by Doug Dorst
She pulled her daughter close, about to whisper, See the bride? Doesn’t she look beautiful? But when she turned to look at April’s full-moon face up close, she stopped herself. She saw patches of hair missing from both of April’s eyebrows. Some of her eyelashes were gone, too; what had once been soft fans now looked like insect wings torn apart by cruel little boys. Pinpoints of blood red dotted the rims of her eyes, which still held a vacant, checked-out look. She instantly regretted bringing April with her. Forcing her to admire Dinaburg’s daughter would be awful, unforgivable. “Let’s go,” she said, leading April away from the door. “Let’s go see the cake.”
“Who were those people?” April asked.
“They’re from New York,” she said.
The kitchen staff said nothing when they walked through the swinging doors. They all recognized her from previous weddings; they’d jumped at the orders she’d barked, kept a safe distance while she’d added the final decorations and circled the cake, searching for imperfections. “Where’s the cake?” Kacy demanded. “I’m a special consultant to Mr. Dinaburg.” One of the dishwashers pointed to the leftmost walk-in and turned back to his work. Kacy pulled the handle and opened the heavy silver door. They went in.
The cake sat tall on a serving cart. Mist swirled in on currents of humid kitchen air. She felt a strange mix of disappointment and glee. The cake was big, garish, loud, a monstrosity. Nine tiers of chocolate excess and opulence and self-indulgence. Strawberries crowded out by outrageous gnarls of gold-leaf spirals and clots of gum-paste tulip blossoms.
The cold snapped April out of her stupor. “OK, so it’s really big,” she said. “Can we go see Dad now?”
“Shush.” Kacy studied the structure and detected a slight tilt in the third tier and a bulge crowning the sixth. April was right—there was no reason to stay. Dinaburg, she decided, was just a little man with too much money and no taste, and Rona Silverman—with her maroon hair and her tiny, tiny flowers and her magic New York water—was nothing special at all. But she had to be sure. She peeked back into the kitchen to see if anyone was watching. She had an easy path to a knife on a cutting board across the room, and calmly and confidently, she walked out to get it, plucking a clean white hand towel from a laundry box on the floor on her way back.
When April saw her approaching with the knife, she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Don’t. Jesus, Mom, that’s somebody’s cake.”
Kacy laid a hand on April’s folded arms. “Come on,” she said. “It’ll be our secret.” Under the gentle but insistent weight of Kacy’s hand, April’s arms returned to her sides, and as Kacy hunched over the lowest tier of the cake and pierced the dark chocolate surface, she heard her daughter’s breath quicken and thought, She likes this. She’s having fun, too.
She carefully ran the knife through the cake and excised a piece—a thin piece, but thick enough so she’d be able to get all the flavor—and she folded the towel around it loosely. She looked at the wounded cake. Silverman’s assistant, if he was good enough, would be able to cover it up. She silently dared him to try.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Walk like you belong.”
And April did. She walked quickly and confidently toward the service exit. Kacy watched her, struck by her daughter’s poise and confidence. It dawned on her that April might have barricaded her bedroom door that night because she’d had Skillet in there with her. She was thrilled. Not that April was sleeping with him—if that loser got her pregnant, she’d kill him—but that April was capable of connecting with somebody, that Kacy hadn’t ruined her, that April might not blame her for everything that was wrong in her young life.
They emerged from the building in a small parking lot, where a dozen young people in kitchen garb leaned against cars and smoked. They walked right past a tall, well-muscled young man in a chef’s coat with SILVERMAN CATERING stitched over the breast. He was flirting with a waitress, steadying his tall chef’s hat on her blonde head, and he didn’t even glance at them. They jogged around the hotel on a flagstone walkway, running in rhythm with each other, Kacy in her tennis shoes and April in her clompy black boots. As they waited for the valet to appear with the minivan, Kacy unfolded the towel. Daubs of chocolate icing stuck to the terry cloth. She held the cake out to April. An offering.
