Jack had done everything he could to act natural, but he knew the sergeant had become wary. His friends in New England had said Jack’s eyes told his emotions and they joked about not wanting to be on the receiving end of one of his “looks.” When the sergeant made his gesture to the men behind him, Jack didn’t need to react; his body simply uncoiled like a tightly wound spring. He heard a saber swish and chunk into the wood of the seat behind him as he rolled on top of the driver, never looking back at his assailant.
His instincts told him the blow was coming from behind, but they told him too that the brain of the beast was the sergeant. Jack saw the old driver assume a terrified, hands-over-head crouch. He was blocking access to the pistol, so Jack used what was available. Leaping up, he thrust his foot toward the officer’s hip where it pounded into his left thigh, causing him to jerk violently and the horse to spin so swiftly that he was thrown to the ground. Jack himself lost his balance and went careening into the mud, only a few yards from the taller officer. “Have you gone crazy?” Ethan yelled. Jack knew his father had seen none of what transpired outside the carriage. Jack shouted from where he’d landed in the mud. “Go, Father! Take Mother! They’re no good!”
“What! For God’s sake, Jack, they’re constables—” His father was trying to scramble out of the carriage when his wife screamed to him to come back inside and bring Jack with him.
Other soldiers were trying to approach Jack but he managed to raise himself up and bounded back to the carriage ladder. “¡Andale! ¡Andale!” he shouted to the driver. When he jumped back to the ground, he held the oaken handle that served as the lever for the carriage brake. The four-foot piece of wood with a fashioned grip had rested loose in its retainer and Jack had easily yanked it from its metal boot.
A young soldier who flanked the sergeant had unsheathed his saber, advancing on Jack. A moment’s hesitation gave Jack the opportunity to step to the soldier’s left and bring the plank down solidly on the soft muzzle of his horse. The creature jumped back, whinnying in pain. Jack crashed the board down violently on the arm of another soldier, leaping to the side and slashing about in the manner of a two-handed swordsman. Another of the steeds made a high-pitched sound and threw its rider when Jack smashed its left hind hock.
Pandemonium ensued among the mounted men. The young man with the flashing dark eyes had transformed himself into a demon, flailing in rage. Fighting like a cornered tiger, Jack was vaguely aware the carriage had started to move; he could hear his father’s voice railing against the tide of hooves and men. “See here, damn it all, that’s my son! Leave him be! Driver!”
Two of the guardia civil had fallen in a heap. Jack had forgotten about the sergeant and a second later buckled over, reeling from a punch to the head from behind with what he guessed to be the hilt of a sword. When he turned to confirm, he took the brunt of a steel-banded fist, this time in the face. In Spanish or English—he couldn’t sort it out—it came to the same thing: the sergeant had yelled to his comrades, “Kill the dog! Throw his stinking carcass in the ditch. You others, come with me.”
Jack was aware that most of the men were riding off after the carriage. The ones he had injured were left to dispose of him. He felt one of them pull him to his feet. The man moaning on the horse, his arm hanging limply from its socket, screamed for his comrades to gouge his eyes and slice off his balls. The one who held him yelled for the other to shut up. Coldly, he said to the man on the ground, “Gut him and be done with it.”
Spanish—it was clearly Spanish they were speaking. Jack had the curious thought that he preferred to be killed in English. He knew he was soaked in blood, from the back of his head and face. Still, he had gathered himself for another assault on his attackers when he was suddenly propelled forward by the man holding him. He looked up in time to see the other’s sword swing in a vicious backhanded arc and lodge in his side. The man looked him in the eye as he followed through, drawing the sword backward in a long cutting motion. Jack felt himself spin with the retreating blade and felt another man’s boot kick him squarely in the back. The water-filled ditch rose to meet him and he blacked out.
When he came to he knew only seconds could have passed, since the men were still talking about him. The man on the horse argued that his friends should at least cut Jack’s throat if they wouldn’t bring back his balls. Jack knew he was moments from death anyway and hoped it would happen before the screamer had his way. The others told their associate to shut up and bear his pain like a man; they didn’t need to crawl in a ditch to cut the throat of a pig they had just gutted. “Let him water the soil with his blood. Let him die slowly.”
No! Wait, goddamn it! My life… it’s just starting, this can’t be my time to die. And these mustachioed, pinch-faced bastards… Who’s going to avenge?… no, this can’t be right.
Jack faintly heard them move off. How long does it take to die with one’s entrails in one’s hands? he thought. The image of what might be happening to his mother stirred him to regain a sitting position. He looked down at the bloody mess that was his side and shivered, remembering the sound the sword had made as it sliced along his mid-section. Fiercely clutching his side, he tried to rise. Oh God! He was falling apart, wide slivers of red and white flesh were peeling off him like the pages of a book. He didn’t understand—he had been sliced only once. And then he realized that they were the pages of a book, and his heart rose in exaltation. The Pilgrim’s Progress had taken the brunt of the sword.
The realization that death was less imminent than he had imagined spurred Jack on. His parents! Breathing heavily, he packed a wad of the most blood-soaked and pliable pages of the book into the deepest part of the cut on his torso. Then he wrapped his tattered shirt around his middle to hold the makeshift dressing in place. Although weakened almost to the point of immobility, he was satisfied to see the loss of blood essentially stanched. Covered with mud, he continued pursuit of the carriage, staying in the drainage ditch that hugged the side of the road.
“See, you bastards haven’t killed me. I knew it couldn’t be.” Jack spoke to himself in gasps. “If you hurt my parents… so help me Christ, touched my mother… Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I’ve got to walk… they can’t see me in this ditch.”
After about fifty paces, Jack spotted a bundle ahead and above him on the edge of the roadway. He reached for it hoping it might be a sack discarded from the carriage in the melee, containing something he could use as a weapon. It was the badly mangled body of a man. Gathering himself, he took a chance on being spotted from the roadway and raised himself to almost his full sixfoot height to determine who it was and if he still lived. It was his father. Dead.
“What… have they done? No!” Jack tried to scream but the words emerged as a croak.
Fighting conflicting urges to hold his father close and push him away in horror, Jack could only stare as the image burned into the back of his brain. He couldn’t determine the nature of Ethan’s wounds, but it was irrelevant. His father’s lifeless eyes stared at him, half questioning, half accusing. He pulled his father’s hand to him and kissed it. In desperate anger he spoke softly, “Father, you have your wish. You have finally been listened to by rightful authority. Look—it has reached out to you.”
Jack’s mind blurred in a kaleidoscope of images: his father speaking at town meetings, his pathetic search for justice from distinguished-looking gentlemen who smirked behind his back. In Cuba injustice was not so subtle. Here the privileged cut you down in cold steel. His killers had parodied his naive faith by obscenely butchering him in front of his wife.