Stranger on a Train to Taraquilla
JPYoung
Another Place, Another Time…
Beyond the Dawn
The brilliant blue morning was alive with the colour and chatter of the crowded market. John Farrow reflected that in his solar-impaired London, mornings were slow and miserable with massive caffeine required to get the zombies moving. Here the dawn was a tonic that began the energy; the people were as happy as the legions of chirping birds watching from the trees. There was no need for any music.
The market featured wonderful things to see and buy with happy people exchanging sincere warm greetings and news. John revelled in the euphoria as he drank in the ambiance and his freshly squeezed orange juice with equal gusto. The energy would gradually subside as the sun rose higher until the torpid afternoon where everyone would shutter up and enjoy their siesta. Things would slowly pick up around teatime; then the nightlife began…
Today he would leave the boisterous market city to ride the narrow-gauge railway up to the mountain town of Taraquilla in a first-class carriage. He was on his employer’s expense account, for he never travelled first-class in his own country. First-class meant no crowds and cosmopolitan companions.
In his homeland the trains were as dull as their commute to the duller wage slavery. Here, there was genuine excitement!
Built when the nation was prosperous, the old steam engine was the cutting edge of technology. Now, outside the nation it was merely an eccentric tourist attraction; except there were few tourists.
The majority who rarely rode the train themselves enjoyed the ritual of preparation for its journey. The train was everything in the market city, for everyone dreamed of an exotic journey to adventure with interesting companions.
The vibrant multitude gathered to watch the engine leave its ancient concrete shed topped by a rusted corrugated metal roof beneath the palm trees. They cheered when it blew its mighty whistle; displaying the same enthusiasm as if viewing a bull entering the corrida de toros to do mortal combat or the start of a Saturday-night movie that promised excitement, romance and an escape from their own problems. Its engineer was the proudest man on the planet.
The exhilaration of the authentic travellers and the imaginary ones they were leaving behind inhaled the atmosphere of adventure that was building to a fever pitch. The clock tolled seven, the conductor’s whistle blew, the steam engine with its two green second-class and one combination luggage and first-class carriage slowly chugged off.
Everyone waved farewell, then literally went their own way.
Timeless Travel
He was the only one in his compartment until...
‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume?’
His greeting was as old as their train, but fitting as they were the only gringos aboard. John’s new travelling companion carried his backpack in one hand, his other held a small stalk of ripe yellow bananas with a brown paper bag to thoughtfully place the skins.
The stranger appeared the same age and like John was dressed in a Panama hat and tropical suit with a plain maroon tie.
A suit together with a backpack???
The stranger’s appearance was the opposite of John’s; dark-haired with a local type of moustache, tanned, lean, and fit. He removed his aviator-type sunglasses revealing piercing brown eyes.
Both travelled well-dressed because they couldn’t see the point of their suit taking up space in their luggage, though they removed their coats and unbuttoned their collars.
John questioned the stranger as he placed his backpack on the luggage rack,
‘Should I ask what brings you to Taraquilla, or are you a man of mystery?’
‘Isn’t that just who you want to meet on a holiday? Isn’t that just who you want to be on a holiday?’
‘What makes you think I’m on a holiday?’
‘Look around you…for travellers a holiday is how you look at things. If the locals journeyed to where we came from, they’d think it all a wonder and would have tales to tell on their return.’
He shook the stranger’s hand,
‘I’m John Farrow, and I’m meeting clients to sell them some English imports…You look the type who doesn’t talk about himself.’
‘You remember Socrates?’
‘I’m not that old!’
‘Sock once said that great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about things, and small minds talk about other people…what size mind do you think talks about themself?’
‘So, you’re a philosopher as well as a traveller?’
‘Aren’t they one and the same?’
‘You’re right, one becomes the other...I can’t exactly place your accent.’
‘British.’
‘”British”?’
‘Subject, not citizen.’
‘The Wild Colonial Boy.’
‘Jack Duggan is my name’, the stranger sang in a Southern Irish accent.
Australian…definitely.
‘Coffee, “Jack”?’
John produced his thermos; Jack smiled and pulled out his own that contained tea scented with lemon.
‘Great minds think alike’, John displayed his rum flask, ‘Would you like me to sweeten it for you?’
‘Thank you, no…’, Jack raised his own cup, the pair tapped them.
He didn’t drink…but he didn’t act the religious type; was he ‘on duty’?
As if he read his mind, Jack responded,
‘Not before sundown.’
