Mercenary Intent Review

I want to thank Filipina blogger and book reviewer Jen Adams for such a kind review of Mercenary Intent on her blog: http://bookworm.i.ph/.  Besides Bookworm, Jen also authors http://sexynomad.i.ph/,  a wonderful blog that covers a wide variety of slice of life from the Philippines...travel, food, local events, fashion, and the ins-and-outs of daily life in the Philippines.  I'm one of those people that likes to browse through blogs to see what they're about, but seldom find one that catches my interest enough to make me want to come back regularly.  Sexy Nomad is one of those blogs that will absolutely get you hooked, and coming back often to see what she's up to next.  It's like a favorite television show...you don't want to miss each and every episode.  So give Sexy Nomad a look...you'll be glad you did! (http://sexynomad.i.ph/)

'HAIKU', by Andrew Vachss

I've been an ardent fan of Andrew Vachss ever since I picked up my first copy of his 'Burke' books.  I was hooked from the beginning, and remained a devotee of his writing up to and including his final offering in that long running series.  I find that often, after a writer creates such an engaging cast of characters as Vachss did with the 'Burke' series, and then moves on to new literary territory, it's a disappointment.  Many readers feel a sense of abandonment from the voice they were so accustomed to, and miss that familiar feel of place and circumstances that truly gifted writers paint with their craft.  Consequently, I was a little apprehensive when I picked up Vachss' latest book, HAIKU, having been disappointed by favorite authors in the past when they changed horses.  However, within just the first few chapters of HAIKU, it was clear that Vachss has once again captured the truth and grit of life lived by the forgotten, in the dark shadows of a world that many falsely believe is merely a place of fiction.

In HAIKU, Vachss brings readers into the lives of a band of homeless men who have built their family on a foundation of choice; not blood.  Theirs is a brotherhood where devotion to having each other's backs is a matter of honor; not a question ever needed to be asked.  As in Vachss' previous books, the characters are wonderfully complex, and wear the dark diversity of their demons on their sleeves, not hiding behind masks of excuses and blame.  They own their self-inflicted wounds, and band together in a daily struggle for survival on the streets, and their quest for personal redemption.

Initially, the group thinks they've found a perfect opportunity to make some serious money when one of them sees a woman get out of a white Rolls Royce and dump something into the river, which they believe might be the murdered body of her pimp.  They begin planning to put together a blackmail scheme and start their search for the mysterious white Rolls Royce.  However, their white Rolls Royce becomes a quest to save a brother whose life hangs by the threads of his already tortured mind.  Each of the group finds himself having to face the dark reality of their own personal demons even more deeply, and as they fight to save their brother from tragedy, they also wage personal battles to save themselves.  Some find a more secure toehold to salvation in this world, and some realize their reward can only be found beyond this life, and embark on that journey to find peace.

Vachss embraces the dark truth of the reality of life in places many don't want to look, or even admit exists.  He writes of the bare-bones honesty and commitment of men who band together in the world of homelessness and mental illness, and who survive by their own code of justice in a place where conventional justice has abandoned their kind.  It would be tragic to call Vachss' writing merely crime fiction, because it is so much more.

For readers that are already fans of Andrew Vachss, HAIKU is another installment of his wonderful ability of using the fiction genre to shine light into the deep shadows of the life of the often forgotten.  For thsoe who have never read any of Vachss' work before, HAIKU will definitely bring you into the fold of the devoted.

Tickle That Pig Or It Won't Drown...

     One thing about living in a jungle village out in the Amazon basin is that you quickly learn the value of regular meat.  Oh sure, there's the occasional boa or anaconda, or maybe a cute little monkey to toss in the pot, and sometimes, something a little tough and greasy shows up on your plate but you know better to ask what it was before they killed it, or you might change your mind about eating it all together.  But real, lip-smacking, stick-to-your-bones country fare like Grandma used to make is a rare and wonderful treat.

  I can't tell you how many villages I've wandered in to out in the bush where I see the natives treating their livestock better than they treat their children.  When asked about it, they readily say, "Because it's easy to have another kid...do you know how hard it was for me to get that pig?"  So anytime a proud pig owner agrees to part with his four-legged prize for a village feast, you know it's going to be a special occasion.

