Renegade General 01, page 15
part #1 of Renegade General Series
“Yes. Si.”
“I’ll stay here tonight and the next few nights. They will come for you in the night, I think,” Swoop said. “They’ll talk it over tonight at Rumy’s and maybe even try tonight or maybe tomorrow night. I am up here in my wagon. It is full of supplies. Ammo. I aim to stay here.”
“I will help you, help me. I have-a guns. I can shoot. Yes. Back in Sicily I had to kill. I kill those against me. Yes. I am lucky to find you when I did, amico. The army made a big mistake letting you leave.”
“That ... is ... debatable,” Swoop said quietly.
At sunset, a butler named Pepino approached Zapello as the worried owner glanced out the front window of the cabin holding a glass of red wine.
“Mr. Zapello?”
“Yes, Pepino?”
“Mr. Zapello. I must tell you something. One of the men, my friend from home told me secret. He called me aside and told me a secret that he heard.”
Swoop heard the whispered tone of this conversation in Italian and saw the facial expressions. He wandered closer. Pepino looked at him, worried.
“Go ahead Pepino,” Zapello said, as Zapello motioned for Swoop to step near.
“Santino called me aside when I was outside getting firewood. He told me ...” Pepino turned toward Swoop and started back up in broken English, “you and the workers must go home tonight, to town. Santino say, leave the cabin. Leave Zapello and the Yankee. He begga me. Something is going to happen in the cabin tonight.”
“What?” Zapello asked.
“I dunno. But trouble for you, eh?”
“Then you all must go, Pepino. Okay? Yes, you must go home tonight. Tell everyone that they have the night off. Okay?” Zapello said. “You make a special wagon and go home to your wives and husbands. Is good.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you, Pepino.”
Swoop nodded and smiled at Pepino as the butler walked off to issue the orders.
“Oh! Only after dinner! We eat!” Zapello shouted out, checking his watch, “you make the dinner first! Then everyone go,” he turned to Swoop, “They have a lamb tonight-a. I don’t want to miss! Tonight, huh? You think?” Zapello asked Swoop.
“Tonight. You have any sleeping bags?”
“Oh yes, many for mountain emergencies.”
“Okay. I’ve got a plan,” Swoop said, let’s get two sleeping bags ready. Dress warm tonight. Bring some food, some jerky. Binoculars. And bring those guns of yours. We’re sleeping out back.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Evil Eyes
SWOOP STOOD ON the porch and watched Greco board the five o’clock wagon for Manitou Springs.
At seven-thirty p.m., after the meal of roast lamb, Zapello ordered all the cabin staff to go home for the night and report back for a late breakfast the next morning. Swoop and Zapello herded up the six cats, no easy task, and locked them in a storage room off the kitchen along with food, water and the litter boxes full of dirt, sand, ashes and chopped-up paper. The felines were not at all happy about this arrangement.
Swoop and Zapello exited through the cabin back doors at nine p.m., trudging out into the darkness and the crisp, clear freezing, windy night air, toting their bags of winter gear. The grounds of the cabin and storage area next door were cold, dark and empty. The two scaled the incline behind the residence-office-cabin. Swoop stopped them a ways up, turned and studied the landscape below.
“This will do,” Swoop said.
They laid blankets down, then put their sleeping bags above the blankets. They took their jackets off as Swoop instructed and slipped into the bags and pulled the jackets inside the bags with them.
“The jackets will stay warm,” Swoop advised. “If we wear them, we will get out of the bags cold. But if we get out and put the warm jackets on? It will be warmer and better.”
“Army?” Zapello asked.
“Yes, Army.”
“And so here we sit,” Zapello said.
“We have to stay awake. Or at least take turns staying awake. The uninvited ‘guests’ will be arriving, oh, my guess, two a.m.? Three?”
They both had three flasks of coffee and shoved them between their legs in their bags.
“You know, this afternoon, Greco? He gave-a me the ‘Malocchio.’ The evil eye,” Zapello said. “It is an easy custom of the world, but in Italy it is a thing of worry.”
