Ghosts of La Higuera
Joseph Pfister
I saw him again. The ghost. Standing on the trail that makes its slow, bumping way to our village. Overnight, fog slips down the mountain, spilling like water between the gorse and banana palms and cacti, dampening all sound. Our pueblo is haunted, Mamá says. People vanish into the mountains and become ghosts. It’s always been this way, she claims. Those who go missing—los desaparecidos—as numerous as the stars, cast like birdseed across the sky above our casa.
I’ve seen this ghost before, but only recently. Usually at dawn or dusk: standing, stock-still, behind the chicken coop or at the forest’s edge, skirting the huddle of houses, careful to stick to the shadows, out of sight. It appeared the day Hernán told me he felt himself beginning to change. Since he left, our hammock feels too big, like I’m adrift on a sea of scratchy blankets. I turn restlessly through the night and rise early, stalking the trail through the ravine alone, reciting my multiplication tables.
Eight times seven is…
In the gray light, the ghost’s face shines like fresh goat’s milk. Its hair, combed into a pompadour, is the color of honey.
Fifty-seven.
Mamá taught me to be kind to strangers—even pale-faced ghosts I encounter on the trail outside our village—but my vocal cords refuse to produce sound. They’re a wooden bucket scraping the bottom of an empty well. The Ghost is dressed in jungle fatigues, the pants rolled to his knees, and a dirty woven shirt. The sun climbs higher, the first feeble rays struggling to penetrate the fog before it begins its long, slow retreat up the mountain. I wait to see what the Ghost will do. It slides noiselessly from the trail, parting the mist like a curtain.
And, just like that, it’s gone.
The knot of fear in my gut dissolves. I run, legs straining, back to town and don’t feel the full flush of relief until the first shacks, their tin eaves dripping, appear like shadows from the fog. I pound up the street, past barking dogs and clutches of dirty, clucking chickens, past stucco houses with red-tile roofs and leaning porches, until a stitch forces me to a halt outside Doña Rosa’s. Her store is the only one in our pueblo. Mamá comes to her whenever she needs something she can’t make or borrow.
Doña Rosa’s sandaled feet appear, the muddied, frayed hem of her pollera sweeping the cobblestones.
“¿Que es esto?” She turns her head, peering down the cobble street toward the jaws of the forest, then the schoolhouse, as if expecting a band of ladrones in hot pursuit. Doña Rosa’s face is cracked like old leather. She has a mole the size of a marble on her left cheek and a hooked nose like the beak of some big, ugly bird. Nilsa calls her La Bruja. Her husband—Don Rosa—was killed ten years ago, during the revolución in 1957, though it’s hard to imagine her ever being married.
The Witch trains a milky eye on me. “Joaquín Vargas Orellana? How old are you now?”
“Nine,” I tell her, though I’ll be ten in December. Two months from now.
She laughs, a sharp sound, like glass breaking. “Nine! ¡Dios mío! And does your mother know where you are? Does she know you’re not at home?”
I stare at the white, paved stones. My face starts to itch. I don’t dare scratch it.
“No? Have you gone out and joined the revolucionarios? Have they recruited you? Is that why you’re up so early?”
I shake my head.
“You know what they say about them, don’t you? Raping, robbing, and worse. They talk of equality,” she continues with a furious shake of her head. “The glorious proletariat Revolution. Overthrowing the government, sharing the land. But they sleep in the dirt, half-starved, filthy with fleas. Aye! Does that sound glorious to you?”
“No,” I mumble, afraid to lift my eyes, to meet Doña Rosa’s gaze.
“Your father—”
The old woman’s voice plunges off a cliff—and my heart with it. I wait, barely daring to breathe. But now that she’s caught herself, I know she’ll say nothing more on the subject.
Up and down the street, doors creak open. Someone coughs. Smoke from breakfast fires begin leaking from chimneys. Doña Rosa turns her attention back to me. “These are dangerous times. You’re too young to be running around by yourself, Joaquín, especially this early. There are wolves everywhere. ¿Lo entiendes?”
I see the Ghost, vanishing into the mist. I nod.
“Bueno. Now run along before your mother knows you’re missing.”
I only make it four or five steps before I remember: Eight times seven is fifty-six.