They ate with their fingers.
“What’s the verdict?” Kacy asked her daughter, her depressed and mangy daughter whom she loved more than anything.
“It’s good,” April said, a chocolate-buttermilk crumb clinging wetly to her upper lip, “but not as good as yours,” and that was all Kacy needed to hear.
La Fiesta de San Humberto el Menor
It will be a hot day, perhaps the hottest in years. It is only nine o’clock, yet sweat soaks my clothes as I sit alone in the shade of my fruit stand. It has not rained in weeks. The air is as still as San Humberto’s bones.
The great saint is buried in a vault beneath our cathedral, along with the remains of the hyenas that he collected on his travels across the water. Each morning since his death three hundred years ago, the church bells have rung at eight o’clock, sounding the beginning of the daily Mass in his honor. The bells woke me today. In my throbbing head it sounded as if they were calling out, No fruit! No fruit! No fruit!—admonishing me for another late night with the bottle, for another wasted morning. Once again I have disappointed my early customers, the people who like to eat fruit on the cathedral steps as they wait for Mass to begin. Now, with everyone filling the pews inside, the town is quiet except for the buzz of fat, dizzy f lies as they circle and dive and swarm.
I pass several minutes admiring a sturdy beetle as it rolls a dung ball many times its size through the dirt. When I look up again, I see someone running toward me from the town square. Though my vision is blurred, I know it is my friend Vargas, the carpenter. Vargas is a fat man. He runs neither often nor well. When he reaches the stand, he leans on it to support himself. He holds his side and doubles over like a man stuck by a knife. I give him the glass of lemonade I have made for myself; he needs it more than I do.
“Manolo,” he says through shallow breaths. “Come to the square. You will not believe what you see.”
“Who will watch the stand?” I ask.
“Your fruit is safe. Everyone is at Mass.”
We walk toward the square, shading our eyes from the sharp morning sun. “What news could be so important that it makes you run?” I ask.
“You would already know if you had not slept so late,” he scolds. Vargas likes to think it is his job to teach me lessons. I have told him he is wasting his time. Lessons are burdens, and I do not need any more of those.
He turns to me. “It was another one of those nights, yes? You drink and you clean the gun?” He says this quietly, with concern.
“I did not touch the gun,” I lie.
The square is at the exact center of the town, where our two alamedas cross; one runs north-south, the other east-west. In the southwest corner of the square is our town wishing well, shaped from rough-cut chunks of limestone. As we pass it, I mouth a prayer of contrition to the saint and drop in a coin, as is my custom. There is no splash, just the flat sound of the coin landing in the muck below.
Vargas leads me through the square to the mayor’s office. A scroll hangs from the door on a braided purple cord. The parchment is thick and smooth, with bright purple and yellow borders, long black leather fringes attached to the corners, and elegant script that glitters as if it has been written in gold. I want to touch it to see what the gold feels like, but Vargas grabs my wrist. “You might smear it,” he says.
“Is it the pronouncement for the Festival?” I ask.
He nods excitedly. This is strange. Usually the pronouncement comes in the form of a name scratched in charcoal on a torn scrap of paper that is nailed to the door.
“Why such a fancy scroll?” I ask. “It is only Ayala who will hang this year. No one special.”
He grabs my elbow. “Th
at is the news,” he says, and he is shaking with excitement. “It will not be Ayala. We have someone special. Let me read for you.” Vargas knows I broke my eyeglasses in the bar last week defending my daughter’s honor, such as it is. “‘Attention citizens! The infamous bandit El Gris has been captured in our town! Next Friday he will receive his punishment at the Festival of San Humberto, where the great saint’s hyenas will run fast and hungry! Rejoice in your safety! Rejoice in our justice!’ ”
El Gris! My pulse races. It is a feeling of triumph, a feeling that everyone in town must be sharing this morning, all of us, together. El Gris is a ruthless murderer, robber, and thief, a man who shoots, then laughs, then shoots again. It is said that he has had his mane of gray hair since he was a teenager, that it turned gray overnight from the thrill of his first kill. El Gris was a plague on this land long before Lars Jarlssen ever came from across the water with all of his riches and built his house with its swimming pool and bought the village bar and turned its back rooms into a brothel and cursed us with his verminous pet spider monkey and doubled the price of tequila and stole my wife and children away from me.
