Captains of the Sands (35 page)

“Not anymore, no, I’ve already had a fight with a cop…”

Lampião shouts:

“Zé Bahia, give Dry Gulch a rifle…”

He looks at his godson:

“Guard this exit. If anyone tries to escape, shoot him.”

He goes in to collect. Fainting and cries from inside, the sound of a shot. Then the group returns to the road. They bring along two policemen who were traveling on the train. Lampião divides up the money with the
cangaceiros
, Dry Gulch also gets a share. From a coach, a trail of blood is dripping. The good smell of the backlands penetrates Dry Gulch’s nose. The policemen are stood up against some trees. Zé Bahia cocks his rifle, but the voice of Dry Gulch asks for a favor:

“Let me, godfather. They beat me in the police station, they beat a lot of kids.”

He raises the rifle, what backlands boy doesn’t know how to shoot straight?

His somber face has a smile that fills it completely. The first one falls, the second tries to run away, but the bullet catches him in the back. Then Dry Gulch runs over on top of them with his dagger, satisfies his revenge. Zé Bahia says:

“This kid is a good one…”

“His mother was a tough one, she was my good friend…” Lampião remembers proudly.

“A real wild beast…” the traveler thinks while the train moves along slowly after the trainmen have taken the sawhorses off the tracks. The group of
cangaceiros
is lost in the brushland. The air of the backlands fills Dry Gulch’s lungs as with his knife he cuts two notches in the stock of his rifle. The first two. In the distance, the train whistles in anguish.

It had been too daring to raid that house on the Rua Rui Barbosa. Near there, on the Praça do Palácio, there were a lot of guards, detectives, policemen. But they were thirsty for adventure, they were getting bigger and bigger and more and more daring. But there were a lot of people in the house, they gave the alarm, the guards came. Pedro Bala and Big João took off down the slope of the square. Outrigger got away too. But Legless was cornered on the street. He played hide-and-seek with the guards. They’d given up on the others, thought it would be enough to catch that cripple. Legless ran from one side of the street to the other, out-dribbled one of the guards, went down the hill. But instead of going down to take the Baixa dos Sapateiros, he headed for the Praça do Palácio. Because Legless knew that if he ran on the street they would catch him for sure. They were men with longer legs than his, and, besides, he was lame, he couldn’t run very fast. And, above all, he didn’t want them to catch him. He remembered the time he’d been taken to the police station. The dreams he had on his bad nights. They wouldn’t catch him, and while he runs that’s the only thought that goes with him. The guards are right on his heels. Legless knows they’d like to catch him, that the capture of one of the Captains of the Sands is a big thing for a guard. That will be his vengeance. He won’t
let them catch him, they won’t lay a hand on his body. Legless hates them the way he hates the whole world, because he was never able to have any love. And the day he had it, he was obliged to leave it, because life had already marked him too much. He’d never had the happiness of a child. He’d become a man before he was ten years old in order to struggle for the most miserable of lives: the life of an abandoned child. He’d never come to love anyone, unless it was the dog who followed him. While the hearts of other children are still pure with feelings, Legless’s is already full of hate. He hated the city, life, men. He only loved his hatred, the feeling that made him strong and courageous in spite of his physical defect. Once a woman had been good to him. But it really wasn’t for him, but for the son she’d lost and thought had returned. At another time another woman had lain down with him in a bed, caressed his sex, taken advantage of him to collect the crumbs of love she’d never had. They’d never loved him for what he was, however, an abandoned boy, crippled and sad. A lot of people hated him. And he hated everybody. He’d been beaten at the police station, a man laughed when they beat him. For him, it’s that man who’s running after him in the figure of the guards. If they bring him in, the man will laugh again. They won’t bring him in. They’re right on his heels, but they won’t bring him in. They think he’s going to stop by the big elevator. But Legless doesn’t stop. He climbs up over the small fence, turns his face to the guards, who are still running, laughs with all the strength of his hatred, spits in the face of the one who’s approaching, holding out his arms, throws himself backward into space like a circus trapeze artist.

The whole square is suspended for a moment. “He jumped,” a woman says and faints. Legless crashes onto the hillside like a circus trapeze artist who’d missed the other trapeze. The dog is barking between the bars of the fence.

The
Jornal da Tarde
publishes a wire from Rio reporting the success of an exhibition by a young painter unknown until then. Days later it reprints some art criticism published in a Rio de Janeiro newspaper. Because the painter is a Bahian, and the
Jornal da Tarde
is very mindful of the glories of Bahia. A portion of the criticism goes on to speak of the qualities and defects of the new social painter, using and abusing expressions such as setting, light, color, angles, strength, and others, it says:

…one detail was noticed by all who went to this strange exhibition of scenes and portraits of poor boys. It is the fact that all good feelings are always represented by the figure of a thin, blond girl with feverish cheeks. And that all evil feelings are represented by a man in a black overcoat and the look of a traveler. What interpretation would a psychiatrist find in the almost unconscious repetition of these figures in all the paintings? It is known that the painter João José has a history…

And the abuse of the words color, strength, setting, light, angles, and other more complicated ones continued.

