Hammock swinging, baby sleeping. Mosquitos buzzing and
grains of black sand on the concrete floor. Church music blaring and Don
Miguel’s morning cough ticking like a clock. A new day like all the rest.
Rising from your sheets though, you notice how your sweat
tastes different this morning. Salty not sweet. Your shirt slapped down sodden,
a change from the usual crumpled mess. Beside you Claudia is still asleep, so
that’s normal. She’ll have been up all night with the little one whilst you
again snored through. Looks the same as ever, her thin traces of beauty smudged
by years of tortillas and frijoles. “Reina de belleza” they said, though now
you’d do well to see it. Turning out just like her mamá, though she wouldn’t be
the first. A shame, though she’d say the same about you. Worse even. Drink like
your papá too, which was something you promised you wouldn’t. A lifetime of
broken promises, though at least you gave her a kid and she’s happy it’s a girl
even if you’re not. Maybe it’s a good thing your family line ends here. The
only good one was your hermana Juana, but she got out long ago, all the way to
the land of the free. The rest of you, wastes of space to the end, especially
the eldest, God rest his sad soul.
You move to stand and that’s when the pain begins. Sharp and
targeted, right to the forehead. Nothing new there, it’s the same every time
the sun pops up. You can taste the drink on your breath right away, hot and
stale at the same time. No wonder Claudia can’t stand to sleep close anymore
though really, she gave up long ago.
You take a sip of Sprite from the glass bottle sat on the
sweating floor, warm and flat yet it helps. The morning sugar rush more urgent
than any café. As you lumber upright little droplets of sweat cloak your tubby
body so you turn to the fan for relief, yet it just spins dust straight back at
you. Cheap like everything else in this dump you call a home. No place to bring
up a kid, ¿but what other choice have you got? Poor little girl, waking up
every day in this dog pit. The rich kids can never handle the rainy season so
all roll away in their fancy cars with their blacked-out windows, but for your
little one there’s no choice. Just has to deal with days like today where the
humidity pummels you despite the early hour. The only break is when the rains
hit, but that just brings the mosquitos and whatever disease they’re cooking up
for the season, so it’s the same shit served different.
Hoping for some kind of morning breeze you open the shutter
and let your eyes wander out. Straight away you spy Walter selling fresh coco’s
to gringos from his front porch, his kids running scattered rings round his
feet, giggling in the morning sun. You found out he sells the powder to the
gringos now too. Cocos and cocaíne, someone’s got to do it.
Now Claudia begins to stir, kicking sheets off in the
process. She looks up, gives you an eye, and then shows you her back. You know
that eye, seen it far too many times and it never gets easier. One that says
you’ve done something wrong, something bad. What, you can’t remember. Never
can. The alcohol does that to you, it always has. You decide to face her later,
easier that way, after you’ve had some more Sprite and something to eat, maybe
even a morning cerveza.
The baby is still knocked out, rocking back and forth on the
little hammock by the bed, so you slide out before she wakes even though you
know it will spike Claudia’s anger further. When she was born you promised
you’d help out at home, but of course you don’t. Yet another promise broken.
The baby doesn’t do much, ¿so what’s there to do? Just sleeps, shits and cries.
Hopefully you’ll like her more when she can talk. Neri said that happened with
his little girl, though he’ll always be a better papá than you.
Quietly you take a step out onto the concrete porch, the
floor still fresh under the shade of your palm roof, and see Walter look up. He
keeps your eye for a second but there is no normal morning greeting, no guilty
laugh for the night before. Only a look, one you’ve never seen before, one you
can’t work out. Another new different, only you’re too hungover to ask why. You
can deal with Walter and Claudia later, it’s already time for that drink.
You slide on your sandals, the thin soles breaking through
to the ground below, and stagger down the dust track towards Luis’s tienda. His
speakers fight against the church’s, a horrid clash of noise that only makes
your headache worse. That
song too.
Siempre te voy a querer, Me aseguraré de enamorarte cada día.
