Not wanting to be a part of what was to come, Espiricueta’s son kept his distance, preferring to rummage through the Moraleses’ cart. Espiricueta did not care: like the land now, this moment belonged to him and no one else.
He approached and trod on the lifeless hand to prevent the wounded man from defending himself in any way, but Morales did not react: he did not groan with pain or try to pull his hand from under the boot that insulted him more than it hurt him. The only parts of Francisco Morales that seemed to still be alive were his eyes and mouth. The eyes, weeping, understood that their end was coming and realized who would be responsible for it. The mouth tried to form words, without success. Francisco Morales seemed to be trying to plead, though Espiricueta was no longer interested in what the boss wanted to say to his former-peon-turned-executioner. Espiricueta was more interested to see that the boss was now irredeemably prostrated at his feet, against his will. He observed with enthusiasm that all the arrogance and elegance had now left his body and face.
The day had come when the boss was silent and the peon spoke, and it gave Espiricueta pleasure to have him as a captive audience: Francisco Morales had no option but to listen to what he wanted to say to him.
He had already said it to him forcefully with a bullet. Now he would tell him with a whisper.
Espiricueta then decided that missing the target had been for the better: it had given him time to administer death up close, intimately—almost like Lupita’s; he would see the precise moment in Morales’s eyes when he realized he was dead, even if he still breathed.
He moved closer to the living dead man, crouched down, and bent over him, and as close as one does with a lover, he sang into his ear, as he had always wanted to do.
Now the golden eagle has flown
and the finch is chased away.
At last the day must come
when the mule takes the reins . . .
As he did so, as he repeated the words that had remained with him for too many years, repeating them like an obsession, like a prayer, he promised himself it would be the last time they came from his mouth.
It was time to change his tune.
Standing again, he aimed the barrel of the rifle at Morales’s neck, and without hesitating or prolonging the moment, he fired, satisfied with the effectiveness of the weapon. The bullet ended its journey like a flash of lightning, but its thunder lingered in his ears like a constant reminder that there was no going back.
“Dead’s dead.”
Hearing his own voice, enveloped in the thunder that rolled on, enabled him to make out another quiet sound: a groan, almost as soft as a sigh. Then he noticed that under the father’s body lay the son’s, dying little by little, suffocated by Morales’s dead weight. Espiricueta was glad that he did not have to waste time searching for him. Pleased to know that the boy had been trapped, that he was suffocating. Espiricueta could leave him there, remain with him until the little body no longer had the strength to breathe in, remain with him until he died, and then enjoy the irony of it, almost as if he had killed two birds with one bullet. But he reconsidered: Why wait, when he had already waited so long? Why not kill him and solve the problem once and for all?
With the toe of his boot and with great effort, he managed to roll the dead body, and he saw that, though it had lost part of the face where the bullet exited, the forehead remained intact, and the blue eyes, open, now looked up at the sky. For a moment, and with a shiver that traveled across his skin, he feared that the boss was still alive and turning his accusatory eyes toward him—but no.
“Dead’s dead,” he reassured himself.
Now he had the boy at his feet, just as he’d had the father: alive, but half-dead. Without the weight on top of him, the child began to move, to take in more air, determined to cling to life.
Espiricueta helped him, ignoring the signals his son was giving him in the distance. His yells of Something’s coming meant nothing through the thunder that grew ever louder in Espiricueta’s ears. Nor did he notice—and at any rate he would not have cared—that the Moraleses’ horse was bolting, terrified, as if the weight of the cart behind it did not exist. There was nothing more important at that moment than finishing what he had begun: he gripped the boy by the shirt and lifted him, shaking him violently so that the thick mist that had taken possession of the boy’s awareness quickly dispersed, so that he, too, would know who would kill him and how.
He took his knife from its sheath.
When the boy opened his eyes, he did not notice the blade that threatened them. He just stared at Espiricueta and, weakly, said something that Anselmo heard without understanding.
“Coyote.”
Then, inevitably, Espiricueta heard a roar that exceeded the thunder in his ears, and he knew immediately that it was the cry of the devil, who was coming for him.
After so many years searching for him on the roads without finding him, without coming face-to-face, that day he knew the encounter would be inevitable, and fear seized Anselmo Espiricueta. He did not want to see him anymore, he did not want to confront him, but he understood he could no longer avoid it. He looked up and saw several things at the same time: his son speeding away, the devil in a boy’s body now grown into a man, and behind him, above him, in front of him, as if he had opened the gates to hell itself, a living, furious, vengeful storm.
A winged storm that came to take him. The thunder in his ears.
75
Killing and Dying
On the longest run of his life, the interminable sprint that seemed to take him nowhere, feeling his thirst and the effort of his roar tear at his throat, feeling his lungs compressed from traveling over the path that he had traveled only once before, Simonopio knew the precise moment when Espiricueta feared for his life, when he let go of the boy, who fell onto the soft ground among the mounds of earth that his father and he had made while they dug holes.
He noticed Francisco Junior was not moving, but he breathed.
He saw that Espiricueta was running, pursued by the violent cloud that, implacably, came closer to him with every second, and which sooner or later would take revenge. That the son, despite his head start, would not escape the bees, either, now that they had come out of their hive in response to Simonopio’s urgent call.
For him, at great cost, they had defied the cold and their own instinct which, with good reason, had prohibited them from venturing to this land all these years.
They knew what they were there to do: they would kill that day, and most of them would die doing so.
Without turning around, Simonopio had first heard them behind him, but they soon caught up and then overtook him. He had never seen them fly so fast or with such intensity; they were of a single mind and a single idea: kill. Simonopio, who had always lived surrounded by them, felt afraid when he found himself in the eye of that storm, even knowing that their fury was not directed at him and that they knew their target. They would take revenge against the man who, by existing and treading on a territory, had banished them from there forever.
Simonopio saw them pass over the bodies of the two Franciscos without stopping, but he did not look beyond there. It did not matter if Espiricueta managed to climb the hill and tried to hide in the wilds. The bees would find him wherever he went, because now he was in their sights, and bees never forget: even if they failed that day, even if it took them years and several generations, Espiricueta and his son were dead men.