Pepsi Bears and Other Stories by Anson Cameron Page B

bumbling Oswald was inches from success when he stepped upon the husk of a martyr beetle on the floor of Castro’s bedroom. The great man woke and sprayed the room with bullets and the assassin’s finery was donated throughout the length and breadth of revolutionary Latin America where the leaders wear it as charms to keep off the hireling killers of the West.’
    â€˜Well, this wasn’t about Jorge Luis Enriquez and his famous cravat. This was about Russ Hinze and his tie,’ Chris says.
    â€˜Sadly, my friend,’ and El Capitan Zambro’s face droops with a plausible sadness, ‘you have left me with a demeaning image in my mind of Lieutenant Coetzel, hero of the October Thrust and adjutant to Jorge Luis Enriquez, adorning the Great Leader with his red cravat in the very manner you suggest your chauffeur has adopted. It is an awful image. Treasonous and heretical. The neck of Jorge Luis Enriquez extends like a giraffe and his eyes bug as if with a vast voltage, whereupon Lieutenant Coetzel completes a hasty double-Windsor. My friend you should not have suggested this thing.’
    â€˜I … I didn’t even know you spoke English.’
    â€˜And yet you told us of the surprising properties of the healthy bars.’ A busy silence falls then. The threeAustralians scrambling to think what this man’s accusation might mean. Does he seriously believe they were mocking his Great Leader? Is he making a joke of our joke? Is he about to laugh? They are two days’ walk from the nearest village with a government military post. Up here the Red Guards are the political reality. Why would they mock paramilitary zealots who live in the jungle sleeping with AK-47s? And how could they know Jorge Luis Enriquez was fat? No outsider has seen him for years.
    â€˜How could I know Jorge Luis Enriquez was fat?’ Chris asks.
    â€˜Perhaps you are a spy.’
    â€˜No, man. I’m with the church. Here for the street kids. You can check that. Listen, I’m sorry. It was just a stupid joke about a fat Australian guy.’
    â€˜Yet, my friend, and I think my logic is correct here, if your Russ Hinze is, being fat, then also laughable, contemptible … then aren’t all fat men equally guilty? Eh? My friend? Isn’t Jorge Luis Enriquez also a man whose size makes him shameful? In your mind?’ No one answers this question. It has become horrifically apparent to the Australians this man is committed to taking offence.
    El Capitan Zambro takes a greasy red scarf from his jacket pocket and says to Amelia, ‘You are sweating. Understandable.’ He throws the scarf into her lap. ‘It is never nice being in a strange land surrounded by gun-toting necrophiliacs.’ She recoils from the scarf, standing and letting it fall, and he tells her, ‘Oh, it carriesmy secretions? No reason not to use it. Soon enough you will be covered in those.’ Amelia grimaces. Her teeth are whiter and more perfect than any these men have ever seen or broken.
    â€˜Hey.’ As Matt Downey gets to his feet four candle-lit AK-47 foresights track his rise. Matt is a lawyer. His chances of survival are slim, being brave and chivalrous, in this land where bravery is a serious condition and chivalry a terminal disease. Slowly, softly, El Capitan Zambro spells out their crime and their predicament. ‘You have mocked Jorge Luis Enriquez, my friend. It is not your time to say “Hey” or to say “You there” or to say “Well now”.’
    â€˜You guys can have the hut. We’ll sleep in the open. We’re sorry for all this Russ Hinze crap.’ Matt takes a step toward the door and one of the soldiers fires a shot. The candle flames leap in the muzzle blast, making the hut quiver. Amelia screams. The billy swings wildly on its handle bleeding gouts of stew from a wound onto the fire which hisses, filling the room with a smell of burning meat.
    The soldier