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Show Acting Alone Page 80 the ocean, to civilization and parquetted living room floors and mean, mauling neighborhood children. Finally, on the third night, a young federale sawed the little black dog lengthwise with his M-16. "Rabido!" he shouted at the brown children who gathered like flies to worry the carcass in the sand. "Rabido!" he shouted, and backed his sergeant's jeep into the surf, cursed, "Carajas!" - lurched up onto the highway, and bashed into something that bounced, something scummy, and smaller than a wild burro - German shepherd, maybe? A military band farted down along the beach somewhere. Going down past the Tropic of Whatever is like going right down into the smelly, damp, hot, rank groin of America; and, once he'd finally gotten his butt out of the car and quit being moony over los indios, Sam immediately had begun to be mindless and sultry and virulent like a tropical body louse or a jungly gangrene virus or something. And the holes where face bones had been bashed through the sides of his nose were now rich with red, exploding tropical infection. His nose looked like a strawberry parfait with the hiccoughs. And he was not allowing himself to notice that Shanny was at his side less and less of the time these days, was gone further and further down the beach with people whom he refused to look at. Sam was not ashamed to admit that he was still a bit antsy among all |