The group up ahead stopped in front of a clearing. A long, loud gasp came out of everyone’s mouth at the same time. From where I stood I could see something on the ground. A few women turned their faces away and made the sign of the cross, and some of the old men removed their hats, either for respect or to hide whatever was on the ground.
The shock made them forget that three boys were mere inches away. Guillermo was the first to get a good look at what lay at the grown-ups’ feet. Carlito and I inched our way over to him. In retrospect, I wish I had gone to school that morning instead of being such a follower. This changed after that day.
Thank God.
The dead man was about four feet away, his eyes still open. The whiteness around his pupils shone bright, contrasting with the deep purple bruises on his face. Brownish blood was caked in the open slashes on his neck and torso. His pants were pulled down to his ankles and there was a savage hole where his penis had been.
Most of the blood had been soaked up by the ground and washed away by the previous night’s rain. I wanted to look away, but the brutality of his death was as fascinating as it was horrible. Then I saw something else that caught my attention, almost hidden by the bushes. I squinted to get a better look.
I saw a handle half-buried in the disturbed earth.
Sirens approached fast and the crowd began to disperse. I inched closer to where the handle was, and with one foot pushed it farther into the ground. Then I joined my friends. I walked down the hill without looking at them.
It had been two days since the discovery of the body. It gripped our small town in a web of suspicion and uneasiness. There’s a killer among us, was the cry heard many times. Maybe it was a wanderer and not one of us, was the argument to fight back against the paranoia that had consumed everyone.
But I knew the truth.
I walked to school alone that morning and ignored Guillermo’s and Carlito’s calls to wait for them. I kept spinning the image of the handle in my mind as I pushed it into the ground. It was my father’s machete handle, and I was sure that the blade was near the scene somewhere.
I went through the motions of the day, yet I felt like an empty vessel with no spirit inside. My spirit never left the place where the man had found his death at the hands of my father.
I had recognized the man, regardless of his disfigured face. I hadn’t known him well, but my father had brought him home just two weeks before.
They staggered in late that night, drunk and loud. So who was he? I didn’t know for sure. I never knew his name. A stranger. Perhaps the lady with the rollers had been right — a wanderer or laborer that happened to befriend my father.
And charmed my mother...
I saw him return twice, late at night after that first night, while my father was dead-to-the-world drunk. Mami had left the house and disappeared with him, only to return hours later. Always a few hours before my father woke up.
That’s what she thought.
My father was a good faker when it was to his advantage.
At age ten, in the so-called innocence of the 1960s, nothing wicked or carnal had ever crossed my mind — but I did have a vivid imagination. When school let out later that day, I slipped away from my friends and returned to the spot where the man had been killed. I went straight to the bushes.
The handle was still there.
In those days, police work was sloppy and not as thorough as it would become. I could still see dried blood and the impression the body had made in the ground. I pulled the handle out and looked around on all fours to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
My diligence was rewarded. About twenty minutes later, I found the steel blade from my father’s machete. There were still streaks of dried blood on it. I took both pieces with me and went home, stashed them behind the latrine.
My father’s drinking increased and his foulness and nastiness with it.
I heard the sound of flesh smacking flesh late one night, bestial groans from my father’s throat. I knew damn well what was going on. My mother was being beaten and raped by the man she had vowed to honor and obey until death undid them apart.
She could no longer hide the bruises on her arms, legs, and face by combing her hair or by wearing long-sleeved blouses. I took all of this, just like my mother did, with silence. And after school every day — behind the latrine — I mended my father’s machete.
And I planned.
The beatings my mother got nightly began to take their toll. She became a frightened and defeated creature. There was no shadow left of the woman I had loved so much. Her tears were my tears. Her pain was my pain. We became shells, spiritless shells.
As the coquís sang their sweet lullabies and the small town slumbered in a peaceful sleep one night, I slipped away from the house and went straight to the latrine. I’d planned for days and weeks. I waited for the bastard to come around the bend, on the familiar road where trucks drove by in the mornings and were chased by little boys.
I saw his silhouette under a weak moon, a black smear staggering along the road. I waited, hunched behind bushes, where I found some sugarcane forgotten by the boys.
I heard his boots dragging on the road, sending small pebbles skidding into the bushes. One of them tumbled, jumped into the air, and hit the raised machete blade.
I could smell the sweat and alcohol seeping out of his pores, even from there. I could smell his breath that came in and out in halting hiccups and loud, disgusting burps.
His bloodshot eyes popped out from their sockets when the sharp blade — his precious blade — slashed him along his neck, slicing his throat open. Blood shot out like a busted water pipe, and he pressed his fingers to the wound.
He staggered backward, then sideways, and the momentum knocked him forward. I swung the machete again, slicing half his face off. His knees buckled and he landed hard, still holding onto his throat and making gurgling sounds — for with severed vocal cords there were no screams of death. I buried the blade into his black heart with one final thrust and ran like a demon.
The morning sun rose above the mountains and the wind brought the aromas of a new day with it. Grandpa’s rooster flapped his tired, old wings and stretched his scrawny neck — he crowed. I could hear soft snoring coming from my mother’s room.
The peaceful sleep she had been denied for too long.
I smiled. She will sleep better from this day forward, I told myself.
Sirens approached from the distance, and I could hear the chattering of a nervous crowd gathering at the bend in the road. I pretended I was still sleeping when the first knocks came urgently on the door.
Originally written in English
Sweet Feline
by Alejandro Álvarez Nieves
El Condado
I’d been told that the security office at the Majestic was a labyrinth, like the ones in the movies. So when they took me there — handcuffed, held by the arm, disgraced — I lost myself in that sea of monitors and Internet servers, until I was left sitting in that little room. That’s when I woke up to the reality of the situation: they were going to kick me out of the Majestic, after seventeen years working my ass off for this fucking hotel. The shift manager showed up fifteen minutes later, with his characteristic mafioso air, face serene and eyes unhinged. He entered the room and sat down facing me. A few seconds went by and he didn’t say anything. I was quiet too. Like a gangster, he removed a cigarette from his pack and offered me one. I was scared shitless, so I started to blubber excuses: “My bad, man, she tricked me, I didn’t see it coming.” I was always careful, stuff like that never happened to me. He just wanted me to tell him everything before that dumb-ass Hermann showed up with a police officer. Because part of that whole theater would be meeting with the director of Security and an agent from the CIC — the night manager always wanted to be told everything, no matter what it was. If you stepped up and told the truth, he’d also step up and support the staff. If you didn’t support the staff, the hotel was screwed. I won’t lie, I didn’t trust my boss, man. Because all of that sounds nice, camaraderie among men, that bullshit about not sticking your nose in anyone else’s business — until someone sticks a knife in your back.