__________

     One of the kids in our camp came of age to start kindergargen in the village.  For several years, he'd heard his older brother bragging about how much he enjoyed school, so of course, he was terribly excited for that first big day.  We all pitched in to make sure he had all the supplies he needed and encouraged him in every possible way to try and set him off on the right foot toward getting an education, which is rare in a place where the literacy rate hovers around a high of about ten percent.

     Lo and behold, about half way through that very first day, we looked up the trail and saw several of the village elders and the director of the little school leading our little academic-to-be back toward camp, and none of them looked any too happy.  Apparently, Tato had gotten bored about half way through reciting the alphabet and decided to pick up a length of bamboo and take a few spirited whacks at the Chief's prize pig as he strolled it by the schoolyard.  The village elders told us that Tato's punishment was a two-day epulsion.

     Two days later, we all gathered around Tato and told him, in no uncertain terms, "Do not whack that pig , or they'll kick you out of school for good."  In hindsight, that was probably the wrong approach to take.

     About half way through his second day of school, once again, up the trail from the village came a commission of elders leading Tato by the scruff of the neck, and dragging a limping pig.  Apparently, deciding he had little interest in an academic career, Tato rationalized that if beating a pig would get him sent home for two days, then killing a pig would get him kicked out for good.  Even though he didn't actually beat the pig to death, he did inflict enough damage with his bamboo staff so that the Chief declared the animal ruined.

     It took several hours of tense negotiations, but three things were decided.  First, we agreed on a price and I purchsed the brutalized pig.  Second, Tato was assured that if he ever did any more damage to local livestock, he'd have to go to school six days a week instead of five.  And third, we declared the coming weekend to be a special occasion to be highlighted by our new friend Porky, in all his crispy-skinned, mouth-watering, oven-baked glory.

__________

     When I was growing up, my grandparents were farmers and ranchers, so I wasn't a novice at seeing farm animals whittled up into bits and pieces that ultimately ended up baked or fried and put on a plate with corn-on-the-cob and country gravy.  So when the guys came rolling up with Porky in a wheel barrow, I thought I had a pretty good idea what was coming next.  I was wrong.

     First it was explained to me that since I purchased and donated the pig for the feast, I would be the honored guest at the event.  Sure that sounds all fine and dandy, but in the bush, being the honored guest means much more than sitting at the head of the table...there are responsibilities that go along with the title.  Here's how they explained it to me...

     "Since you so bought the pig and are so graciously sharing it with the village, then it is your honor to drown it before it can be butchered."

     "Whoa...hold your horses guys...what do you mean drown it?"  I mean I'd heard some strange thigs since coming to live in the bamboo wonderland, but drowning a pig was definitely a new one to me.

     Even though most of the villages had been evangelized by missionaries over the last century, and practiced some form of Christianity, they also held true to many of the old customs of Pachamama...Mother Earth...and still practiced many of the rituals.  I was told that it would bring very bad juju on the entire village if a pig was butchered to be eaten, unless it was drowned first.  Since I was the benefactor who donated the pig, it was my honor and responsibility to do the deed.

     Now listen, I'm no expert on native customs, but I did know enough to feel pretty certain that stomping on their beliefs in Pachamama was not a smart move to make, or I might find myself buried up to my neck in an anthill for bringing bad juju to the village.  So all I could say was, "Let's dunk that bad boy."  Sorry Porky.  It's you or me, and you're headed to the adobe oven anyway.

__________

     In my usual gringo naivete, I thought I could handle the gruesome task in short order.  So, while several natives held Porky by the hind legs, I grabbed the other end, waded about knee deep into the river, and plunged him under.  Since our crew worked on an underwater gold dredge on regular days, and I spent five or six hours a day as a diver, drowning is one of those things that I always had in the back of my mind as being a bad thing.   So pig or not, I was agonizing over what was happing to poor Porky.

     After a few minutes, Porky ceased his squirming and kicking, and I said, "Okay...it's done."  Wrong again muchacho.

     Immediately one of the young villagers waded in next to me and said, "If you don't tickle that pig, it won't drown."  I didn't even have the words to respond to something like that, so I just stood there and waited to be further educated in the ways of the jungle.

