The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Read online

  In the orphanage we ate crap, wore rags, worked long hours without pay, and were schooled to become maids, handymen, mechanics, gardeners, garbage collectors, dishwashers, as well as replacements in the armed forces. I also learned American football.

  “See Egypt for less than $5.00 a day,” appeared scribbled on senior school websites accompanied by images of bodies on stretchers or lined up in body bags or flag-draped coffins. Casualties from the renewed Egyptian military aid operation were less than fifty a day, only a third of that number actual deaths. On average for every coalition death, we were told, twenty-six Egyptian combatants died. Whether Egyptian Army, civilian, or rebel combatants was never made clear. Neither was it clear whose side the wounded and dead Egyptians had been on. This was probably because no one really knew.

  Late on a Friday night so that no one would notice, Congress passed the “Global Child Care Act.” The United States declared itself the last ditch parent not only to the Western Hemisphere’s children, but to the children of the world. The flood Doctor Guzman predicted arrived.

  UCH now took in orphans of all kinds after all the orphanages in the United States became federalized. Room was made, as well, for refugee orphans from South and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Consolidation was supposed to utilize world resources more efficiently and provide a core learning standard to improve education among the world’s parentless. We were, it was said, “The Destiny of the World.”

  At UCH one of the new additions was a stunted, sadly deformed, and mentally slow Panamanian boy everybody called Chiquilín, referring to his small size. Someone made up a raggedy yellow tee shirt for him that had “The World’s Destiny” lettered on it in black. As I looked at him in that shirt, he made a picture speaking more truth than humor. The picture was ordered down from the senior student’s website, but by then nearly everyone in the world had a copy.

  The solitary cells were emptied, the property south of UCH, the City of Uvalde Service Center, was put up for sale as the city’s services followed the UPD HeliDrone Unit and moved somewhere else. The new Federal Bureau of Child Protective Services acquired the property and made it part of UCH. They also acquired the property north of the school, the old police drone site and the house with the swimming pool. Both properties together doubled the acreage of the school. The number of school staff personnel quadrupled.

  Rumor had it that the house with the swimming pool was going to be a student recreational center. Just behind the school’s north fence, from the old drone pads down almost to Benson Road, was nothing but mesquite and a few cactuses. Rumor was that the school would put in a regulation sized football field and that UCH senior school footballers would begin competing with other high schools in the area.

  Additional reclaimed military prefabricated dorms for the older children were constructed. North Dorms, the old Diaper Dorms, were turned entirely over to P through K. Center Dorms, A through E, were for elementary school students, grades 1-6. Cook East Dorms, A through E, were for grades 7-9. Cook West Dorms, A through E, were for high school and senior vocational students. I, along with the rest of seventh grade, moved into Center A, Up for the Girls, Down for the boys.

  The big garage on the upper end of the new south campus was made into a theater we used for assemblies, movies, and viewing vid downloads. Next to it a warehouse was converted into the school infirmary. The lower end of the south property in the existing buildings was where UCH set up its new administrative offices and had its own service center for UCH vehicles, carpentry, electrical, and plumbing. The cafeteria was expanded until it seemed huge. By the time all the construction and conversion was finished, it was Christmas and there were a lot more orphans in UCH. The Bureau of Child Protective Services and our share of the Bureau of Indian Affairs had been absorbed by the Federal Bureau of Human Affairs.

  Better than a third of our newbies weren’t real orphans. They came from parents in the U.S. who either couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of their own children. Their children were runaways, had mental problems, or were simply booted out, caught, and condemned to UCH. We lost the solitary cells under the cafeteria mainly because we needed them for dorm rooms as our population swelled. Reasonable sized windows were put in, the metal doors replaced with wood. Now we had almost three thousand boys and girls. Goose Guzman had been right.

