The Road of Death

[Steven Hunley]

The Road of Death

When the DEA left Center 41 with the prisoners in back of the truck it was mańana en la mańana-still dark.

Their plan was to take them to a lock-up in the capital, La Paz, where unlike in Santa Cruz they figured the officials could not be bribed. It was a mistake. The only way there was by a single road named El Camino del Muerte that wound its way up into the Eastern Cordillera or Cordillera Oriental of the Andes. It was called that simply because it was a treacherous single-lane tract, with many switch-backs, at times steep, and mucho buses of Indians fell over its edge into the canyons every year, as the altitude climbed from sea-level in the yungas, or flat lands, to over fourteen thousand feet near La Paz. The road had a reputation for danger. On this day it would keep its reputation… in spades.

As the agents pulled out of town the forest began to grow closer, surrounding the road with trees standing like tall silent sentinels. It was cool and still early. An hour later the dew still remained on the grass and leaves, and collected on the barrels of the AKs slung over the shoulders of the primos, or cousins, of the two brothers in back of the truck. Bolivia is named after Simon Bolivar, El Liberator, so the cousins called themselves liberators and secreted themselves in the forest on both sides of the road. Hugo in his wisdom had seen to that. Dude knew nothing about this. He was along for the ride, cuffed to the other two for crimes of his own. They jostled and bumped down the road in the bed of the truck along with canteens and extra gas stored in Jerry cans. On the truck rolled, deeper and deeper into the gaping mouth of the hungry forest. There would be no arrival at the capital and no turning back on this trip, but there would be a stop.

A jacaranda tree had fallen across the road. One agent stepped down to inspect.

“We’ll just use the winch and pull it aside,” he said to the other who remained in the cab.

“It’s OK,” the second one answered, “we’ve got all day.”

Then the first one went to the trunk of the tree to take a closer look.

When the agent saw the trunk he didn’t see a break or an uprooting. What he saw was a clean cut.

He noticed the forest gone quiet.

When he considered both the quiet and cut he knew he was dead.

A shot rang out of the trees proclaiming liberty. The AK barrels grew hot spitting fire and turned the dew to steam. The three prisoners regained their freedom and along with the gunmen gained the safety of the forest. Their laughter was soon muffled by the leaves and the creepers and lianas and the chatter of monkeys but after some time the clearing went silent except for the drip-drip-dripping of scarlet death as it stained the fallen leaves lying still on the forest floor.

A day later Dude packed up his stash and left town for good, his only souvenir of the incident the cuff marks on his wrists, and within a week they’d be history.

“Vaya con Dios,” Hugo said when they shook hands and parted. Before, when Dude heard the phrase it only meant goodbye. From Hugo it meant, “Go with God.”

When Dude stepped onto the aluminum stairs that led to the safety of the plane, he knocked the red mud of the Yapacani from his boot heels as easily as if he was stepping into his mother’s living room for a hot home-cooked meal served with love. Lloyd Aereo Boliviano looked just as comforting.

Dude copped a seat by the window and watched as the jet raced down the tarmac, then trees passed by in a blur, they, then white puffy clouds, and finally the Yapacani winding like a silver thread between gaps in the green canopy as the plane gained altitude to make it safely over the Andes. Dude grew reflective and thought,

‘The worst part of the trip wasn’t the heat or the insects or the language barrier or hoping you’d score from a Bolivian Goodfella instead of some greedy b*stard that might sell you out to the police. In fact, I can’t think what the worst part was.’

Dude was thinking in the wrong tense. The real danger was in the future, and so typical of Dude’s psyche it had not been considered.

The worst and most dangerous part was going to happen after he cleared customs in LAX and became famous overnight, a bag man with an endless parade of women and their numberless intrigues, unprepared to deal with his own greed and new-found arrogance, the eventual scandal that led to his inevitable bust, and watching helplessly as his life fell apart by default.

©Steven Hunley 2012


https://youtu.be/DVJkfXeTs9Q?si=UeBtc3foqlTPvuf6

[tailor STATELY]

Interesting first installment... Enjoyed :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Steven Hunley]

Interesting first installment... Enjoyed :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

It was really an end. But of course, there is always a beginning.