I slink up the forested hill to our house. Nilsa is at the table, rolling dough for salteñas. I haven’t had breakfast. The smell of peppers, cumin, and oregano causes my stomach to rumble.
“You’re in trouble,” she warns.
Mamá is standing at the counter, her long hair twisted into a single braid. She doesn’t turn around, but I can tell from the slump of her shoulders she’s angry. “¿Dónde has estado?”
“The pasture,” I say. A half-truth: I took Tomás out to graze before wandering the trail.
Mamá turns. There are deep creases under her eyes. People stop Nilsa on the street and tell her, once upon a time, Mamá was the prettiest girl in La Higuera. Perhaps all of Valle Grande. Now she looks tired, the worry lines across her high forehead worn into permanent grooves.
“Then why’d I see you coming from town?” she asks.
I slide into a stool beside Nilsa. She refuses to look up from her task, her hands gloved in corn flour. “I went for a walk. After.”
Mamá rolls her eyes. “¡Dios mío, Joaquín! What did I tell you yesterday? I don’t want you or your sister leaving the house, except to do your chores! It’s too dangerous.”
I reach for a piece of diced pepper. Nilsa slaps my hand away. “Those are for the filling.”
Secretly, I’ve always envied Nilsa. Not because she’s Mamá’s favorite or exempt from all the chores Hernán and I have to do, but because she’s old enough to remember Papá. The way his singing preceded him up the path to our hut at the end of a hot, dusty day. The aluminum coffee pot he filled with water from the rain barrel. His favorite shoes—a pair of tasseled loafers—the heel and toes worn smooth by his feet. I wish I had even one memory that was my own.
Mamá rattles pots and pans before finding what she’s looking for. Since Hernán left, she has been quieter, more likely to address Nilsa or I suddenly, in a violent tone. She shoves a stray hair from her face. Then adds another log to the cook stove, where a pan of api boils, filling the room with hints of pineapple, cinnamon, sugar.
My stomach roils again, loud enough that both Nilsa and Mamá hear it.
“I’m serious, Joaquín,” she says, her voice chagrined. “I don’t want you wandering outside the village by yourself. Do you remember Doña Zárate?”
I nod. Doña Zárate lives farther up the mountain. Sometimes, I run into her while bringing Tomás back from the pasture. She lives alone, ever since her husband was kicked by a horse. The doctor in Valle Grande thought Don Zárate would live. Two days later, he was buried in the cemetery behind San Miguel.
“Yesterday, the guerillas took her while she was out with her goats. They wanted to know where the soldiers were. She was so scared, she nearly fainted. She was sure they were going to line her up against a tree, shoot her, and scatter the herd.”
I picture Doña Zárate’s scrubby-looking, brown-and-white goats roaming the mountainside, picking through the weeds around her body, oblivious.
Mamá is staring at me, fists on her hips. The Lady of Copacabana pendant around her neck flashes like a fish gliding into view. “Do you know what happened to her? They let her go, gracias a Dios. But she could be dead—dead!”
Nilsa rolls out another tortilla with her hands. “Don’t worry, Mamá. I won’t wander. I’ll stay close.”
“Buena niña,” Mamá says, bringing over a bowl. She gives me a dark look. “Least I have one child with sense.”
By the time we finish breakfast, the sun has burned off the last of the fog. On a clear day, you can see for kilometers, the gray-green of distant mountains appearing much closer than they really are. I recite my multiplication tables while I gather kindling, sweep the house, pump fresh water from the well. With Hernán gone, I have to handle his chores, as well as my own. The sun stabs my neck and I can feel myself beginning to sweat beneath my shirt. Now that it is spring, the days are getting longer, warmer. Now and then, I stop behind the Guzmáns’ outhouse to rest and peer into the forest, searching for any sign of the Ghost. I wonder where Hernán is, if he’s safe. My jealousy eats at me like a worm in an apple.
The first time he told me he could fly, we were laying in our hammock—the piglets, their warm bodies wriggling between us—listening to the lonely scream of a mountain lion. Hernán insisted every night, after I fell asleep, he snuck from our bed, climbed to the roof, and jumped into the starry sky. The sounds I heard? They weren’t swallows nesting in the eaves. They were Hernán. Papá could fly, too, he claimed, and one day he would step into the clouds and join him. Hernán could feel himself changing, he said. In no time, he’d be lighter than air.
