El Demónico and Germán Alcántara Carnero—the latter, turning at the first fork in the path, tries to banish people he thought dead from his mind—had already decided to leave the mine when they found themselves ambushed by Will D. Glover, who is currently bringing up the rear as they pass siding stands that ourman and his father worked a long time ago, back when this decaying hacienda wasn’t just this pile of masonry and black stone—stone and masonry that ourman will later use to build a new family home, the birthplace of bornsickly, and the place where ourman will eventually die—on a day that awaits us in the next chapter. “I have to come with you… I want to leave and never come back… let me come with you!” El Demónico remembers Will saying. “Not a bad idea… and maybe he could help guide us…” ourman had said. “Think this foreigner can be trusted?” “Yes, I think we can trust the little miner man…” “Shall we tell him it’s a yes, then?”
With Will as their guide, they traversed forests and mountains and came to a town where they took a passenger train. When the sun came up the next day, they looked out the window and saw large numbers of black slaves working the land. They met the owner of an enormous plantation—he, having lost his white workers nine days when his son took against them, contracted ourman, Will, and El Demónico—who now skips forward three weeks in his thoughts, recalling the morning when Germán Alcántara Carnero came running into the eating area and shouted in his ear:
“I slept with Ana!”
“She isn’t called Ana, you idiot,” said El Demónico: “Her name’s Anne. Anyway, what the fuck were you thinking? Didn’t I tell you to steer clear of that girl?”
The quartet have come to the barrenest portion of the vast swath of thickets and scrub, and ourman’s thoughts of their destination have become frenzied: What will I do if he’s there waiting for me? If Father has waited all these years for me to get back… if I have to face him again today… this time it won’t be a stone I’ll use… I won’t use anything… I’ll just use these two hands… what does it matter if María’s there… if he didn’t actually do anything to her… he’d already done plenty.
“Idiot, you’re going to get us thrown out… that’s if he doesn’t kill us first!”
“How are they going to throw us out if they don’t even know about it?”
“Don’t you get it? He’s sure to find out… For all we know he already suspects, and he’s her father, he’s doubtless got ways of making her talk!”
At this point Will D. Glover had interrupted: “We’re going to have to hit the road again…” He and El Demónico had looked at each other, before saying, almost in unison:
“We won’t have a choice… if he finds out, he’ll kill us!”
Now, Will overtakes Anne Lucretius Ford on her left-hand side, so that she is bringing up the rear as they approach the midway point of the rocky outcrop, the place in which we earlier saw three dogs devour an opossum family. Will gains on ourman, whose pace momentarily slows—weighed down by the great number of hypothetical people in his mind, and by a rapid series of answers to his own questions:
If I have to take him on again, I’ll use these two hands and nothing else… what does it matter if María’s there… he did plenty already… what will I do then with María… I won’t hurt María… or maybe I’ll have to… I’ll have to hurt her, too… but I don’t want to hurt her!
It was Will who had seen the dogs being starved, beaten, and made to fight at the mine—dogs that El Gringo Alcántara Carnero had been taking care of, and had been going around for a number of days asking after. Will had seen the ring the men set up, had witnessed the arrival of the thirty or so individuals who had come to bet on the dogs, had witnessed the spectacle until, as people had started to leave, ourman had appeared: without a single word to anyone he had grabbed a pick and struck down the two organizers of the evening. Will knew this meant that El Demónico and Germán Alcántara Carnero—who, as they get to the end of the rocky outcrop where the slate shines like shards of glass, is still struggling in his mind against his sister’s fate—would have to leave, and he had gone and begged them to bring him along. And four days after the day that Will is replaying as he, quickening his pace, draws level with ourman, the three men who at the beginning of this chapter we called ourmen had found work at the cotton plantation that El Demónico is now revisiting in his thoughts, and where Anne Lucretius Ford was born twenty years ago and where ourman fell in love for the first time. As Will draws level with ourman, the latter announces:
“Leave me alone, I’ve got a lot on my mind… Why don’t you get the others to hurry up… we’re practically there now!”