The South American Sequence


Flying Down to Lima


It’s so much fun. There’s nothing like it. Dude is so keyed up he barfs the whole way down. Nine hours of continual barfing are required so he exceeds the requirements. Then, when he’s at his weakest, and his stomach turned inside out, he can barely press his head against the cabin window to cop some cool. Dude needs relief from nerve-fever. With effort he opens his eyelids and gazes at the sea, crawling with waves of sparkling obsidian arrowheads, pointing to a new continent.

Suddenly the black begins to fade to dark blue defining the horizon. Then a brown coast appears, running away north and south, till it disappears into distant blue mist. In fifteen minutes Dude will land in a place where he must live his life at a run, and he has done this insane thing by choice.

Lima is only a stop on the way. He doesn’t even go through customs or immigration. They have prepared a special room just for him. In it is a leather couch like the kind you see in movies in the offices of psychiatrist. But the doctor won’t be here. Instead, a flight attendant gives Dude what he needs. On her light brown palm lies a capsule with little dots inside. She smiles at him using blue-green eyes, small white-perfect teeth and red cupie-doll lips. It is compazine. It makes him sleepy. Right when it gets quiet and Dude gets comfortable, two flight attendants appear wearing Aereo Boliviano uniforms. They escort him out, up the ramp, and into the plane.

He barfs his way to La Paz, which he can’t quite remember, then Cochabamba, which remains a blur, and he finally sees out the window a green land with silver ribbon rivers winding through. It’s Santa Cruz. When he lands and is crossing the tarmac, an insect the size of his hand lands on the lapel of his coat because it smells like papaya. It’s not. It’s barf. Welcome to the tropics.

He rides in an open Isuzu taxi, but finds his hotel is full. The sky darkens. To another hotel he goes. The sky darkens further. On the way it starts to rain. Thunder booms. Dude ends up in a room face down on a bed. The only thing that happens all night is pouring rain, thundering thunder, lightning flashing so close it lights up the room, as the smell of ozone invades the air. Dude would be afraid but no, he is far too Compazine-tranquillo to care. The next day it’s sunny and bright, and leaves him feeling like yesterday wasn’t quite right. That’s why flying down to Lima is such fun. It’s the first leg to much more.

He eats an omelet with ham for breakfast because he has memorized the phrase “omelet con jamon” in preparation for this event. He eats it late. He grabs a cab into town. The driver drops him off in the main plaza. It’s one o’clock by now. The place it deserted. His hopes for an easy score are dashed like a fragile chocolate Easter egg.

“Where’s the gringos, where’s the people?” he asks the only man there who’s selling ice cream to nobody.

“Later,” he answers.

Dude returns to the hotel, depressed. The air is thick with heat. Nothing is familiar. This place is no good. Dude thinks, “I have made a wrong choice in this matter.”

Dude waits for the cool of night. In the blackness which envelopes the countryside he catches yet another cab to return to town. He eats at a Chinese restaurant, dinner. Exactly twenty minutes later he decides he is hungry again. He heads back to the plaza for ice cream. He notices noise when he turns the last corner where the unexpected lies in wait.

There are dozens, scores, hundreds of people there now. It is as packed as Disneyland on Date-Night. He breathes in the cool air now perfumed with the scent of lovely Crucenos. He even spies young people who, by the way they dress, may be possible connections. Dude takes heart. He joins the crowd and tries to catch up. Like I said, welcome to the tropics. Dude has finally arrived.

The crowd he wanted to catch up to was defined by the tee-shirts they wore. The words on the tee-shirts were written in English. A girl with curly brown hair had enormous breasts which filled out her tee-shirt. There was Snoopy, dressed as a pilot, flying from the top of his doghouse. Actually, considering the dimensions her breasts were adding to the scene, is was a regular three-D experience. Charles Schultz would have been proud seeing Snoopy in magnificent three-D.

The guys walking with her turned out to be from Mozambique, as was the girl. Then there was Steve, who was Canadian. Dude introduced himself and was instantly accepted in their group because he shared something with them. They all spoke English.

They did what everybody else did for an hour, which was walk around the plaza. Then Canadian Steve said the magic words.

“Wanna smoke a joint?”

And the game was on.

©StevenHunley2021

[tailor STATELY]

Oh :)

"When he lands and is crossing the tarmac, an insect the size of his hand lands on the lapel of his coat because it smells like papaya. It’s not. It’s barf. Welcome to the tropics."... Lololol !

