by Doug Dorst
“You are an evil man, Lars,” I say. I focus on a spot above his head so I do not have to meet his eyes.
Swinging from a crossbeam, Lars’s monkey screeches and bares its teeth at me. I hate that monkey, that filthy little beast in its purple velveteen coat. Lars laughs—a false, too-loud laugh that is for the benefit of everyone having a drink or waiting for a girl. “Good-bye, Manolo, and thank you for your business,” he says, waving me out.
“San Humberto punishes people like you,” I say. “If not now, then someday.” I turn my back on him and walk through the door and into the night. He shouts something that I cannot hear, and everyone inside laughs. He has the money, he gives the party, so people laugh.
I open the bottle and drink as I walk down the road. Tonight I will not touch the gun, will not clean it, will not cradle it like a baby. I swear it to myself.
In the morning, Vargas brings news from the jail, where Ayala and El Gris sit in adjoining cells. “Ayala does nothing but cry,” he says, mopping his brow with his sleeve. “He sobs so hard it is like he is having a seizure.”
“Why?” I say. “He is going to live.” It is our tradition that the worst criminal in the jail on the day of the Festival goes to the gallows. Ayala had been the only one behind bars; with the Festival so close, he must have expected he would hang. The capture of El Gris has spared him.
“Ayala wants to die,” Vargas says. “He wants to be with Concepción.”
Concepción was Ayala’s wife and one of Vargas’s sisters. She died of the green fever six months ago. The night after she was buried, Ayala went to the bar and drank himself senseless. When the bells tolled midnight, he jumped up and overturned his table, smashed bottles, kicked the monkey into the wall, and ran out. He went to the cathedral, where he stripped off his clothes and relieved himself all over the front steps. “I piss on your apostles! I shit on your saints!” he said. He shouted this again and again, dancing naked around the cathedral as we gathered in a crowd. He stopped, suddenly, and with a look of sudden, rapturous knowledge—as if he’d just glimpsed Truth itself—he said, “I will burn your God to the ground.” The police came as Ayala was pushing through the crowd, asking people if they had any matches he could borrow.
I open a crate of sapotes that was delivered this morning. “And El Gris?” I ask Vargas. “You have seen him?”
“Yes,” Vargas says. “He tries to comfort Ayala.” Vargas eyes the sapotes.
“Go ahead,” I say. He chooses one and cuts into the fibrous brown skin with a pocket knife.
“It is sad to see Ayala,” Vargas says. “A naked man in a bare cell. Even though the police do not need him for the Festival anymore, they still will not give him his clothing. They are afraid of what he may do to himself.”
“It is San Humberto’s will,” I say. “We live because it is our duty to live.”
“You have never wanted to die?” Vargas asks. He cuts a crescent of pink flesh away from the rind.
“What we want,” I say, “is irrelevant.”
I, too, lost my wife to a fever—to the fever of money and power that Lars brought to our town. It left Madalena dazed and desirous and vulnerable. Her note, which was delivered to me by Lars’ silk-clad coachman, made this plain: Lars can give the children everything you cannot. He is a gentleman and you are a boor. He is a respected businessman and you sell fruit of poor quality. At Mass the next morning, all of them—Lars, Madalena, Ysela, and Rubén—sat together, a false family looking down on the rest of us from Lars’s reserved seating area—which had been the choir loft until the bishop let himself be bought. I have not gone inside the cathedral since. Does San Humberto understand my reasons? I believe he does.
Two years ago, Lars and Madalena traveled to the capital city for a vacation. He came back; she did not. Lars and his coachman claimed she was killed when a small and unknown band of rebels began catapulting boulders into the city from the surrounding hills. Whether that is true or not, Madalena is gone, and there is nothing I can do.
The white marble tombstone that Lars’s unclean money bought is bigger than my house. It is a blindfolded angel pointing at the sky. When the shadows are longest, the wings of the angel darken forty-six other graves. I cannot read the epitaph because it is written in Latin. The final insult: the stone gives her surname as “De Los Pozos,” with capital D, capital L. What kind of man does not know how to spell his wife’s name? I asked Vargas if the stone could be corrected. “You do not have enough money,” he told me.