Always the same fucking song on repeat, no wonder no-one
likes drinking at his anymore. Luis is the same as usual though, reaches for
the Sprite before you even ask. You throw some quetzales down and take a seat
on one of the red plastic chairs, all branded in the bright red of Gallo beer.
They’ll take over the whole village before long. Them, the rich kids, and the
gringos.
See, one day it was your village, the village you’d always
known with the same families and faces for generations, probably too close in
relation at times. Then snap, everything changed. Suddenly white faces were
everywhere, busloads of people charging in, Semana Santa a never-ending party
covering the beach in trash. Some locals say they like the change, but it’s
only because they’re the ones making the money. For everyone else it’s a
nightmare you all saw coming.
Beauty can only stay beauty for so long before greed takes
over and turns it all to shit.
Your abuela said that, minus a few words. She’d seen it
happen all before up north, the same sad reality on repeat. Busy and drunk and
loud and dirty and full of girls in tiny bikinis that only make you mad because
you’ve never got a chance with any of them, and anyway you’re stuck with
Claudia. The sleepy fishing town with the village fairs and the school parades
and songs at Navidad all long gone.
¿And for what? It’s not like the new people from the city or
the gringos treat any of you with respect. The opposite in fact, looking down
on you because you’ve worn the same shirt for three days straight and it stinks
of sweat, but only because you’ve spent every day out in the angry sun building
them a second home for shit poor wages. Looking down on you even though you were
all born on the same earth. The only time they like you is for a photo,
flicking out their fancy camera phones to take a snap of another poor person
living under a palm roof. Good for their social media or whatever it is they
do. It’s enough to make you give up.
A gringo died today.
Luis machetes your thoughts in such a direct way that for a
second you are taken by surprise and can’t respond.
Brenda told me, he carries on. They found him on the shore,
his body limp like weeds.
You take a sip of your Sprite. ¿Drowned?
Luis shrugs. Drunk probably, the sea is a cruel mistress.
You laugh but only because Luis has been saying that same
line for years now. A gringa taught it to him and it must have stuck because he
can’t seem to say anything else. You take another sip and go to meet Luis’s eye
to ask more when a flicker of last night suddenly hits. It often happens this
way after you drink, little stories revealing themselves as the day goes by.
Snippets of memories you struggle to piece together.
You were here last night with the boys though, that much you
remember. Jorge, Julio, Walter, maybe Neri though his face is blurred. You were
watching the football through the bars of the tienda, crushed cans of Brahva
littering the floor. Julio was laughing, snorting too, and that’s how you found
out about Walter and his new line of work. Some gringos were there and drinking
even heavier than you, no doubt on their way to the new beach club. Beach clubs
in the village, who’d have thought. You’re almost glad your abuela died younger
than she should. Meant she never had to watch all her fears come to life.
One gringo had his back to you, but he towered above the
rest. Wearing an oversized, sand yellow shirt, one way too hot for the
humidity. Talking lots, animated, his hands always moving, even joined you all
for a beer. Chatty guy, confident. Tried on his Spanish which was more than
most. Took a few lines from Walter too, not a care in the world. It was lucky
for some. Then another came over, a gringo you’d seen around the village,
spoken to even, but then the memory ended, and you were right back to the now
and Luis talking about the sea.
When he carried rambling on to discuss the always rising
noise, you stopped listening. The problem with Luis is he never knows when to
shut up. Unless you jump in, he can just talk and talk and talk. Another reason
why everyone stopped drinking at his tienda and moved on to the new spots. That
and all the bikini-wearing chicas. You still like Luis’s place though, even if
the music drags and he’s a bore. It reminds you of the old times.
On that note your stomach churns and it’s your cue. You
leave without saying goodbye, shuffling away from the tienda towards Itzel’s
for some breakfast. This is another place that hasn’t changed and the only one
that never will. The city people and the gringos don’t do well with all the
flies and strays that join for dinner, always buzzing and barking and shitting,
your hand forever flicking pests away. You don’t mind though, means you never have
to wait, the tortillas and frijoles on your plate before you have time to ask.
Buenos días mi amor.
You nod back a greeting.
¿You hear about the gringo?
