothers wept, and old men quietly accepted their fates. She watched as the soldiers went to each man and made them kneel while the others watched. They hit them on their necks with their machetes. Some of the men’s heads hung on by flesh and they fell over. The others’ heads fell off on the first hit. They looked like forest birds with their heads pulled off.

  Jackaleena ran as fast as her legs would take her, to the stream, to the tree, into the hole, and securely in the tree room. She gasped for air and vomited again. This time nothing came out at all. Tears streamed from her eyes as her small frame shook. She could not calculate what had just taken place. Her family was probably dead, even though she did not see her mother in the group. She did not see them take her father but knew that it was true. Maybe she should have asked the witchy man Toto to place a curse on the boys, but there was no time. It was over. Maybe her mother was still alive. She did not dare return to the village for a while.

  Jackaleena caught frogs to eat and two grasshoppers. Her stomach was not ready for food. She placed the dead creatures on a log and looked at them. Why do others have to die to feed me? Who made up these rules? But if I do not eat, I will die. She pulled a handful of moss from the tree and tried to eat it. She finally ate the small frogs and grasshoppers. The brown juice from the grasshoppers dripped down her lips. She gagged but did not vomit this time. She reasoned that she would sneak back to the village in the dark, to see if there were any fire lights, and maybe see if her mother and father were still alive. She reasoned they were not. But the witchy man Toto may have protected them. He could fly and see all tribes at the same time. He had been known to stop a man from dying who had been bitten by the black snake that stands tall and moves fast. He had probably protected her mother and father, because Jackaleena had given thought to him when the men were using their machetes.

  At the time when the sun meets the earth, she crept back through familiar trails to a stone’s throw from the village. She stood quietly and listened. There were no fires, no sounds, except for sounds of the forest animals and night insects. She climbed a tree and sat perched in the second fork from the top through the night, watching and listening. Night animals did not scare her as badly as the soldiers did. She thought she heard the sound of the leopard roar. Maybe he was telling her
he was there to protect her. Her father told her she was as smart as a leopard.

  Daylight was long in coming as she stayed in her perch. Her body ached all over. She listened carefully, unable to sleep. When the sun was two fingers from the earth, she crept down from the tree. She slipped along the ground until she was half a stone’s throw from the huts. She waited under the brush until the sun was three fingers flat from the earth, and slipped up to the camp.

  She entered her empty hut. The floor was saturated with blood, with signs of a struggle. There were many machete cuts on the thatch wall and great spurts of blood. What little clothes they had were strewn on the floor. Mother’s teapot, her only cherished possession, lay broken on the floor. Jackaleena lay there and wept.

  After a time, she began to make her way around the camp. There were many dead men with no heads. The soldiers had placed their heads on sharp sticks around the communal campfire rock ring. There were still some smoldering coals in the ring. Some of the men’s heads had eyes wide open, frozen in fear, dried blood staining their faces. All had swollen tongues and dried blood and grass stuck to their ghostly faces. Some of them had their man parts cut off and were stuffed in their mouths. One man had one of his ears stuck in his mouth. Others’ eyes were closed.

  She recognized Arao Mvungo’s head on one of the poles. He must have tried to fight as they were putting their man parts into his daughters. His head was nearly completely flat on one side. Maybe they hit him with a rifle butt or a tree limb . . . maybe a big rock, before they cut his head off. She recognized the animal bones he wore in his ears. He was the only one in the village that had the “membe bat” leg bones adorning a hole in his ears. He was never without them. He had climbed high into the trees to catch one on their perch. The story was told many times in the village, because the tree was four fingers tall from the ground, as Arao Mvungo told it. It was said that the membe bat carried special powers in his wings, and that the person who caught one would be able to fly. She never knew Arao Mvungo to fly, and now his membe bat bones drenched in blood did nothing to protect him, letting him fly away from the soldiers.

  How could the witchy man Toto allow this? He was supposed to be the guardian of the village. These were his people. Where was he? She screamed, “Witchy man Toto, this is Jackaleena.” She clapped her hands twice. “I call on you to end this spirit dream now. I call on you to produce my mother and father and all the people of my village. I call on you to kill the soldiers. Do it now.” She clapped her hands twice. She listened quietly and only heard jungle sounds. Maybe Toto was busy with worse problems, though she could not think of anything he needed to be doing but answering her request. In fact, if he was a good witchy man, he would not have allowed it to happen.

  She hoped he could not think the same thoughts she was thinking, as he might become angry with her. He might put a curse on her and cause her hair to turn white and her skin to turn yellow. He had been known to place this curse on a whole village. The old ones spoke of it at the communal camp fire. They were called the “parrot village.” Other tribes were forbidden from traveling to the parrot village or talking to the villagers. Toto said he was the only witchy man who knew how to find the parrot village. He would not let any other tribes make contact with the parrot village until the signs were right. She guessed the signs had not been right up until now, because no one had ever been there. But she believed it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I cannot say how genuinely ticked off I was as I made my way down county road NM 2105 to the bend in the river. Beatrice’s parting comment nearly stopped me in my tracks as I left home, but I did not let on. Stopping only for gas, fourteen hours of travel were beginning to muddle my brain. Birdie, my ’68 Ford truck, was feeling the stress of the rutted-out road, but continued to putt along at my command. As in the past, a small pat of gratitude on the dash seemed to keep her going. Even with the carburetor job I did on her, she was still not running like her old self, probably the timing was off just a smidge.