     The young man reached under the water, smiled up at me and said, "Watch."  He then proceeded to reach up under Porky's front legs, and yes, he actually tickled that pig. 

     Sure enough, Porky jerked and squirmed, and then blew out a long stream of bubbles before finally giving up the pig ghost for good.

     "See," my native friend said, "A pig will hold back his breath and try to make you think he's dead, so if you don't tickle him, he won't drown."

     Live and learn.  Live and learn, my friends.

We All Need 'Our Own Little Spot'...

     We all need our own little spot.  It's cathartic...it's therapeutic...it's what keeps us from ripping out our hair and climbing up on the hood of the car and howling at the moon.
     Life just moves too fast, and every once in a while, you just need a place to go and catch your breath.
     My little spot is the Starbucks just down the road from where I live.  I've been going there long enough that they know me.  I walk in the door and they don't even have to ask...tall coffee poured and waiting on the counter.  Sometimes I go there to meet a friend and just talk...about anything and everything, except work.  Sometimes I go there to read, and if I'm lucky, I can even snag one of the good chairs and settle in for a spell.  Sometimes I take a little table in the far corner and write.
     We all need our own little spot...to take a break...to daydream...to be creative...to let our minds wander over all the wonderful little things that make us smile.

Don't Slap The Witch Doctor

     I'd been in Bolivia for about a month, so I still wasn't completely up to speed on all the cultural no-no's of South American life.  But truthfully, considering this was my first trip this far south of the Texas border, I thought I was doing pretty well for a greenhorn gringo.

     So far, I'd only spent two nights in the local jail, as punishment for the last Norte Americano who skipped town without paying all his bills, and hadn't had a gun pointed in my face but once.  Considering this region was still regarded as a lawless frontier territory, and responsible for putting an end to Che' Guevara, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I think I was doing pretty well.

     While preparing for my journey as an Amazon adventurer, I poured over every State Department bulletin and commercial travel guide I could get my hands on, and I swear, not one time did I ever see a warning that said, "Caution!  Don't Slap The Witch Doctor!"

__________

     Chulumani is a picturesque little mountainside hamlet nestled in the tropical region of Las Yungas, about 125 kilometers from the capitol city of La Paz, Bolivia.

As the crow flies, my guess is you could hit it with a well placed shot from a .22 rifle from downtown, but winding up and through the desolate snow-capped ridges of the Andes Mountains, and then back down to the valley floor below, and then back up and around treacherous switch-back turns along one-lane wide dirt roads, it's actuall about a five hour, sphincter-tightening bus ride from La Paz.  More than a handful of busses and trucks go careening off into the gaping maw of the valley every year, claiming dozens of lives, and violently validating the name given to this infamous stretch of road: The Death Road.
                                               

     I was living and working in a gold mining camp along Rio Solocama, about an hour further down the mountain from Chulumani, and only came into town about once a week to pick up supplies with my crew.  Even though I was getting pretty well known as the token gringo in town, and tolerated one or two clicks above that of a casual tourist, I still wasn't completely accepted; that honor wouldn't come until at least six months of living in the area.  You know you're accepted when the price of breakfast suddenly drops from two pesos, to fifty centavos...the true sign that you're now considered to be a local.

     As I already mentioned, the last operators of the mining camp skipped town without paying their bills to the local suppliers, and after my short stint in the local gray-bar hotel for their financial transgressions, and then settling all their debts, I thought our operation was in pretty good stead.  Little did I know that there was still one rather imposing debt yet to be settled.