You sigh, not in the mood for conversation. You love Itzel,
another mother of sorts even though she’s K’iche’, but right now the hangover
hurts. She can see that so slips some quetzalteca into your coffee to loosen
you up. Not many people visit her these days, so she wants the conversation.
Every week there’s always a new story to tell, some better than the rest.
Last week it was all about some drama at the lake. For once
there was a gringo at hers too, some fidgety kid called Archie. A name you’d
never heard before and couldn’t say right even when he tried to help. Him and
you were sat there listening to Itzel, though the gringo was way more into it
than you. All about a young girl that was assaulted and the guy who did it
being hung in the street for all to see.
An eye for an eye, Itzel said, and the gringo repeated her
word for word.
You were half listening then and you’re half listening now.
Taking it in one ear even if not responding. It’s only when she says the next
part that you give her your full attention.
The gringo was murdered they say.
You can’t help but get sucked in. ¿Murdered?
That’s what I heard, she replies, happy to have your gaze. Everyone
in the village is talking about it.
¿How? Your curiosity piqued. ¿I thought he drowned?
Drowned on his own or drowned by someone else, Itzel replies
calmly as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Not for you though, as your mind is suddenly thrown to the
memory of your wet T-shirt on the floor and then it sparks something new.
You never go to the new places unless forced, especially the
shining lights of the clubs, but you now remember you were there last night.
You and the boys, shirts off, jumping up and down to some DJ wearing one of
those bucket hats you see everywhere. The kind of shit your mamá made you wear
as a baby that are somehow now trendy. He had a shitty goatee too and wore a
stupid vest that said, “Me Gusta Guatemala” in bold, funky letters. The guy was
clearly on something, his eyes wonky, but in fairness his music worked. New to
your ears but with the rum inside you, your feet were moving.
Now you remember the kid Archie was there too, alongside the
gringo in the big yellow shirt, with some chica dancing saucily up on him. She
was Guatemalan though not from the village. City type in a slinky red dress and
her tits pushed up high. He looked over at you all and gave a silly wave, proud
of himself. An arrogant grin on his sunburned face. Then he reached round and
grabbed her ass tight and pulled the chica close.
She didn’t like that one bit though, slapped his hand away
and pushed him off, and you all cheered and laughed as she stormed away. The
gringo followed her, apologising, pleading, and it was nice to see one of them
look so pathetic. Then Walter appeared by your side, lifted the back of his
hand to your nose and the memory fades into another blur.
Unlike Luis, you say goodbye to Itzel. She wouldn’t let you
not, though she doesn’t charge for the breakfast. She rarely does these days
even though she knows you must have some money cause you’re always hungover.
You’ll pay her back one day, you owe her enough. The place you always ran to
when your papá had had too much to drink and his right arm was swinging.
Huddled in the corner of your corrugated-iron shack before making a run for the
door and racing down the street into the arms of Itzel. He would never follow
you there, not to her house, which is exactly why you went.
In that moment you promise to not be the same as him and
this is one vow you know you’ll keep. Maybe the only one, but you will. And for
a second you miss the baby even though you saw her an hour ago and she does
nothing but sleep and shit and cry, and that feeling of missing her makes you
happy because it might be the first time you’ve felt anything real towards her,
and now all you want to do is go back home and be with her. But going back home
means seeing Claudia and you’re not ready for that yet, not while you stink of quetzalteca
and your head still hurts, so you decide to head for the sea as there you can
wash it all away.
Normally you go to the river, but that’s too calm for a day
like today. You need the waves to hit you, straight and hard to the face to
smash the drink out of you. It’s times like this you wished you still surfed as
that was always the best cure. A morning out there on your board, joking and
messing about with the crew. Flying down the face of monsters, your gut in your
mouth, screaming in a joy even the drugs couldn’t magic together. Barely
drinking back then as you didn’t want to be out too late because then you’d
miss the best waves. How long ago that all felt now.
