I was looking at the gully, imagining what it hid. Wondering what else hadn’t been found there, what had to wait too long to be looked for. The dark wet leaves and pine needles that made up the ground seemed to move, to come closer and edge away. To swirl as if someone were stirring them. Marco struggled with the trap. He had not stopped to look up while Berta spoke.
“I’ll get the iodine,” Berta said. “I think I have to put it on the wound as soon as you get it out.” She ran up the hill, holding her belly.
The trap’s metal teeth flashed in the sunlight. The air was too bright for this. Where we stood, there were no shadows to cover the lamb’s thin tissue, still pumping blood to ruined flesh. Marco pried slowly at the trap, trying to wedge it out of the lamb’s leg. The lamb jerked upward suddenly, remembering it was alive, and caught Marco off guard.
“Help hold him,” Marco said to me. I shook my head, the rest of my body not moving. He bent back toward the lamb, his face a dropped curtain, closed in on itself and pushing the set around in the dark.
The lamb struggled under Marco’s hands.
“I need you to hold its leg, Mosca,” Marco hissed. The lamb thrashed again. “Hold it here.”
He wanted me to hold the lamb right by its wound so he could get the metal teeth out of its bone. He wanted me to press down right where its insides met the air and curdled.
“I’ll go get Grito,” I said.
Marco grabbed my hands and pulled me onto my knees. He put my hand where he had pointed. The wound was wet, but the only smell was blood.
Looking at Marco’s hands, the lamb’s blood welling around them, I couldn’t stop the memory, the one I least wanted, I was back in the kitchen in Casasrojas, the cathedral bells calling home the storks, Abuela out with her last friend still alive, to walk beside the pigeons and piles of sunflower seed shells in the Plaza de Colón. Alexis looked up at the cheap clock with gold-plated plastic chimes that hung above her altar. We had about an hour before she got back. She could hardly hear anymore, but Alexis said he had something important to ask me and he wanted to be completely sure she didn’t hear any of it. He said she needed to know nothing.
Alexis turned away from me and Marco, fixing us both some espresso. I’d never seen him make anything in the kitchen before. No matter how late he came in, Abuela would get up and cook him whatever he wanted. But he didn’t fumble with the parts of the moka pot, and he even knew where she kept the wooden brush to clean out the old grinds.
“Thanks,” Marco said when Alexis placed a small white cup in front of him. The cup jittered in Marco’s hands. Alexis kept adding sugar to his espresso. I hadn’t known he took so much—perhaps that was new. Alexis started another pot for me and I stayed quiet, waiting for the hiss of the coffee sweating out.
The photo was on the table without my seeing how it got there. Alexis turned away, fiddling with the espresso. I knew why he hadn’t explained what he was doing with the militants until that moment. If I’d known what it was about, I would have tried to help, but he didn’t want to ask until he needed me.
I looked at the photo on the table. A cheap snapshot, black and white, blown up. The grain was too large. Our parents had disappeared when Alexis was four—he’d seen only a few pictures since. He needed me to make sure it was really them.
Alexis handed me my espresso without looking at the photo. It was clear he hadn’t spent much time studying it, if he had looked at all. He was waiting for me to tell him it was real. I nodded once, and only then did he face the photo. His fingers moved to pick it up. I must have made a sound to stop him. I needed to look, too.
Our parents were turned toward the camera, their necks taut, looking over their unnaturally squared shoulders. Their hands were bound and they were on their knees. My father’s face was partially hidden by my mother’s, his thick mustache disappearing into her black hair.
“It was taken before they were executed,” Alexis said.
Marco ran his fist over his mouth again and again, bringing blood to his chin, marking it as with smeared lipstick.
Whoever had taken the picture must have surprised them, because they had turned quickly, the movement caught in the shape of their eyes. They must have thought it wasn’t a camera behind them. They must have thought that was the moment they would die and not the one after. They were looking straight into the camera, unflinching.
Alexis picked up the photo, rotating it slowly in his hands. “The people I’m working with—they say they can find who did it.”
The photo was the proof of what we’d suspected. That our parents had resisted. That they were killed for it. That they weren’t coming back.
“Do they know why?” I said. “Why they were—”
“No, but we could find out. The militants trust me. I’ve done enough for them.”
“Where did they get the photo?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of them showing up. When the old fachas die off. Or someone kills them.”
I imagined a room of these photos. Thousands of faces, shoulders all pinched into the same position. Their heads turned, facing the bullet that would kill them. First I thought of a room with all the different dead. Then I thought of one filled only with the same picture, endlessly repeated, a strand of my mother’s hair caught in my father’s partially open mouth.
“I’m glad you told me,” I said.
“You don’t have to be here, Marco,” Alexis said. “It’s not your family. It’s not your fight.”
“It is my fight,” Marco said. I knew why he was there. The pig outside the warehouse hadn’t really been Marco’s hit. The gun they got from him was because of Alexis. Marco needed to be there because of Alexis, Alexis only, who hadn’t even asked him, and Marco was so proud of that. He’d volunteered before he could be asked. I didn’t mention La Canaria. The last time I’d seen her, she was strung between two guys crossing the plaza past midnight. Alexis had seen her, too. We would all pretend she didn’t exist until they got back together again.