“The evil eye?”
“Yes. The power of ‘Malocchio.’ It is not some power that only chosen people have. You call them witches and warlocks. It is a power that ordinary men-a have, men that are very jealous. When they have a great amount of envy for another man’s success, his possessions. His handsome looks—like me! All those things. HA!”
They exchanged smiles.
“That is why you won’t hear from an Italian that everything in their life is so perfect you see? Even if it is, they don’t want to attract-a, the evil eye. When you look at me, I can see that you do not have this, this evil eye on me. Which is why I trust you. Your eyes.” I see only help-a. And hope-a.”
Swoop’s study remained on the grounds out and below.
Zapello opened the flask and sipped some coffee, and said, “there are healers for this Malocchio, to break the spell. Milk, peppers, chants, prayers. The burning of olives. Several things that break the spells.”
“I see. They mention a bullet in that list?”
“Ha! I think now, Archie Turner, you are my healer. Now, your bullets too. You came here like magic. You say yes to help me like…like-a magic. You save my business. You save my life.”
“Well sir, it ain’t over yet,” Swoop said.
“Sicilians have other evil eye spells too. One is to wish great misfortune upon someone. The ‘evil eye’ curse, a…how-you-say malacheezus…”
“Malicious.”
“Yes-a! A malicious gaze…supernatural! Causing harm to an enemy. The evil eye is mentioned in ancient clay tablets of the old. The Bible mentions an evil eye. The blessed Pope Leo too. You must be careful showing the evil eye, Archie. Jesus warns from the mount that, ‘If, however, your eye is evil, your entire body will be full of darkness’, so you must watch out! Because the devil, he loves the evil eye, and he comes into your body, maybe.”
“Uh-huh,” Swoop mumbled.
“You have to worry my friend, because you, YOU! I have seen you shoot out the rays of evil eye lights from your eyes. It makes someone’s heart-a…skip a beat or two. Or more. You cannot do this too much, my amico. The devil? He smiles-a when you do this. And he comes into you.”
“Un-huh.”
“You read the Italian Stoics, do you read the Pope’s Bible? Have you been to church-a?”
“When I was a boy. Something like that. In Minnesota,” Swoop said. “My parents were very familiar the Bible and with Indian religions ...”
“You are connected to American Indians?”
“Yes. My grandmother, my mother’s mother was an Indian,” Swoop said. “They believed in the Wakan Tanka for the Dakota, just west of us and related, and gichi-manidoo for the Ojibwe. Both translate to ‘great spirit’ or ‘great mystery.’”
“I see.”
“My only wife was an Indian,” Swoop said, after some hesitation.
“Your wife-a? What happened to her?”
“She was killed by other Indians, mostly because she married me. It’s a very long story, Zap. Like a Shakespeare story. We were on a rope bridge over a chasm, and they cut the bridge on one side. An ambush. To kill us both. She…fell. I…hung on.”
“Dio mio!”
“I have this as a nightmare. These moments. The moments of seeing her look at me as she fell. Fell. She could not hang on. Her face. Night and day-mares, still. It…it steals my breath. I scaled up the other side, the connected side of the rope bridge. They shot arrows at me, but they really wanted to kill her more than me. Then and there, I became disconnected to everything. Every church. Every religion. My Indian heritage, everything,” he said. “I was once famous in the Army, Zap, for killing. Killing Indians and outlaws. I have a branding iron temper. I recognized after the rope bridge that man is just another animal.”
“We are not animals. God has made us in his image.”
“Yeah. Image. Some of those images need killing. The advice when I was young was that I should ask the question when in turmoil, ‘what would Jesus do?’ You know? I did think about that, then one day I realized, Zap, I ain’t Jesus.”
They stared ahead, with only questions wandering their minds. There were animals coming…
Swoop lay awake, watching. Thinking. This Tabby. Tabby. A very unusual name. Last name? First name? Nickname? Is Tabby officially just Tab? And Tabby is a nickname? Where had he seen that odd name lately. He’s done nothing but read the Denver newspapers and the Seneca book. He must have scanned over the name in the newspapers. He made a mental note to look into this. Manitou Springs had a small library, and surely, they saved the Denver newspapers.
