by Noah Gordon
Nivaldo had counseled him. “One should never gaze into the eyes of another man’s dog’s. A dog sees a stranger’s stare as a challenge, and if he is a fierce dog, he responds by attacking, perhaps even wanting to take your life. One should look at a dog only briefly, glance away without fleeing or showing fear, and speak to the animal softly and soothingly.”
Josep had no idea if Nivaldo’s theories worked, but he considered them as he rubbed the blood sausage as hard as he could with handfuls of grass, removing a lot of the white bloom. He cut the sausage into small pieces, and that evening as dusk fell on Santa Eulália, he walked to the village placa, past the Casals’ vegetable field. The chicken house was at the far end of the field, the rich soil of which was manured but not ploughed. The dog, attached to the rickety structure by a very long rope, lay dozing in front of the henhouse like a dragon guarding a castell.
The alcalde’s casa was within easy eyesight of the chicken coop, little more than half the length of the field away.
Josep walked aimlessly until the full darkness of night had fallen; then he returned to Angel Casals’s field.
This time, keeping an eye on the lantern light in the window of the house, he walked slowly across the field heading straight for the dog, which soon began to bark. Just before he was close enough to see the animal, the dog came at him, held back only by the limitations of his rope tether. The alcalde, resting from his farming and mayoral duties, should be sound asleep, as should his sons, but Josep knew that if the barking continued, someone would come from the house.
“There, there, be quiet now, there’s a good shit-dog. I’ve just come to pay you a little visit, you monster, you stupid asshole, you ugly beast,” he said in a friendly tone Nivaldo would have approved, taking a piece of morcilla from his pocket. When he tossed the lump, the dog shied to the side as if a stone had been thrown, but the ripe scent of the blood sausage called. The piece was swallowed at a gulp. Josep threw another, which was eaten just as quickly. When he turned and walked away, the barking began again but it didn’t last, and as he left the field, the night became quiet.
He went back again, after midnight. By that time the moon was high, and he would have been detected if anyone had cared to look, but the house was dark. This time the dog barked again in the beginning, but he seemed to be waiting for the two pieces of morcilla Josep fed him. Josep sat on the ground just beyond the end of the tether. He and the dog looked at one another. He talked to the beast very quietly and mindlessly for a long time, about grapes and the bodies of females and saint’s days and the size of the animal’s member and itchy balls and the lack of rain, then he gave the dog one more piece of sausage—a small one, he had to make his supply last—and he went home.
He returned to the alcalde’s field twice the next evening. The first time the dog barked twice before Josep began to talk. When he came the second time, the dog was waiting for him silently.
On the following evening, the dog didn’t bark at all. When it came time for Josep to leave, he moved toward the dog until he was well within biting range, speaking slowly and steadily. “You good old thing, you homely beautiful ugly beast, if you want to be my friend, I want to be yours….” He took a piece of blood sausage and held it out, and at the abrupt movement the creature growled, a low ugly sound. Then in a moment the great black head moved over his hand. First he felt the wet snout and then the thick tongue, wet and tickling and rough, like a lion’s tongue moving over his palm, lapping up every bit of the blood sausage scent.
His late night departures had been noticed. Josep knew from the sly little smiles he saw in the morning that his father assumed he was sneaking away to be with Teresa Gallego, and he said nothing to contradict the belief.
That night he waited until the French clock had issued two of its gentle, asthmatic chimes before leaving his sleeping mat and walking quietly out of the house.
He drifted through the darkness like a spirit. In two or three hours the village would begin to waken, but at that moment the entire world was asleep.
Even the dog.
There was no lock on the poultry house—the people of Santa Eulália did not steal from one another—only a little stick through two small iron rings kept the door closed. He was inside in a moment.
It was warm and smelled strongly and sharply of bird shit. The upper half of one wall was wire mesh through which the low moon sent pale glimmer. Most of the chickens were sleeping, dark lumps in the moonlight, but several birds scratched and pecked in the straw on the floor. One glanced at Josep and clucked inquiringly, but soon lost interest.
Some of the chickens were on raised shelves against one wall. Josep thought those must be layers on nests, and therefore hens. He didn’t want to get a sharp-spurred rooster by mistake. He knew that any flurry of action or sound could turn into a disaster of noise—clucking, crowing, the barking of the dog outside. His hands stole down to one of the nests. As his right hand clamped tight around the chicken’s neck to shut off any squawk, his left pressed the bird into his body to prevent the wings from beating. Trying not to think of what he was doing, he twisted the feathered neck. He expected to hear something like a crack when the neck broke, but it was more a crackling, like the rapid snapping of many little bones. For a few moments the hen struggled, feet pushing to break from his grasp, wings fluttering against him, then as he continued to twist as if trying to rip the head off, the chicken quivered and was dead.
He set it back in its nest and tried to quiet his breathing.
