‘Maybe they’re … in one of those … I don’t know … what’s going on … Maybe one of them is hiding …,’ the captain falters as he sees the guns trained on him and then, in Estela’s eyes, sees a flicker of doubt.
‘I knew something was going on … It would be very strange for this place to be deserted,’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio growls, reaching for the gun holstered in her belt and staring at the shack next to the checkpoint at La Cañada just as a barn owl lands on its roof.
‘I’ve seen that happen, too … Why are you drawing your …? Sometimes when they see people coming they run and hide … Why are you drawing your gun?’ El Chorrito hesitates before turning his head too. ‘Then they wait for you to get here and bang … they swoop.’
‘They swoop … You think that’s what going to happen here?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Well, what the fuck are you saying?’ Estela roars angrily.
‘I’m saying they could be anywhere,’ El Chorrito mutters, while the voice in his head says: You’re falling into her trap.
‘Anywhere?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio says through gritted teeth, feeling her chest swell with joy.
‘Yeah, anywh … Probably better if you don’t draw your … Maybe it’s best if we just hit the road,’ stammers the captain.
‘Best if we just hit the road?’ Estela mocks him, looking up just as another owl lands on the roof of the shack.
‘We have to get out of here as fast as possible,’ El Chorrito says stubbornly, as the voice in his head deserts him: You’re in this up to your neck and now you’re coming out with this bullshit.
‘I thought you wanted to stay here … Why do you want to come with us?’
‘Why do I want?’
‘Why do you want us to get out of here?’ Estela says again, feeling the exultation in her chest; she has decided that it is all over for the man of skin and bones.
‘Why do I want? … I want … because … because why?’ El Chorrito stutters, his words cut off by the woman who forces him to take another step back.
‘Do you seriously think I’m a fucking idiot?’ Estela barks. ‘You might betray me … but how can you dare betray Epitafio?’
‘Be …betra … please … put the gun away … betray Epitafio?’
‘You little shit … Did you really think I wouldn’t catch on … that I wouldn’t realise that you’re lying?’
‘Lying … What are … Don’t do … What are you saying?’ El Chorrito digs himself deeper, then, clutching at his last hope, he masks his words with brazenness: ‘I’ve never betrayed anyone … Everything’s going to be fine here.’
‘You’re absolutely right … Everything’s going to be fine, because I’m going to make an example of you,’ Estela screams, grabbing the captain by the hair and dragging him to the shack next to the La Cañada checkpoint as the owls on the roof begin to screech.
Startled, the men loyal to Estela watch as their boss throws El Chorrito on the floor of the shack, as she kicks him, as she drags him out again and, pulling him to his feet, leans him against the door. ‘I don’t know where they’re hiding,’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio hisses into the ear of the man of skin and bone, ‘but I bet they’re watching,’ then she shouts: ‘The first man to try anything will end up like him!’
Though he wants to swear that he has done nothing, the captain cannot utter a word: his tongue has died before the rest of his body, and El Chorrito, who wishes he could beg, can do nothing but listen to the woman ordering him: ‘Say his name … I want to hear it … Say it, say Epitafio! E-pi-ta-fio! Come on, you little shit … I want to hear you say Epitafio!’ Estela’s words leave her men shaken, as they do the men hiding in the rocky crevices and the godless who have come from far-off lands.
I see it clearly … as clearly as I have ever seen anything … the shadows will eventually recede … You will see many new horizons … You will be with those you love again … Those who love you will come back … Life will reward your pain and your prayers.
The echo of the gunshot that destroys the teeth, the throat, the hypothalamus and the neck of El Chorrito interrupts the words of the eldest of all those who have come from beyond the borders, puts to flight the owls on the roof of the shack, starts a muttering among the men loyal to Estela and forces those who fled and hid deeper into their rock crevasses: those who are the target of Estela’s last threat, as she steps over the body of the captain: ‘You’d better not stand in our way!