As the rum increased, the waves vanished. Then your belly
got big, your board snapped, and you never got round to fixing it because you
preferred to spend the money on drink. So it stayed out the front of your
shack, a pathetic picture of lost dreams, until one day Don Sergio’s kid asked
for it. Now you see them out there surfing every day. Some say they might go
pro whilst you haven’t caught a wave since. Instead, all you can do is run
against the wave, not with it, let it hit you and pull you down and wash away
the toxic waste inside you. It does a job. When you finally get to the beach
though that option is immediately robbed from your slippery grasp.
The crowd is bigger than you think you’ve ever seen, even
larger than Semana Santa when the parties are in. A swirling mass of
bodies that frightens you because it’s so foreign. Practically the whole
village must be there, as well as the gringos and the dogs and the city people
and the army and the police. People fucking everywhere and you just know the
swim isn’t going to happen and you’ve of course figured out why.
In the distance you spy the boys, Julio and Walter chatting
away, hunched, and you walk towards them, but Walter pretends not to see you
even if you know he does. He just snakes away and drags Julio with him and your
gut confirms something is up. Something involving you though you don’t know
what.
You start walking through the crowd to find out, pushing the
gringos aside until you get to an opening, a circle, wide and large with dogs
running and barking in the middle. The police and some of the army guys are
there too. The police who are new to town, brought in by the gringos. Decades
of you all asking for a police station and nothing happens and then the gringos
ask and one is built in months. Of course it is.
Next to the police you notice a few gringos who are crying.
Men on their hands and knees, sobbing their eyes out in front of everyone. You
watch them for a minute or two, curious, then decide enough is enough and get
to leave, yet just as you turn you catch a glimpse of what they’re bent over.
All you can see is a shoulder, but you know in an instant
who it is. ¿How can you not? That big yellow shirt, the one you can’t escape
from. The one that keeps the memories coming.
The water had covered you both. Clothes drenched including
his big yellow shirt, hanging low off his lifeless frame. You were pulling him
out from the sea, away from her claws, bringing him back to earth. On the beach
you could make out some shadowy figures in the distance. Julio and Walter and
Rodolfo, that Archie kid from breakfast at Itzel’s, and some chica you sort of
recognised. The dancing one in the red dress. She was crying and crying as you
staggered your way out of the ocean, dragging the body with you, his yellow
shirt painted black by the sand.
In the memory no one came to help, which you find strange.
And then you remember the weight of it, the pure weight of the body. Worse than
any bricks you lumbered around a site for some rich kid from the city. Every
step hell as you dragged his body out, screaming, pulling him back to life.
When you got to the shore you threw his body down, though
you didn’t try to bring him back to life anymore. He was dead, you already knew
that. The eyes had rolled, foam frothed at the corners of his mouth, and his
lips had turned blue. Already so floppy that you were surprised he had once
been a living and breathing animal and it was with that thought front and
centre when you collapsed to the sand to join him.
You had curled up right next to the dead body, panting and
panting and panting for breath. Sucking, clawing at any air you could find,
thinking that maybe you were next, that the sea had done for you too, the cruel
mistress, as Luis liked to say. And only then had your friends circled towards
you. The gringo was by their side too as they huddled over both bodies. One
dead, one nearly dead. The girl was no longer there, though you could hear her
cries disappear into the distance as she ran down the beach, almost like an
echo that kept going, going, going.
Then Julio bent down and asked, ¿qué paso?
And for some reason he was crying too, but he also looked
scared, the whites of his eyes shining like the full moon above. But you
weren’t scared, in fact you were the opposite.
Instead you had smiled, proud, and said, an eye for an eye,
though you have no idea why. Then you had passed out.
When you woke a few hours later, everyone had gone. Just the
stars sparkling up ahead, brighter than ever before. You could have stared at
them for hours but then you saw what was lying next to you, still, just like
your baby girl when she sleeps. The foam in his mouth had dried up by now, the
little bubbles burst, and there was something so disgustingly peaceful about
the whole thing, so innocent, that you had reached out your hand and traced the
tip of your right index finger across the lines of his brow. Brushing the black
sand out of his matted hair. Then reality had hit and you got anxious fast,
unsure what to do.
