The Demands of the Dead by Justin Podur Page A

moved that they weren't going to be talked out of this. They came to fight, not quite a fair fight with two-to-one odds, but they came empty-handed, gave me fair warning, and because of that, I wouldn't hurt them – much. By my count, if I spilled their blood, I would lose; if I broke any of their bones, I would lose; and if I surrendered or lost the fight, I would definitely lose.
    Doctrine for fighting multiple attackers was to use footwork to keep one of them between you and the other. These guys approached with bluster, as cops usually do, sure of their size and strength in numbers, and I could easily have maneuvered my back to the wall, to keep Escalante in the middle and Madero, with his short arms, behind and out of reach to hit me. But I also did not want to leave any visible injuries and I, too, wanted to send a message. So I leaned to one wall, leaving enough space on the other side for Madero to start making his way behind me. Escalante threw the first punch, the standard high right hook, which I guided with my right hand into my left elbow, in the Filipino Eskrima style.
    Don't hit the face , Mr. Manley taught , because the face can't hit you. The hand can.
    He pulled his hand back – I wrapped my left hand around his tricep, cupped it, and slammed my right elbow into his bicep, full force. His arm hung limp and he took a step back, holding his right arm with his left. He wouldn't be throwing any more right hooks in this fight.
    Madero grabbed my left arm and tried to turn me completely away from him. I wrapped my left arm deep into his underarm, took another step back into him, and pulled him into a Japanese shoulder throw from judo – seoi nage. It's an ideal throw if your uke (the one you're throwing) is taller than you are, and Madero was shorter, but it still mostly worked.
    Madero fell flat and hard on his back between me and Escalante, all the air whooshing out of his lungs. I held on to his arm, pulled it up, and kneeled upright on his face. From here, I could break his elbow or his shoulder just by turning my body, and I turned very slowly to show him that I could.
    “ Son resbalosos estos pisos,” I said, out loud now Slippery, these hallways . “Do you need a hand up?” I looked up at Escalante, still stupidly cradling his arm. “Maybe you can help officer Madero up? I'm going to bed.”
    I put my weight down on Madero before springing back up again off of his body.
    As I rose I saw that Chavez had walked out of our room and was cautiously approaching us with his service weapon drawn. Escalante helped Madero up and they scrambled off.
    “They don't like you,” I said.
    “No,” he said.
    Chapter 4
     
    We left as the base was waking up at dawn, neither of us seeing much value in another encounter with anyone on Hatuey base. Chavez went back to Tuxtla and his superiors. I wanted to see some of the people whose photographs I had been looking at, so I went to San Cristobal de las Casas.
    San Cris is two hours east of Tuxtla in a bus - my new mode of transportation now that I was leaving the world of Seguridad Publica to travel among the rebels. San Cris was a city nestled into the mountains, and to get to it you went through them, looking up or down a mountain at every stretch, at the jungle or at somebody’s farm. Where Tuxtla was big, sprawling, new, built for the car and the bus, San Cristobal was colonial cobblestone town where people walked everywhere. Tuxtla's modern mestizo Mexicans going about their daily routines were replaced in San Cristobal with indigenous people in their traditional clothing, sitting on the grey stones selling their handicrafts to young backpackers from Europe and the US who wandered in groups looking for fun.
    The bus dropped me off north of the city. I walked to the zocalo , the city square, crowded with backpackers and tourists even now, late at night. I needed to set up a headquarters – I needed to find a hotel. I sat on a bench in the park in the middle of