by Rusty Young
Surely, Papá would fit in a car? Or on the back of a motorbike? We’d both seen entire families move house on a 125cc motorbike – first-born child and two suitcases between the mother and father, infant in the basket and the family dog yapping along behind. We could carry Papá to the cemetery. Or use that spare door in the shed as a sled. However, I rejected every suggestion, claiming I needed a truck, until Palillo reached his point.
‘A truck, or an adult to drive it?’ He let that sink in before adding, ‘It’s just us, Pedro. No one’s coming.’
Palillo was right. I’d been holding out for an adult to take control. I believed that transporting and burying Papá would get done magically by someone who was in charge. I didn’t want to do it myself because I was deeply afraid of the Guerrilla. They’d murdered my father in front of me, and when I thought about defying them I was terrified.
‘Then I’ll hire a truck and drive it myself,’ I declared.
‘Fine.’ Even though Palillo knew about the prohibition on crossing the property line, he pointed to our house. ‘The phone’s that way.’
He was right again. It didn’t matter which of the two prohibitions I broke first. If I moved Papá for burial, I’d have to flee.
For the next ten minutes I struggled to breathe. The thought of leaving Llorona was a noose tightening around my neck. I didn’t want to go. I loved my town. Everything important to me was there. My mother. Camila. My friends. Our finca. In fact, everything I’d ever known was there. The people I’d grown up with. My primary school. Our Mazda. My bicycle. Even the road and fence posts and Mamá’s scarecrow. They made up my world. I still hadn’t grasped that Papá’s death had changed everything anyway. I thought the rest of my life was still there, fully intact. I hadn’t yet considered how we’d survive without Papá working, and without our land.
Palillo was patient. He gathered more rocks, adding them to my pile. We took turns throwing them at the vultures. Even in the dark I hit two out of three.
‘Nice!’ said Palillo. ‘You’ve still got the magic touch. And your eye is in, brother.’
I stopped mid-throw. I knew what he was hinting at. The Guerrilla had killed his father. He’d always planned on joining the army or Paramilitaries. Now that they’d killed my father too, he wanted me to go with him.
‘No! No fucking way! I can’t join the Paramilitaries! It was my last promise to Papá.’ Not only was any promise to my father sacred, I also remembered what Papá had said in the dinghy: ‘They’re killers, Pedro!’
Palillo listed many valid reasons for me to join: I couldn’t stay on the finca anymore; the Paramilitaries were the Guerrilla’s enemy, so living with them I would be safe; I could send my salary to Mamá. But as much as I understood his logic, my fear was greater.
‘What will you do then?’ Palillo asked quietly.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to answer. Headlights appeared in the distance. We heard the low growl of a diesel engine winding up the hill. I leaped up excitedly.
‘I’d call that a truck!’
For a few happy moments I believed Uncle Leo had changed his mind about moving Papá’s body, but he cut the ignition fifty metres short of where we stood. I heard the wrench of the handbrake, then the hot engine clinking and contracting in the cool air. Leo didn’t even have the agallas to exit the truck. Instead, he sent Mamá.
Palillo bowed. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Señora González. You and Pedro probably need time alone.’
As Palillo reached the Ford, Leo patted the door to offer him a lift, but Palillo pedalled straight past with plans of his own. Then the real fireworks began.
‘Why can’t we use Uncle Leo’s truck?’ I demanded. ‘We need the priest to bury Papá. Otherwise he won’t reach heaven.’
Mamá used to be Catholic, but after the volcanic mudslide in Armero she claimed to have seen too much suffering to believe in God. In a single night, 23,000 people had perished, including my sister.
Losing Daniela may have erased her religious faith, but that didn’t stop her from using whatever arguments she thought would get through to me.
‘It’s the soul that matters, not the body. Your Papá was a good man. God will look kindly on him.’
‘You know what Papá would want.’
‘Yes, I do. I love your Papá and I know him better than anyone. I know he’d want us to be safe. For you and I to look after each other. To be a family.’
I tensed at her mention of family – what kind of family leaves one of its members behind?