In my dreams that night, I could fly, too. I sailed above our village, above the fists of fog and rags of mist shrouding the hillsides, until everything I knew became a speck.
At noon, the bells of San Miguel—an old Jesuit mission—toll over our village, calling congregants near and far to Sunday Mass. Despite her candles and nightly lamentations to the Virgin, Mamá rarely makes us go, unless she feels Nilsa or I are in special need of prayer, which we are more often than not. I don’t pray much when I’m there—I get distracted, particularly by the liquid light that pours through the stained-glass windows far above our heads, transforming the altar into a kaleidoscope of color. The panes are most arresting at midday when the sun gathers behind the altar. The image they depict—Christ, rising from the cross, hands and feet bloodied—blazes to life, often sending a shimmer of fear through me, and I spend the rest of Mass focusing on the enormous mole on Padre Cortés’ chin.
Shortly after Mass lets out, a sound like thunder—rumbling from the upper reaches of the valley—halts everyone in the street. The sky is blue, cloudless. A shadow passes over Padre Cortés’ wizened face as he stands inside the church doors, shaking hands with the throngs of departing parishioners.
“Revolucionarios,” someone says.
“The army must be closing in.”
The blasts echo up and down the mountainside. Nilsa draws her lace mantilla tight around her face. Her admiration for the rebels has been replaced by something else: fear.
“Come on, niños,” Mamá says. “We don’t want to be in the street.”
After an hour, the sunbeams above the village begin to fume with blue smoke. It’s impossible to tell who’s winning, the government or the guerillas. Part of me hopes it’s the army, that the guerillas will be driven from the slopes above our town and life will go back to normal. Hernán will return, and everything will be like it was. But some small, traitorous part of me hopes it’s the guerillas, the revolucionarios Doña Rosa so despises. Several times, I think the battle is over until it starts up again minutes later. Mamá forbids us to leave the house, so Nilsa and I lay silently on the floor, listening, while she repairs the seam of one of my shirts and sips api.
Our village, what we can see of it, is empty. There’s no one in the streets. The curtains are drawn in every house. Slowly, the sun shifts in the sky. I picture Tomás alone in the pasture and utter an urgent plea to the Virgin and all the icons in San Miguel that he’s okay until the fighting stops and I can bring him back. The shadows have grown long by the time Mamá calls Nilsa to help with dinner. They’re making pampaku. Nilsa asks if she should collect cassava from the garden, but Mamá says they’ll have to make do with what we have in the pantry. The longer the battle lasts, the more worried about Tomás I become. He’s alone, and not exactly the brightest, as far as goats go. The likelihood that we’ll have to leave him overnight grows. The sun sinks lower, eventually collapsing behind the mountain, cutting the sky with one last blade of light.
Mamá redraws the curtains and lights the kerosene lamp. Nilsa sets the table. Halfway through dinner, I realize something is different. It’s…quiet. The boom of the big guns has stopped. I lift my gaze from my plate, turning my eyes toward Mamá. I expect her to tell me it’s too late to bring Tomás back now—it’s too dangerous—but she sets her fork down.
“Pero apurate,” she says. “Don’t linger. Come straight back.”
I leap from my seat, itchy with excitement, and barely wrench my sandals onto my feet before I’m out the door. The light outside is the color of plum, a dull dusky purple. The first people, the bravest of our neighbors, open their doors and emerge from their unlit homes. Instead of heading straight for the pasture, I take the long way, through the village, the rapidly cooling night air sharp in my lungs. Somewhere up the mountain, the fog is already forming. For an instant, I feel the way Hernán must have felt standing on the roof of our house in the dark night, so light he could float away.
As I approach Doña Rosa’s tiny, shuttered store, an end-of-the-world hush falls over the street. Above the whir of my heart, I hear the crunch of approaching footsteps. Everyone who was out has melted from their doorways. Someone has pulled their mattress from its frame and barricaded the door.
I stop and squint into the velvet dark, my heart picking up speed.
