“This is serious, Father,” Tiburcio interjected. Felícito’s blood ran in this one’s veins, no doubt about it. Tiburcio looked like him, with the brown skin, straight black hair, and thin, slight build of his progenitor. “Don’t kid around, Father, please. Listen to us. It’s for your own good.”
“All right, agreed, I’m listening. What’s this about, boys?”
“After that notice you published in El Tiempo, you’re in a lot of danger,” said Miguel.
“I don’t know if you realize how much, Father,” added Tiburcio. “You might as well have put the noose around your own neck.”
“I was in danger before that,” Felícito corrected them. “We all are. Gertrudis and you too. Ever since the first letter from those sons of bitches arrived, trying to extort money from me. Don’t you know that? This isn’t just about me but about the whole family. Or aren’t you the ones who’ll inherit Narihualá Transport?”
“But now you’re more exposed than you were before, Father, because you defied them publicly,” Miguel said. “They’re going to react, they have to do something in the face of this kind of challenge. They’ll try to get back at you because you made them look ridiculous. Everybody in Piura says so—”
“People stop us on the street to warn us,” Tiburcio interrupted. “‘Take care of your father, boys, they won’t forgive his rash act.’ That’s what they tell us everywhere we go.”
“In other words, I’m the one provoking them, poor things,” Felícito interjected, indignant. “They threaten me, they burn down my offices, and I’m provoking them because I let them know I won’t be extorted like those asshole colleagues of mine.”
“We’re not criticizing you, Father, just the opposite,” Miguel insisted. “We support you, it makes us proud that you placed that notice in El Tiempo. You’ve given the family a very good name.”
“But we don’t want them to kill you, listen to us, please,” Tiburcio added. “It would be a good idea to hire a bodyguard. We’ve already looked into it, there’s a very reliable company. It protects all the big shots in Piura. People in banking, farming, mining. And it’s not too expensive, we have the rates here.”
“A bodyguard?” Felícito started to laugh, a forced, mocking little laugh. “A guy who follows me around like my shadow with his pistol in his pocket? If I hire protection, I’d be giving those thieves just what they want. Do you have brains in your heads or sawdust? I’d be confessing I’m scared, that I’m spending my dough on that because they scared me. It would be the same as paying them. We won’t talk about this anymore. Go on, eat, your stew’s getting cold. And let’s change the subject.”
“But Father, we’re doing it for your own good.” Miguel still tried to persuade him. “So that nothing happens to you. Listen to us, we’re your sons.”
“Not another word on this subject,” ordered Felícito. “If something happens to me, you’ll be in charge of Narihualá Transport and can do whatever you want. Even hire bodyguards, if you feel like it. There’s no way I will.”
He saw his sons lower their heads and reluctantly begin to eat. Both of them had always been fairly dutiful, even during adolescence, when kids tend to rebel against parental authority. He didn’t recall their giving him many headaches, except for a few stunts, nothing very important. Like Miguel’s accident, when he killed a donkey on the highway to Catacaos — he was learning to drive and the burro walked in front of the car. They were still pretty obedient, even though they were grown men. Even when he ordered Miguel to join the army as a volunteer for a year to toughen him up, he obeyed without a word. And truth be told, they did their work well. He’d never been especially hard on them, but neither was he one of those indulgent fathers who spoil their children and turn them into bums or faggots. He’d tried to guide them so they’d know how to face adversity and be able to move the company forward when he couldn’t anymore. He had them finish school, learn to be mechanics, get licensed to drive buses and trucks. And both had worked every job at Narihualá Transport: guard, sweeper, bookkeeper’s assistant, driver’s helper, inspector, driver, etcetera, etcetera. He could die at peace, they were both ready to replace him. And they got along with each other, they were very close, thank goodness.
“Me, I’m not afraid of those sons of bitches,” he suddenly exclaimed, hitting the table. His sons stopped eating. “The worst they can do is kill me. But I’m not afraid of dying. I’ve lived fifty-five years and that’s plenty. I’m at peace knowing Narihualá Transport will be in good hands when I go to join my father.”
He noticed that the boys tried to smile but were upset and nervous.
“We don’t want you to die yet, Father,” murmured Miguel.
“If those guys hurt you, we’ll make them pay,” declared Tiburcio.
“I don’t think they’ll dare to kill me,” said Felícito, trying to reassure them. “They’re thieves and extortionists, that’s all. You need more balls to kill than you do to send letters with drawings of spiders.”
“At least buy a revolver and carry it with you, Father,” Tiburcio persisted. “So you can defend yourself just in case.”
“I’ll think about it, we’ll see,” Felícito conceded. “Now I want you to promise me that when I leave this world and Narihualá Transport is in your hands, you won’t give in to extortion by these motherfuckers.”
He saw his sons exchange a look that was somewhere between surprise and alarm.
“Swear to God, right now,” he demanded. “I want to rest easy on that score in case something happens to me.”
They both agreed and crossed themselves as they murmured, “We swear to God, Father.”
They spent the rest of lunch talking about other things. Felícito began to think about an old idea. Since they’d left home to live on their own, he knew very little about what Tiburcio and Miguel did when they weren’t working. They didn’t live together. The older one boarded in a house in the Miraflores district, a white neighborhood, of course, and Tiburcio rented an apartment with a friend in Castilla, near the new stadium. Did they have girlfriends, lovers? Were they carousers, gamblers? Did they get drunk with their friends on Saturday night? Did they go to bars and taverns or patronize whorehouses? What did they do in their spare time? On Sundays when they stopped by to have lunch in the house on Calle Arequipa, they didn’t talk much about their private lives, and he and Gertrudis didn’t ask questions. Maybe he should talk with them, find out a little more about the boys’ personal lives.
The worst thing during this period were all the interviews, the result of the notice in El Tiempo, at several local radio stations, with reporters from the newspapers Correo and La República, and with the correspondent in Piura for RPP Noticias. The journalists’ questions made him very tense: His palms got sweaty and chills ran down his spine. His answers were punctuated by long pauses; he searched for words, denying vehemently that he was a civic hero or an example for anybody. Not at all, what an idea, he was simply following the philosophy of his father, who’d left him this piece of advice as an inheritance: “Son, never let anybody walk all over you.” They’d smile; some looked at him with an intimidating expression. He didn’t care. Screwing up his courage, he went on. He was a workingman, that’s all. He’d been born poor, very poor, near Chulucanas, in Yapatera, and everything he had he’d earned by working. He paid his taxes, obeyed the law. Why should he allow a few crooks to take what he had, sending him threats without even showing their faces? If nobody gave in to extortion, extortionists would disappear.