Kris Kristofferson in Sapoa
Kelly, Sheldon
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 27 You are entering Sapoa, Nicaragua. Dust devils whip across the rutted road; ragged, listless campesinos stare from unpainted shacks, spotted incongruously with...
...These were the people wearing Ho Chi Minh buttons when I came home from Vietnam...
...How did he get here, so sweatless and comfortable...
...ragged, listless campesinos stare from unpainted shacks, spotted incongruously with new FSLN government posters...
...Several swaybacked horses stand in the shade of a fly-ridden tienda...
...Then you see the church, as sparkling white as bridal cloth...
...This better be a f------ movie," Hank said...
...Pete's statement was a bellwether...
...F--- him...
...He looked away...
...Willson, you may remember, had sacrificed his legs to an on-coming munitions train in Concord, California last summer...
...It's like deja vu...
...This crap is spooky," he said...
...But Kristofferson and this whole damned bunch being here makes me want to vomit...
...reasons for being there seemed concluded, as all sideshows eventually are...
...You are now minutes from the customs complex where leaders of the country's Marxist and Resistance armies will discuss peace for the first time ever—and where Kris Kristofferson, the movie star, awaits the momentous opening of the Sandinista-Contra Peace Talks...
...Frankly, I'd like to ask him something," he said...
...His presence startled me...
...A TASS reporter, a Cuban TV crew, and a host of sullen-faced men and women in Sandinista uniforms with press badges drifted through Kristofferson's court...
...The tree is the church's focal point and is encased in the brightly colored Sandinista posters...
...Meanwhile, Kristofferson remained perched on the table-top a few feet away from the speaker's dais and mounted TV cameras...
...more is dabbed thinly onto a pile of rocks near a scraggly tree...
...Managua in an air-conditioned Mercedes-Benz bus, he said...
...A network reporter and producer joined our small, voluble group...
...I had just crossed the plains of Costa Rica's hot, desolate northern Guanacaste, was interrogated humorlessly at a Sandinista checkpoint, then escorted through Sapoa...
...A braless, barefoot young woman wearing a slogan-imprinted T-shirt had begun jogging in place on the hot sidewalk outside...
...The movie star had arrived from Sheldon Kelly is a staff writer for Reader's Digest...
...Looking closer, you see the paint is fresh, and covers the boarded-up entrance...
...Nearby, Willson, standing on prosthesis, was gesticulating to a small rapt audience...
...Around him scores of journalists, thrust into the maw of Hollywood by Sandinista planners, sat, stood, walked, or segued, as it were, from the touring North Americans...
...the reporter repeated...
...Their...
...A reporter looked up angrily from his Tandy 200 when I asked him...
...The star smiled and smiled, seemingly following the directional beam of the frizzy man's eyes...
...I'm losing it...
...He sat on top of a long wooden table like a wrinkled, 100-percent-cotton centerpiece, a California statement...
...He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, lit a cigarette, then returned to his empty screen...
...Hank, a beefy middle-aged cameraman for another network, stood up from his nearby seat...
...By early afternoon, shortly before General Humberto Ortega mounted the dais to announce the contra-crushing cease-fire, Kristofferson and the rest were escorted away by Sandinista personnel...
...He came with these . . . these others...
...He didn't know, didn't care...
...An American with permed hair, fashionably dressed in khaki pants with many pockets, knit shirt and boat shoes, leaned close to the star's ear, talking in low tones as his eyes darted around the assemblage...
...I shouldn't say this because I'm a by Sheldon Kelly black and these folks probably support black causes," Pete, a young network cameraman, said...
...The star's entourage included a light-stepping Cape Cod group calling itself Veterans for Peace, at least one Harvard professor, many young women apparently preoccupied with looking round the dry, empty terrain, then putting notes in prettily covered little journals, and another California notable, Brian Willson...
...His long, trademark hair and funny, narrow little eyes could be seen from almost anywhere in the cordoned-off area...
...I asked, looking at the star a scant few feet away...
...The group mingled, held forth in the fashion of indignant victors of a game known only to themselves...
...the drippings form a nebula on the bare earth...
...Hours before the first words of peace were ventured publicly by Sandinista or contra, Kristofferson had been ushered into the tin-roofed pavillion reserved ostensibly for the working press...
...The producer wrapped his hands around his chin and stared as if studying a carry-out menu...
...KRIS KRISTOFFERSON IN SAPOA...
...No f------ way will I do it...
...This may be our finest hour," Hank said...
...The reporter turned to cast a glance, then answered loudly: "F--- him...
...The actor looked back at me with seeming ingenuousness, his locks lifting like a gray veil in the wind...
...Are you going to get a statement from Kristofferson...
...On one of them is a barefoot old man in a straw hat, slumped motionless...
...I asked...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