When he took the second bird, things went almost as before, but with an important difference. His pulled the chicken against his chest instead of his abdomen, which bent the wrist of his right hand into an angle that restricted movement, so that he could twist only a limited distance that proved not enough to break the bird’s neck. He could do nothing but hold fast to the chicken and continue to squeeze the feathered neck, so tightly that almost at once his fingers began to hurt. The hen struggled, strongly at first, and then more weakly. Her wings pulsed against him, fluttered. More feeble still, ah Déu, he was squeezing the future from this creature! He could realize the departure of life, feel the last bit of indistinct existence moving up the neck against his squeezing iron hand like a bubble rising in a bottle. Then it was gone.
He risked taking a swift new hold of the neck and twisted firmly, though that was no longer necessary.
When he left the poultry house the big black dog was standing there in front of him, and Josep cradled the hens in one arm like a baby and took the remainder of the sausage from his pocket, seven or eight pieces that he cast to the alcalde’s dog.
He walked away on legs that were powerless and trembling, a murderous thief in the black night. Around him, everyone—his father, his brother, Teresa, the village, the whole world—slept in innocence and rectitude. He felt he had somehow crossed a chasm and been changed, and the meaning of Sergeant Peña’s assignment was suddenly clear.
Go kill something.
When the group of hunters assembled in the morning, they found him in the clearing mending two small fires over which the cooked hens sizzled on greenwood spits hung from Y-shaped stakes.
The sergeant took in the scene judiciously, but the boys were delighted.
Josep cut up the chickens and distributed largesse, burning his fingers slightly in the hot fat.
Peña accepted a drumstick.
“Nicely crisped skin, Alvarez.”
“A little oil rubbed on, Sergeant.”
“Quite so.”
Josep took one for himself and found the meat delicious. All the youths ate and they relaxed, laughing and chewing, enjoying the unexpected treat.
When they were finished, they wiped their greasy hands on the forest floor and sprawled on the ground and against tree trunks. They were full of well-being, belching and complaining about Xavier’s farts. It felt like a holiday. They would not have been surprised if the sergeant had passed out sweets.
Instead, he told Miquel
Figueres and Josep to follow him. He led them to the shack where he was staying and gave them boxes to carry back to the clearing. The wooden boxes were each about a meter square and surprisingly heavy. At the clearing the sergeant broke open Josep’s box and from it took bulky packets wrapped in heavy oiled cotton and bound with rough jute cord.
When each youth had received one of the packets, Peña ordered them to take off the cord and unwrap the oilskin. Josep untied the cord carefully and put it into his pocket. He discovered that beneath the outer wrapping were two more layers of oilskin.
Within the third wrapping—inside each of the third wrappings, waiting to be discovered like a nutmeat—there was a gun.
13
Guns
“It’s a proper soldier’s piece,” the sergeant said, “the Colt .44. Lots of these to be found now, left-overs from the Americans’ civil war. It blows a nasty hole, and the weight isn’t bad for lugging it about—a curly hair more than a kilogram.
“If this was a single-shot gun, it would be a pistol. This weapon gives you six shots loaded into a cylinder that rotates, so it’s a revolver. You comprehend?”
He showed them how to remove the small wedge in front of the chambers, which allowed the barrel to be broken away from the frame for cleaning. The box Miquel had carried proved to contain rags, and soon the youths were busily engaged in rubbing away the greasy film that had been protecting the guns.
Josep worked the cloth against metal that had been used and cleaned and used again, many times, until almost half of the blueing had been worn off by the hands of others. He felt an uneasy instinct that this was a gun that had been fired in combat, a deadly tool that had wounded and killed men, and he feared it far more than he had been afraid of Angel’s dog.
The sergeant passed out more supplies from Miquel’s box: to each youth, a stocking filled with black powder; a heavy sack of lead balls; an empty little leather tube, closed at one end; a small wooden bowl of lard; a cleaning rod; a sack of tiny objects shaped like drinking cups but smaller than the nail of Josep’s little finger; and two strange metal tools, one ending in a sharp point.
All these things, and the guns, were placed in cloth bags. Wearing the bags hung from their necks on rope straps, the youths were led away from the clearing behind the Calderon vineyard. In their work clothes instead of uniforms they still seemed awkward and unmilitary, yet carrying the guns made them feel powerful and important. The sergeant took them an hour’s march away from the village to another forest clearing, where the sound of firing would not raise comment and alarm.
Once there, he showed them how to pull back the hammer of the gun until it reached a stop and was half-cocked, so that the trigger was locked into a safety position and couldn’t be pulled.
“It takes the explosion of thirty grains of black powder to send a lead ball out of the barrel,” the sergeant said. “When you are under fire, you have no time to be measuring grains of powder or dancing a slow sardana , so…” He held up the leather measuring tube. “You quickly pour powder into this sack, which holds the correct amount, and from the sack into an empty chamber of the gun. Next you place the lead ball into the chamber and pull down the loading lever to pack it into the powder firmly. A dab of grease over the powder and ball, then these little cups—the caps that explode when struck by the hammer of the gun—are placed over the bullet and powder, using the capping tool. You can spin the cylinder by hand and load each chamber, one by one.
“In combat, a soldier must be able to load all six chambers in less than a minute’s time. You must practice this again and again. Now each may begin to load his own gun,” he said.