Eventually Madalena would have come back to me. I know this. Lars made her forget what is good and what is right, but one day the great saint would have opened her eyes, shown her that Lars is like the feijoa, a fruit that rots from the inside out, turning brown and foul-smelling underneath its shiny green skin. I may be a man who blackens eyes, cleans his gun, and dreams violent dreams, but I live by San Humberto’s example. I am not a bad man.
As much as El Gris deserves his punishment at the Festival, I would rather see Lars in his place, sweating and crying and helpless, knowing the floor will fall away beneath him, knowing his neck will soon be snapped and we, the true citizens of Ciudad San Humberto, will lead the hyenas to his swinging corpse. That is the picture I have in my head when I drop my coin into the well. I hear it clink at the bottom, metal on metal.
I am doubled over in the pain of last night’s drink. The hot air scorches my lungs when I breathe. The shade of the fruit stand is little comfort. Hammers pound and pound from the direction of the square. The construction committee has begun to reassemble the gallows.
I am startled by my daughter’s voice, suddenly close. “Those papayas are lovely,” she says.
Sunlight stabs my eyes when I look up. “I sell good fruit,” I tell her.
Ysela is nearly twenty, tall and slim, with graceful limbs and wide, dark eyes. She is the most beautiful woman anyone in town has ever seen. These are not the foolish words of a proud father, for I am anything but proud of her. Her beauty is simply a fact, just as it is a fact that hyenas can smell carrion from seven miles away through a crosswind. Today she wears a new-looking dress of deep carmine. It does not cover her calves.
She tucks a strand of her long black hair behind her ear. “Yes,” she says. “You do your job well.” I know she says this to make me feel better; she must have heard all the complaints. Even so, I thank her.
“I hope you are well,” she says. “I worry.”
“I do not need your worry,” I say.
“How is Rubén?” she asks.
“The same. Always the same.”
She looks up and down the road, then quickly opens her basket and hands me a bottle of tequila, the best Lars sells. “Tonight, at least, you won’t have to go into the bar,” she says. “I know Lars makes it difficult for you.” I tell her I can buy my own drinks, Lars or no Lars. But I take it from her and hide it behind the stand.
She bites her lip. A habit, when she is anxious. It is the same look she had just before she told me she was going to work in Lars’s back rooms.
I asked her, Have you lost your mind now that your mother is gone?
She said, You can’t control me like you controlled Mama.
Do not talk to me that way. I am your father.
I will talk any way I want to talk. And I will make my money any way I wish.
I will drag you from there and beat sense into you.
I will curse you whenever someone is inside me. Whenever I am fucking.
San Humberto will make you pay.
San Humberto would pay me to fuck Him.
So now, with her lip bitten and her calves exposed, I brace myself for her news. But what she says is not what I expect.
“I want to see Rubén. Will you show me the way?”
“Rubén does not want to see you,” I say. “Not while you work for that man.”
Her eyes narrow, but she says nothing.
“May San Humberto guide you,” I say.
“May He guide y
ou as well,” she says curtly, then turns away. I watch her walk; it is Madalena’s walk, a walk of confidence, even arrogance. In my blurred vision she could be her mother, and I cannot stop watching her.
I do not even notice the two boys making off with all of my lemons until they are halfway to the square. The children are getting bolder these days.
Each day Vargas visits the jail and brings back the same news: Ayala is despondent, El Gris is strangely calm, and the two of them whisper together through the bars. I am filled with questions: Does El Gris have regrets? Does he pray? Is he perhaps conspiring with Ayala, formulating a plan that will let him escape and let our sad friend die in his place? Vargas shrugs and tells me he does not know; the bandit does not speak when anyone but Ayala can hear.
