Dinner with the Colonel

Dinner with The Colonel
A short story by Josh Morrey
Based on the poem, “The Colonel”
By Carolyn Forché

I choked back the bile rising in my throat and once again resisted the urge to vomit all over myself and the luggage at my feet. It was a scorching hot day, the heat from the sun smoldering up from the asphalt of the tarmac at the Bogotá International Airport. Though we’d only been standing on the tarmac for five minutes, sweat already drenched me from head to toe. Jeans and black T-shirts were not the recommended attire when traveling in Columbia.
   
    I glanced at the man standing next to me, Daniel Copfield, hard hitting power-reporter for Time Magazine’s newest syndicated news magazine, “In The Line”. Dan seemed right at home in the heat and I hated him for it. Not to mention the fact that it was Dan’s fault that I was standing there, on the hottest day of the year, fearing for my own life. The small jetliner we had flown in on taxied away behind us and we were left standing alone on the tarmac.
   
    Dan took a deep breath and said, “Smell that air kid. That is the scent of truth and justice. Today, The Colonel will answer to the voice of the people. Today, he will answer the question burning on the tongues of every diplomat and political leader in the free world. Today, he will answer, ‘why?’.”
   
    The bile rose in my throat again. At least he had the burning part right. Dan was the driving force behind, “In The Line”. Produced by Dan himself, the magazine’s premise was centered around interviews conducted with the world’s leading dictators; interviews arranged through a man named Ted Baxter, Dan’s contact in the International Monetary Fund, an organization dedicated to loaning money to third world countries in order to help boost their economy. Most small countries vie for loans from the IMF, and Ted used his position in the IMF to organize these interviews for Dan so that the dictators of these countries could attempt to show how they were worthy to receive an IMF loan.
   
    Today was going to be Dan’s most dangerous and controversial interview yet. Today he was in Columbia to speak with, arguably, the world’s foremost dictator; a man who has killed more people in his own country than any other dictator in world history; a man so deranged that he fed his eldest son to a pack of wild dogs to keep him from defecting to the United States; a man known as “The Colonel”, Jorge Rodriguez Garcia. And today, he had brought me with him.
   
    A photographer by trade, I had worked for Time magazine for twelve years before transferring to “In The Line”. My hope was to get out from under the thumb of the top photographers at Time. Even after twelve years, I was still a low man on the totem pole, so to speak. In transferring to the new franchise I was hoping to get a fresh start; to begin at the top rather than the bottom. So far, all had gone well. I was quickly elevated to one of the leading photographers and given some of the most exciting assignments.
   
    Until this one.
   
    There are many of my colleagues who would find this sort of assignment to be the cream of the crop. Indeed, Dan’s usual photographer, Blair Christian, actually volunteered for the assignment, and I, for one, was happy to let him have it. Unfortunately, Blair had come down with pneumonia two days earlier and was forced to back out of the interview, and I was the one Dan chose to take his place.
   
    Lucky me.
   
    I must have looked sick. Lord knows I felt sick, because Dan asked, “Are you feeling alright kid? You look kinda pale.”
   
    I nodded in response but could not open my mouth for fear that the turkey sandwich and roasted peanuts form the plane would come gushing forth.
   
    “Relax, kid,” Dan said slapping me hard in the back, (which didn’t help to keep the bile down) “The key to these interviews is confidence. Show no fear and no harm will come to you.”
   
    I nodded once again, indicating that I understood, which was a lie, and fidgeted with the camera hanging around my neck. At least I had that. When everything else seemed to fall apart, I could always take comfort in my pictures. When it came to photography, I was in control. I called the shots—I realized that “shots” was a bad term which only scared me further—I was in charge. I decided what pictures to take and I decided which of those pictures to keep and which ones to discard carelessly. It was my world.
   
