O my soul, come
not thou into their secret;
unto their
assembly, ...
for in their
anger they slew a man.
Genesis 49: 6
(KJV)
The unexpected sound
of the plane overhead had interrupted a productive morning at Raul’s
operation. After dumping yet another barrel of kerosene into the vat,
he was laughing to himself again over something a colleague had told
him - that Europeans considered cocaine a glamor drug. Mopping his
brow with a crusty bandanna, he watched Platon and Mario kick off
their grimy sandals to slosh their sweaty feet in the vat of coca
leaves. They joked together to pass the time, each one daring the
other to pee into the stuff. Glamorous? This?
That was when they’d
heard the plane overhead - right overhead. What idiot was
flying that thing? The landing caused a ripple of excitement through
the camp, as did any hope of contact with the outside world. They'd
been working three weeks without a break, and were hoping to wrap up
this harvest soon.
Of course there were
a dozen or more volunteers to go investigate at the airstrip, but
Raul knew these muchachos would take half the morning at it,
and he wanted to keep the work moving. Besides, he needed to check
this out himself. He barked at them to keep working, he’d be back
in half an hour, and he expected to see some progress.
The wooden planks of
the boardwalk groaned under Raul’s considerable weight, as he
trotted through the trees, his mind racing. He was not expecting any
shipments - he already had more leaves than he could process in a
week, and it would be several days before he had anything to ship
out. Damn them all! What kind of production schedule was he expected
to keep, anyway? Approaching the airstrip, he slowed to a walk, then
crept around the trees, his pistol drawn.
He saw her in the
clearing. Not who or what he’d been expecting at all. The plane had
apparently made an emergency landing here.
He watched her
play-acting with the gun and had to smile. Then when it went off and
she was scared to death, he could hardly stifle a laugh. He watched
as she packed the weapon away. And whatever was wrong with the plane,
she clearly hadn’t a clue as to how to fix it.
He had seen enough.
He smiled and put his pistol back into its holster. He would not be
needing it.
He imagined his crew
bugging out at the first sound of gunfire, afraid to show their faces
near camp for days. But, Raul reasoned, it might be labor well lost
to get some privacy with this little gringa.
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