  I was never great at setting the points under the distributor cap. I always had trouble filing the tits off flat. “Atta girl, Birdie,” I said as I patted her blue, cracked dash. We trailed out at the stand of cottonwoods, ancient and fiery yellow and orange in their November beauty.

  Slamming Birdie to a stop, I stepped out, not bothering to close the door. The river ahead was flowing quietly in front of me. Slow forward steps, drinking in the smell of the mountain country, I made my way to the edge and sat. My brain felt like it was going to burst for the first few minutes, but the tension began to ebb the longer I sat and looked at the water. The river was low and flowing at a moderate rate, but still offered the same peace it had given me on my yearly visits, about twenty of them, now. I always like to study the smooth rocks on the bottom of the stream, worn smooth by relentless flow. Kind of like most people: starting out strong and resilient, but somewhat worn down over time with the relentless flow of life. Hell, I was one of those rocks.

  The sounds and smells absorbed me, and the stresses of the past year seemed to take a reluctant back seat for a time. Looking to the northwest, I could see Old Hatchet Rock and the hazy blue features of Sacatonee Ridge. My eyes tightening, blocking out the setting sun, I strained to see if there was a snowcap above the aspens on White Water Baldy. After my eye surgery four years prior, the syrupy brown floaters seem to travel across my left eye at the most inopportune moments. In younger times, I could make it out with my bare eyes, but not so today.

  To Birdie I went, to fetch my binoculars. Sure enough, snow it was, just above tree line. I don’t know why Texas folks always get excited when they see snow, but it always gave me a bit of a tingle. As the sun began to drop below the horizon, I glanced at my watch: 5:20 p.m. NM time. I was in no hurry to set up camp, but the mid-November evening was cooling down rapidly. I grabbed as much quick firewood as was to be had, and in short order had a nice campfire going.

  I set up my small tent with Birdie’s headlights. My old Coleman lantern still held the mantles I installed on my last trip. It was somewhat amazing that they were still intact, in my rush to leave and get that witch behind me. After pumping the handle for a couple of minutes, careful to keep my thumb over the hole, I realized there would be no pressure without oiling the stem. All I had was a can of engine oil in my truck tool box.

  I opened the plastic container and immediately had a mess with oil on my hands and jeans. Flaring with post-travel anger, I threw the container into the fire and cursed. I could feel the heat on my face, as I did when rage was upon me. I was quite sure the light V birthmark on my forehead was turning purple.

  My heart rate began to slow and the heat began to dissipate. I then began to methodically retrace my steps to Birdie, and retrieve another quart of oil, feeling as always quite childish in not controlling my temper, especially over something I had created.

  My head was splitting, as it always seemed to after a long trip. Anyway, this time I was successful, and upon lighting the lantern, the scary night was transformed into something I could deal with. No critters would come into my camp as long as I had a fire and a lantern burning, I told myself.

  I pulled off my boots and let the fire warm my feet. The hole in the heel of my right sock was getting bigger, but I simply could not throw them away. I remembered my first pair of cowboy boots when I was ten. A neighbor boy gave them to me. They were a size ten; I wore an eight. They were already several years old, probably his stepdad’s. I kept them for at least ten years. Like old friends, they helped me identify with the rodeo cowboy white trash crowd I lived with in our run-down country neighborhood. I guess they let me be part of their inner sanctum because I had a pair of boots and chewed tobacco. No matter that it made me sick, just the fact that I chewed it in front of them elicited a certain amount of poor boy toughness that they seemed to like. They knew I could not afford a pair of boots, but it did not seem to matter.

  The fire began to dwindle. I pulled up one dead stump and hoisted it ont
o the fire as my nighttime log, and moved the lantern into the tent, careful to hang it at the highest point, to allow the fumes to travel upward and out the vent holes.

  I propped my head against my pillow. It had been a long day and, as always, a long drive. I pulled out the picture I had secretly borrowed from Mr. Couch’s trailer. The young lady in the picture was quite striking in her pep squad uniform. The black and yellow colors indicated she was local, as the newspaper said. My research thus far had my blood boiling in the most unprofessional way. Being an officer of the law, I was to be above the fray and the politics of any case I was assigned. “Just the facts” was my motto; let them take you where they may. It seemed when I knew that there was much unpleasantness ahead, I always rushed to the only place that offered solace in a turbulent world, my Gila mountain country. It was wild Apache country back in the day, and was still wild, yet without the Apaches. Even though it was several hundred long miles away, it was always worth the trip to straighten out my mind. The mystical qualities of her remote primitive areas, where humans seldom abide, allured me like a great mountain whore, there for the beholding. She always seemed to give me more than I took from her.

  While here, my biggest fear was being eaten by a mountain lion or maybe a pair of Spanish wolves. The eerie womanlike scream of a mountain lion at night had turned me yellow on a previous trip. I ran into my tent and grabbed my pistol, ready at the helm if it came into my camp, even though it was night.