Unless you’re doing night work…
John took a chocolate bar from some bubble wrap,
‘Ogden Nash once said. “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker”…please…it will all be melted soon.’
Jack broke off some and enjoyed it.
‘Thanks. You’ve the trifecta. The Germans have Scho-Ka-Kola bars for Schokolade, Kaffee and Kolanuts, I’m surprised no one’s invented a Scho-Ka-Alkohol bar.’
The officious conductor entered their compartment for his ticket ritual; they responded with customary polite conversation in Spanish. Business ended; he left to engage with the other passengers.
‘Tell me, John. Since you’re here, who would you most like to be? Who would you be if you were on a holiday from yourself?’
John answered immediately,
‘I’d search for the Treasure of the Sierra Madre!’
Jack’s smile grew bigger as he quoted the film in a Mexican accent,
‘Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin’ badges!’
Their conversation turned to Humphrey Bogart, Warner Brothers films, John Huston, Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz, Howard Hawks, and how John Ford, William Wellman, Fritz Lang or Alfred Hitchcock would have used Bogie.
Their amusing conversation continued throughout their journey through the lush green countryside as they enjoyed their drinks and bottled water and shared the bananas.
Jack wasn’t hesitant to talk, but he expertly steered the conversation away from certain things; the past, the future, and particularly himself. His happy demeanour was at variance with his eternally staring eyes.
John wondered, just who was ‘Jack’?
Jack was too conversational for a fugitive but didn’t talk of his work had he been a businessman or missionary, nor of his travels had he been a tourist. He made no inquiries, so wasn’t an investigator. His haircut and physique looked military, but his conversation was too intelligent, well-read and diverse; however, he certainly wasn’t an academic. Had he been a soldier or an undercover agent attempting to blend in, he never would have refused an alcoholic drink.
He deduced Jack was an eccentric well-travelled vagabond living the old movies and Graham Greene novels he had been raised on that lived again on the strange train to Taraquilla.
Their scenic journey passed in laughs and education on a variety of topics...except politics and each other.
Arrival
‘¡Taraquilla! ¡Taraquilla!’
After the conductor’s announcement, Jack began singing,
‘They came to Taraquilla…’
John recognised Jack’s changing the town of Frank Sinatra’s They Came to Cordura; the lyrics were apt.
Picking up his brown leather suitcase and sales sample case, he didn’t bother to ask if Jack was staying at what was probably the only hotel in the town.
They shook hands in farewell.
‘It’s a small world, Jack. Maybe we’ll meet again.’
‘It’s a smaller town, John, we probably will.’
Jack became more of a mystery man when he was met by an attractive nun.
Their conversation was typical of one acquaintance met by another and asking about his journey…but she called him Felipe.
Jack waved, then walked away with the nun as he sang They Came to Taraquilla like Sinatra,
‘Fate will bless your dreams,
or tear them apart…’
Vespers
John’s hotel reservations were in order; he telephoned his clients to meet the next morning for their business.
He sat on the balcón del hotel with a cerveza fría watching the colourful sunset as he waited for Jack/Felipe; his instincts told him he’d see him again. Surely, he wasn’t an undercover priest like Henry Fonda in The Fugitive? However, his local contact who arranged tomorrow’s meeting said that a priest had recently been murdered in Taraquilla by los guerrilleros.
An open-topped truck loaded with heavily armed men drove into the town square.
All but one jumped off the truck, the remaining one stood on top of the cab and fired a Cuban-supplied AKM rifle into the air; the automatic fire only ceasing once his magazine was empty.
‘¿¿¿Dónde está el cura gringo???’
So, he was a priest…and the guerrillas wanted him!
The clergy played both sides in the guerilla insurgency that killed the population as well as the tourist trade. Some clerics openly favoured the communist ‘liberators’, some the current regime, most took the path of least resistance, all were easy targets.
The man on top of the truck ordered everyone in the town square to lay on their stomachs so they could see where they were going if the priest refused to come out. He boasted that as there was no God, they would just be going into the ground.
The women wailed and wept; the children cried.
‘¡Estoy aquí!’
There was his dignified travelling companion wearing wire-rimmed glasses, priest’s collar and black cassock…but it was unbuttoned. He opened his coat with his hands to presumably display he wasn’t wearing a belt or shoulder holster. He slowly performed the Sign of the Cross and intoned,
‘Qui morituri salutate me…’
The leader laughed that not only was there no God, but very soon there would be no priest…the wailing, weeping and crying grew louder.