Then, at three-thirty a.m., it happened ...
“There. There, you see?” Swoop whispered.
Zap was asleep, but rather lightly and he startled awake with Swoop’s call.
Four men, dark figures each carrying long objects like sticks, like long guns? They appeared in the storage and work areas, bound for the cabin. Zapello and Swoop sat up and pulled up their binoculars for a closer look.
“My God, it’s true,” Zapello said.
“Yes.”
“They are coming to kill us,” Zapello said.
“Yes.”
“It is ... this crazy-a. It is something like the wild, wild West.”
“This is the wild, wild West,” Swoop said.
The four men, hunched over, spread out, traveling from stockpile to stockpile to lumber stacks, their staccato advance seemed to resemble giant, invading spiders.
It is ... Lorenzo. And it is Tommasso and Tray. Even Edourdo! Madre di Dio, they must hate me so,” Zapello said.
The four worked their way to the very back door Zapello and Swoop had slipped through hours earlier and then they crept into the unlocked door.
The surveilling duo on the hillside waited, and then came the explosions. Two of them from inside the cabin. Two flashes of red light from inside two, two-story bedroom windows, Zapello’s room and the room Swoop stayed in.
“They have killed us,” Zapello said.
“Yes. Shotguns,” Swoop said.
“Do you think they will look at the lumps in the beds we made? To see they are just piles of pillows and if they shot us?”
They had piled up the beds in both rooms and left a dull candle glowing in each one.
“I don’t know. I hope they don’t. They don’t know that they are alone in there, they must think the crew is in there, and they have to leave right away.” Swoop said, “Expecting your house crew to wake up.”
“Yes-a.”
Within less than a minute the four men burst from the back door and ran full out across the work yards. One fell, but he launched right back up, and all scampered into the workmen’s bunk houses.
“Hmmm,” Swoop grunted.
“What do we do now?” Zapello said.
Swoop laid back down on the ground.
“For one thing, in the morning we’ll have coffee on the front porch. In a bit we’ll go back in.”
“I hope-a my cats are all okay,” Zapello said.
“I bet they are.”
6:30 a.m., the next morning ...
The two shot-gunned beds were investigated. They were shot up, but it didn’t appear that the covers were lifted to see if Zapello and Swoop were inside. The two stepped outside onto the cabin porch with coffee mugs in hand and three of the six cats followed them out. The other three lounged around inside the cabin. Swoop sat at one of the tables, with his lever action rifle on his lap. Zapello slowly wandered the balcony, as was often his way, seen by all the men gathering themselves and their gear for their work day up the mountain. Quite a number ignored him, some waved to him, but quite another number were surprised to see him.
“Fernando,” Zapello shouted out.
The crew chief turned from his work and jogged up to the cabin.
“Yes, Zap?’
“Ferdy, I want you to send for Lorenzo, Tommasso, Trey, and Edourdo. Tell them to come see me right here.”
“Si, signor.”
Within a few minutes the four men, walked abreast into their sight. Zapello turned and looked at Swoop and Swoop nodded.
The four men’s faces were expressionless, but Swoop thought he could see the, “Malocchio, evil eye” of some sort, from all of them, or their expressions of disappointment that they were looking at ghosts?
“Have you seen a ghost?” Zapello yelled out. “Well, you have. You pazullas! We know what you did. Assassnis! And now? Now this ghost fires you.”
Two of the men sneered and almost growled.
Swoop stood and walked to the stairs and down the steps.
“You men are fired,” Swoop continued. “You are fired because last night you tried to kill me and Mr. Zapello. Instead, all you killed were a bunch of stacked up pillows.”
They looked at Swoop’s rifle. It was halfway up. Other co-workers gathered around, still keeping some distance, but very interested.