“We have never had such a famous person to hang,” Vargas says.
“This is San Humberto’s doing,” I say. “The saint is showing us His hand. Reminding us of His goodness.”
“That is possible, I suppose.”
“El Gris is too smart to be caught by any man.”
“What if he wanted to be caught?” Vargas says. “What if he wanted to repent, and he turned himself in?”
I laugh and shake my head. “The heat makes you foolish,” I say. “One can bathe a hyena, but one can never remove its stink.” Vargas nods, and I tell him, “You see? I have lessons to teach, too.”
On our walk back to my stand, I see two boys running away with their arms full of my guavas. They yell and laugh. It is too hot to chase them.
El Gris has nearly taken my life twice.
The first time was twenty years ago. I was young, I was muscular, I had hair, I had many friends. I was walking home from the bar—at the time, Vargas’s grandfather owned it— and we had been celebrating the engagement of Vargas’s oldest sister. I walked through the square and turned onto the west road toward the one-room house Madalena and I had shared since we were married the year before. I heard someone clear his throat behind me. I turned and saw El Gris leaning against the wishing well, his long gray hair bright in the moonlight. “Good evening, friend,” he said, in a voice that told me I was not his friend at all. I saw his right hand move for his gun, and my instinct took over. I leaped into an alley and ran, taking a snake’s path through the west side of town, staying off the road. I hid behind the pescadería, behind a stack of crates, kneeling amid the old, stinking fish that had been left out for the dogs. I remained there for hours, trying not to breathe, watching the moon cross the sky. When I ran, I did not look back. At home I fell into Madalena’s arms and told her my story. “You did the right thing,” she said. “You have too much to live for.” Then she bathed me and made love to me. I believe this was the night Ysela was conceived.
The second time was four years ago. El Gris robbed and killed six merchants in a rampage along the west road. His path ran right past my stand, but I was not tending it that day. Madalena had left with the children only days before, and I was at home, facedown on the cool floor, trembling, sick with drink and with the loss of my family. In the echo of each shot, I prayed a ricochet would take me.
The heat lingers into the evening like a rude guest. I am exhausted after hours of making change and smiling and ignoring the knife-blade remarks like, Where are the guavas today, Manolo? Don’t you know my wife needs to make jelly for the feast? And where were you this morning? Aren’t you ashamed to be so unreliable? But my day is far from over. I must go into the hills and tell my son Rubén the good news about the Festival, about El Gris. There should be just enough daylight for me to find my way back.
Rubén left town four years ago, the day his mother married Lars. He left a trail of orange peels so I could find him. He has never come back, not even for his mother’s funeral. But each day I tell myself maybe, just maybe, he has grown tired of living alone, tired of punishing me, and he only needs an excuse to come back. Perhaps the chance to run with the hyenas for El Gris will be enough.
I leave the dirt path that runs south of the town and head into the hills. I walk for an hour, following the path I know by heart: over a field of prickly maguey and sunny trumpet bushes, across a stream where dipper birds dart underwater, up a rock face flecked with quartz. When I come to the old apple tree, I stop and call his name. Silence. I see the faintest movement of a shadow in the branches. Then an apple flies down and hits me, square on the ankle. This is what usually happens; I talk, and he throws fruit.
“Rubén,” I say again. “There is exciting news from town. They have captured El Gris. He will hang at the Festival next Friday.” Another apple, this time soft, rotting. It hits me on the knee and stains my pants.