The priest ordered his flock on the ground to pray intensely; they instantly complied.
‘Orar nunca es una pérdida de tiempo’, prayer is never a waste of time.
The wailing stopped…
The jefe guerrillero furiously ordered his men to bring the priest to him.
The front rank smiled like Cheshire Cats as they slung their AKMs and brandished machetes. They gleefully sauntered like cats about to play with, then eat a helpless crippled mouse.
One of them sneered that now, they were here…
Jack/Father Felipe feyly put his hand on his waist, threw out his hip and made a funny face as he pointed and waggled his finger,
‘Pero no lo estarás por mucho tiempoooo…’
The guerrillas stopped in disbelief…Some in the square began to laugh; for Fr. Felipe now sounded like Jerry Lewis playing an obnoxious child playing a priest.
‘Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-WOW!!!’
The laughs increased with the children joining in as the wide-eyed Fr. Felipe held his head in both his hands and spazz-modically ran in circles.
The laughter from his hostages and his own men made the jefe guerrillero screech bloody vengeance as if someone threw acid in his face.
He raised his automatic rifle into the air again and uselessly pulled the trigger, forgetting he had emptied his magazine. He fumbled for a new one and dropped it; the square filled with catcalls and derogatory whistling.
He shrieked for the priest to raise his hands; he vowed he would crucify him in the square!
Fr. Felipe moved his arms up and down like a jumping jack.
‘¡Oy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoyyyy!’
The guffawing and children’s giggling increased; the guerilla chief squawked,
‘¿¿¿Quién está a cargo aquí???’
Those laughing in the square KNEW who was in charge…
Fr. Felipe spoke in a resigned voice,
‘There you go…’
His left hand took off his spectacles and threw them to one side…there was his stare…the guerillas’ eyes widened…The chief’s squeaking rant was cut off in mid-sentence when his head exploded…The sound of a single gunshot…
His surprised men turned to their late leader who had a rendezvous with a sniper’s bullet. They dropped their machetes and unslung their rifles as they turned back to the priest who had drawn an Uzi submachine gun from behind his cassock, dropped prone and gave the guerillas semi-automatically administered 9mm hollow-point messy blessings. The enthusiastically cheering square filled with equally enthusiastic battle cries and blazing M2 carbines from the jungle green-uniformed military policemen led by the shrieking nun using her own Uzi. The surviving guerillas dropped their weapons, raised their hands and were marched off.
Life may be short, but it was rarely dull.
John wondered if he gave the Last Rites as he killed them.
Fr. Felipe pointed at the nun-in-charge and looked up to John,
‘Nun But the Brave…she’s my Twisted Sister!’
‘How about that sundowner cerveza, Father Felipe?’
‘You’re on, John! But it’s got to be a quickie!’
The ‘priest’ removed his collar and cassock; he wore a Policia Militar Ambulante armband with his black shirt and trousers. He replaced his Uzi in the holster behind his back as he conversed with an older military police senior officer who nodded and smiled when he pointed to John.
A band came out of nowhere, as they did, and the square went to celebratory fiesta mode as they played. In the land of quick death and eternal poverty they took their happiness when and where they could and truly enjoyed themselves; for when they were alive, they were alive…
The grinning defrocked priest arrived at John’s balcony table as a waiter brought his beer. He pulled up a chair, straddled it ala Christine Keeler with the backrest of the chair against his chest because he had his Uzi on his back in a holster.
‘Martial law means never having to say you’re sorry.’
‘You’ve earned this one, Father.’
They clinked glasses.
‘Cheers! Since I’m not your dad, you can call me Phil!’
They savoured their cool Gallo lager…he did have time for another. John signalled the waiter.
‘Truthfully, Phil…Do you really believe in God?’
Sargento Primero Phil Danté glanced upwards to the starry tropical sky,
‘Who else do you think keeps me alive, in one piece and happy?’
FIN
Author Notes: I am the author of three Extra Dimensional/Ultraterrestial military science fiction novels MERCENARY EXOTIQUE, OPERATION CHUPACABRA and WORK IN OTHER WORLDS FROM YOUR OWN HOME! as well as two travel books THE MAN FROM WAUKEGAN and TWO AUSTRALIANS IN SCOTLAND (all from Lulu.com). I live happily ever after with my wife in paradise (coastal Kiama, NSW Australia).
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Australia • 68 years old