‘I love you so much, Pedrito.’ Little Pedro was what she’d called me until I was seven. Of course she knew it would affect me. But I would not let her get through to me.
‘Then lend me the truck.’ She could change her brother’s mind, and we both knew it. ‘I’ll drive Papá to the priest myself.’
‘I’m begging you, Pedrito. Please don’t do anything foolish. You’re all I have left; we’re all each other has left – can’t you see that?’ She hugged me then sobbed into my ear, ‘Come back with me.’
‘Come back with you and then what?’
But the then what was obvious.
The vultures would pluck out Papá’s eyeballs, nibble off his face, chew his innards and strip the flesh from his bones. He’d be left to bleach in the sun like a cattle carcass while I lived dependent on Uncle Leo, a man I no longer tacitly disliked but openly despised. I’d finish my exams and pray for good mathematics grades. Meanwhile, our finca would turn to ruin, the crops would wither, the pipes would burst and our cattle would die.
True, if I obeyed their prohibition, the Guerrilla would not touch me. But what sort of life would I be living?
‘I’ll leave the key under the pot plant,’ Mamá said as Leo flashed his headlights.
‘What kind of wife leaves her husband to vultures?’ I called after her.
She spun viciously. ‘How dare you! Maybe if you hadn’t spat and provoked them we could have buried your father and stayed on the finca. I tried to stop you but now you’re saying I’m a bad wife.’
Already nailed to my own cross, her blame was a dagger in my side. Hearing her truck door slam and the sound of Uncle’s engine recede down the hill, I stood there, silent and drained.
Then, suddenly, I felt liberated. Without hope, everything became simpler.
They had made a mistake killing Papá. But they were not coming to fix their mistake. Neither were they coming to take control of the situation, nor to look after me and Mamá. They were not coming to transport Papá and bury him in the cemetery. And they were not coming to capture Papá’s murderers and bring them to justice. Why not? Because there was no they. They didn’t exist. There was only me. Everything was up to me.
17
NO SOONER HAD Uncle’s tail-lights disappeared than I scoured Zorrillo’s dirt line with my heel until it was utterly obliterated. I peppered the vultures with rocks, scattering them like skittles. I strode to the shed and returned with a kerosene lamp and shovel.
Papá’s body was stiff as I dragged him to his favourite oak tree. The earth beneath was hard and rocky. Perspiring profusely despite the cool night air, I stabbed and punched the shovel repeatedly through roots. Sweat trickled into my eyes and stung so much I had to close them.
As I dug, my father’s execution replayed in my mind. I saw his killers’ faces in minute detail and I heard their voices as clearly as gunshots.
I saw Caraquemada circling Papá, pausing to swat a fly before studying the place into which he’d fire his bullet. I heard Santiago’s radio operator order: ‘¡Ajustícialo!’ I saw Ratón’s sinister nod to Caraquemada and suffered his indifference as he relayed the order like a weather forecast: ‘Execute him.’ I felt the blond boy’s knee on my head as I flailed like a fish on dirt. I remembered Zorrillo’s rifle digging into my teeth, and the taste of blood in my mouth before he banned us from our farm.
With anger searing through my veins, I dug furiously, driving the shovel in harder and harder. I bar
ely noticed the blisters forming on my palms, or the hot tears streaming down my face. By the time the grave was deep enough, my shorts were drenched in sweat. I climbed in and slid Papá gently down.
As I took his pocket Bible and crucifix necklace, I heard a small motorbike engine struggling up the hill and a silhouette darkened the corner of my eye. Palillo. I saw a shovel across his lap and a pack over his shoulder.
‘You should have waited,’ he said when he reached me.
‘Whose motorbike?’
He lit two cigarettes and held up the panda keychain. ‘It’s Little Red Riding Hood. The mulata was coming to find you.’
‘Carrying a shovel?’
Palillo shook his head. ‘Lights were off at Old Man Domino’s. A shovel was leaning on the porch with a candle lit beneath so you couldn’t miss it.’