It is too hot to do anything but talk. The rumor today is that Zorrillo, who runs the hyena ranch, has starved the animals for a week; they are so hungry that one of them escaped the pen last night and ate twenty chickens before it was recaptured. People are also talking about the drinks and the meats and the jellies and pies we will share on the rooftops after the run. I want to share their excitement, but the thought of food makes me ill. I realize I have eaten nothing in two days. The heat, the stillness, the flies, the tequila—they have robbed me of my appetite.
I pull my hat over my eyes and pretend to sleep. The children will try to steal again today; they are crazy, and the Festival makes them crazier still. The gun is in my hand, hidden under my shirt. The bell at the schoolhouse rings. I wait. It will not be long.
Through the weave of the straw in my hat, I see the two boys emerge from behind the cobbler’s shop and creep toward my stand. The shorter one pulls a small wagon behind him. A wagon! They are more than bold, I think, more than shameless, more than crazy—they have become animals.
They are within arm’s reach of my oranges before I can make out their faces. The short one is Zorrillo’s son, and the tall one is the son of the town doctor. These are not boys who must steal because they are hungry. The wagon creaks, and they hold still. They are watching to see if I stir. I am patient. I am calm. I am completely still.
But I am up quick and strong as a panther the moment they reach for my fruit. I have the muzzle of the gun pressed into the tall boy’s temple before they can even pull their hands back. It is the fastest I have moved in years. They look at me, mouths open. “You are surprised?” I say. “Surprised that a man will defend his fruit?” I walk out from behind the stand and kick over the wagon. “A wagon? Were you going to steal everything I have?”
The short boy starts to stay something, so I box him in the ear with my free hand. My hand thinks for me. “Shut your mouth,” I say. “Do you know what San Humberto does to boys like you?” I hit him again. I see tears in his eyes. I feel tears in mine. “Go home now,” I say, “and tell your fathers what you have done.” I lower the gun. “Now leave me alone.” I do not want them to see an old man cry.
They are slow to move, so I hit the tall one. “Go!” I yell, and they run. I sit and wipe my eyes with my shirt. I am so tired.
Late in the afternoon, their fathers come to the stand to pay for all the fruit the boys stole. Zorrillo holds out a sackful of coins, then pulls it away when I reach for it. “In the future I would prefer that you not threaten children with your gun,” he says.
“In the future I would prefer that children not steal my fruit,” I say, and I wait for him to hand over what is mine.
Some nights I dream about forgiveness. I do not mean that I dream about people forgiving people. I dream about forgiveness itself, curling around buildings and nuzzling people like the cool west winds. Vargas does not believe me. He says you cannot dream about something you cannot see or touch or hear or taste or smell.
I have not told Vargas this, but when I dream, forgiveness has a smell. Forgiveness smells like limes.
On the day of the Festival, I close the stand early so I can visit Rubén before the run. As I pack away my stock, I sense someone nearby watching me and I look up. I do not know if it is the heat or the hangover or my bad eyes, but for an instant I see Ysela standing hand in hand with her mother. But no, it is my daughter, alone.
She holds out a pair of eyeglasses. “I found them among Mamá’s things,” she says. “I think they’re yours.”
“Perhaps,” I say, although I know they are.
My eyesight has gotten worse, but the old lenses work well enough. The gallows in the square comes into focus. I feel my eyes shift again, and now I can see all the way to the east gate. I turn to Ysela, and I see thin, shallow wrinkles in her forehead that I have never noticed before. It makes me sad, to see my daughter look as if she worries so much. But she has chosen the path she has chosen. I cannot blame myself.
She is biting her lip again. “You know I have made a lot of money,” she says. She waits for me to nod before she continues. “I want you to visit Mamá tomorrow. There is a surprise for both of you.”
Her name, I think. Her name, the way it should be, the way she would have wanted it. I feel like dropping this crate and running to the cemetery now. But then I think: San Humberto would frown on such a tainted monument. He would curse it.
“No,” I say.
She looks surprised. “It is a gift,” she says. “For both of you.”
“I do not want your mother’s grave defiled by whore money,” I tell her.
