1975
Reporter Gets High
on Poorly Aimed Gunfire
A SILENT FORMATION of students barely out of secondary school march up a hill directly toward — again — a Mercedes water cannon. Max hears the aggressive ricochet sound of the Photog’s motor drive before he spots him walking alongside the demonstrators, sidestepping to keep an eye on his viewfinder. He is dressed head to foot in Army greens, no doubt in the hope that cops and soldiers hesitate before shooting at him.
The mountain sun paints everything in high contrast. The cobblestones are bright but distinct, as if outlined in pen and ink. Most of the kids wear cheap tan pants or drab tunics, the unofficial uniform of community college students. A few wear toque-like alpaca hats with strings hanging from the earflaps. Some of the girls have shirts or sweaters with beads that sparkle in the sunlight. Almost all the faces have high, strong cheekbones and smooth skin the colour of pennies. Max thinks they could pass for native people in some parts of North America. They march in silence with a lithe and steady gait. There are no chants to hide their fear, which is easy to see in their dark wide eyes and tight mouths. But their shoulders are back and their heads straight, like they’re posing for school graduation photos.
They wear white bandanas over their mouths to symbolize state suppression of free speech. Max thinks of the plaza and wonders if they know how brave they are.
He looks uphill, dreading what is about to happen. The black cannon waits patiently, water dripping from its tanks. The Army is absent. Max thinks they’ve either abandoned shows of co-operation or they’re busy in the capital mounting the long-awaited counter-coup.
Max is no tactician, but the positions of the opposing forces make him fearful for the students. The cops can see all the streets and buildings behind the kids, but the marchers can barely see past the cannon and cops in riot gear next to it. A cathedral forms the backdrop. Max looks down-slope and is unsurprised to see an armoured personnel carrier slide in to block the way the kids have come. One block farther downhill, the street is conspicuously open.
He cannot understand why the students would put themselves in that position. Perhaps they thought the clergy would emerge from the cathedral to protect them. Max looks up the hill. No clergy in sight.
Max hears the Photog yelling: “Here it comes, man! Here it comes.”
The water cannon driver revs the diesel engine, creating a plume of black exhaust.
The Photog takes one look uphill, shoots without looking through the viewfinder, and joins Max on the sidelines. He hands over two rolls of exposed film, as is now their custom.
“What do you think?”
Max looks him fully in the face and for the first time realizes that the Photog might share part of his bloodline with the kids behind him.
“We’re in deep shit,” Max says. “We’re in the middle of it again.”
The Photog looks around and then at Max.
“Jesus, amigo. How does this happen? You’re a dangerous guy to be around.”
“Some would call it a knack for being in the right place at the right time,” Max says, not believing it.
Without ceremony, the water cannon lets loose. Again, the kids go down like dominoes. From the rear, the cops launch tear gas grenades. The foreign correspondents take off downhill. Max doesn’t bother taking notes, but the Photog stops every 10 yards or so and fires the motor drive. Max shouts at him as he starts to follow the crowd toward the open side street on the left.
“That’s a trap! Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I fucking remember! It was your job to make sure this didn’t happen again.”
Max looks around. “Oh, Christ.”
They follow the kids into the side street. Half a block down they encounter a cordon of black-clad cops with rifles and Uzis blocking the way, forcing them into a street on the right. A hundred yards away, an Army troop truck waits for them, blocking the way. This, Max thinks, must be Army’s show of co-operation. Out of choices, the kids charge toward the truck. Max has seen something like this before, at a slaughterhouse.
The foreign correspondents scoot into a doorway. The Photog takes a light-reading. “This is going to be bad,” he yells.
But the truck shifts into gear and every one of the dozen or so soldiers in the back turn to face the cops and extend their middle fingers. They hold that pose as the truck drives into an alley and out of the way. The kids charge past. It occurs to Max that few of them even noticed what happened. He and the Photog rejoin them.
And then Max gets a taste of “real action”. The cops open fire. For the foreign correspondents, all desire to report on the event is supplanted by the urge to go on living.
In that same moment, protesters and foreign correspondents turn as one, shift into overdrive and accelerate like race cars. The sounds of the shots do not recede but instead surround them. Max’s is certain there is a bullet coming his way. Muscles in his back tense up involuntarily to prepare for the blow. Surely to God this can’t be the end, he thinks.
A final surge of adrenalin transforms everything. The hardpan underfoot turns into a plush carpet. Running becomes effortless. He can see the rest of the crowd in front of him and feel the Photog just behind him. He can see every pothole and stone miles before he reaches them. Even better, he can see who is going to change direction before it happens and can slip past them effortlessly, like Kareem setting up for the skyhook.
Despite the weight of his armoured camera bag, the Photog manages to keep up as they come upon an open field scarred by a series of ditches. Max clears them easily, hanging in the air for as long as it takes — forever if necessary — to find the right landing spot. One, two, three, four ditches. Max feels no impact when his foot hits the dirt, just a sense of his muscle absorbing the force and straining against the ground for more speed. Now he veers left, away from the demonstrators, and leads the Photog on a long arc through baked farmland and septic fields. He is ecstatic each time his feet dig into the dirt and his strong legs start the cycle again. Ahead, he can see his route to safety, etched in the hardpan.
I’m a fucking gazelle, Max exults. I’m an eagle.
The shooting ends long before Max and his friend stop at the edge of a stream. They lean over, hands on knees, sucking air for several minutes.
“You okay?” the Photog finally gasps.
“Yeah. You?”
The Photog extends his hand and offers the plantation-owner smile: “Yes. And may I say, sir, what an excellent job you did of running away.”
“And may I add, your own demonstration of flight was exemplary, encumbered as you were by photographic equipment. It was an honour trying to stay ahead you.”
They took a few more breaths. “I suppose this makes us chicken,” Max says.
“Perhaps. But chickens who are . . . how you say in English . . . alive.”
“And there’s no need to mention our cowardice,” Max says. “The Bureau Chief himself said readers want to know about the incident — assuming it’s over — not what we did to cover it.”
“Precisely!” the Photog says emphatically. “They do not want to know how scared we were.”
Max’s thoughts goes to his fleeting experience as a gazelle with the eyes of an eagle. The Photog notices.
“You were scared, weren’t you?” he asks.
“Yeah, but mostly I’ve never been so high in my life,” Max replies.
The Photog gives him a thoughtful look: “We are more different than I thought.”
Max notices they can see the back of the cathedral, which means they can circle some more and arrive at El Palacio de las Montanas.
Max stares at the cathedral, noting that no one had emerged from what would certainly be a richly-appointed interior to plead for the safety of their flock.