And so you had ran. Sprinting as best you could across the
beach, lit up by the light of the moon and the stars, stumbling in the sand yet
always going forward. On and on, right back to the crummy little shack you
called a home. And when you had got inside the baby was crying and wailing as
if she knew something bad had happened. Claudia was awake too, trying to nurse
the poor little thing, and she had glared at you and for some reason that look,
that piercing judgement broke you, and you had started to cry. Shoulders slumped,
nails clawing at your eyes as through those sobs you had then started to speak.
Words coming out in pathetic bursts painted in tears, only you can’t remember
exactly what you said. Only that her reaction was first shocked, then sad, then
angry and then scared.
And now you’re right back in the moment, the morning sun
beating down, and suddenly aware that one of the crying gringos is now pointing
right at you. That twitchy guy with the funny name who had breakfast with you
at Itzel’s, now with his stubby, shaking finger aimed in your direction. The
others you recognise from Luis’s too, the boys who were drinking with yellow
shirt, partying the night away, only they’re not partying anymore. Instead
they’re pointing.
He did it, he did it, they start to yell, their fingers
jabbing.
And the new police, the ones who have only just set up in
town but act like they fucking own the place, start walking towards you. And
suddenly everyone is staring right at you, including Julio and Walter who both
look worried. And Claudia is at the beach too, clutching your little baby,
looking even more worried than the rest, and you want to walk towards them, to
be with them, but the police get to you first. They grab you by the arms, twist
them behind your back, and pull you violently into the centre of the circle.
¿Are you sure? One asks in shitty English and the gringo
with the funny name nods.
It was him, it was definitely him, he replies in shitty
Spanish, his voice cracking, and all you can do is laugh.
You idiots, you cry. You point to the yellow shirted body on
the floor and shout, I tried to save him. Loud for everyone to hear. I pulled
him out of that bitch of an ocean and brought him ashore, but no one listens.
No one believes you. No one even tries.
Instead, another gringo spits in your face and says,
murderer, and the crowd starts to cheer. Your friends start to cheer. People
you’ve known your entire life, but they’re so scared shitless they’d rather
stab you then save you. And you look to the police for help but nothing gives
there and then the crowd gets louder.
You try to find Claudia but she is already gone, your dear
baby girl with her. Only then do you start to panic. Only then does the fear
start to gurgle up your throat and choke you, as the thought hits that maybe
it’s the last time you’ll ever see your baby. That she is gone, and you’ll
never get to be the papá you promised you would be.
So you fight back, for her, rising from the floor to escape
this horrid little moment, your fists begging, but the police stop you as
quickly as you start. One takes out his gun and that’s when you take the first
butt to the face, knocking you straight to the floor. You hear the crowd cheer
louder as they put cuffs on you and start to drag you away. Pulling you across
the beach, your knees skimming across the sand. The crowd parts to let you and
the police through, but the screams only grow louder.
Shame, they shout even though they have none themselves.
Murderer.
And you try to explain to them all that they’ve got it all
wrong. You scream out that you were trying to help, that you’re no murderer,
you should be the hero of this story. But no one listens, no one even tries.
And away you’re dragged, right up the dune towards town,
towards the station, knowing how this story ends. Yet it’s as you’re being
pulled up the slope that you see it. Through the tear stains and the grains of
black sand and the haunting cries, there you see it, caught in a patch of
grass. Hidden, but you can still see it. Ripped at the side, lace and black,
and you know you’ve seen them before.
You had left the party in good spirits. Rodolfo, Julio and
Walter, and you. You made for the beach as you did at the end of every night.
Rodolfo had picked up a little bit of weed from a gringo and you had wanted to
watch the stars with a smoke. You were all laughing and giggling as you made
your way there, before dropping down into the sand. Smiles on all your faces as
you took your first drags.
You remember that feeling, straight after the first puff
hits when the fog runs to your brain and you start to sink. The other three
were chatting away, probably still high off the coke, but you went to a
different space then. It was if your soul had drifted away from your body and
was now looking down upon it. Then it started flying down the beach and you
wanted to follow it. Feeling a surge of energy from somewhere you pulled
yourself up and started swaying this way and that across the sand. Zigzagging
along to the light of the full moon. It must have been a few hundred metres
further down the beach, where all the hotels stop and it’s just empty beach for
miles and miles, when you heard it.