At first, I’m not sure what I see. Then, from the deepening layers of darkness, shapes emerge. A string of glowing faces, marching toward town. Despite the night’s pleasant warmth, my skin tightens with goosebumps. Soldiers. Dirt-smeared, dressed in combat fatigues and field caps, their arms and necks shimmer with sweat. Rifles slung low across their hips. They don’t laugh. They don’t say anything.
Between the columns stumble two bearded men with long hair, their hands bound with rope.
It strikes me that I should move, that I’m standing in the middle of the street, in the soldiers’ way, but my legs have lost their strength. I can’t help it. I gawk openly at the prisoners. They walk slowly, gingerly, wobbling like old men, heads sunk between their shoulders. They’re even dirtier than the soldiers, painted with weeks’ worth of grime. One of them has torn a strip from his tattered shirt and pressed it to his arm, plugging a fresh wound.
The comandante, a young officer with a pistol belted to his waist and stripes on his shoulder, eyes me as he plods forward. He appears about to speak when two hands grip my shoulders and drag me backwards, out of the street. The columns, led by the comandante, shuffle past, continuing their steady advance into town. I tilt my head back and stare, open-mouthed, into the twin pits of Mamá’s eyes.
“Ven, rápido,” she whispers, steering me firmly through the dark, back to our house, where Nilsa waits, floating like the vision of an angel in our doorway.
While the village sleeps, I flop in my hammock, unable to banish the image of the soldiers drifting like ash through the streets of our pueblo. Tomás is safe, back in his pen—Mamá rescued him without me—and while I want to sleep, my eyes keep flipping open. My body feels charged. It’s all I can do to keep from springing out of bed and stalking the empty streets in search of the soldiers. I have no idea where they’re staying or where they’ve taken the prisoners. San Miguel? The mayor’s home? There’s no jail in La Higuera. We have almost no crime.
Who are the men the army brought down from the mountain? Every time I seem close to dropping off, the question thrusts itself up from the bottom of my mind again, more urgent, more insistent than ever. Revolucionarios, of course, but what terrible atrocities did they commit? Rape? Mass murder? What crimes so heinous they necessitated a battalion of combat-hardened troops from La Paz to round up two half-starved campesinos? Longing crashes against the underside of my ribs: I wish César were here. That we could speculate and theorize on the endless possibilities.
Real-life soldiers in La Higuera! ¡Revolucionarios! The ones we heard whispered so much about. Here! I can hardly believe my luck. The way our neighbors talked about them, Hernán and I nearly started to believe the rebels were more beast than man, creatures with horns, tails, forked tongues. Something that comes in the dead of night to steal babies from their cribs.
I must finally drift off because I’m visited by visions of forest: sweeps of scrubby green vegetation and my blue shadow far below. I wake to the percussion of dripping water, the distant lowing of cows waiting to be milked.
“No school today,” Mamá says before I can sit up. She is seated like a sentry by the door.
“¿Por qué?” I ask, my voice croaky with sleep.
There’s a worried crease on her brow, deep as a cavern. She rises from her stool, knees creaking. Clutched in her left hand, I realize, are rosary beads. “Fetch some water before your sister wakes.”
Tomás waits for me by the gate, shrouded in mist, munching straw. I tell him I’m sorry, but he has to stay in his pen today, and pat him on the head. Tomás may be my best friend.
“I have to stay home, too,” I tell him, though the truth is I don’t plan on staying all day. I plan on slipping away the first chance I get and running off to school to see what’s happening. This, however, proves more difficult than I first imagined. Mamá watches me all morning like a puma guarding its kill. She keeps Nilsa and me busy helping with odd jobs around the hut. I have to sweep the floor again because I did such a poor job the first time, she claims. Then scrub the pots and clean the coop. Mamá and Nilsa make sopa de mani for lunch. I slurp mine from my bowl, trying to be as annoying as possible, hoping I will be banished outside. Mamá gives me a homicidal glare. My most promising chance for escape comes once Tomás starts baying loudly. He’s long since chewed any weeds in his pen down to nubs—and while Mamá knows he’s making such an awful racket because he’s hungry, she also doesn’t want to upset the neighbors.
“Joaquín, check on Tomás,” she says, finally reaching the limits of her patience. She’s replacing a button on one of Nilsa’s blouses and doesn’t look up. “Con rapidez. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
“Sí, Mamá,” I say, not quite meeting her gaze.