‘If you don’t want to end up like this cripple, stay away … and stop being puppets for Father Nicho!’ Estela turns on her heel and, walking back towards her men, she says: ‘Right, back in the trucks and let’s get the fuck out of here!’ Watching ShewhoadoresEpitafio and her men, the soldiers feel their entrails liquefy and, filthy with fear, muddy with shame, they cling to the sides of their stony clefts as Estela climbs into the Lobo.
Even the stench enveloping them cannot force these men to leave their hiding places and return to the checkpoint they are supposed to man: they will not return to their posts for many hours yet, until no trace remains of Estela and her men, by which time Estela and her men will have encountered the men who left the Madre Buena plateau, Epitafio will have finally left his house, and the sons of the jungle will have sold the contents of their sacks in the town where they find themselves.
But it will take some time for all these things to happen: the sons of the forest are only just emptying their sacks of the things lost by those who have spent many days walking in the clearing of El Tiradero; Epitafio is just stepping into his house; the men from Lago Seco have barely reached the foothills of the sierra; and Estela has just keyed the ignition in the Ford. The truck that, a moment later, roars into life as, after a glance in the rear-view mirror to make sure her men are back in their pickups, ShewhoadoresEpitafio pulls away, thinking: I’m sick to death of these mountains.
Actually, I’m sick to death of everything, Estela corrects herself, and, urging the car faster, she loses herself in the mountain roads, where, in a little while, she will stop to call Epitafio at the same time as she becomes lost in the pathways of her mind: How is it possible that all these years are worth so little now … that that bastard priest wants to make us pay dearly for everything we have done for him? And there we were, you and I, always worried … always concerned that he might feel disappointed … letting life trickle through our hands.
Constantly worried that he might think we were abandoning him … Always doing what was best, not for us, but for him … You put up with everything. You even married Osaria! Estela is thinking when her daydream abruptly stops: she knows that if she does not stop to phone Epitafio that she will end up losing her way in these mountains where the wind has finally eased and she can once again hear the howl of the coyote, the bleating of the goats and the braying of donkeys hidden by the darkness.
These same mountains in whose foothills the former municipal garbage truck is wending its way, heading for Estela and her men: it would be for the best if ShewhoadoresEpitafio lost her way. Best for her, for her men and for the nameless who have come from afar, but not for the six soldiers gambling in the back of what looks like an armoured van, nor for El Topo and El Tampón, travelling in the cab of the fake security van, lost in a story that one of them is telling.
VI
‘But the son was much worse,’ El Tampón says after a second or two.
‘Which son?’ El Topo asks, letting one hand slip from the steering wheel as he yawns.
‘You’re bored, aren’t you …? I’m sending you to sleep.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘If you want me to shut up, I’ll shut up,’ El Tampón says, opening the ice box and fishing out a beer.
‘I do want you to tell the story …’ El Topo insists, reaching for the ice box, ‘It’s just that I’m tired.’
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��Yeah, well I don’t feel like telling it any more,’ El Tampón says, uncapping the beer. ‘This is why you don’t know shit.’
‘Spoken like a true genius.’
‘Why don’t you fuck off!’
‘Mister Encyclopaedia,’ El Topo teases, then, by way of apology, he reaches across and clinks his bottle with El Tampón’s. ‘Go on, tell me the rest.’
‘The son was crazier than the father … Seriously … the stuff he did was much worse,’ El Tampón says, picking up the thread of his tales as he balances his beer on the dashboard. ‘The son was completely off his head.’
‘Which son are you talking about?’ El Topo says, then, nodding to the bottle El Tampón has just set down, he adds, ‘Don’t leave it there, it’ll fall off.’
‘How can you not know? … Everyone in Lago Seco knows … Everyone living on the fucking meseta knows,’ El Tampón says, picking up his beer. ‘I’m talking about the son that’s still alive.’
‘He’s got a shitload of sons,’ El Topo quips, rolling down the window and tossing the bottle he has eagerly downed into the darkness.
‘But there’s only one who bears his surname … The only surviving Alcántara.’