     Whenever I came into town I always stayed at La Hosteria, which at the time, was the best hotel in Chulumani.  Now, you have to understand, in remote South American terms, best hotel is a classification absolutely relative to how remote the area really is.  In some areas, it might mean a place with running water and screens on the windows, and mattresses filled with something other than stiff dried straw.  Since Chulumani was somewhere along the regular path of adventurous tourists, best hotel meant a decent bed and hot water in the shower, even though you had to flip on the electric heating element located in the shower head, while standing in ankle-deep water.  What can I say...why aspire to the life of an adventurer if you're not willing to take a little risk...even in the shower.
     After a good night's sleep, a hot (electrocution-free) shower, and a hearty breakfast that we didn't have to kill before eating, my crew and I happily strolled out of La Hosteria and were heading over to the gas wholesaler to secure several fifty-gallon drums of fuel to haul back to camp later that afternoon, along with all the other provisions we'd gathered to last us another week.  You have to understand, seeing a drunk stumbling along the sidewalk on a sunny Saturday morning in a Bolivian village isn't all that unusual.  In fact, it's more unusual not to see a few.  So, when this stumble-bum came teetering off the sidewalk in his soiled wool pants and ripped gray shirt, with his dusty black fedora pulled down over the tops of his ears, and began spitting and sputtering a stream of what I assume were Spanish obscenities, it did very little to get much more than a laugh from me, at first.  But then, when his stumbling turned into a deliberate, although somewhat and purposeful stride heading straight toward me, and I saw him draw back a clenched fist and then sling it in my direction, I decided it might be worth paying him a little more attention.
     As he threw his misguided punch, I knocked it aside and then backhanded him across the chops to get his attention, which not only stopped him cold in his tracks, but seemed to sober him up just a little.  Since my Spanish was rudimentary at best, one of my crew said the man was ranting and raving about our camp still owing him money for a ceremony he'd performed for the previous operators.  He reared back like he was going to throw another punch, so I decided to end it all in the least aggressive and damaging way I could think of, so I gave him a short right jab to the solar plexus, which resulted in him puking on my shoes, right before he dropped hard to his butt on the cobblestone street.
     Having had more than enough of his nonsense, I walked off, leaving the errant reveler to sit in his own mess and continue to scream and rant to nobody but himself.
     One of my crew shuffled up beside me and said, "This isn't good...he's putting a curse on you."
     I didnt' even know how to begin to react to that, and all I could say was, "What?"
     "He's the Witch Doctor, and he performed a ceremony when they built the mining camp, and he said if you don't pay him the $100 he's owed, he'll put a curse on you that will cause serious misfortune if you ever try to build another mining camp."
     "Give me a break," I said.  "Tell him if he ever walks up on me like that again, I'll pound a curse down his throat."  And that was that.

__________

     Several months later we moved our mining exploration to another region far away from Chulumani, along Rio Yuyo, in the Larecaja region.  It would be an understatement to say that it had been a nightmare from the very beginning working in that area.  There were problems getting the camp built.  Heavy rains and storms ravaged the area, destroying the only roads and leaving us with no options other than packing in supplies by mule.  One worker died from snakebite...one worker drowned after being sucked into a whirlpool...and another member of our crew died an agonizing death after lingering for days after a fall from a steep mountainside when the trail mysteriously crumbled beneath his feet.

     After weeks of trying to make it work, I was returning to camp from our dredging site up on a section of river known as Kimbra.  It was about an hour walk along the jungle trail that we had to make every day going to and from camp.  For some reason, I began to get extremely light-headed and weak, and just as we waded across a shallow section of river and into our main camp, the last thing I remembered was trying to catch myself as I lost consciousness and fell headlong into the side of one of our huts. 

     Three days later, when I regained consciousness, I found myself laying on a bamboo bed, completely naked, and surrounded by a small crowd of my crew and a few villagers from Yuyo.  I was covered from head to toe with a thick, sticky paste that I later found out was a mixture of mashed potatoes, yucca root, coca leaves, and other jungle remedies that they'd concocted and covered me with to control what had been a raging fever that lasted for days.  Reuben, one of my most trusted workers, and who had been with me back in Chulumani, leaned  over close and whispered so nobody else could hear, "You should have paid the Witch Doctor."

__________

     I'll never admit that I believe that drunken old Witch Doctor actually put a curse on me, or that it had anything to do with all the hardships we had in Yuyo.  But several weeks later, after I regained enough strength to get back on my feet and function, the very next package we sent from camp, back to La Paz, included an envelope addressed to that old Witch Doctor in Chulumani, with $100 in cash, and a note that simply said, "Paid in full."

     I ultimately recovered from what was diagnosed as a case of hepatitis, and told by doctors in La Paz that considering where I was when I was stricken, and as severe as it was, that I was lucky to have survived.

     If nothing else, I added one more rule to my list of standards for operating in the jungles of South America:  Don't Slap The Witch Doctor.

DennisHambright.com

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