I dragged hard on the cigarette. I was so touched by the actions of the mulata maid and Old Man Domino that my head spun. And then it was Palillo’s turn; his proposal was the bravest of the day.
‘Cemetery?’ He pointed at Papá. ‘There’s only space for two on the bike. I’ll take him down pillion passenger and do some laps of the plaza.’
It took several seconds for me to comprehend that Palillo was proposing to transport and bury Papá on his own. He’d take all the risks by making sure he was seen publicly. For a moment, I felt relieved. I wouldn’t have to do it myself. But only for a moment. What had Papá muttered while digging at 2 am? Cowards!
Papá was my father; I had to bury him. Although I’d felt rejected at the time, I now understood why he wouldn’t let me help dig Humberto Díaz’s grave. He wanted to shield me. Just as I should shield my best friend.
‘I’ll take him down myself and get the priest to do the burial.’
‘No point. He got called away somewhere.’
If the new priest was hiding, there was little point going to the cemetery. By then I didn’t want Padre Guzmán to bury my father anyway. He wasn’t worthy of consecrating a vegetable patch. I would be better off burying Papá where he was.
‘Return the shovel and Little Red Riding Hood,’ I said, scooping dirt into the grave. ‘It’s better if you’re not here for this.’
Palillo blew three concentric smoke rings then spat defiantly through their centre. ‘Your father was the best boss I ever had.’
‘The only boss you almost had.’
‘Same thing.’ Palillo began ladling dirt too. ‘Either way, I’m unemployed. Temporarily.’
‘You phoned Don Jerónimo?’
Glad I’d taken the hint, Palillo lifted his backpack with the tent poles.
‘Dawn pick-up. He has one seat left.’
Palillo looked at me questioningly, but I continued scooping dirt.
Wordlessly, we finished my father’s new home, patting the earth tight with the flats of the shovels. Papá could be at rest now. One day, I’d have the ground consecrated and the rites performed by a proper priest. The only thing missing was a headstone.
‘You coming?’ Palillo asked, his eyes locked on mine.
I answered indirectly by pointing at the shabby skeleton of the scarecrow. ‘Hand me that cross.’
Both hands at its neck, I lifted the wooden cross high in the air and drove it down into the ground at the head of my father’s grave. However, it was not a cross I was thrusting into the earth, but a stake I was plunging into the hearts of my blood enemies.
PART TWO
LEARNING TO KILL
18
CROUCHING IN A ditch with Palillo, an hour before dawn, I realised my life was now divided in two. The time before Papá. And the time after.
My dream of running the finca with him and taking it over during his old age was shattered, and I replaced it with a far darker ambition: to track down and punish his murderers.
After burying Papá I had entered the house. I’d filled a bag with Mamá’s jewellery, some of her favourite dresses and mementos, the family photo albums, the property deed to the finca and Papá’s will.
But I also wanted to say goodbye to the house. I breathed in its smell. I buried my nose in Papá’s pillow.
From my own room I took a change of clothes, my toothbrush, pocketknife and driver’s licence. I removed several photos from their frames and slipped them inside the cover of Papá’s pocket Bible.
Outside, I opened the chicken coop, preferring the hens to take their chances with foxes than starve. I also opened the gate into Old Man Domino’s property – as the dry season progressed, the cattle would pass through it in search of food. Hopefully, the money from selling them would last Mamá a while.
I carried Papá’s fishing rod to Camila’s house on my bike, while Palillo rode Little Red Riding Hood. After taking aim at her second-storey window with a pebble, I changed my mind. Camila would only try to stop me. Or she’d cry and demand to come with me. I leaned the rod quietly against the door. The note took three attempts to write.
Thanks for trying. Leaving to find work. Please forget me.
I didn’t have the stomach to write more. And I omitted my usual sign-off: Te amo. It would only confuse her and make her wait for me.
‘Say goodbye to her face,’ insisted Palillo.
I shook my head. While I longed to feel Camila’s arms around me, it would only cause her pain. Besides, I wanted her to forget me. Hate me, if she had to. There was no point in saying goodbye to Camila. Goodbye is for people you’ll see again.