‘You mean the real son … the one who used to hang out with my old man?’ El Topo laughs. ‘The one I used to see when I was a kid?’
‘You bastard … you knew all along,’ El Tampón explodes, and, tossing his bottle out the window, snarls, ‘Go fuck with someone else.’
‘I’m just joking … Don’t go throwing a fit,’ El Topo says, peering at the distant road sign El Tampón is reading, then, thinking, We’re nearly there, he adds, ‘I know which son, but I don’t know what he did … so finish the story, because you won’t get a chance after we get there.’
‘Now you want to hear the story … You’re suddenly all ears because we’re nearly there,’ El Tampón grumbles, leaning forward and, jerking his chin towards the twinkling lights in the deep darkness, he says, ‘Well, you’ll just have to wait.’
‘Fine, be like that … but I’ll remember this the next time you want me to tell you something.’
‘When did you ever tell me anything?’ El Tampón asks, reaching for the ice chest again.
‘You’re not going to drink another beer, are you?’ El Topo yells, nudging El Tampón and slamming the ice box shut. ‘You can’t show up there swigging a beer.’
‘I’ve got time enough to finish it,’ El Tampón says, opening the box again, then, nodding to the lights pulsing in the distance, adds, ‘or maybe you don’t realise how far we’ve got left to go.’
‘Now who’s fucking with who?’
‘Maybe you’ll be able to tell when we’re a hundred metres away,’ El Tampón mocks, but immediately feels a pang of regret and returns to the question he asked a moment earlier: ‘When have you ever told me anything?’
‘Really? … Who was it told you that the son was deformed?’ El Topo says, urging the former municipal garbage truck faster. ‘And you wouldn’t know about the stuff he did with my old man if I hadn’t told you.’
‘You’re right,’ El Tampón acknowledges, flicking the cap off the beer and, feeling the same pang of remorse, he decides not to pick a fight.
‘You’ve no fucking idea what an evil bastard he was … He was the one who hired my father to go out into the scrubland that afternoon … to shoot that crazy fucker … to put an end to his rage and his father’s dogs.’
‘Who would have thought that faggot would betray your old man … though I suppose he’d already betrayed his own fucking father, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.’
‘Faggot … the guy wishes he was a faggot!’
‘Not every arsehole gets to be a faggot!’ El Tampón completes the punchline, leaning forward, and, although he’d prefer to carry on joking, he nods to the flickering lights like flames: they are coming to Tres Hermanos.
‘I said you wouldn’t have time … You’d better toss that thing,’ El Topo says, glancing at the beer bottle El Tampón is holding, then, slowing the truck, he adds, ‘Before we get there, swear that you’ll tell me the rest of the story later.’
‘Do you think they know we’re coming? … Do you think he called them?’ El Tampón says, tossing the beer bottle and, gazing at the three huge drums belching flames into the black darkness, he adds: ‘The little shit forgets everything … Sepelio better have fucking called them.’
‘Come on, don’t be a bastard … Promise you’ll tell me the rest of the story later,’ El Topo insists, leaning on the horn of the ex-garbage truck.
‘I promise I’ll tell you as soon as we leave,’ El Tampón says, looking at the blazing drums behind the main gate of Tres Hermanos. ‘They’ve obviously got a lot of work on … Let’s see whether they’ll take the ones we’ll be bringing later.’
‘If they don’t, I don’t know what the hell we’ll do,’ El Topo says as he parks the fake security van. ‘Unless Sepelio was lying, poor Estela’s bringing a fucking shedload.’
‘There you go again … What’s with this “poor Estela”?’ El Tampón asks, staring at El Topo. ‘What the fuck do you care about that old bitch?’
‘There they are …’ El Topo mutters, nodding to the two old men in the distance.
‘I spotted them a while ago,’ El Tampón says, trying to determine the mood of the brothers walking towards them. ‘I’ll bet you anything that dipshit Sepelio forgot to call them.’