    “Here we go,” Dan said and I looked up to see a lone, ancient army jeep rumbling down the tarmac towards us. My knees felt like Jell-o, I shifted my weight hoping to get some circulation moving around. The jeep roared to a stop in front of us and two men holding AK-47s jumped out of the back and began shouting orders in Spanish. The driver stayed in his place. Luckily, Dan spoke Spanish and was able to respond. I failed Spanish in ninth grade and never bothered to try again. I was happy to let Dan do all of the talking.
   
    “Take your camera off and set it on your bag,” Dan said to me, “Then step back and spread your arms and legs so they can frisk you.”
   
    I complied by taking a step backward but kept my camera clenched tightly in my tense, sweaty hands. No way was I going to let these mongrels mishandle the one thing I had left to hold on to. Dan was patted down from head to foot, then the mercenary—I can only assume he was a mercenary of some sort—came around behind me and began to pat down all the areas I could reasonably be concealing a weapon. Finished in the back, the man walked around front and then stopped, looking at my camera.
   
    “Quite la cámara,” he said quietly in Spanish. Not understanding a word of it, I simply stood there acting as if nothing were wrong. His breath reeked of tequila and cigarettes, another agent adding to my overall nausea.
   
    Suddenly the man was up in my face, his very countenance assaulting my every sense, and screamed, “Tú haz como digo! Ahora, quite esa cámara!” then he added quietly with a sinister smile, “O rajaré la garganta tuya y le alimentaré a mi iguana.”
   
    “Take the camera off, Kid,” Dan said quietly, “Or they’re going to kill you.”
   
    “But what if they break it?” I started to protest, but the ugly mercenary was in my face again, showering me with spittle as he screamed.
   
    “No habla con él! Tú hablas conmigo! Vas a darme la cámara o tengo que estrangularte con tus propios intestinos?”
   
    “Just do it, Kid,” Dan said. Grudgingly I removed the camera from around my neck and held it out to the mercenary, who gave me a smile of superiority and yanked the camera from my hands. The two mercenaries finished rifling through our luggage, leaving a mess of clothes and toiletries strewn across the ground. They then ordered us, according to Dan, to pick up our things and get in the jeep to which we obliged quickly. I was just grateful to be able to sit down.
   
    The drive to the compound was long and dusty. We were not allowed to speak, though it mattered little because we couldn’t so much as hear ourselves think over the deafening roar of the jeep’s badly out of tune engine. I tried to snap a few shots of the landscape as we drove, but the dirt roads we traveled were so bumpy you would think we were crossing the Rocky Mountains. Most of those shots didn’t turn out. After the longest hour and a half of my life, we finally arrived at The Colonel’s military compound.
   
    Located in the dead center of absolutely nowhere, the compound was surrounded for miles by deserted wasteland; sagebrush, rock, and a whole lot of dirt. Out here, no one can hear you scream, I thought pessimistically. The dirt road we traveled on led right up to a pair of giant wooden doors, framed by a twenty-foot wall of adobe topped with coils of barbed wire. The huge wall surrounded the entire compound with towers placed, one at each corner, to watch over the entire area, inside and out.
   
    The mercenary who had frisked us got out of the jeep, gun in hand, and shouted something—incoherent above the sound of the engine—to someone on the opposite side of the doors. After a moments pause, the two doors parted between them and swung open slowly, being pushed by two scrawny boys, probably slaves. Another man, AK-47 equipped, stood on the far side of the gate waiting for us to enter. The driver ground the gears into first and rolled us into the compound.
   
    There was no way out of it now.
   
    The driver pulled the jeep into a small, wooden shack pretending to be a garage, while the man at the gate followed behind us. As we began to climb out of the jeep, this new figure said to us, “Welcome to El Pradera.” His English was good with only a slight accent.
   
    Dan laughed to himself and said, “El Pradera, huh? ‘The Meadow’. That’s cute.”
The man did not laugh, though he did smile, and said, “Mr. Copfield, I presume,” to which Dan nodded his head gracefully, “And you are?” he asked turning to me.
   
    “McKay,” I said bluntly. “Cutter McKay. I’m the photographer.”
   
