came. When they heard the claxons sounded and made their way to the emergency bunker, they found it occupied by thirty-seven dusty Mexicans who’d gotten lost on their way to the border, Douglas, Arizona, and red, white and blue freedom.
Wide-eyed and certainly wishing they’d never left their homes, the Mexicans huddled together against one wall. Beside them were piles of belongings, a mish-mash of things they thought they’d need, but nothing even remotely capable of protecting them against what the Rift had to offer. Several shuddered beneath a blanket. An old man and woman clutched each other, faces buried in each other’s shoulders, eyes crammed shut. A child cried, his head pressed against the lap of his mother.
“What the hell?” asked one of the other mine tenders.
“When did the wetbacks move in?” Batista asked.
Andy didn’t miss the irony of his friend using the pejorative. “Technically they aren’t wetbacks.”
Batista frowned.
“I mean, they haven’t crossed any rivers yet.” Andy shrugged. “Can’t be wetbacks if they don’t get wet.”
Batista gave him a look. “You think too much, maricone.”
The others spread out and found places to play cards, read or snooze. A few of them watched the new guests, but with only cursory interest.
Andy and Batista found an empty space on the floor. They broke out a deck of cards and began a game of gin rummy. But it became obvious after the first hand that Batista was just going through the motions. His eyes were on one of the girls that huddled next to an older man with milky eyes and a missing ear. A sly, hungry look had crept had into Batista’s face and taken control.
The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her dark eyes and skin told of Indian ancestry. Her long hair had once been luxurious, but was now more the color of dirt than lustrous black. The hair was twisted and bunched beneath an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. Her legs were drawn beneath her. Her hands rested on the old man’s leg.
She reminded Andy of a girl who’d lived near him at Fort Drum. He’d never known her name, but the memory of her had made him who he was to this day.
Andy’s father hadn’t been in the Army, but the girl’s father had. He was assigned to the 10 Mountain Division. He was never home, always playing war games, or deployed to some far-flung country. When he was in town, she used to sit on the front stoop of their townhouse, waiting from him to come home. Her eyes were like the eyes of the Mexican girl: wide brown pools where hope shimmered above a surface tension of fear.
Andy had been drawn to those eyes when he passed on his way home from school. He was sixteen and she was thirteen, and he wanted to stop and reach out to help her. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he’d said in his mind, every time he’d passed. Pounding his chest, he’d let out the famous Tarzan call, grab her by the waist and swing off into the trees like Johnny Weissmuller had done so many times. They’d live a life free of fear, high above the dangerous animals far below. They’d have the monkeys to entertain them and the apes to protect them. Living would be good. Life would be grand.
But not really.
Tarzan, that great mythical man who was the source of all courage, wasn’t real. He existed in the pages of paperback pulps, in comic books, in television and movies, and in the minds of every boy who’d sat down and plumbed the depths of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ imagination.
Andy knew this because of the doctors he’d been forced to see.
They asked him Do you really think you’re Tarzan?
Why did you do that to her?
What were you planning to do to her? And a hundred more questions, each as inane and embarrassing as the others. Why had he done what he had? What had set him off, making him believe that he could be Tarzan?
He’d run after it had happened.
An hour later the doorbell had rung. He’d pressed his ear to the closed door of his room and heard most of the conversations that had taken place. When it came time for his mother to confront him, he was sitting on the bed, prepared for the embarrassment. But the embarrassment never came. They hadn’t understood. What had been his vain inglorious attempt to save the girl had been misconstrued as some sort of attack.