“Are you sure, Mosca?”
I nodded.
Alexis sighed—out of relief or fear, I couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t want to ask you,” he said. “But it’ll be safe, I promise.”
“We’re meeting at the library,” Marco said hesitantly. “And since you’re always there—”
“No one will suspect you,” Alexis interrupted. “You’re always studying, that’s why it’ll work.” He was smiling, almost, excited about the plan, excited to play the part he’d practiced. They had talked about it together. Which meant Marco had seen the photo of my parents before I had. Alexis had shown him first.
I nodded again. “I’ll help.”
Alexis and Marco would meet the militants in the philology library to exchange information. I would be the lookout, signal them if anyone came too close. I wouldn’t know anything else. Alexis needed us, and we would do whatever he needed. We would help him find the men once we had their names and addresses. My task would end at a certain early point. I wouldn’t see them, I would be asked to walk away. We made the plan and promised.
Marco left before our abuela came back. Alexis slipped the photo into its envelope and rolled it carefully. I watched it disappear into his jacket. He rubbed his thumb and index finger over his clavicle.
It had been almost a game. The phone calls from new cities his bragging rights: playing spy, playing soldier. But whether he knew it or not, in that moment Alexis’s body told me what the game had become. I looked at him and knew what he would do when he found the men he was looking for. He thought he was invincible, his sternum pressed proudly against his white T-shirt. But I knew how each muscle would coil and spring, their future actions already wrought into them. If he found those old men, he would make them scream, and I would hear their screams, louder than I imagined but gentler, too, radiating off of his skin every time he moved. He w
ouldn’t be able to deny those sounds. I wanted to turn away from the violence already written into his body, but the inevitability followed me like a spell.
* * *
Marco pressed down on my hands on the lamb until I wasn’t trying to pull away. He lined up his fingers beside the metal teeth where he could grip the trap without cutting himself. Berta called for us on top of the hill.
“Now,” he said.
I pressed down into the wool and muscle, bringing blood to the surface, the lamb struggling beneath me. Marco pulled on the trap. With the sound of a rubber boot squelching up through mud, the metal came out.
“Bring him here,” Berta called. The dogs were behind her and raced up to us, sniffing the trap and barking at Marco.
Marco picked up the lamb and ran up the hill with it. My hands were covered in greasy blood and lanolin. Berta squirted the wound with iodine. The wool around it turned the yellow of a sunflower just about to die.
* * *
Because I didn’t go. I promised Alexis I would help him and I didn’t. I didn’t show up at the library that day. The night before, I had followed Alexis in my dreams, just awake enough to panic, followed him to where he would take the men when he found them, saw him standing over two wrinkled fachas, his back to me, his face nothing I would see again.
An English exam was rescheduled at the last minute—it was just the excuse I needed. I took the exam, did well. Really, I was too afraid. I thought of Mamá standing in Abuela’s kitchen, handing us sweet crackers and saying she’d be back soon. The policemen knocking at our door. The piles by the river.
And I thought, If I don’t go, the plan stops. Alexis’s muscles won’t have to coil and kill. There will be no more men on their knees. No one will be held accountable, and our parents’ names will rest where they had for years, buried deep in the silt of memory, asleep, asking for nothing. I was wrong.
* * *
Marco didn’t mention the lamb at dinner. Berta placed it on the hearth, as close as she could to the fire without singeing its wool, and wrapped it in a blanket. It hadn’t moved since Marco pulled it out of the trap.
We had taken too long to gather and separate all the lambs. Franz would take them to the town the next day. The sound of the grieving ewes echoed over the hills, down into the stone chimney, coating our meager dinner. La Canaria and Grito were silent, trying to speak to each other without words but neither knowing how. If they found a way out of this, they had better tell me. I was worried they would only do so if they needed me. I picked at the blood under my nails.
“Why did you care so much about it?” I asked Marco when Berta stepped outside. There was even less food that night than the one before.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marco said. “It’s going to die anyway.”
Ten
The snow came the next evening while we were peeling wrinkled potatoes and dumping the black bits into a dirty bin. We’d spent the day getting the plot ready for the seeds that Franz was supposed to bring back from town. Berta was worried because he hadn’t returned, and all evening long she kept looking up as if to make him appear.
The lamb rasped in the corner by the hearth. It was beginning to smell. Its meat ruined. The window in the kitchen was small and held only a view of a stone courtyard with a finger’s width of sky. We didn’t notice it cloud, and we didn’t see the snow start. Out the window over the stone stable, only darkness was noticeable, twilight forgotten and now night. There were no lights to glint off the snow. We didn’t even know we were working in the dark until we could hardly see. The night piled layers of cloth slowly over our mouths, so thin we didn’t notice until we couldn’t breathe. Berta lit a kerosene lamp and put it in the window, and then we saw the snow. Falling, it caught the light the way water does. I gasped in surprise and Berta did, too. Only she knew what it meant.
