"Duncan, Andy - Fortitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

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Fortitude - a novella by Andy Duncan



Fortitude
a novella by Andy Duncan
My life started over on May 14, 1916, in a hut in the foothills of the
Sierra Madre, between Rubio and San Geronimo, about 300 miles south of El
Paso.
Pershing had put me in command of a party of twelve, sent to town in three
automobiles to buy maize for the horses. That accomplished, we devoted
most of the day to my own project: We went looking for Villa's lieutenant,
Cardenas. That's what brought us, eventually, to the hut, where we found,
not Cardenas, but -- I was informed -- his uncle.
"Por favor, Senor, por favor!"
In the thirty minutes since Private Adams had unsheathed his knife, we had
learned a number of things from this fat uncle: that he did not know any
Cardenas; that we were filthy American pigs; that he had not seen Cardenas
in months; that the merciful Jesus would save him; that the Americans
should be crushed underfoot like lizards; that he had seen Cardenas a week
ago, but not since; that our fathers were bastards and our mothers,
whores; and, again, that the merciful Jesus would save him. All this in
Spanish, though these bandits could speak English as least as well as I
could. Spanish seemed to be a point of honor with them. I respected that.
"Santa Maria!"
The man heaved and strained against his bonds, trying to avoid the knife.
His sweaty shirt pulled taut over his belly, and one button popped off to
fall onto the dirt floor. I picked it up, rubbed it between my fingers.
Brass.
"Madre de Dios!"
At that moment, with a sudden, sickening exhilaration, I realized
something. I knew I had held this man's button in my fingers before. I'd
heard these squeals and bleats, seen my men's sunburned, darting scowls,
suffered the fried-bean-and-motor-oil stink of this miserable hut.
Since my youth I had been accustomed to sudden, vivid memories of lives in
other places, other bodies, other times -- memories that lingered, became
part of my present self. I still could taste the urine I was forced to
drink from my helmet when I was dying of thirst for the glory of Carthage;
it was brackish and sweet in the back of my throat, and as real as my
mother's orange punch, gulped at the end of a day's sailing off Catalina.
That son-of-a-bitch helmet -- it leaked like a sieve. But what I relived
in that Mexican hut was not a life centuries removed. No, I relived a
previous May 14, 1916, when I stood in the same hut, among the same men,
holding the same button, and was the same person, likewise named George
Smith Patton, Jr.
This was a first, a past life as myself. The initial disorientation
passed, replaced by a giddy surge of confidence. I savored the moment.
Would the feeling last longer than a second or two? It did. In fact, the