    “But of course you are,” the man said broadening his smile. “And you may call me Mr. V. I am The Colonel’s consigliore.” Mr. V. slung his rifle behind his back and we all shook hands. He then spouted a few orders in quick Spanish to the two mercenaries who had brought us here. “They will take care of your luggage. If you will follow me.” He motioned us out of the garage toward a large, two story adobe mansion set central inside the compound. I gripped my camera tightly and fell into step behind Dan as he confidently strode toward the mansion. The mercenary who originally searched us, I overheard Mr. V. refer to him as, José, fell into step behind me.
   
    “Feel free to take pictures, Mr. McKay,” Mr. V. said to me as we walked. I complied gladly, losing myself in the photographer’s world of angles and lighting. I took special interest in the myriad of broken glass bottles sticking out of the adobe walls of the home. I presumed they were there to keep intruders from scaling the walls in order to gain access to the roof. I also noted the thick iron bars covering every window. Some of the bars had been painted brightly in a sloppy, childlike manner. While I snapped away happily, the consigliore continued to talk.
   
    “The Colonel is busy at the moment, but hopes you will indulge him by joining his family for dinner this evening.”
   
    “Are we to conduct the interview during dinner?” Dan asked.
   
    “If you wish, though The Colonel would prefer it if the discussion could wait until afterward.”
   
    “Very well,” Dan conceded.

    Inside, the home of The Colonel was impressive. The room directly beyond the front door was very spacious and contained a large circular fountain flanked by two curved stairways ascending to the second level. The walls were plastered with intricately designed wallpaper of deep reds and oranges. Candelabras hung from the walls, though it looked as though they had not been used in many years. I took pictures of these as well. A large crystal chandelier hung limply from the ceiling, its crystals splashing small rainbow prisms across the entire entryway.
   
    As we entered, we were greeted menacingly by two loudly barking, black Doberman Pincers. I jumped at the sight and sounds of the animals, somehow Dan kept his cool. Mr. V. chased the dogs away.
   
    We were led down a hall to the right of the front door into a large library, decorated floor to ceiling with shelves stocked to overflowing with books of every color, size and shape. The library was furnished with several couches, love seats and ottomans. A small wet bar stood in one corner.
   
    “The Colonel will be with you as soon as he is finished with the business at hand,” Mr. V. reported. “Feel free to help yourself to a drink while you wait.” He motioned to the mini bar in the corner, and then returned to the door we had just entered through. “If you will excuse me, there are matters I need to attend to. You will understand that I must ask you to remain in this room until you are summoned.” He smiled again and slid the wooden retracting door shut. Before the doors closed I noticed José taking up a guard position outside the library. To make sure we didn’t try anything funny, I was sure.
   
    I sighed and looked around. Dan wasted no time in making his way to the bar and helping himself to a drink.
   
    “You want something?” he asked me.
   
    “No, thanks,” I replied, “Even if it weren’t against my beliefs, I don’t think I could keep it down.” I plopped down heavily into a beige leather sofa.
   
    “You’ve got to relax, Kid,” Dan said mixing his drink, a gin and tonic I think, and joined me, easing into a large black armchair. “We’ll have dinner, talk to the Colonel and be out of here before you know it. Fours hours tops.” He winked at me. It didn’t help.
   
    I took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. I tried to recall some yoga relaxation techniques an old girlfriend had once attempted to teach me, to no avail. I thought about capturing the magnificent library on film, but found I wasn’t in the mood to photograph books. With dismay I realized I wasn’t in the mood to photograph anything. That had not happened to me for a long, long time. If it were possible, it scared me even more.
   
    The time passed in silence.
   