They were slow and clumsy and felt doomed. Peña walked among them as they went through the process, and he made several men unload a chamber and repeat the loading. When he was satisfied that each of the guns was properly armed, he took his knife and made a slash mark on the trunk of a tree. Then he stood six or seven meters away from the tree, raised his own gun and fired six rapid shots. Six holes appeared in the trunk of the tree. Several of the holes were touching and there were no more than two finger-widths between any of them.
“Xavier Miró. Now, you try,” the sergeant said.
Xavier took his place facing the tree, his face pale. When he lifted the gun, his hand was trembling.
“You must hold the gun firmly yet apply only the lightest pressure on the trigger. Think of a butterfly landing on a leaf. Think of a fingertip barely teasing a woman.”
Words did not work with Xavier. His finger jerked against the trigger six times, the gun bucked and tossed in his nerveless hand, and the balls sprayed into the undergrowth.
Jordi Arnau was next and didn’t do a great deal better. One of the balls landed in the trunk of the tree, perhaps by accident.
“Alvarez.”
Josep went to face the target tree. When he extended his arm the hatred he already felt for the gun made his arm rigid, but he heard the sergeant’s words again in his mind and thought of Teresa as he caressed the trigger. With each report, smoke and fire and sparks sprang from the barrel as if Josep were God, as if his hand hurled lightning to go with the thunder. Four new holes appeared in the group that had been made in the tree by Sergeant Peña’s shooting. Two other holes were located no more than three centimeters from the grouping.
Josep stood, unmoving.
He was amazed and shamed by the sudden knowledge that there was a bulge in his trousers that could be observed by the other youths, but no one laughed.
Most disturbing of all: when Josep looked at Sergeant Peña, he saw that the man was studying him with watchful interest.
14
Widening the Range
“The thing I remember the clearest about being a soldier was the other soldiers,” Nivaldo told Josep one evening in the grocery. “When we were fighting with people who were trying to kill us, I became very close to my companions, even the ones I didn’t really like.”
Josep could count Manel Calderon and Guillem Parera as his good friends, and he liked most of the others in the group of hunters well enough, but there were several of the youths with whom he had no desire to become close.
Like Jordi Arnau.
Teresa, who had become moody and querulous of late, had used Jordi to let Josep know where her desires lay: “Jordi Arnau and Maria del Mar Orriols are marrying soon.”
“I know,” Josep said.
“Marimar told me they are able to marry because presently Jordi will be a soldier. Like you.”
“It isn’t certain any of us will be soldiers. We must be selected. The reason Jordi and Marimar must marry quickly is that she is pregnant.”
“She told me.”
“Jordi has been boasting of it to everyone. He is very stupid.”
“She is too good for him. But if he is not selected for the army, what shall they do?”
He shrugged grimly. Pregnancy wasn’t a disgrace; many of the brides who walked down the aisle of the village church did so with heavy bellies. Padre Felipe Lopez, the village priest, did not aggravate such situations with recriminations; he would rather give a quick blessing and spend most of his time with his devoted and close friend, Josep’s neighbor, Quim Torras.
But though a couple joined in a “necessary” marriage suffered few recriminations, it was madness to try to support a new family with no work to be had, and Josep knew that for the trainees in the hunting group, the future was in doubt.
The youths had no idea which of them might be chosen and which rejected, or how the selection process would work.
“There is something…odd… about it,” Guillem said to Josep. “The sergeant has had a good chance to judge each of us by now. He has studied everyone closely. Yet he has eliminated no one. It must have been quickly apparent to him, for instance, that Enric is always clumsy and the slowest in the group. Peña doesn’t seem to care.”
“Perhaps he is waiting until the end of the training, and then he will choose those who will be allowe
d into the army,” Manel said.
“I think he is a strange man,” Guillem said. “I would like to know more about him. I wonder where and how he got his wound.”
“He doesn’t answer questions. He is not a friendly person,” Manel said. “Since he lives in our hut, my father has invited him to our table, but he always eats alone, then he sits alone outside the hut, smoking long, skinny black cigars that stink like piss. He drinks a lot, and he has money. Every night my father has to buy him a full pitcher of brandy from Nivaldo’s barrel.”
“Perhaps he needs a woman,” Guillem said.
“I think he goes to a woman nearby,” Manel said. “At least, sometimes he doesn’t spend the night in the hut. I see him coming back, early in the morning.”
“Well, she should do a better job. She should learn to do things to put him in a better humor,” Guillem said, and the three of them laughed.
They had five sessions of firing the Colt revolvers, each session preceded by practice in loading the weapons and followed by practice in cleaning them. They grew faster and more adept but never fast enough to suit Sergeant Peña.
At the sixth firing session, the sergeant ordered Josep and Guillem to hand him their Colts. When he had received them, he drew other guns from a sack.
“These are for you two alone. You are our marksmen,” he said.
The new gun was heavier than the other and felt formidable and important in Josep’s hand. He was ignorant about firearms, but even to him it was apparent that this gun was different from the Colt. It had two barrels. The top one was long and similar to the Colt’s barrel, but directly beneath it was a second barrel, shorter and fatter.