As suspected, Tomás is fine. Just a bored, hungry goat. I rub him behind his ears, kneading his wiry fur, and then cover my own lips with a finger. “Don’t tell anyone,” I whisper. “I’ll be right back.”
Much like last night, our village is mostly empty, the air ripe with static and raw nerves, though a few campesinos have made the trek into town and Doña Rosa has reopened her store. It’s a dishearteningly gray day. In the distance, bruised-looking clouds drag skirts of rain across the sky. The drizzle tumbling down the mountainside is fine as lace on my face. I wonder if Hernán and Papá are keeping dry, wherever they are. I walk faster than usual—I don’t have long—and take a shortcut through back alleys, past San Miguel and its soaring spires, so I can get to the schoolhouse undetected. Rounding a corner, I slam into something solid and find myself gazing up into the face of the Ghost.
He wheels around, flashing his exceptionally white teeth in a friendly smile. He’s wearing the same clothes I saw him in yesterday and has the faintly sour odor of someone who hasn’t bathed in days. Suddenly, my heart is a hot hammer in my throat.
“Perdón,” he says. The soldiers, rifles strapped to their shoulders, shoo me away.
The Ghost is not a ghost, after all.
I stagger back the way I came, barely aware of my feet on the cobblestones. There are two more soldiers lounging on the school steps, where Nilsa’s teacher, Señora Prado, greets us each morning. The soldiers share a hand-rolled cigarillo, passing it back and forth between them, conversing in low, conspiratorial whispers. Visible through a half-shuttered window is the top of a head, a tangle of long, stringy hair.
The army is holding the second prisoner in Señora Prado’s classroom. I can’t use the front door, obviously, but the schoolhouse is built around a long, narrow courtyard that serves as a playground. There’s a loose board in the outer wall, which I sometimes use to escape during recess or avoid taking a test. The board, swinging on a rusty nail, gives way easily. The courtyard is vacant, though I can hear voices coming from inside. The windows are tall. Luckily, the chair Señora Zambrana sits in while watching us during lunch has been left out and I’m able to drag it beneath the nearest window. I clamber atop of it, my heart chiming in my ears.
Reclining against the wall, a slow-burning cigarette clamped between his yellowed fingers, is the prisoner. His face—gaunt from lack of sleep—forms a mask that’s been stretched too tight, the bones beneath pressing out. The beard that creeps across his cheeks is flecked with gray. Up close, he’s even filthier than I first thought, clothes caked with weeks’ worth of mud and sweat. He’s so thin, when he lifts the cigarette slowly, painfully, to his lips, I can see all the tendons in his hand and arm move.
I quickly realize there’s someone else in the room. The prisoner massages his left hand while he listens, relaxing as if he were somewhere else, momentarily free. Then he rolls his hand into a fist, coughs. The pain in his face reminds me of Jesucristo on the cross.
“I told you,” he says once he recovers. “I don’t know anything about that. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“What about the seven soldiers killed in La Paz?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
The other man in the room makes an exasperated noise. “Where were you before you came to Bolivia?”
The prisoner lowers the cigarette, examining it for a moment. “Congo.”
“And before that?”
The prisoner’s cracked lips cramp inward. “Come now, Comandante. Surely you know this.”
“Cuba.”
“Yes, Cuba,” the prisoner says, nodding. He blocks another cough with his hand. His breath, when it returns, is a wheeze. Sometimes, after a game of tag or a footrace, Hernán would sound the same, his lungs desperate for air.
“And where did you plan to go next? Once you completed your mission in Bolivia?”
Blue smoke leaves the prisoner’s nose in a swirl. He makes a vague gesture, encapsulating the room. “Paraguay? Argentina? Perú, maybe?”
The door swings wide and the Ghost sweeps in. His mirrored sunglasses make him look like an over-sized bug. He takes a stool in the corner.
“A soldier’s work is never done,” the prisoner says, his attention returning to the comandante. A bit of ash falls from the end of his cigarette. “I go where I’m ordered.”
“A soldier?” the comandante asks. “Or a puta in sheep’s clothing?”
The prisoner snorts, his patchy beard opening in a smile. “Perhaps. To some.”