    After an hour, Mr. V. returned, apologized again for the delay, and led us, with José never very far behind, from the library, back through the fantastic entryway to a large room on the other side of the house where a long, rectangular mahogany table sat trimmed for a feast. A diamond shaped, lace table cloth partially covered the center of the table, its extended tips pointing toward the long ends of the table. A massive bowl of fruit served as the centerpiece for the arrangement teeming with bananas, mangos and others I could not identify. The place settings were prepared for six diners at one end of the table with one set at the head, presumably for The Colonel himself. I counted twelve high-backed chairs around the table, five on each long side and one at each end. Only two were filled at that moment.
   
    The two seats on the far side of the table from us closest to the head were occupied by a young man probably close to eighteen and a younger girl of about fifteen. The young man, dark skinned with black hair and a thin mustache, had a pair of white wires hanging down from the buds embedded in his ears to the thin, black iPod sitting on the table next to his plate. He was dressed in camouflage pants and a black T-shirt with white text scribble in Spanish printed on the front. I recognized the words, “Estados Unidos,” ‘United States’, and what I was pretty sure was a curse word of some sort before them. He bobbed his head along with the music and played with a very sharp looking butterfly knife. This did not set me at ease.
   
    The girl was dressed as the punk-rocker girls of America dressed at the time: tight black pants, a leather belt studded with metal spikes, wristbands to match, a black and gray hooded sweater with some American rock band’s logo on the front, awkwardly cropped black hair with a long red streak in the front, and entirely too much mascara. Two small metal hoops punctured her right eyebrow. Her fingernails were painted a bright orange and she sat at the table meticulously filing each one to near perfection.
   
    Meet the family.
   
    Dan and I were directed to our seats on the opposite side of the table from the children, (I would never have dared call them children to their faces). The girl gave a quick half-smile. The boy did not look up. José planted himself in a corner, AK-47 always in hand. Feeling fidgety, I examined the dinnerware in front of me. The plate was beautifully and expensively decorated china, the utensils of pure silver. There was a rust colored napkin under the two spoons and butter knife which sat opposite to the two forks on the other side of the plate. A dessert fork lay at the head of the plate next to a thin, crystal wine glass and a tumbler filled with water with crushed ice floating in it. At least The Colonel lived well.
   
    A squawk startled me from my musing and I noted a large, beautiful, green and red painted parrot perched in a cage on the terrace. It squawked again, as if warning me of something—maybe it was just my imagination—and nibbled at a slice of banana stuck in between the bars of its cage.
   
    Only a few moments passed before we were joined by The Colonel and his wife. The sight of this man struck fear into my very soul. He was tall, probably six-foot-two, with jet black hair thinning in front. A thick, charcoal mustache tinged with gray clung to his upper lip and a two days’ growth of stubble darkened his cheeks and jowls. His cold, calculating eyes sunk deep into his skull beneath thick furrowed eyebrows. His wicked smiled showed yellow, rotting teeth. Like his son, he wore fatigues, his colored in the reds and grays of urban camouflage. His jacket was unfastened to reveal a thin, white “wife-beater” style tank top and a gold chain around his neck carried a small Christus, complete with the hanging form of the crucified Christ. I wondered briefly at oxymoron of a Christian mass murderer, but quickly dismissed such thoughts from my mind.
   
    As The Colonel entered, Dan and I stood out of respect. The children did not stand. The two Doberman’s we met briefly earlier followed their master in and settled down on a rug behind The Colonel’s chair.
   
    “Gentlemen,” The Colonel said in a heavy accent, “Welcome. Please sit.” We did as instructed. “Mr. Copfield, Mr. eh…?”
   
    “Mc…McKay,” I stammered.
   
    “And Mr. McKay, let me introduce my wife, Maria,” he motioned to the woman next to him, whose pretty face had been etched with deep wrinkles brought on by stress and probably fear. She wore a simple turquoise dress and no makeup. Dan and I each shook her soft, limp hand briefly. “And these are my children, Juan Miguel, and Anna Lucia.” Anna Lucia smiled again, Juan Miguel continued to ignore.
   
