THE RESCUE

A sepia etching onscreen. Written at the bottom in gold lettering: “The Hanging of Captain Strobe the Gentleman Pirate. Panama City, May 13, 1702.” In the center of the square in front of a courthouse Captain Strobe stands on a gallows platform with a noose around his neck. He is a slender handsome youth of twenty-five in eighteenth-century costume, his blond hair tied in a knot at the back of his head. He looks disdainfully down at the crowd. A line of soldiers stands in front of the gallows.

The etching slowly comes alive, giving off a damp heat, a smell of weeds and mud flats and sewage. Vultures roost on the old courthouse of flaking yellow stucco. The gypsy hangman—thin, effeminate-looking, with greasy crinkled hair and glistening eyes—stands by the gallows with a twisted smirk on his face. The crowd is silent, mouths open, waiting.

At a signal from an officer, a soldier steps forward with an ax and knocks the support from under the platform. Strobe falls and hangs there, his feet a few inches above the limestone paving which is cracked here and there, weeds and vines growing through. Five minutes pass in silence. Vultures wheel overhead. On Strobe’s face is a strange smile. A yellow-green aura surrounds his body.

The silence is shattered by an explosion. Chunks of masonry rain down on the square. The blast swings Strobe’s body in a long arc, his feet brushing the weeds. The soldiers rush offstage, leaving only six men to guard the gallows. The crowd surges forward, pulling out knives, cutlasses, and pistols. The soldiers are disarmed. A lithe boy who looks like a Malay shows white teeth and bright red gums as he throws a knife. The knife catches the hangman in the throat just above the collarbone. He falls squawking and spitting blood like a stricken bird. Captain Strobe is cut down and borne to a waiting carriage.

The carriage careens into a side street. Inside the cart the boy loosens the noose and presses air in and out of Strobe’s lungs. Strobe opens his eyes and writhes in agony from the pricklings and shootings as his circulation returns. The boy gives him a vial of black liquid.

“Drink this, Captain.”

In a few minutes the laudanum takes effect and Strobe is able to walk as they leave the cart. The boy leads the way along a jungle path to a fishing boat moored at a pier on the outskirts of the city. Two younger boys are in the boat. The boat is cast off and the sail set. Captain Strobe collapses on a pallet in the cabin. The boy helps him undress and covers him with a cotton blanket.

*   *   *

Strobe lay back with closed eyes. He had not slept since his capture three days ago. The opium and the movement of the boat spread a pleasant languor through his body. Pictures drifted in front of his eyes.…

A vast ruined stone building with square marble columns in a green underwater light … a luminous green haze, thicker and darker at ground level, shading up to light greens and yellows … deep blue canals and red brick buildings … sunlight on water … a boy standing on a beach naked with dusky rose genitals … red night sky over a desert city … clusters of violet light raining down on sandstone steps and bursting with a musky smell of ozone … strange words in his throat, a taste of blood and metal … a white ship sailing across a gleaming empty sky dusted with stars … singing fish in a ruined garden … a strange pistol in his hand that shoots blue sparks … beautiful diseased faces in red light, all looking at something he cannot see.…

He awoke with a throbbing erection and a sore throat, his brain curiously blank and factual. He accepted his rescue as he had been prepared to accept his death. He knew exactly where he was: some forty miles south of Panama City. He could see the low coastline of mangrove swamps laced with inlets, the shark fins, the stagnant seawater.