She placed her face to the window and cupped her hands around her eyes, held her breath to not fog the glass. She wiped the glass from the heat of her skin and leaned in again. Then she left the kitchen and opened the door. The wind shook the jars and the shelves. Marco had to help Berta close the door. We all looked up at her, waiting for her to speak, but she didn’t. She just sank to the floor like a glob of spit down a wall. She was whispering quietly and quickly; I couldn’t understand her. Marco leaned down next to her and she turned her face away, mumbling, her hands covering her mouth.
“Is Franz still out there?” Grito asked, and Marco nodded.
I went to the window. The snow was falling fast.
We stayed in the kitchen all night. Dawn was just a slight shift: the air outside the window turned from a wall of easing black to a wall of cascading grays. The snow kept falling, pressing against the warped glass of the kitchen window. It had a texture and mass that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. Each flake possessed a huge strength, to support its own weight and not collapse the way my lungs felt they would. The glass jars on the shelves jittered constantly, moved by the wind coming through all corners of the room, calling attention to their emptiness. Berta kept a small fire going, but the woodpile was shrinking. The smoky wet logs did nothing against the wind. There was hardly anything to eat. We huddled close to one another, the air stale with our recycled breath yet cold, too. The lamb died and Berta opened the door enough to put it outside because it smelled so bad.
“Where did that trap come from?” Grito asked Berta. He’d finally gotten out of Marco what had happened to the lamb.
Berta didn’t answer him but stroked her daughter’s hair, which was matted and dark with grease. A thin line of black grime circled the girl’s neck. The gray light was an in-between place, one I didn’t want to be in, one where I didn’t belong. The fire didn’t do much except make the shadows at the window look alive.
“Is the trap yours or what?” Grito said.
“It’s not mine,” Berta said, looking out the window. “No one comes up here to hunt, either. At least not that I know of. And they wouldn’t put a trap where my sheep are.”
“Whose is it, then?” Marco asked. “It was hidden. It was supposed to catch something, but it couldn’t have been there long.”
Berta kept looking out the window. She was no longer expecting Franz to appear but something else, something she was afraid of seeing. She wouldn’t answer about the trap. They stopped asking, and the words she could have said circled the house silently until they batted up against the window harder than the wind.
“Franz’s uncle wants to take the boys to live with him,” Berta said, still turned toward the window. “He thinks we can’t raise them all by ourselves here.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” Grito said. I was surprised he’d even been listening to her. She wasn’t waiting for an answer. “This is something you do by yourselves. Getting help would ruin it.”
Berta didn’t seem to hear him. The boys were too skinny, proof of how far their plan of independence had failed.
Marie waddled slowly over to where Grito and La Canaria were sitting by the fire. She touched La Canaria on the knee and said something. She had the look that children get when they’ve decided to love, no matter what it is. It can happen so quickly, a squash with a curly stem, a rabbit in an alley, someone passing in the park they will never see again. The girl looked at La Canaria and spoke, her hand still on La Canaria’s knee, her tinny voice rising in a question. I couldn’t tell if it was baby talk or a language I didn’t understand. The words seemed formless, too soft and particular to contain meaning.
La Canaria got up quickly and Marie stumbled back. She didn’t hit anything. I looked up, but Berta hadn’t seen. La Canaria knelt next to the boys, who were sprawled out on the dusty floor playing game after game of tic-tac-toe on an old newspaper. The youngest one was debating where to put his next x. La Canaria bent over him and whispered in his ear. It was hard not to look at the boys. All day they’d been edging closer to me.
The little one threaded his bottom lip behind his teeth, concentrating on what La Canaria was trying to show him. It wasn’t enough that he looked just like Alexis, who was blond before his hair turned black; he had to move like him, too. I tried not to remember the boy’s name. Listening to La Canaria, the little one held his hand over each square until she nodded and then he made his mark. The older one cried out. “It’s cheating!” he said in English. La Canaria just shrugged and whispered again to the little one. He drew a new game and on the second round placed his x in the same spot. They kept playing, the little one always winning. The older boy didn’t get it; he kept thinking he would win the next round.
“He’s right,” Grito insisted. “I used to hate it when people would play like that.”
“It’s a dumb game,” La Canaria said. “If it’s that easy to beat.”
Grito was pissed off, but it was too close in the kitchen to yell at La Canaria. None of us wanted to go out to the barn where we’d slept. The floor was probably covered in snow.
“You can’t just tell him how to win,” Grito said. “It doesn’t make sense as a game now.”
“Why do you care?” La Canaria said.
“Don’t they have any books they can read?” Grito asked Berta. She’d been staring out the window, really at her own reflection. The window was completely snowed in.
“Excuse me?”
“Books, you know,” Grito continued, trying to sound nicer. His hands wouldn’t stop moving, picking at the bits of scalp clumping at the nape of his neck beneath his hair. “Books or games, so they have something to do.”
“They’re fine,” she said. “Look, she taught them a game.”
I could tell Grito was angry, but I was the only one besides La Canaria who knew that. His nails worked a patch of skin behind his ear over and over. He picked up Marie, who was leaning too close to the fire, and sat down holding her. “Do you like living here?” he said.
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