    “Juan Miguel!” The Colonel suddenly shouted, “Quite esos auriculares malditos y salude a nuestras huéspedes!” Juan Miguel looked up with his eyes, but not his head, leaving it hanging down, giving him an eerie, evil look. He studied us with a cold stare and I felt as if he could read the deepest recesses of my inner self. It sent a chill down my spine.
   
    After a moment he yanked the earphones free and said, “Si ésta no fuera casa de mi padre, le mataría donde usted está parado.” He then looked to see if his father was appeased, which he seemed to be. This statement seemed to make even Dan a little uncomfortable, which in turn made me very uncomfortable.
   
    The Colonel then directed us to sit, Dan’s seat being closer to The Colonel, next to his wife, and he and his wife joined us at the table. In sitting down, The Colonel removed a black 9mm pistol from its holster at the small of his back and set it on the table next to him. I nearly choked on my own saliva. He picked up a large gold bell sitting beside his plate and rang it loudly. A maid appeared from a swinging door at the far end of the table bringing the first course of the meal, soup, in a large, silver bowl. The meal progressed smoothly, The Colonel doing most of the talking. He spoke in English of politics, economics, agriculture, and science. He spoke highly of his own country and poorly of ours, especially of our media system. He asked us our opinions of what we had seen so far. I lied, stating it was a beautiful country. Dan was a little more truthful though I noted how carefully he chose his words.
   
    The main course was Rack of Lamb, deliciously marinated, steamed vegetables, a type of bread, and fruit from the centerpiece. A red wine was served, and though alcohol is against my religion, when a man with a gun in one hand and an army in the other offers you wine, you accept it gracefully and gratefully. The Colonel finished several glasses of the sweet wine himself during the meal. Cincón was served for dessert.
   
    After dinner, Juan Miguel got up, whispered something in his father’s ear, and was excused for the evening. Anna Lucia flipped on an old television set with poor, fuzzy reception. I heard the familiar theme song from “Cops” through the soft static. Maria got up and began clearing the table. She collected our plates and silverware. As she collected The Colonel’s utensils, he slid his chair back and propped his feet upon the cushion of his wife’s empty chair. He picked the 9mm up and waved it in his hand as he spoke.
   
    He insisted then that I take pictures of him in his home and posed as I snapped the shots. He chose the poses, most them involving his gun in one position or another.
   
    “Alright, Mr. Copfield, let’s begin this interview of yours,” The Colonel finally said.
   
    “Well then, let’s get right to the hard-hitting questions,” Dan said sitting forward and removing a small notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. It was the hard-hitting questions that scared me. Why couldn’t he start with something simple like, ‘How long have you lived in this beautiful home?’ or ‘How are your children doing in school?’? But no, he had to begin with:
   
    “What makes you think that you can use your position of power to trample the basic human rights of your subjects?”
   
    I nearly passed out.
   
    The Colonel was stunned by the bluntness of the question as well. He hesitated for several moments before saying to me, “Mr. McKay, what do you do in your free time? Besides pictures I mean?”
   
    Caught of guard by his question, I glanced at Dan, who seemed quite annoyed by this redirection, and then stuttered, “I…well, I like to…write, usually.”
   
    “Write what? Propaganda filth like your compatriot here?” The Colonel demanded.
   
    “No! No,” I replied quickly. “Poetry, mostly.”
   
    “You are a poet? How nice for you. Have you ever heard of the poet, Rico Garcia?” I shook my head cautiously. “Of course you haven’t. He was my father. I killed him when I was fourteen because he wasted his time writing poetry while our country corroded around us.”
   
    The bile rose again.
   
    “But you are not like him,” The Colonel continued, “You at least work for your livelihood, even if it is for a magazine of garbage and filth.”
   
    “Colonel Garcia,” Dan dangerously interrupted, “Will you please answer my question.”
   
    The Colonel glared at Dan for a full minute, fire blazing in the man’s dark eyes. How people like Dan found the courage to upset gun-wielding madmen I would never know.
   