‘We’re about to find out,’ El Topo says and, a moment later, he adds, ‘It’s your turn to get out … I did it last time.’
‘Bastard … You always claim you did it last time,’ El Tampón says, climbing out of the former municipal garbage truck and walking towards the railings that protect Tres Hermanos.
Reaching across the dashboard, past the dolls dressed in football kit, the figurine of Christ in a soldier’s uniform that they use as a bottle-opener, the tiny Christmas tree and the Smurf dressed as Saint Juan Diego, El Topo grabs the pack of cigarettes and the box of matches, watching as El Tampón reaches the gates, leans his arms against them and waits for the two old men still making their way across their vast empire.
A cigarette dangling from his lips, El Topo tries to strike a match, but as he does so, he realises he is much more nervous than even he expected, and, closing his eyes, he tries not to think about El Tampón or the two old men slowly approaching. Gliding over the depths of his mind, El Topo repeats to himself: Better to think about something else, and this is how he comes to call up an image of Estela, the woman now driving along mountain roads, who, to avoid thinking about Epitafio, about Father Nicho or about her life, snorts two lines of coke and is thinking about the two sons of the jungle.
The two boys who, a moment earlier, on the main square of the town known to them as Tonée and to those on the far side of the great wall as Oluée, finished laying two blankets on the flagstones on which they are now setting out the things lost in the clearing known as El Ojo de Hierba by the nameless ones that they betrayed.
Exhausted, the elder of the two boys has collapsed on a flowerbed, while the younger boy, excited at the prospect of finally making it to the other side of the fence that divides the desolate lands, is shouting at the top of his lungs, selling off the possessions and belongings left in the clearing known as El Tiradero by the soulless who crossed the border days ago to these creatures who crossed it a few scant hours since.
Closing his eyes and using his hands as a pillow, the elder of the two boys prays to heaven that his younger brother will not sell off everything too quickly, since he has not yet worked out how he will explain that he doesn’t want to take him to the other side today: but, Better not to worry about that, the elder boy thinks, changing the image in his mind and, calling up the face of Epitafio, he decides that it was a good idea to work with this man who, right now, is stepping out of his house because he wants to go to
the toilet and it is on the far side of the dirt yard.
This yard that Epitafio is crossing as he thinks about Estela, the woman who a moment ago stopped her truck in the high sierra, so she could talk to him and tell him about Father Nicho’s betrayal. The same woman El Topo is still thinking about when he suddenly opens his eyes and sees El Tampón standing at the gates, waiting for the old men who founded Tres Hermanos.
Never leaving each other’s side, the two surviving triplets of Los Tres Hermanos — a former quarry, now a breaker’s yard, that locals call El Infierno — finally reach the railings that circumscribe their world and safeguard their existence, oblivious to the purpose outside their gates of these men who appear from time to time.
‘We shouldn’t bother to open up for them,’ says the white-haired triplet, though he knows that his brother is thinking the same thing: Let them stay out there until they’re sick and tired and they leave … Maybe this time they’ll finally get the message. The smoke from the great drums dances around the triplets, who stand rooted to the spot, the fire-glow sets the shadows quivering, while a pack of skeletal dogs fight over a bitch in heat.
‘I’m not going to open the gates … Let them talk to us from their side,’ says the triplet who, years ago, decided to dye his hair, and his words are precisely those that his brother would have uttered. ‘Maybe they’ll realise that they can’t just turn up here whenever they want to,’ says the white-haired triplet, standing a few metres from the railings and, gesturing with both hands, he bids those who have come from Lago Seco to extinguish the headlights of the fake security van.
Obediently, El Topo turns off the headlights of the apparently armoured vehicle and the shadows of the men standing by the railings become multiple and shifting in the rhythmic flicker of the flames: ‘Why have you come here at this hour? … Why come without calling beforehand?’ As the first brother speaks and the second backs him up: ‘Don’t you know we’ve got rules here?’ One of the dogs wins the carnal battle, the bitch in heat whines, while the vanquished dogs snap at the victor.
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