The boys were long gone now and it was just you and the sand
and the moon and the hit of the weed and the crash of the waves and this noise.
Muffled at first but there. A tiny little cry before a louder one, before
another tiny cry. You stumbled towards it, your feet scuffing into the sand,
following it bit by bit until the noise was right in front of you.
There, illuminated by nature above, the sound still fighting
to be heard, you had seen yellow. That big, billowing yellow shirt, down, flat
on the sand. At first you thought the gringo might be asleep but then you saw
the shirt move. Up and down, up and down. You watched, confused for a second or
two until you heard the same sound again and suddenly your brain focussed, and
adrenaline kicked in. Your pupils narrowed and through a tiny gap between the
yellow of his shirt and the nape of the gringo’s brawny neck, you saw her little
face.
Small, petite and beautiful, like Claudia once was. Innocent
eyes, clawing for help. The red of her dress now pulled up to her waist, ripped
lace and black by her side. Then you heard her scream, heard her plead for
mercy and that’s when everything switched.
Without a thought you yanked out your belt, grabbed it tight
in both hands, then swung it round the gringo’s neck. Then with a roar you tore
it back and his body came with it. Arched at the top before you dragged the
belt to the left and the body crumpled into the sand. The girl immediately
started scrambling to her feet, pulling her red dress down, her eyes saying gracias
again and again even if no words came out.
You smiled at that, feeling good for something in your
pitiful sad life. Feeling proud. Thinking again that you might be a good papá and
you’d turn things around with Claudia and you were suddenly so happy at that
thought, so taken by the whole idea, that you didn’t notice yellow shirt loom
up in front of you and his white fist swing into your face.
You took the hit hard. That mixed with the alcohol and the
weed sent you to the floor. Hand to eye you tried to get back control and for a
second you were worried, yet only for a second.
Your eyes had darted over to the gringo and there you found
a broken state far worse than your own. Hands to his neck, desperately panting
for breath and that’s when you knew how this was going to play out.
You had grinned the next time he came at you. Ready,
patient, in full control, as you rolled down into the sand to dodge his attack,
then pounced upwards and hit him from below. See, this gringo might look
sculptured on the outside, with his broad shoulders and model height, but he
wasn’t like you, he hadn’t learned how to take punches, hadn’t learned how to
fend off a drunken papá from before he could make a tortilla. The two of you
were like one of Don Miguel’s cockerels who fight for quetzales on a Tuesday
night, pecking and clawing at each other in the pit. And there’s always one
cockerel who’s so much better than the rest and you were that one on the beach,
dipping and ducking and swinging and the gringo didn’t know how to respond.
A fury had taken hold, a blind fury and you knew it wouldn’t
ever end as you thought, ¿what if that was your daughter? Your little girl who
you now want to protect, who you now want to love and be good to, and you
thought that when you hit him again. By then you were both in the water, in the
cruel mistress, and fighting there in the crashing waves, and you knew it was game
over.
This was your playground, you rode these waves before
most could walk. Even in the dark you knew them better than you knew your own
baby. Booming down harder and louder now because it’s the season for rain, and
in those crashing waves he came at you again but it was almost too easy by
then. The lumbering gringo in his heavy yellow shirt. He knew he’d lost but he
couldn’t stop coming at you and that’s when you had a decision to make.
You could take him to the shore now, pin him down and tell
the new police in town all about it. That’s what they’d do in Germany or
England or one of those countries they say are civilised. But not here.
You knew they’d do nothing about it. She might be a rich
Guatemalan, but she wasn’t a gringa and the hierarchy went that way. As to your
own word, well it was as good as shit. A drunkard, good-for-nothing builder
against the gringo with the gym toned body and the expensive yellow shirt. And
so you had another decision to make but in truth, it was something you’d made peace
with ever since you saw the girl in the red dress fighting on the sand. A
decision stamped into the sand all because of what Itzel told you last week.