My leg has fallen asleep, but I don’t dare shift my weight. I can’t risk being seen, not with the Ghost present.
For the first time, the comandante is silent, as if unsure how to proceed now that the Ghost has joined them. “Are you hungry? Is there anything I can get you?”
The prisoner blinks once, twice. “Yes. Very.”
The door creaks and the comandante shouts to one the soldiers outside. The door closes again.
“What will happen when we’re done here?” the prisoner asks.
A shrug of fabric. “¿Ah, quién sabe?” the comandante says. “I cannot see the future. Only God can. But I imagine you will be sent to Santa Cruz and court-martialed.”
The prisoner’s dark eyebrows climb toward his dirty hair. His gaze swings between the comandante and Ghost. “Court-martialed? ¿Ah sí?”
“Por supuesto,” the comandante says. “Here in Bolivia, we are not animals. We treat our guests with courtesy.”
There’s an abrupt knock and when Doña Rosa’s timid frame fills the door, I nearly topple from Señora Zambrana’s chair. A soldier with a rifle accompanies her. Clutched in her knotted hands is a steaming bowl of soup. Peanut, by the smell of it.
Doña Rosa glances at the comandante, then the Ghost, before shuffling into the room. Her hands, when she presents the soup, tremble.
The prisoner appraises the soup, then grounds out his cigarette. “Gracias, comrade,” he says, taking the bowl.
Doña Rosa backs away, one careful step at a time, never taking her eyes off the bony feet protruding from the prisoner’s army-green fatigues. Behind her, the soldier whispers something to the comandante. The comandante nods, then turns back to the prisoner, resting a hand on the holstered pistol hanging from his hip.
“Buen provecho. Enjoy your soup,” he says, tugging the door closed behind him.
Silence seeps into the room. The Ghost folds his arms, but otherwise doesn’t stir behind his bug-like sunglasses. I can hear voices in Señora Zambrana’s classroom, another interrogation being carried out. The prisoner pulls his bare feet up off the floor, sitting cross-legged on his chair, and spoons the soup, ravenously, into his mouth. Finished, he licks the bowl and spoon clean, glaring at the Ghost, as if daring him to speak.
The Ghost and the prisoner regard each other. From the street comes the clatter of hooves, the rattle of a cart. I think I hear Tomás baying in the distance. I’ve been gone far longer than I planned. Mamá will be wondering where I am, if she isn’t out searching for me already. Just as I’m about to release my grip on the windowsill, the door bursts open. The prisoner and I both jump. The comandante looks grim, hands clasped behind his uniform. Two soldiers trail him. One unshoulders a rifle. The prisoner’s arm shoots out in alarm, as if trying to fend off a rabid dog. He remains in the chair, unwilling or unable to move. The Ghost watches from the corner.
“On your feet, amigo,” the comandante says quietly. “Ahora.”
The prisoner shakes his head like a stubborn child. The soldier has trained his rifle on the prisoner, but a tremor runs through his arm.
“Stand, please,” the comandante repeats.
The prisoner’s arm wobbles. “No—please, please! Wait! I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! About La Paz, about—”
Panic crackles across my neck, freezing the sweat there.
“Lo siento, comrade,” the comandante says. “The time for talk is over. Please, stand.”
Something dark blooms on the prisoner’s trousers and runs down the chair to the floor in a trickle. He lowers his arm, a look of resignation falling over him like a sheet. The rifle bucks like a horse. The prisoner leaps back as if he’s received a shock, upending the chair, collapsing against the schoolroom wall. Two more thunderclaps in quick succession. The blasts shake the room.
I screw both eyes shut. When I reopen them, tears crowding the corners, the comandante stands over the prisoner. The classroom fills with the acrid smell of cordite. He kneels, parting the prisoner’s matted beard, and presses two fingers to his neck. Then he gives the Ghost a nod. The comandante rises and, as he does, the whole awful sight comes into view: blood misting the wall, a thick puddle spreading across the earthen floor. Three holes, grouped in a circle at the center of his chest. The prisoner’s eyes, which sparked with life only moments ago, are white and open. I have to—go. Now. The last thing I glimpse before lowering myself from the window is Doña Rosa’s soup bowl, lying in two pieces.