  We still didn’t get paid, but now we had “accounts” that we had to keep track of, along with more paperwork. Supposedly, the moneys accredited to my account would be applied to my college tuition, supposing I ever went to college. If I didn’t go to college, the moneys would be applied to someone else’s college tuition or stuck in someone’s pocket.

  One day Mister Makin planted an ash tree on the playground where Thiago and Bodey died. Dylan and I were two of about eight students who attended the makeshift ceremony. After we planted the tree, we watered it and everything, but it died in only a few days. We found out later that some of the high school chemistry students had poured muriatic acid on the roots the night the tree was planted. Some fun.

  We never again saw Mister Makin on the school side of UCH.

  Besides going to classes, we also had to keep everything clean. Sometimes I was assigned to the kitchen, sometimes to the grounds, and sometimes to clean up classrooms and offices in the new Admin Building.

  From Mister Makin’s corner office windows I could see the empty lot across West Main Street where they sometimes planted crops that never grew very well. Across White Lane from the empty lot was a scrap yard, and across North Benson Road from UCH was a building supply outlet.

  Sometimes at the scrap yard and the building supply outlet I’d see people not connected with the orphanage: Plumbers, building contractors, carpenters, roofers, masons, do it yourselfers. Scattered among them would be homeless men, women, and children begging for food, money, work, a place to sleep.

  I’d stand in the window and wave at them all, hoping to get a wave in return—some kind of contact with the outside, some small recognition of my existence, a sign that I was part of the human race, one of them. No one ever looked in the direction of the orphanage, not even the homeless. Not ever. It was like we were a guilty secret everyone was keeping from themselves.

  When it could, the building supply place moved away, as well. The orphanage, the scrap yard, and the homeless remained.

  Blood and Liberty

  They began clearing the back of the west lots for the football field, but before loam that had been brought in could be spread, funding fell through. The loam was already there and they thought about raising vegetables there for our own consumption. The only problem was the vegetable concerns who sold produce to UCH didn’t like the competition, the area would still be expensive to clear, water costly, and the only crop that would be monetarily worthwhile was marijuana. The skunkweed farmers, of course, objected to that.

  The huge mounds of loam sprouted grass and weeds, and eventually tiny trees that became not so tiny trees. We called them the “Lost Mountains.”

  At one of the school assemblies, some student I didn’t know, an older boy, a redneck, asked if we could at least use the swimming pool in that beautiful house that now belonged to UCH. When it was first acquired, we had been told, it would be our recreation area.

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen either, it was explained. A complete misunderstanding. You see, the staff and faculty of UCH pretty much had the whole place filled to capacity. There simply wasn’t room enough for three thousand more, and nothing in the budget for a mandatory lifeguard.

  It was a very long way around the vulcanized rubber turd to say, “Tough shit.” UCH: Like the world, it was all meant for us, but only after everyone else was done with it.

  The kids in North Dorms told us from the upper floors in either “A” or “B” dorms you could see the off duty staff of UCH using the pool, lounging around on deck chairs in swim suits, smoking dope, and drinking.

  Senior biology students talked plans about putting somet
hing horrible and contagious in the pool water some night, and maybe they did. No one heard anything about it, though.

  I learned that Coach Dover made it a point to brief all the new kids entering UCH that I had a nasty sting. They learned not to call that Apache kid over there Geronimo or anything resembling it. His name was Jerry.

  Some just didn’t get the message. There were a few fights. Mostly it was just knuckles, but I did have to cut two of them in separate fights. One pulled a knife on me, the other brought a baseball bat. The older kids at UCH let the newbie losers know we take care of our own people and our own problems. Nothing gets reported to anybody about anything. If they need a stitch or two from the nurse, they cut themselves on pieces of sharp metal or broken glass. Any other tale would get them killed.

  Then it was that spring day, chilly and damp, the sky dark and overcast. Very few were out on the playground for recess. I met Dylan at the end of the cafeteria facing the volleyball net, the red clay of the court wet and greasy. Dylan was pretty tall then, very muscular, and still with the face of a brute. He asked me to go for a walk with him into the playground and talk some.

