May 17, 2010
Missionary Max: Prologue--Reach Out and Touch Someone
Max's arms burned with the pressure being exerted on them. His hands clung desperately to the rope while below him—several hundred feet below him—the jungle canopy spread out like a green carpet. Above him he could hear the roar of an airplane.
The rope he was holding was attached to the plane, and he was trying to pull himself up to the cockpit. It would have been a daunting task under any circumstances. And the fact that there was a beautiful woman in a leopard-skin dress with her arms and legs locked around his middle made it all the more difficult.
Gritting his teeth, and with every last ounce of strength he possessed, Max began to climb.
Who is Max? Why are he and his beautiful companion swinging like human pendulums over the jungle? To answer these questions we have to go back.
Way back.
The year was 1986, but on the island of Cabrito it might as well have been 1956. Little had changed in three decades for inhabitants of this green speck surrounded by the vast blue of the Atlantic ocean. The newest buildings in downtown Santo Expedito, Cabrito's sleepy capital city, were built in the seventies, and most of the structures that lined the cobblestone streets were from earlier decades—even earlier centuries. Ancient cars from bygone days still plied the city, held together by little more than the hopes and prayers of their owners. The Santo Expedito International airport received three flights a day—one from Kingston, one of Havana, and one from Rio.
Politics was another unchanged aspect of life on Cabrito. First elected in 1956, Francisco Rabelo had enjoyed the unwavering support of the island's elite family. Consequently he had felt no need to invest in Cabrito's decaying infrastructure. Instead, he devoted himself heart and soul to the building of his personal fortune at the expense of public coffers.
Then, quite unexpectedly, in an election which was supposed to have only one candidate, Rabelo found himself facing vigorous opposition. Leftist revolutionary Camilo Saraiva—purportedly funded by Cuba—had somehow obtained very specific information about the current administration's systematic plundering of public funds. Undaunted by the refusal of the nation's only newspaper—A Verdade—to publish his findings, Saravia ran off thousands of copies on a mimeograph machine and posted them on walls and light posts throughout the capital.
Now, for the first time in his career as a “public servant”, Rabelo was obliged to think about the public. Desperate, he looked around for some area of infrastructure that he could modernize at minimum cost and maximum publicity for himself. He settled on the public telephone system.
Woefully out of date and decrepit, the pay phones had not been updated or repaired since the fifties. With uncharacteristic zeal Rabelo set to work. He contracted an American company and bought millions of dollars worth of equipment. The new phones that sprouted up around the island had the words “Alô Cabrito” stenciled on them in white letters. Underneath were the words “Adm. F. Rabelo”, so nobody would forget who was responsible for such a giant technological leap forward.
The opposing party was not idle in the face of all this. Saraiva's pamphlets contemptuously derided the new telephones as coisa de gringo, insinuating that it was all a show in order to get votes. As it became obvious that the jaded populace was not being swayed by his efforts, Rabelo became increasingly desperate. What he needed was some big project, something of Pharaonic proportions, which would impress once and for all the Cabritanos. Then, he had an idea.
“My fellow Cabritanos” he began in his weekly radio address. “My opponent has accused me of trying to buy votes with the Alô Cabrito project. I want to assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. If I were just trying to get votes, why would I put a public phone in the Ipuna Jungle, for the Indians to use? I give you my word, I only have in mind the modernization of my beloved Cabrito.”
There it was. He had promised to build a public phone for the Indians. And, in a move totally out of character for Rabelo, he set out immediately to fulfill his promise. The American contractors hired for the task scratched their heads at the idea. Why would anybody put a pay phone in the jungle? But, as the compensation was more than generous, they shrugged their shoulders and ran the underground line from the nearest substation into the rainforest.
Meanwhile, Rabelo ordered the military to find a suitable Indian village. The helicopters finally located a group of thatched dwellings not too far into the dense jungle, and the contractors dutifully laid the cables and installed the phone. The aluminum post and blue fiberglass cover presented a stark contrast to the Quonset huts of the Yamani tribe.
It was just this kind of contrast that Francisco Rabelo was looking for. This would symbolize to the people of Cabrito that his administration...no...that he represented progress from the stone age to the modern world.
The inauguration of the telefone dos índios was a grand affair. Rabelo brought out a camera crew from Cabrito’s only TV station, together with as many reporters and photographers as he could round up. With a handful of Yamani Indians standing by, he made an inspiring speech about how these phones would unite all cabritenses in one big, happy family. Then, with great ceremony, he placed a token in the slot and slowly, dramatically, punched in a number.
At the presidential palace in Santo Expedito another gaggle of reporters and photographers waited in a large state room. Before them was an oaken table on which sat a telephone. At the table, facing those assembled, sat Osvaldo Ferraz, loyal and ambitious secretary of state for the Rabelo administration.
Suddenly there were two short rings from the phone, followed by a pause and then two more short rings. Osvaldo picked up the phone.
“Alô, Senhor Presidente.” There was a round of applause from the reporters, and the photographers strained to get a good shot of the event. It was the first phone call from an Indian village to the presidential palace.
It was also the last.
As the election drew near the ruling family of Cabrito at last came to Rabelo's aid, and through strong-arm tactics and voter fraud the incumbent won the election. Camilo Saraiva and his auxiliaries melted into the jungle, never to be heard from again. Some theorized darkly that he had been assassinated, others that he was evacuated to Cuba in the dead of night by a Russian submarine.
Whatever the fate of his opponent, Rabelo's victory celebration was short-lived. In his enthusiasm for the Alô Cabrito program there were a few important details he had failed to take into consideration.
One such detail was that the Yamani Indians are a nomadic tribe. They stay in one place for about a month, and then leave in search of better hunting. Hence, even if they possessed the necessary tokens to operate “their” pay phone, and even if they had any reason whatsoever to call anybody in the capital city, and even if they understood the meaning of the markings on the ten little buttons, they would not have been able to take it with them when they moved, which they did two days after the election.
Perhaps the presidente would have been gratified to know that, sensing something important was connected to the phone, the Yamanis returned regularly for about a year afterward to adorn it with flowers and leave gifts at its aluminum base.
But he would not have had much time to revel in that fact. Another detail he had failed to take into account was Osvaldo Ferraz, his loyal and ambitious secretary of state. Ferraz, it became evident, was much more ambitious than he was loyal. The military coup that would signal the end of the Rabelo administration took place a mere two days after the election results were made public.
And so, as the Yamani Indians made their way to their new dwelling place, they paused briefly to gawk at the twin-prop plane carrying ex-president Francisco Rabelo to his “early retirement” in Brazil.
Meanwhile, back in Santo Expedito, jubilant crowds flooded the streets and tore apart anything that would remind them of the Rabelo administration—including every last one of the brand-new public phones.
This is the first chapter of the Missionary Max series as it was originally published on this blog. The series is currently in the process of being published as an e-book by Creative Fuel Studios. If you read the original series, you will be happy to know that it has undergone significant improvements. As it is now an officially copyrighted work, all the other chapters have been removed. This one is left as a hat-tip to pure, unadulterated capitalism.
As soon as we have a definite publishing date I will post the information here.
To learn more about the reasoning behind the Missionary Max series, click here.
To download this chapter in PDF format, click here.
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Posted by Andrew on May 17, 2010 9:17 AM.
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Comments
Posted by: hhcomings at May 18, 2010 2:27 PM
Hmmmmm...special mind. That must be why I had a teacher who wanted to put me in the "special" class;-)
Posted by: Andrew 
at May 18, 2010 2:30 PM
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Off to a GREAT start. It takes a special mind to write mystery. You've got the goods. :-)