Except I never make it. I never stumble across the courtyard or lift the broken board that leads back to the street. A hot ache opens in my middle, a lightness that begins in my chest, extending to my toes and fingers, until I’m not sure where I end and where the world begins. I feel my feet leave the chair. The ground beneath me falls away and I’m floating—drifting up, up, up—past the school’s eaves, past the concrete and tarpaper roof. I can see for kilometers. There, a kettle of swallows dozing in the belfry. There, a campesino driving his cattle across a stream with a switch. There, a toy-sized bus grinding its way up a muddy track of mountain road. And, directly below, a woman with her face upturned to the sky.
Doña Rosa totters toward my shadow with the just-woken look of someone drawn outdoors by calamity. She forms a bullhorn with her hands. I begin to descend slowly, like a kite fixed to a string, the cobblestone street and terra-cotta roofs drawing closer, until my feet collide with the ground. I’m dimly aware of the soldiers loitering by the schoolhouse, turning to watch. The street is deserted. The gunfire has driven everyone inside. Doña Rosa’s mouth is moving, but she’s like a radio with the volume cranked all the way down. Behind her a figure, galloping closer. Mamá? Or is it Hernán, returned at last?
Reaching us, the comandante drops to one knee. His mouth moves the way Doña Rosa’s did, a soundless moving of his pink, fleshy lips. My eyes drop to his waist, to the pistol jammed in his belt. All at once, he slaps me, hard, and the drone in my ear vanishes.
“¿Niño?” he says. “Are you alright?”
I nod without meaning to.
“Di me—where does it hurt?” His hands flutter down my chest, then my back, the front of my legs, checking me for—what? “Were you hit?”
I see a halo of blood. The broken soup bowl.
The comandante’s face, shiny with sweat, hangs centimeters from mine. “¿Que pasó?”
I want to tell him everything. About Hernán climbing onto the roof at night. About the white-faced ghost and my dreams of floating away.
“Está bien, Joaquín,” Doña Rosa says, the mole on her left cheek hovering like a tiny moon above me. “It’s alright. He’s with the army.”
The comandante is so close, I feel the hot gust of his breath on my face.
“Nothing,” I say.
After a moment, he rises from his crouch, securing his pistola with the heel of his hand. “Take him inside,” he says. “Rápido.”
Doña Rosa drapes her arm like a blanket across my shoulders. She pushes me gently, but insistently, toward her store. Her breath puffs against my ear: “Don’t stop. Just keep walking.”
For several long moments, the squish of mud and Doña Rosa’s raspy breathing are the only sound in the world. We pass the store, whitewashed stucco and crumbling brick. A goat, grazing on a nearby roof, comes to the edge to gawk at us.
A voice beckons us from a darkened doorway, wanting to know what’s happened.
“They killed him,” Doña Rosa says, her voice shrunken to a whisper. “La Poderosa.” The mighty one.
My feet stop.
“¡Niño!” Doña Rosa hisses, the word leaping from behind her gray, uneven teeth. “¿Qué estás haciendo? Have you lost your mind?”
“Is…is that what they did to Papá?”
Her next step nearly falters. “Not in a schoolhouse,” she says, her voice drifting over her shoulder. “But yes. To my Pedro. And your father. And to countless others during the last revolución.”
I have no words. Only a spreading chill, the feeling that I may never be warm again. Behind us, the bells of San Miguel begin to peal out, tolling across the valley.
When the trail to our hut—overgrown on either side by weeds—crawls into view, I hear Nilsa call to Mamá. There is the protest of a stool being pushed back. Then a shadow detaches itself from the dark interior. Mamá appears in the doorway disguised as una vieja. Her hair hangs in wild strands around her face. She holds one frail arm clutched to her chest, the pendant of Our Lady—hands open in peace, forgiveness—balled in a brittle fist.
No one speaks. Instead, we watch the fog steal in, sheets of mist drifting across the valley. It spills from the woods and ditches, from streams and brooks and fingers of encroaching forest. It tiptoes across footbridges and planks laid across muddy tracks. It creeps, too, between the gaps in boards, across empty pens, vacant pastures and paddocks. A light, clinging mist making its slow advance, covering, burying, smothering everything.