Will obediently drops back, while El Gringo Alcántara Carnero, without breaking stride, picks up a rock from the path:
“Just this hill and then down the other side!”
Falling quiet again and breaking into a run, Germán Alcántara Carnero wonders: What do I say if there are other shacks there now, or other people? Or if my shack isn’t empty… if it isn’t empty, my home? As he thinks these last two words, “my home,” ourman accelerates once more and, driven on by a strange inexplicable force, reaches the brow of the hill—passing three agaves, four yuccas, a pair of pepper trees, ten bishop’s weeds, and the fig tree—he reaches the top just as we prepare to depart from this current moment, arriving at the summit of the hill that looks out over a landscape he has looked out over and has cast his mind back to so many times and that now, for the first time in his life, does not leave him crestfallen. At the foot of the hill, the ground for several hundred meters is a black stain, an enormous ash-black stain, at the center of which lies a ruined shack, dilapidated and dust-covered, the same dust that at the very end of this story will inter both the body of ourman and his memory. Next to the broken-down shack, and just as we are in the process of departing from this moment, we see the corpse of what looks like some large animal, and the only thing in the vicinity that seems to have escaped the flames unscathed: it is the fig tree that was formerly used to hang up the clothes of the family whose son we now leave as he descends the hillside—passing the three crosses that stand like fearful unsteady stalks and that fill the approaching figure with the hope that had drained out of him almost two hours ago—in the moment when he said to himself, for the first time today and for the first time in this life: my home.
Exequies
This story’s last chapter—a story that via the fluctuations in one man’s life renders the fluctuations of an era and of the place always known to its inhabitants as the Mesa Madre Buena—dissects the final two moments to shed light on the life of Germán Alcántara Carnero. These two moments, unlike the others we have dissected—the birth of ourman, his struggles against his father, the disappearance of his younger sister, the fight with the Díaz Cervantes clan, the departure to another kingdom, the conflicts in the borderlands, his return to this mesa, Anne Lucretius Ford’s death in an ambush, the burning down of the church on the mountainside, his rise to become chief of the small ministry in Lago Seco, the accident that led to the death of El Demónico Macías, the torture of the men inside the old slaughterhouse, the vengeance taken on Delsagrado as an old man, a self-inflicted punishment before the gates to a dam, the renunciation of the ministry and of a way of life, the meeting with Dolores Enriqueta Celis Gómez, the founding of his family, the birth of an oldest son and that son’s ill-health and untimely death—occupy the same amount of time in the life of ourman as they do in this story about him.
And a story may have no beginning, it may even have numerous beginnings, or follow one thread or skip from moment to moment, but it may not end just anywhere: a story’s end must match the end of the life that animated it. It is a story I pointlessly tried to insert myself into, forcing me to ask why I wanted to be part of the story to begin with: Because my days are empty, I say, because I am really no different from my contemporaries, because I’m determined to create an imaginary life while my own life unravels in this time of
vacuity and pointlessness, because I’m content with being merely the context and never the text itself. A story that is about to turn to the moments after the unintended death of his son bornsickly: his final attempt to gain mastery over his fate. Two moments that run in sequence and begin here:
At 03:32 on February 18, 1975, when the moon positions itself at the center of the night and owls traverse the skies, Germán Alcántara Carnero opens his eyes wide in fright, seeing before him the nightmare from which he has just awoken: a woman shut inside the trunk, crying out for somebody to help her—a woman who is an amalgam of Anne Lucretius Ford, María del Sagrado Alcántara Carnero, and Dolores Enriqueta Celis Gómez.
Burying his face in his massive hands, ourman groans, begging for this dream image to go away, though he knows—too well—how much he deserves it, this punishment, being visited by the sight of all the women he has ever loved shut inside the same trunk he employed during his time at the ministry. How many more years of this… how long will you have to carry on paying? ourman asks, massaging his eyeballs, before suddenly crying out “It’s the least I deserve: I deserve it all!… Do you really think you deserve it? Really, haven’t you had enough already?”