I dream of bringing Rubén back into town with me; I will cook him a magnificent dinner, then we will steal a bottle of tequila from under Lars’s pointy nose and share it as we watch the sunset from the bell tower, and Rubén will work with me at the stand and smile as he makes change and ignore all the complaints because he is so happy we are working together. But I have come to accept that, for now, he is a boy who lives in a tree and throws fruit at his father.
I did not always accept this. When I followed the orange peels and found him in the tree, I shouted at him, drunk and blind with anger. These are the things I said:
Come down from that tree! Boys do not live in trees!
You are bringing shame upon your family, such as it is!
You are as bad as your sister! Perhaps worse!
The lightning will hit you. San Humberto will see to it!
Squirrels will claw at your testicles, trying to gather them for the winter!
If there is a drought, the branches of the tree may weaken and break, and you might then fall and hurt yourself !
Why are you leaving your father alone?
Twice I have brought the gun here, drunk. On the day after Madalena was buried, I aimed it at my son, a shadow in an apple tree. Weeks later, on the day my daughter, Ysela, told me she was going to work in Lars’s back rooms, I held it to my head. On both occasions, San Humberto prevented me from pulling the trigger. For this I am grateful, most of the time.
“Do you not want to see El Gris?” I say to Rubén. “We have never had such a famous person to hang.”
Apple, apple, apple.
I turn and walk back to the road with the bruises spreading under my clothes. But I have not given up. I have decided that the capture of El Gris is a sign from the saint, a sign of order restored, a sign that Rubén and I will run with the hyenas together this year.
It is pitch-dark when I pass through the south gate into town, and I swear it is as hot as it was at noon. Though my clothes are stained with sweat and dirt and apple, I go to the bar for a bottle of tequila. It is the only way I will find sleep tonight. I do not want to see Lars, but as is his custom, he sits at his desk in the loft overlooking the bar, calling out bawdy jokes as one of the girls sits on his lap and combs his thick blond beard. The sound of coins slapping the bar is as constant as the ticking of a clock.
There is a bottle of tequila on the corner of the bar, nearly full and unattended. I wonder, Is Lars setting a trap for me? Inviting me to steal from him while he watches me from beneath the folds of his eyelids, stroking his monkey and relishing the thought of the police dragging me away, humiliated? Well, he is right to expect me to steal from him, but he underestimates me. If I am going to steal for myself, I will not take something as insignificant as a bottle. I will steal something he loves. I do not yet have a plan, because Lars does not seem to love anything besides himself. Which is an excellent defense, I admit.
I keep my eyes to the floor and pay the bartender. I tu
rn to leave, a new bottle in hand. “Manolo,” Lars shouts from his loft. “My most reliable customer.” I keep walking. Behind me I hear whispers, stifled laughs. “If you have come for a glimpse of your daughter,” he says, “you should know she will have nothing to do with you.”
I turn and look up. Without my glasses I see his face as a blur, but I know his expression—a scornful curl of lip under blond mustache, a creeping lopsided smile, blue eyes wide with mockery. He sits in front of a bright lamp that casts a halo around his head so that people who look up at him will think he is some kind of angel. I spit on his polished floor.
“Oh, Manolo. You must be so lonely,” he says loudly. It is important to him that everybody hear. “A nice girl would comfort you more than that bottle. One of Ysela’s friends, perhaps? I’m sure they would love to see where she came from.”
More laughter. The door seems very far away.
I know that every man in this room has paid his money to be with my daughter. Most have not said anything to me, but I can see it in their eyes when they come to buy my fruit. Some squeeze the fruit silently and stare at the ground while they hunt for money in their pockets. Others look me in the eye too directly, speak too loudly, listen too earnestly. I do not know which bothers me more. Even Vargas took his turn, once. The next morning he knocked on my door and confessed; he said he was sorry, he was drunk, he had been fighting with his wife, and Ysela was just so beautiful, and on and on. He begged me to blacken his eyes, so I did. We never spoke of it again. If I were to hold grudges, I would soon be out of friends.