  I said okay.

  As I hunched my neck and shoulders inside my jacket, we walked until we were half way to North Dorms. There was a clammy drizzle hanging in the air.

  He stopped and faced me. Four boys were at the asphalted basketball court, shirts off, doing deuces in the rain. Dylan looked around, satisfied himself no one could hear us, and said, “Okay, hermano,” he said looking around once more for possible eavesdroppers. “I ain’t going be here much longer.”

  “Why? You’re not eighteen.”

  “Getting out, man,” he said, nodding toward the fence. “Over the wire.”

  “Why?”

  “Mira, all I learning here is how to eat government cheese, follow government orders, and kiss government ass. I don’t want to starve making shitty cars cough a little longer. I want to see what’s out there, make some real money, go to a real school.” His heavy black eyebrows went up. “Learn to be a chef.”

  “Where?” I asked, feeling slightly panicked.

  “San Antonio. SA, esse. Talked to one of the new kids from there: Billy Palmer. Used to be a runner for the West Side Kings. Learned a lot from him. Mira, going to San Antonio. Got an address. Find some people, find a place and get to know it, then begin pulling in the money.”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  He shrugged and glanced down. “Doing the only thing dudes like us can besides sell our asses or commit murder, hermano. We supply those with money with the stuff they can’t get in the supermarket or online.”

  “Drugs,” I said.

  He nodded. “Lots of shit is banned or taxed to death. You know how much black market tobacco cigarettes go for now? The vapes? When we know enough, we maybe go for some big money. Enough so we can get good papers, I can go learn cooking from a real chef, and what you want to do?”

  I laughed. “Get out of here.” Who needs a plan, I thought. Sometimes a plan just drops into your lap. It seemed like one of those chances Mister Makin had described.

  “Okay, mira, what I want to say is if you want to come with me and leave this shithole behind, bueno. The kid I talk to describe the teams the gangs use in SA: Runners and leads. A young kid who’s quick to carry the shit, and a older dude with some muscle to make the deals. We perfect for it.” He raised his eyebrows. “So?”

  “Tú eres, mi hermano. I want to come with you,” I said without another thought.

  He grinned, his smile made crooked by the severed nerves in his chin. “Bueno. You can run fast, little brother. Jump those fences. We gonna make some coin.”

  “Just one thing, Dylan.”

  “What?”

  “What about the drones? What about picking us up?”

  “I take care of that. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I answered.

  “Bien. We leave tonight. You got much stuff to bring?”

  “Just my jacket, a shirt and underwear, and my knife.”

  “Travel light. Hey, let me look at that knife,” he said. He unfolded the main blade from the handle and tested the edge.

  “Sharp?” I asked him.

  Nodding once, he folded the blade back into the handle and gave it back to me. “Sharp enough,” he said as he nodded toward the north corner of the playground. “See the tool shed there. The one painted pus green?”

  “I see it,” I said.

  “Bueno. After lights out, everyone sleeping, soon as you can, sneak out behind that tool shed. Don’t let no one see you, don’t say nothin’ to nobody. I got a hole back there in the fence. I wait long as I can, but if you don’t show after awhile, I got to figure you change your mind.”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised.

  He thought a moment, smiled sadly, and said, “Thiago make that hole first time so he can sneak over and look at the drones. He tell you about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Long time ago. Had to work some to make that hole big enough for me.”

  That night I traded my second pair of pants, my third shirt, my heavy jacket, and the rest of my underwear and school notes for a bag of hard candy and a half eaten bag of turkey jerky. Wearing two shirts and with clean underpants and socks stuffed in my jacket pockets, I waited in my dorm room beneath the covers until I was sure everyone was asleep. I slipped out of bed, got out of the back of the dorm, and crept along the fence toward the garden shed in the north corner of the playground. It was chilly with a steady light rain. Once there I slowly made my way around the green tool shed until I could see behind it. No one was there.

