The Magdalena Curse by F.G. Cottam Page B

down his tray and seen the listing. He had gone to Hatchard’s really on a whim. Already he regarded his having met his future wife as a sort of miracle. Nothing up to the point of his deployment in Bolivia would shake Mark Hunter’s faith in that grateful conviction.
     
    Now, sleepless in the ravine, he went to get his pack and took from it some paper and a pen. There was an unfamiliar duty he had forgotten to perform and he needed to carry out. He had to write a letter to Lillian that might be his last. It was a new responsibility and it was onerous but he had no choice. She had the right to final words from him should he not survive the coming encounter. He would keep the tone light. He had misgivings about this operation, an uneasiness he could not have articulated to himself, let alone to her. He would not be dishonest in what he wrote. One discovered lie and he believed he would lose her. That was her promise. That was the standard she set. He would not truly have dared to lie to her. She was too precious a prize for him to think of risking the loss. But there was enough honest comedy in the circumstances to allow him some cheer in the writing. And he did not believe he was going to be killed or injured in the contact to come. No soldier really ever does. It’s always what happens in a fight to someone else. Hunter wrote with brevity and good cheer, signed his note with a kiss and folded the paper into
an envelope he licked shut and put back into his pack. Much had recently changed in his life and the change was greatly for the better. But he was experienced at what he was about to do and he entertained no false modesty concerning his formidable ability to do it.
    There was only so much information the men could absorb about their mission. The boys of the South were soldiers steeled for action. They were not repositories of words. They were not lovers of rhetoric. There were only so many times a weapon could be stripped and cleaned and loaded. There were only so many equipment checks a man could make on the tools on which he depended in action for survival. Fifteen minutes before their moment of departure, Hunter, Rodriguez and Peterson gathered in their little canvas command post with nothing else physically to do before setting off on the mile-long route to combat. Rodriguez took out a metal flask, unscrewed the stopper and poured them each an inch of something potent. Hunter sniffed the liquor. It was tequila. They raised their glasses and drained them.
    ‘I’m wondering about you, Hunter,’ Rodriguez said. ‘I like to know the men I fight alongside. When you’re not doing what you’re ordered to, what do you choose to do? What’s the passion in your other life?’
    Hunter wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He was silent for a moment. ‘Back at home, my wife and I light a log fire in the evening.’
    ‘It’s summer,’ Peterson said. ‘Even in England, it’s summer now.’
    ‘You don’t live in the West Country, Captain. We light a fire. And the logs take. And the room fills with the warm scent of pine resin. And I brush my wife’s hair as she sits between my knees on the rug in front of me. And I greatly cherish that ritual.’
    Rodriguez smiled and nodded.
    ‘That’s fucking tragic,’ Peterson said. ‘It’s my understanding you’ve only been married a few weeks.’
    ‘Not tragic,’ Rodriguez said. He shrugged. ‘Though somewhat English, perhaps.’
    Hunter looked at Peterson. ‘And you don’t know what it is that makes my wife’s hair require the brushing.’ He turned to Rodriguez. ‘You, Major?’
    ‘I’m teaching my daughter piano,’ Rodriguez said. ‘I treasure that time we spend together, side by side on our stools at the keyboard. She has a real and precious gift.’
    ‘Jesus,’ Peterson said to Rodriguez. ‘Is there no end to what you can do?’
    Rodriguez smiled. He looked apprehensive, even sad, though such feelings were relative, Hunter told himself. ‘What