    Another squawk from the parrot broke the silence and The Colonel yelled at it to shut up. He was upset. We had just upset one of the most ruthless and lawless killers on the face of planet Earth. In my opinion, we were dead.
   
    The Colonel suddenly sat forward quickly, yanking his booted feet from the cushion of his wife’s chair. He glared back and forth between Dan and myself and then slammed his gun down on the cushion in front of him, got up and left the room. I glanced at Dan, but his eyes told me to say nothing and to do nothing. Not that I could have moved at that point, even if I’d wanted to.
   
    The Colonel returned very shortly, storming into the room with a crinkled, brown paper bag; the kind used to bring groceries home in. Without a word he dumped the contents of the bag out onto the table. Hundreds of severed human ears, dried and shriveled, tumbled out across the place settings. They resembled dried peach halves; this is the only way that I can describe them, and suddenly, the mango I was picking at lost its appeal.
   
    Instinctively I recoiled in shock, covering my mouth with my hand just in time to keep the vomit from spurting out all over the table, which elicited a smile from The Colonel. Again Dan managed to retain his poise. The Colonel picked up one of the ears and began shaking it in the air.
   
    “I am tired of fooling around,” he said. He dropped the ear into the glass of water in front of him, its decaying skin dissolving somewhat, tainting the water with small floating particles. “As for the right’s of anyone,” he paused, dropping into his chair again, “tell your people to they can go f*ck themselves.” He swept his arms across the table, brushing most of the ears off onto the floor. The dogs jumped up and began sniffing and tasting the ears.
   
    I swallowed the vomit back down, making myself even sicker. I heard a commercial in Spanish coming from the television.
   
    In an instant, Dan’s hand lanced out, snatching up The Colonel’s gun from where it lay on the seat next to him, and before anyone in the room had a chance to react, Dan shot The Colonel square in the chest. Startled, I cried out loud, the thunderous blast of the pistol deafening me for several moments. The force of the blast toppled The Colonel backwards in his chair where he landed flat on his back and slid out of the seat a bit, one leg still dangling across the front of the horizontal seat.
   
    In another instant, José began shouting in Spanish and brought his gun up and trained on Dan who, also in that instant had flung the gun to the ground and thrust his hands straight up in the air in surrender, while Anna Lucia ran screaming from the room. 
   
    The next instant brought Mr. V., Mrs. Garcia, and host of three other armed guards into the dinning room, guns in hand and immediately pointed at the two of us. They all shouted in Spanish, Maria burst in to tears and dropped beside her fallen husband.
   
    I peed myself, something I had not done since I was a boy. It seems funny now, but I took comfort then from the urine in my trousers. The warmth soaking my loins was almost soothing and helped to distract me from my imminent death.
   
    A hoarse cough from The Colonel summoned the attention of all of us in the room to the man lying in a pool of his own blood. He looked at everyone in the room one at a time, stopping his gaze at last on me, and through yellow teeth now tinged with red he smiled and said, “Something for your poetry, no?”
   
    Then he died.
   
    If possible, Maria’s wailing grew louder, and even the dogs began to howl, whether out of grief or just to join their voices with Maria’s I’ll never know.
Time stood still then. Scientists don’t believe it is possible to stop the world form turning, but I can attest with every fiber of my being that not a particle moved, down to the tiniest electron, in that house. Dan and I, with our arms held high, waiting for the men with the guns pointed at us to shoot, who were waiting for the order from Mr. V., who was waiting for instructions from his master, who was waiting for nothing anymore. The barely audible static from the TV was deafening in that silence.
   
    Finally, to my great surprise and relief, Mr. V. lowered his gun, José and the other guards slowly and confusedly following suite. Mr. V. walked over to where Dan had flung The Colonel’s 9mm, picked it up, walked back to Dan and kneeling before him, presented him with the weapon.
   
    “By killing the master, you have become the master,” Mr. V. said confidently.
Dan looked at me then, his face an even blend of fear, wonder and triumph.
   
    “We’d better call Ted,” I said reaching for my phone.