"Exactly twenty minutes later he decides he is hungry again."... Hah!

"Charles Schultz would have been proud seeing Snoopy in magnificent three-D."... ... ...

Oh, my goodness. The end ? Lol.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Steven Hunley]

They left the plaza and crossed by the church, went around the corner and down one block.

In a darkened colonnade Steve found an even darker doorway and they all went in.

The room was long and thin, extremely empty except for a single bare light bulb hanging from a cord from the ceiling. There were two mattresses on the floor, and on one of them lay a man reading a paperback.

“Hugo,” said Steve, “Look what the dust man turned up, an American.”

He looked up from the book with interest. His eyes were brown and clear, he was bearded and resembled Che Guevara just a bit but without the beret. He got up.

“I’m Hugo,” he said and put out his hand.

Dude shook it. He had a strong grip. If he had as good a grip on reality as he did Dude’s hand he was a man of power.

“I’m Robert,” he replied, “But you can call me Dude”

Between these two it would be the truth from square one.

They smoked a bit with the others, but after an hour or so the rest drifted off, leaving the two of them alone. Their talk turned to serious matters. The similarities between the two of their lives began to stack up when they started comparing notes. They were both the same age it turned out, and both had lost their families when they were young. Both were seekers too.

“I tried LSD several times, but it was a dead-end,” said Dude.

“That’s because it’s partially synthetic, it doesn’t exist in nature. I agree it’s a hoax.”

Now they’d been talking for hours and it was near on twelve, the witching hour. A cricket chirped in the corner as if keeping guard.

“In the states we have peyote though; it’s for real, and mushrooms too.”

“I’ve read about peyote. We have mushrooms in Venezuela too.”

Hugo took a hit and passed it over using the roach pass. (It was getting short)

“The ones that grow in cow pats?”

“The same species. Let me tell you a story. I was in a cow pasture outside Barranquilla.

I found some mushrooms growing out of the cow****, right?”

“Of course,” Dude answered, “their stomachs act like incubators for the spores.”

“Right. The cows were shy at first. Then I ate a few mushrooms. After about a half-hour the cows sensed I was different. They started coming closer and closer. And get this. They stated licking me mon. licking my hands!”

“‘Cause they knew you were loaded!”

“We were on the same trip mon, on the same trip!” Hugo pronounced “man” “mon”.

If they weren’t already on the floor they would have been soon because both of them burst out laughing.

At this point is where Dude knew he’d found a man who told the truth. She decided to broach the subject that had been on his mind for days. With Hugo it didn’t seem hard.

“They say there’s coke around here. How is it?”

“Oh it’s good Mon. It’s good.”

“Any chance you could get me some?”

“Sure. How much you want?”

“How much does it cost?”

“Well, if you go with me it’s ten dollars a gram. If I go alone, it’s fifteen.”

Dude thought a moment. He didn’t want anybody else to know he had it. He trusted Hugo, so he said,

“ You get it. About ten ounces, is that O.K.?”

“No problem, come back tomorrow night about ten.”

That was all there was to it. It was almost like ordering pizza that took overnight to deliver. It was late now, almost three, so they shook hands and called it a night. The cricket stayed in the corner, Hugo returned to the mattress, and Dude to El Poso del Bato. (Gran Hotel Cortez, a relic of the fifties.)

If you have any imagination you may imagine when he got there and laid on the bed that he would have trouble sleeping. And it wasn’t because of the coke. It couldn’t be. He didn’t have any……yet.

The next day when Dude woke up he started doing the math. It looked as if (with a ten-time mark up) he might actually have the change he needed. For once in his life he might be in the pocket. He grabbed a cab back to town and found Canadian Steve and accompanied him for breakfast.

“I’ll show you where to get good empanadas.” Steve said.

They stopped at a café on the corner. The empanadas were fresh here, and had vegetables and meat filling. They cost about a quarter.

“Why so cheap?” Dude asked.

“It’s a poor country. The average per capita income is two hundred seventy-five dollars per year.”

Dude nearly choked.

“Average?”

“Yes, average. I imagine that with the majority of people, it’s a lot less.”