“No, not even close,” ourman says, peering into the darkness, trying to pick out any detail that might be a way out of this moment: the chair with yesterday’s clothes draped over it, a rocking chair his wife gave him as a gift, her Virgin Mary, his charred Christ, the stuffed armadillo El Trompo Trápaga Mora gave him, the radio that nobody has switched on in years. Reaching down the side of the bed, El Gringo Alcántara Carnero turns on the lamp, and now we see how his face, which rather than seeming to have grown older, simply looks more full of strain and tension. Though it is now six years since he committed himself to the same religion his wife professed silently the moment they met, under her breath when they moved into this house, out loud after giving birth to bornsickly, and at the top of her voice following the death of that child, Germán Alcántara Carnero has found the way to neither forgiveness nor solace.
“You really believe you haven’t had enough… that this is the way to find forgiveness and solace… and all that’s happened hasn’t been because of something else… Really think you couldn’t have got it all wrong?” ourman asks himself again while casting around, and then looking down, astonished, at his wife, saying: “Truly, I don’t think it has been enough… I will find forgiveness one day, but not today… this is a trial I have to pass… this is the final stage before solace is mine!” Still watching Dolores Enriqueta’s cold face, half-lit by the lamp, half in shadow—the same shadows enveloping the rest of this room—Germán Alcántara Carnero thinks on the image he saw in his dream but this time, instead of a chest he sees all the women he has loved in his life shut inside an old casket, so old it looks liable to disintegrate at any moment. He shakes his head and says: “You are my final test… I am going to have to get up again… to get to my feet even after having been dealt this same blow once again… this final step is my way to solace—the solace I didn’t find when María died… or when Anne or El Demónico died… I didn’t find it after our son died, either… perhaps I will, now that you are dead.”
Opening his eyes wide, as though in shock, ourman turns back to the cold and stony countenance beside him, the woman who departed this earth eleven hours ago, a faint red line around her neck from the noose. What do I tell the children… how will I tell them you couldn’t stand it any longer… that you hanged yourself with the birth ribbon, the one that was meant to bring the child so much luck… that the last thing you did was to betray your faith? Germán Alcántara Carnero asks himself, even as another question takes shape in the recesses of his mind: “Do you really believe this is the way to solace? Maybe she’s shown, by betraying you like this, that you got it all wrong? Perhaps you’ve never had as much faith as you made out… Really believe this is the way… that solace still might be yours, even now she’s done this?” He reaches out to touch the mottled bruises on Dolores Enriqueta’s neck, and after a moment, skimming his fingers over the skin, touching it lightly, he suddenly grips her in his hand and begin squeezing, crushing, throttling.
What separates life from death? he thinks, even as he continues to throttle his deceased wife. Strange, in a way, that in the life of ourman—responsible for ending the lives of so many men and women—death, or his fear that his loved ones might die while his love for them is still alive, should be the thing to fuel its most unpredictable turn of events.
“Why did you… how is it that… what… You killed yourself!” Germán Alcántara Carnero then bursts, letting go of Dolores Enriqueta’s neck. The moment he opens his eyes, tears begin streaming down his face, thick, salty, almost cloudy-looking tears, and for some minutes he becomes lost in the same feelings, the same corrosive dejection, that engulfed him yesterday when he came in to find his wife dangling from the beams. Before cutting her down, trembling violently and murmuring and weeping, he decided to lie her down in the bed, to spend another night at her side. Maybe in the morning he would know what to do.