Months later a news item passed this on to the readers of the
Jornal da Tarde
under the title of

A GREEK GIFT SWINDLER “CAT” RETURNED BY BELMONTE POLICE

The Belmonte police received a real Greek gift from the Ilhéus police. A well-known young swindler who operated in Ilhéus under the name of “Cat,” after having piled up some good money from a lot of landowners and businessmen, was shipped to Belmonte. There he continued conducting swindles, at which he was a master. He managed to sell an immense tract of land, the very best for the cultivation of cacao, to several plantation owners. When they went to look at the lands, they turned out to be the bed of the Cachoeira River, no less. The Belmonte police were able to lay their hands on the fearsome swindler and sent him back to Ilhéus.

“The Ilhéusans are a lot richer than we are,” the informant ends with a certain irony, “they can support the elegant ‘Cat’ in more comfort than the sons of beautiful Belmonte, Princess of the South. Because if Belmonte is the Princess, Ilhéus is quite properly called Queen of the South.”

Among police items of small importance, the
Jornal da Tarde
noted one day that a drifter known by the name of Good-Life had raised a tremendous row at a party in the Cidade da Palha, opening the skull of the master of the house with a beer bottle, and that he was being sought by the police.

During one Christmas season the
Jornal da Tarde
appeared with enormous headlines. A news item as sensational as the one that brought to light the story of the woman who traveled with Lampião’s band, the
cangaceiro
’s mistress. Because the population of the five States of Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Paraíba, and Pernambuco lives with its eyes fixed on Lampião. With hate or with love, never with indifference. The headline said in block letters:

16-YEAR-OLD CHILD IN LAMPIÃO’S GANG

Large type was also used for the heading of the story:

IS ONE OF THE MOST FEARED OF THE BANDITS—THIRTY-THREE NOTCHES ON HIS RIFLE—BELONGED TO THE “CAPTAINS OF THE SANDS”—DEATH OF AX-HEAD DUE TO DRY GULCH.

The story was long. It spoke of how in the villages sacked some time back people noticed a boy of sixteen among Lampião’s band, who bore the name Dry Gulch. In spite of his age, the young
cangaceiro
had become feared all through the backlands as one of the cruelest of the group. It was said that his rifle had thirty-five notches. And each notch on the rifle of a
cangaceiro
stands for a dead man. Then came the story of the death of Ax-Head, one of the oldest veterans in Lampião’s gang.

It so happened that the gang had caught an old police sergeant on the road. And Lampião had given him to Dry Gulch to “dispatch.” Dry Gulch was “dispatching” him slowly, with the point of a dagger, cutting out small pieces with obvious satisfaction. It was so cruel that Ax-Head, horrified, raised his rifle to put an end to Dry Gulch. But before he could fire, Lampião, who was very proud of Dry Gulch, shot Ax-Head. Dry Gulch went on with his task.

The item went on to tell of various other crimes of the sixteen-year-old bandit. Then the author remembered that a boy with the name Dry Gulch had lived with the Captains of the Sands and that it was possible that it was the same one. Then came several considerations of a moral nature.

The edition sold out.

Months later the edition sold out again, because it carried the news of Dry Gulch’s capture while he was sleeping by the flying column that covered the backlands in pursuit of Lampião. It announced that the
cangaceiro
would arrive in Bahia the following day. There were several pictures where Dry Gulch appeared with his somber face. The
Jornal da Tarde
said that it was the “face of a born criminal.”

Which wasn’t true, as the
Jornal da Tarde
itself observed some time later, when it related, in extra editions and supplements,
the trial that condemned Dry Gulch to 30 years in prison for 15 known and proven killings. His rifle had 60 notches, however. And the newspaper recalled that fact, repeating that each notch was a dead man. But it also published part of the report by a forensic doctor, a gentleman of recognized honesty and education, already at that time one of the foremost sociologists and ethnologists in the nation, a report that proved that Dry Gulch was an absolutely normal type and that if he had become a
cangaceiro
and had killed so many men and with such extreme cruelty, it had not been because of an inborn vocation. It had been the environment…and the necessary scientific considerations followed.

Which, however, didn’t arouse as much curiosity among the public as the description of the beautiful, vibrant, and impassioned speech of the State’s Attorney, who had made the jury weep, and even the judge himself had brushed away tears as the attorney described with sublime oratorical force the suffering of the victims of the ferocious boy bandit.

The public was indignant because Dry Gulch didn’t weep at the trial. His somber face was filled with a strange calm.

There’s new movement in the city. Pedro Bala comes out of the warehouse with Big João and Outrigger. The waterfront is deserted, it looks as if everyone had abandoned it. Only a few policemen guarding the big warehouses. There’s no unloading of ships this day. Because the stevedores, with João de Adão at their head, have shown solidarity with the streetcar motormen, who are on strike. There seems to be a festival in the city, but a different kind of festival. Groups of men pass talking, automobiles cut through the street taking men to work, employees in businesses laugh, the Ladeira da Montanha is full of people going up and down, because the elevators have stopped too. The jitneys are jammed, with people hanging out the doors. The groups of strikers pass silently on their way to union headquarters, where they are going to hear the reading of the stevedores’ manifesto that João de Adão carries in his big hand. At the door of the union hall, groups chat, police stand guard.