Dude only shook his head. They bummed around town, and Dude found a nail in his boot. A cobbler removed it for one peso, about a nickel. He couldn’t figure out how anyone made a living. The whole thing seemed a bit surreal. When he was walking down one of the roofed walkways to shade himself from the sun he accidently kicked a piece of gravel in through an open door of a bar. It rolled in and stopped in the middle of the floor.

The bar was pretty nice, but not too nice. The bar itself was long and carved of mahogany, a rich red color, almost, which was good and matched the blood that was sometimes splashed on it. The mirror behind it was a beveled mirror, stained on the edges with yellow, from the constant tobacco smoked within. On one side it was chipped where a glass thrown by one of its patrons had missed its mark, (another patron’s head) and hit it instead. A typical bar in Santa Cruz it was.

At a table in the back sat two gringos. Although the bar was crowded with men they sat alone, shunned by the rest. It was easy to figure out why if you knew the two. That’s why the other men avoided them with ease. They knew the two.

Lenny, the taller one was still not tall, had a lump on his head that would never go down, and slobber constantly hanging from his lower lip. That didn’t bother him one bit.

The other one, Phil, was fat, sweaty at all times, had more chins than a Chinese telephone book, rumpled pants and coat, and carried a cane made of cane. Why? As he once put it, “Just for fun.”

They were both drinking the cheapest beer available, which in Bolivia was pretty cheap. Even the other men, the workingmen, who traded their sweat for Pesos Bolivianos working on the oil rigs that doted the outskirts of town, drank better beer than they did, though they could hardly afford it. For this reason they were shunned, and for another reason as well. They were DEA.
Assigned there by the US state department they were supposed to be undercover. Being Lenny and Phil they had managed to keep their cover for all of two weeks. Of that fact they had taken no notice. And even if they had known they wouldn’t have cared. They were getting paid well, extremely well considering the rate of exchange, and in their leisure moments (which were many) divided up their time neatly between the bar and the whore-house down the street.

“Life is good to us,” Lenny slobbered to Phil.

“Yes,” Phil sweated back, “life is good.”

They would make a few busts occasionally when needed or required, not by detective work, which was beyond their abilities anyway, but through the work of low-life informants. This method gave them more time to invest in the drink and the whores. When they finished their cheap beers they made their way through the door for the walk down to Esmeralda’s establishment.

On the way, crossing an intersection, the traffic blocked their way. A small buff-colored donkey pulling a cart stopped right in front of them. The driver was small too.

“Move this donkey,” said Phil to its driver, “or I’ll move it for you!”

He couldn’t, the traffic would not allow it.

Phil tapped his cane on the donkey’s buff rump and knocked off some dust.

“Come on, just move it!”

He hit harder and the donkey let out a bray. Another hit even harder followed, his face getting flushed with effort.

“Move it I said, move it!”

At this the donkey sat down.

Then Phil went ballistic and starting to hit the animal with so much ferocity the cane split into sharp sections. When the driver got between him and the animal, and caught the cane with his hands Phil exploded. He pushed the driver aside, and began to whip the mule mercilessly, over and over. The cane started to splinter just as the mule broke free of its halter, and ran down the street pursued by the driver. A crowd formed and drew the attention of a cop. After the driver caught the mule and returned, accusations were made. Money was spread all around. That’s how they took care of it. That’s how they always took care of things, Phil and Lenny, by spreading money around.

“You’re crazy Phil, just crazy!”

“Whadda you think you are? Some kind of psychiatrist? Some kind of Sigmund Somebody?”

“Well maybe that’s what you need, some kind of psychiatrist.”

“Whores or mules, what difference does it make? They’re all the same to me. Let’s go. Vamanos.”

Fortunately for them Esmarelda’s was only a block away and they made it there in safety and were just lucky I guess.

The women that worked in Esmeralda’s were lucky too. Phil had already broken his cane and wouldn’t be able to replace it until the next morning. It was true. When he was in top form he could be a cruel dude. Still, he paid them well for their lacerations with his filthy cash. He was generous in this respect. But it was getting harder and harder to find girls that liked that sort of thing. Many, who thought they did at first or did it because they were strapped for cash, and I do mean strapped for cash, had consented to such treatment. But now their backs and legs and bottoms were sore and they needed time to heal. The broken cane, now lying there on the street where the donkey had been would give them the time they needed. Poor putas, poor burros…Phil was poorer yet.

to be continued??? I hope so.