The slap hits me before I see her arm move. My eyeglasses, bent, hang from one ear. Ysela clenches her teeth and shakes with anger. “You haven’t changed,” she says. “You’ll never change.” She grabs an overripe mango and heaves it into the wall behind me. Pieces of the fruit spatter on the back of my head and neck.
“I have told Lars I am finished working for him,” she says. “I am going to be the new schoolteacher.”
My voice is louder than I intend. “What can you teach children? How to shame their fathers?”
She stomps away, then stops in the middle of the road. “You think you are San Humberto Himself !” she shouts. “You are not! You are an old and drunken fruit vendor, not a saint and not a father!”
I want to go after her, but I do not know what I would say. I put on the glasses again and see that people have come out onto the road to stare. I take the glasses off. I cannot watch them watching me.
I sit on an empty crate and bite into a lime. The sour juice floods my mouth. I bite again, and again. I bite, I sit, and I stare straight ahead at nothing. I do not even blink when Lars’s monkey snatches the fruit out of my hand and runs away, tittering.
I am dry-throated and dripping with sweat when I get to Rubén’s tree. My pulse drums in my ears. I sit on a flat mossy rock and stare up into the branches, but I can see no shadow, hear no movement. The only sound is the shrill cry of a chachalaca defending its nest. I wait, trying to think of what to say. It is difficult. I feel it has been years since I have said the right thing to anyone—not even to the saint, in my prayers. Finally, this comes out: “Rubén, I do not speak to you as your father but as a man. I am sorry for all I have done and all I have failed to do.”
The apples fly. I close my eyes and let them find their marks. When I arrive home, I count the new bruises. Seventeen in all. One for each year of my son’s life.
It is time. The last traces of sunset have disappeared and the gallows is lit only by the flickering torches on the roofs. We are all gathered in the square, packed in tightly, breathing on each other. I look through the crowd for Rubén, hoping, but I do not see him. It occurs to me that I might not recognize him if he were here. Would he have a beard? Would he be taller than I am? Would he be thin and weak from a diet of apples and insects? My heart drums. I feel feverish. I cannot find Vargas, either. I do not want to be here, alone in this crowd.
A young man climbs up the frame of the gallows and leans out over the crowd, holding on with one hand. This is Urrieta, who runs Lars’s cochineal farm and likes to brawl in the bar. He pumps his free hand in a fist. “Give us the bandit!” he
shouts. “Give us the bandit!” A twisted, gap-toothed grin spreads across his face as the crowd takes up the chant. I see Lars standing on the terrace of the hotel that overlooks the square, shouting along, beating the railing with his fists, while one of his youngest whores runs a comb through his yellow beard and the monkey bounces and screeches. Ysela is on the terrace with them, but she stands apart from them, scanning the crowd with her arms folded over her chest. I wonder if she is looking for me.
The door to the police station opens, but no one comes outside.
Underneath the shouts I hear Vargas’s voice and his heavy breathing, coming closer. “Pardon me. Pardon me. Pardon me.” He pushes his way into the space beside me. He is covered in sweat and dirt. He wipes his forehead, leaving a streak of clean.
“Where have you been?” I ask him.
“I had to bury Ayala right away, before the hyenas are set free. I did not want—”
“Ayala is dead?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“El Gris strangled him through the bars.”
“Ah,” I say. “One last kill. The demon-bandit could not resist.”
“No,” Vargas says. “Ayala begged him.”
“Then may San Humberto have mercy on Ayala’s soul,” I say. “He did not deserve to be buried.” I find myself getting angry. Why should Ayala get away so easily when the rest of us have to stay here and hurt?
“Do you want to know what I think?” Vargas says quietly, with his head down. “I think it was an act of kindness.” When he lifts his head, I see tears in his eyes. He wipes them away with his fat, callused fingers and suddenly I feel very old and lost. Living was so much easier long ago—when husbands and wives stayed together, when children respected their parents, when blond strangers did not control our town, when we had nothing to fear but the infrequent visits of El Gris.