He started to back away. He stumbled on a rock, nearly falling. Then Lorca let out a high, piercing wail, and he froze. Sweat poured down his ribs, acrid with the chemistry of fear. A better soldier would save her, he thought. A better soldier would wade right in, guns blazing. But he had never been a good soldier.
Lorca’s scream had silenced the monkeys. And the birds had gone still. There was a sound of tearing fabric. Another cry. And Tito’s curses.
Victor stepped forward into the light and said, “Stop.” Both men whirled round to face him, the Captain’s gun glinting. “Let her go,” Victor said. He thought his voice sounded not too fearful.
“Don’t worry about him,” the Captain said to Tito. “He was always a coward.”
“Hey, Pena,” Tito called. “You going to stop me? Come down here right now and try, you little faggot.”
“He will do nothing,” the Captain said.
“Tell the sergeant to back away from her,” Victor said. “Or I will shoot.”
“You’re going to shoot?” It was the Captain’s turn to laugh. “I don’t believe you’ve ever fired a weapon in your life, little Victor. You couldn’t stop a butterfly. You couldn’t stop a flea, let alone a man. To shoot a man takes more balls than you will ever have.”
Tito had Lorca by the hair now. He yanked and twisted, forcing her to the ground. Victor pulled the trigger. Fear roared in his ears, so that he did not even hear the shot. He simply pulled the trigger, and the Captain fell-knelt, rather, like a supplicant. He pressed a hand to his chest. Blood gleamed blackly on his fingers. Captain Pena’s face bore the stunned, disgusted look of a man who has just lost a huge bet.
Tito let go of Lorca. He was reaching for his weapon, and Victor hesitated, his finger frozen on the trigger. He had shot two people in the past hour. It seemed impossible to shoot another. Tito was raising his gun. Victor squeezed the trigger, and closed his eyes to receive Tito’s bullet.
When he opened his eyes again, a dark stain was spreading across Tito’s chest. The big man clutched at the chain-link fence, lowering himself slowly, almost delicately, to the ground. He turned himself over, his head propped against the fence at a sharp angle, like a drunk’s. His pistol, wavering, was coming up again. He levelled it against his other arm, sighting along the barrel. Even in his terror Victor admired such relentlessness. The sergeant was tough, you couldn’t take that away from him. Tito’s bullet caught him in the chest.
The trees looked very beautiful overhead, and with the animals silent now, the boughs made soothing, soughing noises in the breeze. How intricately the branches tangle, he thought. How stupid that he had never noticed before. Such wild precision in their scrawl against the clouds.
She would be gone by now. She would be safe. Halfway to the train station, perhaps. Lorca knew how to survive, she would be gone by now.
“Tell me what to do,” the harsh voice said.
He knew that voice. Why could he not see her?
“Tell me what to do. You’re bleeding so much, I don’t know what to do.”
“Come closer. I can’t see you.”
A shadow loomed, took shape and definition: Lorca’s face, a cut on her cheek, her bare shoulders.
“Get me to the road. A taxi or a bus.”
“I am afraid to leave you like this.”
“It’s not that bad, is it?”
“Your chest is open. Your leg is pouring blood. You took three or four bullets.”
“No, no. There was only one, Lorca. Only one bullet. We will hide somewhere, and tomorrow we will testify. I want to tell them what we did to you. I wrote it all down.”
“I will tell them. Show them.”
“No, I want to go too. I will testify tomorrow with you.”
“Sure. But why did you stop your friends?”
“Three or four bullets-is that what you said?”
“The big man. He fired at you many times. You would not stop. You would not stay down.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You fought bravely.”
“No, no. Not me.”
“Yes, you. But why did you kill your friends?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was not afraid anymore. No, it wasn’t that. I was afraid.” He had been terrified of pain and death-he had been terrified through every minute, except for the minutes he couldn’t seem to recall. You couldn’t call that bravery. It must be something else, something to do with forgiveness, with loving her. No, not loving her, he knew he did not love her. Shame and sorrow and a strange, bitter longing, those had been his feelings. Not love.
“Mother of God,” he said, and choked. His lungs were filling. “Even dying, it is hard to be honest.” The thought made him laugh, and he inhaled fluid. Blood, he supposed.
It was not bravery and it was not love. He had pitied her and he had been sorry-but it wasn’t that either. Not pity. “There were two sides,” he said, and started to drown.
“Don’t talk. I am going for help.” Something tightened around his leg, and the woman closed his hand around the knot she had tied. A tourniquet. She got up, and the sense of her moving away was unbearable.
“Two sides,” he tried to say, but it came out in a gargle. The woman-what was her name? — Lorca did not hear. Had she really gone away? Victor raised his free hand to his face and felt around. His skin was slick with blood, his hair sticky. Blood spread away from him in a black pool. Could all that blood really be his? His grip loosened on the tourniquet. The pool was spreading farther, he could see the tangle of branches reflected in his blood. The tourniquet slipped from his fingers. Let all his blood flow out. Let it all flow out and into the earth. Take it, he wanted to say. Take every drop of blood I have. There was not enough blood in the world to make up for the wrongs he had done.
Two sides, he wanted to say. There had been two sides. And, he wanted to tell her, if there were going to be two sides in this world-two sides in any matter, even if it involved bullets and pain and every chance of getting slaughtered-he had wanted, wanted all along, to be on hers.