“Let’s go,” Stallings said.
The retired Colonel’s car was a well-maintained ten-year-old yellow Volkswagen convertible that he drove, top down, with what Stallings quickly decided was far too much dash. The highway up into the mountains started off well enough, but soon disintegrated into broken pavement, patchy gravel, and finally into a twisting red dirt road that was not much more than a trail.
“Why retire here?” Stallings asked. “Why not Fort Sam in San Antonio?”
“With the rest of the old farts?” Crouch said, shaking his head and gearing the VW down for a curve. “I had three wars. Two bad and one good. I sure as shit wouldn’t retire to Seoul or Saigon — even if I could — so with the wife dead and both kids either married or divorced, I figured what the hell, you like the Filipinos and always did, so you might as well go live there and see what the fuck happens.” He gave his head another shake, this time a satisfied one, and said, “It’s sure been interesting.”
They drove on without speaking for minutes until Crouch said, “Al lent me that book you wrote.”
Stallings’ reply was a noncommittal, “Oh.”
“I didn’t agree with everything you claimed, but you sure got most of it right. So I don’t guess I have to tell you that if you’re doing a deal with Al, watch him. He’s tricky.” Crouch glanced at Stallings. “But I expect you must’ve figured that out by now.”
“A long time ago,” Stallings said.
They drove on in more silence for what Stallings estimated to be three miles. That made the trip thus far about twelve miles — or not quite halfway across the island. Crouch came to a curve. In the VW’s headlights it looked just like any other curve, but he slowed down to fifteen miles per hour, then to ten, and finally stopped.
“End of the line,” he said.
“What happens now?”
“You get out, stand around and admire the Southern Cross, if you’ve a mind to. Somebody’ll come fetch you. It won’t be long. They’re out there somewhere, just waiting to make sure nobody followed us.”
“How do I get back?” Stallings said.
“Beats me.”
Stallings opened the door, stepped out of the Volkswagen, and looked down at Crouch. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Maybe someday you or Al might tell me what the fuck this is all about.”
Stallings only nodded.
“And maybe not,” Crouch said as he put the car into reverse, backed around and shot off down the rough mountain trail.
Stallings watched until the Volkswagen convertible disappeared around the curve. He decided that once again the grown-ups had sent him out on his own, just as if he had good sense. On the drive up he had remembered more vague details about his elderly chauffeur. In 1945, Crouch had been a 26- or 27-year-old major, a war lover, and somebody who, before the war, had done more than just go to high school. He had either held down a job, or joined the CCC, or bummed around the country, or graduated from Michigan State or Texas A&M. Something anyway.
In 1945 that seven- or eight-year experience gap had seemed unbridgeable to Stallings. In 1986 it still seemed just as wide and just as deep. You’d better grow up fast, sonny, Stallings decided, or you’ll slip from acute chronic adolescence into senility with nothing in between. He turned and looked up at the Southern Cross, only to discover — with a trace of surprise — that it, like himself, hadn’t changed at all in 41 years.
Stallings wasn’t sure how long he stared up at the constellation before he heard them. It was at least five minutes, maybe ten, possibly fifteen. They came down the hill, stumbling and muttering in the dark, indifferent to the noise they made.
Stallings turned to watch their bobbing flashlights approach. He jumped when something hard was jammed into the small of his back by the one who had slipped up silently from behind.
“Please don’t move, Mr. Stallings,” she said and he recognized the voice of the woman who called herself Carmen Espiritu.
“How’ve you been, Carmen?”
“Please don’t talk either,” she said.
The ones who had muttered and stumbled their way down the hill turned out to be three in number. All were men, none more than 30. While Carmen Espiritu kept the muzzle of her gun in Stallings’ back, one of the men searched him with quick, expert hands.
“Nothing,” the man said.
She moved around in front of Stallings. With the help of the three flashlights he saw that she wore yet another semiautomatic pistol, a dark T-shirt, jeans and running shoes. The T-shirt advertised a cantina called Hussong’s in Baja California.
“How’s your health, Mr. Stallings?” she asked.
“Well, I sometimes get a mild touch of sciatica, but it comes and goes.”
“I mean can you walk three kilometers into the hills without us carrying you?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Let’s go.”
In Booth Stallings’ opinion, there was far too much up hill and not nearly enough down dale. But he was pleased by how well he kept up and surprised by how vividly he remembered the way he and Espiritu had once bounded up and down such trails like a couple of goats. Young goats.
They climbed for an hour and 15 minutes before they stopped. One of the men imitated the cry of a bird whose species Stallings didn’t even try to identify. After an answering bird cry, they crossed through a cornfield whose rustling stalks provided an effective early-warning alarm system.
Just beyond the cornfield was a large nipa hut of at least three or four rooms. It rested on poles that were the usual five or six feet high. Soft kerosene lamp light came from the hut’s open windows and also from those of the three or four smaller nipa huts that made up the compound.
A man who wasn’t very tall came through the large hut’s main door and stood, staring down at Stallings as he emerged from the cornfield with Carmen Espiritu at his side.
“How’ve you been, Booth?” Alejandro Espiritu asked.
“Fine, Al,” Stallings said. “And you?”
Chapter Twenty-six
After a warm handshake and a somewhat stiff embrace at the top of the bamboo stairs, Stallings followed Carmen and Alejandro Espiritu into the nipa hut, which was really more house than hut.
They came into a combination kitchen-living-and-dining-room. Food was being cooked over a charcoal brazier by a plump handsome woman in her fifties who wore bright red slacks. An old plank table had been set for two with glasses, plates, forks and spoons, but no knives, which many Filipinos seldom use, preferring to cut whatever needs to be cut with the edge of a spoon.
The living room area was furnished with four bentwood chairs and a matching couch. There were no pictures on the wall or rugs on the polished split bamboo floor. But music came from a small battery-powered Sony shortwave set that was softly playing something by the Rolling Stones. The woman in the red slacks left her cooking, went to the radio and turned up its volume slightly, placing her left ear close to the speaker. No one introduced the woman to Stallings.
Espiritu waved his guest to the bentwood couch and chose one of the matching chairs for himself. Carmen Espiritu stood nearby, leaning against a wall, her right hand down inside her woven fiber shoulder bag. It occurred to Stallings that only recently he had seen someone else stand just like that, leaning against a wall, all coiled up and ready to spring. Durant, of course.
“Care for a beer before we eat, Booth?” Espiritu asked.
Stallings said he would and the woman in the red slacks took a bottle of San Miguel from a plastic sack, opened it, crossed the room to Stallings, pausing at the table to pick up one of the two glasses. She handed the bottle and glass to Stallings without a word. He said thank you, but she only nodded and returned to the Sony radio where she glued her left ear back to the speaker.