After dropping Little Red Riding Hood back at the church, Palillo and I rode our bicycles fifteen kilometres to Garbanzos in darkness and chained them up inside Uncle Leo’s yard. I slipped the deed and will under his door and left Mamá’s things on the back step. Then Palillo and I went to wait for Don Jerónimo in the ditch beside our school sports ground.
Until then, the need for action had spared me from having to think. But as we crouched there waiting, there was no escaping the self-recriminations and regrets. If only I hadn’t gone to save Palillo from enlisting in the Paramilitaries, Papá would still be alive. And in the end, I had merely postponed Palillo’s joining by a few days.
Despite my own culpability, I still found it impossible to accept the reactions of people like Mamá, Uncle Leo and Father Guzmán, and the lack of response by the police and the army.
I’d studied for my history exam and I knew the old saying: A los buenos siempre los matan. Good guys always get killed. In 1948, they assassinated the presidential candidate Gaitán, right on the eve of the election. Decades later another honest candidate, Galán, was leading the polls when he too was murdered, just for being good. In fact, both men were executed precisely for how good they were, and because they stood as reminders to those who were not. And during his reign of terror, Pablo Escobar murdered Lara Bonilla, the Minister of Justice, to remind ordinary people how truly powerless they are.
When Guerrilla commanders brazenly commit murder and wander off into the hills with impunity, two types of men are revealed: those who want to help but can’t, and those who could help but choose not to. And that was the choice most of the citizens of Llorona made on the day of my father’s murder.
For defying the Guerrilla, I could no longer live in Llorona. But I didn’t want to live there anyway, surrounded by cowards and hypocrites.
It was cold when first light appeared on the horizon. My watch alarm sounded. It was Thursday, 5.45 am. That day’s exam was in history. I was still dressed for school in my blood-soaked uniform. I hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours, but I didn’t feel tired. The adrenalin was still pumping. The shock was still rattling. And the sadness was still burning, small and blue and quiet, like a gas pilot light that could burst into angry flame at the slightest twist of a dial.
19
DON JERÓNIMO WAS a kindly, moustachioed taxi driver in his fifties who moonlighted as a driver for the Paramilitaries. Palillo and I were his first pick-up, and he talked to us jovially about his two teenaged daughters. Owning a taxi licence allowed him to transport people ac
ross the country without raising suspicion. The Paramilitaries paid him one hundred dollars per recruit, and reimbursed his fuel and food expenses. If a third party referred a recruit to him, he split the commission.
We travelled north into the province of Meta. It was a clear day with a sprinkling of cotton clouds drifting across the blue sky, and I was glad of the silence and the beauty. The long, flat road sliced through verdant pastures and water-drenched fields like a dried river of tar. In shallow marshes, flocks of white storks lurched into motion. Long legs thrashing, they seemed to run along the water’s surface, the tips of their feet leaving light ripples.
An hour into the trip, Don Jerónimo pulled off the highway behind a black SUV. The driver opened the back door and a skinny kid with glasses scrambled out. Jerónimo shook the man’s hand, produced a crisp banknote from his wallet and guided the boy back to our car.
Palillo shifted into the middle, and the kid, who was twelve years old and named Eugene, perched awkwardly on the edge of the seat beside him. When Palillo told him to sit back and relax, Eugene lifted his shorts to reveal welts and purple bruises covering the back of his thighs. They’d been inflicted by his father, a violent drunk called El Machetero, who’d killed six men in separate cantina brawls using a machete.
Three days earlier, Eugene had walked in on his father kissing a woman who wasn’t his mother, and his father had given him seventeen planazos with the flat side of his machete. Eugene hid under his aunt’s porch. She brought him food, but his father continued looking for him, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to go home. Instead, he begged the local Paramilitaries to take him. ‘When I showed them my legs they said my father was a prick and I should never go back. That’s when they called Don Jerónimo.’
Palillo shook his head. Even his stepfather had never hit him with a machete.
‘What about you two? Why are you joining?’
‘The Guerrilla killed our fathers,’ Palillo said.