  I felt panic filling my chest because I knew I would go, Dylan or no Dylan. Except I had no idea where to go or how to get there. It was already raining and I didn’t want to die in the mud of Cooks Slough.

  A large and very strong hand went over my mouth, and Dylan whispered in my ear, “Quiet, Jerry. You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “You look upset.”

  “Thought you already left.”

  “Took me a little longer to get away. Give me your knife. You know about the locator chips?”

  “The what?” I held out my knife. He took it and opened the blade.

  “They inject these little chips in you first day at UCH. Nurse does it. They keep your number on file so if you take off, they can find you with the fucking satellites or drones.”

  He held out his right arm, pulled up the sleeve on his jacket, and pointed at a spot in the center of his forearm. “Feel there. It’s a tiny lump. You got to push in a ways, but you can feel it.”

  I pressed with my index finger where he pointed, and by moving my finger back and forth I could feel a hard little bump—like a steel pea— maybe half a centimeter beneath the surface. “Yeah. Yeah, I feel it.” Then I pulled up my right sleeve and felt my forearm. “I can’t find mine.”

  “I raided the nurse’s office; That’s what took so long. Keyboarded your file, Jerry. You was so tiny when you came here they put the chip in your ass.”

  “My ass?”

  “Uh huh. Right cheek. I was seven when I got mine. Plenty meat on me. You was only a week or so old when you come here. No meat on you, so they put it in your butt.”

  “We’re going to cut them out?” I asked, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach, the blood all over the playground after the knife fight huge in my mind’s eye.

  Dylan shrugged. “We either cut ‘em out or they pick us up tomorrow and bring us back.” He held out his arm. “You have to do it for me. Right-handed. Cut it out and see how it goes. I took some tape and bandage stuff from the nurse’s office.” He looked around and pointed at the water running off the shed roof. “Stick the blade in the dirt a few times then give it a good rinse.”

  I took the Barlow, thrust it into the hard wet soil of the playground four times, then stood and held the blade beneath the runoff.

  “I got light.” Dylan took something from his pocket. It looke
d like a mobile phone. Only a guess, but it looked like the high school Spanish teacher’s missing mobile. Dylan made the little flash light bright and he held the phone with his left hand so I could see where to cut on his right forearm. “Do it.”

  I took a breath, felt where the chip was again, placed the point of the knife just below it, glanced at Dylan, and he nodded back at me. “Go,” he said.

  “What if I cut too deep?”

  “The bone’ll stop the blade. Go on.”

  I quickly jabbed the tip of the blade into his arm what I thought was half a centimeter and quickly withdrew it. Blood began pooling in the wound, a lot less of it than I expected.

  “Hold the light,” he said.

  I took the mobile and shined the light on the wound. The blood was flowing more freely now. Dylan held his arm away from himself to avoid getting blood on his clothes. With his left hand he began squeezing the wound with his thick fingers like trying to pop a really deep pimple. He grunted with the pain, but in a few seconds I saw the rain wash the blood from a tiny orange and silver bud.

  “Bueno,” said Dylan taking the chip and sticking it in his jacket pocket. He took something from his pocket and tore it open. “Hold this on the cut, Jerry, while I get the tape.”

  I held the cotton square on the wound then Dylan stuck one end of the tape on the cotton. “Hold onto that end. Won’t stick too good ‘cause it’s wet.”

  He wound the tape around his forearm twice and bit it off. “Bien,” he said, pulling his sleeve back down. He nodded at me. “Give me the knife and drop your pants.”

  As I loosened the tabs on my trousers, Dylan rinsed the knife again in the runoff from the shed roof. He really scrubbed the blade with playground sand, then rinsed the blade again. He took the phone and began looking at my ass.

  “Your record says it was shot in your right cheek.”

  I felt him poke around first in the center of my right cheek, then wider and wider still. “What is it?” I asked.