And now it is morning. He turns over and sees the curtain move a little, but no, it isn’t moving: the hints of early sunlight, and where they meet the darkness of the room, have merely given an impression of movement. Once more he thinks of the frontier between death and life, and again of the pain that always attends deaths, that attended the deaths of María del Sagrado Alcántara Carnero—when he left home—and Anne Lucretius Ford and El Demónico Macías Osorio—when he denounced his work and decided to make a family—and the death of his oldest son—when he committed himself to a faith he had previously spent his life persecuting. He looks over at the chair in which she used to sit reading to him from the book now lying on the floor—the book we saw Dolores Enriqueta Celis Gómez reading from almost six years ago: And it came to pass, ourman hears her saying, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. So great was Saul’s astonishment… Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And I answered, Who are you, Lord? And He said unto me, I am the one you persecute…
This was the passage closest to her heart. He shakes his head and falls back onto the mattress. Because of you, He won’t love me like a son… although if He were real He wouldn’t have let you… Sitting up, Germán Alcántara Carnero steps off the bed and, regarding the body of the woman we met in the town square of Lago Seco almost twenty years ago, he is confronted with every person whose deaths have touched his life, a cascade of images finally coming to a stop with that of El Demónico Macías. No, he thinks, now is not the time to think about how you died… or the existence of God, for fuck’s sake… just work out what to do with this body. That is all.
What follows: Germán Alcántara Carnero turning on the remaining lights, going into Dolores Enriqueta’s dressing room and hunting through her hundreds of dresses until he finds her favorite—all the while questioning his faith as never before. If you don’t believe in Him, does that also mean not believing in His word? Going back into the bedroom, he lifts the feather-light body of Dolores Enriqueta into his arms and, slowly and carefully—lovingly, in truth—begins undressing her. He covers her neck with a shawl before sitting down on the bed again, doubting, doubting a God that it is perhaps time to put aside. Once more the cloudy tears come forth. And whatever he does next—pacing the room, drawing the curtains, slowly and agonizingly inching closer to an exit—we will not be privy to, for instead we are on our way to another moment, the moment of El Demónico Macías’s death, the same moment ourman hurries off to in his mind in order to avoid both his doubts and the moments that must surely come next.
Though I have no place in this story, though I have to accept that I only want to appropriate this life because my own is such a shit life, though I ought to admit that my existence as a writer is empty and that I only tried to become a character because I have never dared to be a person, I also know about keeping promises,
and that is why I take this moment, while ourman absents himself, to recount here the death of El Demónico Macías, a necessary component in this story and a moment when the air is full of dust motes, the sunlight merciless, birds shriek in the distance and circle over the white rocks we saw two chapters ago when ourman called out the rebels at the dam, and Germán Alcántara Carnero, Will D. Glover, and Amparo Pascua de Ramones are hiding out—Amparo’s twin, Ausencia, is lying down on the riverside, her legs in the water, her paint-splattered clothes torn to shreds and her head peeking out between two rocks. Two hours ago, ourman and the twins sent a note to El Demónico, whose thirty-fifth birthday it is today, in which Ausencia said to him: My love, I’ll wait for you today down by the river so we can be together, alone, I don’t want to be with the others, I want it to be just me and you and for us to love each other like you love me when I let you. I’m going to let you today, your birthday. My love, meet me at the river at noon, down by the rocks where no one ever goes and where the water is calm and cool. My love, I can’t wait to see you… I’m so happy you were born.
A note that sent shudders through him, that nearly made him faint, El Demónico hurried out of the ministry over which ourman has ruled for a little more than two years. He knows very well, as do Germán Alcántara Carnero and Will D. Glover, that the area in which his girlfriend waits is one of the areas controlled by Ignacio del Sagrado Sandoval-Íñiguez Martínez and his men: what he doesn’t know, as he runs outside, heart in mouth, is that it is all a trick, a ruse being sprung by his girlfriend and friends. Putting his foot down in the Count Trossi SSK—strangely, it was parked right outside the door—El Demónico Macías crosses Lago Seco—putting his foot down until the vehicle almost takes off—and out onto the surrounding mesa, crossing the expanses of farmland, much of the scrubland, the rocky outcrop, and entering the belt of thicketland where ourman was born, coming to the hill where we spent the beginning of chapter seven’s final moment, this craggy hill being as far as the car can go. He has to get out and run, tripping several times as he comes down the hillside in a frenzy, down to the cacti, the yuccas and the tall prickly pears, along the stream bed and then threading his way between the boulders, and is still running when the enormous white rocks that are his destination rear up in the distance.
The Arid Sky Page 12