The story you’d half listened to then but couldn’t have been
clearer in your brain then. Of what happened up at lake amongst the volcanos
and the sunsets and the water that goes till your eyes can’t see any more. Of
the young Guatemalan girl and the old gringo guy. Apparently he was well liked
in the community but that wasn’t enough. An eye for an eye, as the old saying
goes.
It was your daughter, your Princessa, you thought of when
you had pulled him down under the waves, his arms flailing in the air for help.
You thought of her and Claudia and how proud they would be, protecting them
from these pieces of shit. And even though you’re a piece of shit you’re not
like this gringo, you could never do what he did and he deserves to go for it
because there would be no justice otherwise. There never is in this place and
so justice is for you to take into your own hands. And so you did.
By this point you’d noticed the boys on the shore, the
gringo from Itzel’s and the chica in the red dress by their side. They were all
shouting and screaming and you’d figured they were cheering you on. She must
have told them what happened and that gave you a new energy, stronger and
stronger, able to hold him down despite the gringo’s size and strength. And
still they had made noise from the shore, so you realised that you needed to
take them the body, to show the girl what you’d done, for her to thank you
even.
So you held him and held him and held him, giving it
everything you’d got, your biceps burning under his endless assault for life.
The dream to live still burning inside him, a flame whispering at the wick.
Soon though, the arms stopped swinging and the body fell limp in the toing and
froing of the waves, the yellow of his shirt the only thing visible above the
surface. Then you had turned the body round and that’s when you saw that the
eyes were gone, rolled back and lost to the murky waters below and you knew
that justice had been served.
It was there that the memories merged together. The girl was
no longer there, though you could hear her cries disappear into the distance,
but the boys were, including the twitchy gringo.
Julio had bent down and asked, ¿qué paso? And he was crying
but he also looked scared and so you had turned to face him, and Walter, and
Rodolfo and the gringo Archie.
And there, when they were all close, all you could say was an
eye for an eye. Then you collapsed deep into the sand and passed out.
Collapsed to the
floor like you collapse to the floor now, only now you don’t collapse to the
soft black sand that had met your feet every single morning of your sad little
life. Instead it’s to the piss-stained concrete of a cell and you’re spitting
blood and one eye can’t open. You try but it just won’t open and you know it’s
fucked and you’re not getting it back.
The guard outside the cell turns to look in but just smiles
when he sees you and another quickly joins him. They tell you it’s an
international news story and you believe them. A gringo’s blood earns a
different kind of weight. And that makes you think of your family, your little
precious family, and that maybe Claudia and your girl are better off without
you anyway. That you were never going to change, and you’ll always be a drunk
good-for-nothing like Claudia says. But at least you did one thing right, one
thing you can be proud of, one thing to make your little girl’s life better and
maybe she’d come find you one day, to thank you, congratulate you even. Or
maybe she won’t because you’ll probably already be dead. You’re not sure if you
care anymore anyway.
That’s when the door to the cell is opened and the guards
walk in. One, two, three, four. You try to stand up to face them, but your legs
can’t do that anymore. That’s when you notice your knee is out of joint too.
You’ve got so much pain all over it’s hard to tell where exactly it’s coming
from and that thought makes you laugh even though it isn’t funny. And then the
butt of the rifle hits and again you fall and when you fall it’s not Claudia
you think of or your little girl or Itzel or your big sister Juana or your papá
or your boys or the girl in the red dress or even the gringo in the yellow
shirt. Instead, it’s the ocean.
The cruel mistress rearing up at you like a heron about to
push off into flight, hanging there in front of you, taunting you, calling you
in and so you step forward and that’s when she crashes down on you and swallows
you whole.
About the author
Ben C. Davies is originally from the UK and is now based in
California. His work has been featured in numerous
publications including Fiery Scribe Review, Unlikely Stories
and Left Brain Media, with articles in Electric Literature,
Huck and Lost.
He is an editor for the Ginosko Literary Journal, a
member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, and is currently
completing his debut novel. Beyond his writing, Davies is
the co-founder and director of Studio Luce, a Guatemalan
writing and artist residency. And So I Took Their Eye is debut book.