“This last month ...” Swoop continued with a sigh, “I have been trying, really trying not to kill people. Otherwise, you all would be dead. Guts ... all…all over this gravel and snow, right here.” He waved his left hand over the ground. “Wanted to kill you last night when you rats showed up here with your shotguns, or maybe right now. But, for right now, you’re just fired.”
“You ...” One started to spout off.
“There are signs everywhere now that say, ‘No Trespassing,” Swoop said.
“Trasgreesoris,” Zapello repeated.
“And trespassers ... trasgreesoris will be shot. You’ve seen em these last few days at the front gates. Perfectly legal up here in the mountains and private property. If I see you here, I will kill you, instantly.”
They stared at him.
“Get your stuff and start walking,” Swoop said.
“What about our paychecks?” Tommasso asked in Italian.
“We’re keepin it,” Zapello said. “To pay for the pillows. And the beds are all shot up. Mattresses, bed posts. Sheets. Shotguns do that.”
“Idiots with shotguns pay for the damages,” Swoop added, getting the drift of the request for ‘buste paga.’”
Some of the nearby crowd seemed confused, others were not. The four men turned for the barracks. Swoop backed up the stairs and walked to the north end of the balcony watching them go. There was a wooden chair already there at the end and Swoop sat in it.
“I would go inside,” Swoop quietly told Zapello.
“Why, you think ...”
“I think ...” Swoop said softly.
And Zapello did.
Swoop watched as workers questioned the four as they walked off. Swoop heard one say, “What’s that all about?” More or less, in the Italian he was beginning to understand.
The sun started to fully rise, up over the pine tree tops. The four crossed the yard and entered the barracks. Some of the men returned to their morning prep chores to make ready for the mountain climb and work, but some seemed to “scatter away” a bit. Not a good sign. Swoop watched the barracks’ doors.
Then a door swung wide open and too fast. Angry fast. Lorenzo appeared in the frame. He marched back toward their cabin, a pistol pointed down at his side. He split the workers apart like Moses at the Red Sea. Swoop stood and went flush against the cabin wall.
Lorenzo raised his pistol and fired at the cabin balcony. At him. Every five or so steps, he fired again. Carelessly. Madly. This time the workers raced away.
Swoop braced his rifle on his left shoulder, and peeked around the cabin’s corner, which displayed less of a target for Lorenzo, and Swoop took aim.
“Stupid son of a bitch,” he muttered about the bad tactic, angry approach. Suicidal?
He squeezed the trigger and hit Lorenzo in the center of his chest, just below his throat. Though the shot was center mass, the man twisted hard to the left and dropped, pistol still in hand. Swoop stepped further out on the balcony for a better look at all of the barracks. Zapello charged out the cabin’s door with a pistol in his hands.
“It’s over, I…” Swoop told him. “Oh, wait ... no, no it’s not.”
Swoop spotted Trey run out from the rear of the barracks, slowed by the drifts of snow, holding a shotgun. Trey was headed for the inclines behind the work yard and the cabin, trying to get behind the residence-office and flank them.
“Trey’s making a play for around back,” Swoop told Zapello.
Zapello dashed inside. Swoop vaulted the balcony rail and turned for the rear of the cabin, rifle up. Trey had already disappeared from his view, dashing to the south. As Swoop ran to the northeast corner of the building ...
Gunshots. Shotgun and ... pistol.
He turned the corner, stock welded to his left shoulder again, left elbow pointed down, to only expose his left eye and the gun barrel, ready to shoot.
Trey was down on his back, groaning, about thirty feet shy of the back door! Swoop saw Zapello at the back door, his pistol arm and gun arm extended. Zapello looked at Swoop. Swoop nodded, then slowly approached Trey. So did Zapello. Trey was still alive, still gasping.
Swoop kicked the shotgun away.
Zapello knelt beside him, and they started speaking in Italian.
“Lorenzo is dead,” they heard a voice the side of the cabin. It came from the company’s resident doctor.
He was jacket-less, and carried a black bag. He ran toward them from the work yard.
The doc said while catching his breath, “How is he?” He knelt by the man and Zapello stood.
“It is Trey!” The doctor said.
