When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

7

Lying in the palmera, Raul wiped his handkerchief over his face. The August heat sopped matted fronds of trees, trickled down lianas, webbed ladders of foliage. A cooked iguana revolved on the bamboo spit in front of Raul. Manuel, squatting on his heels, turned the iguana over a tiny fire. Raul sat up and removed his revolver from its holster and began reloading, cursing the border fracas that had taken them so far from Petaca. As he shoved in a greasy bullet, the earth commenced to rock, trees shook, lianas bent.

The men gaped at one another. A growl drummed underneath them, drummed at the palmera, rattled rocks and seemed, somehow, part of both earth and sky. Raul felt the sand give underneath him and sprang up, revolver in hand. The palm next to him, a tree many years old, leaned over, and then the growl passed farther away and disappeared.

"That was a bad one," Manuel said.

"The volcano," said Raul.

Another shock reached them as they ate their iguana: the sand heaved, palms waved like flags; numbness hung in the air; the sun died out; birds cried as though in pain. A full-grown tigre rushed past Manuel, crazed with fear. His plunge sent up a flock of birds that cackled insanely.

"Let's get where we can see the volcano," said Raul, stuffing his mouth.

"Listen," said Manuel.

A volcanic explosion sounded like air passing through a bamboo tube.

"I'll see about the horses," cried Manuel.

They were yanking at their ropes as Manuel raced toward them, whacking foliage aside, hoping he could get to them before they broke away. He tied them to a ceiba, where they had some sort of forage.

Another explosion told Raul the volcano had let loose; he planned to push through the palmera to the closest hill and take stock of the eruption. With his hunting knife, he sliced more iguana and, putting on his hat, lunged after Manuel. Rolling their eyes and snuffing, the horses dragged at their reins and kicked. Raul grabbed Chico, and handed Manuel a chunk of meat.

"We can eat as we ride," he said. "Let's make for the nearest hill. Maybe we can see what's happened."

As Raul mounted, yellow cup-shaped primavera flowers spattered his saddle, hat, and shoulders. The tree, loaded with blossoms, had been a landmark for the last few miles. Manuel swung onto his horse, took a mouthful of iguana, checked his rifle in its scabbard, and nodded to Raul.

Here no trail cut through and both horse and rider had to worm ahead, a slow, painful ride, Chico rebelling, fighting back at fronds and lianas. Parrots sputtered and he snuffed and threw his head. When he tried to plunge through bamboo, Manuel dismounted and swung his machete.

"We'll have to do it slow. You take my horse, Raul."

A great hive of maggots, a brown clot, in the arms of a red birch, broke as Manuel swung the knife. Sweat dripped from his face and arms. He stopped to peel off his shirt and knot it around his waist. His Negroid features, streaked with dust and pocked with leaf fragments, had whitened. He worked with big long sweeps of the machete, realizing haste was futile. His eyes became slits, and he called back at Raul:

"There ought to be a place to break through soon ... soon now."

"You ride, Manuel. I'll cut."

"No ... you ride," said Manuel, wheezing as he chopped.

"I wonder what happened at Petaca?" Raul said.

"Plenty."

Raul left his saddle and slashed with the bone-handled knife and a load of ants sprayed over him. He backed away, shouting:

"Next time, I'll look, and then cut."

Before long, they reached a hill strewn with wreckage from a forest fire: old palm logs humped the sand and rocks; the horses walked across fronds so burned and fragile their ashes rose in spurts. From the crest they saw the volcano.

A black horse's tail, some twenty thousand feet long, arched above the peak. The smoke seemed too enormous to be moved by any wind. Lower, behind other mountain ranges, ranges that flanked the cone, black teeth of rain gaped, ready to bite into the earth.

Neither Raul nor Manuel spoke. Faces streaked, their white clothes filthy, they merely looked, steadying their horses. A chain of yellow traveled through the volcanic smoke and then the flame became red and gradually bloomed into more smoke.

"I've never seen so much smoke," Raul said.

"Lava must be pouring down," Manuel said, recalling his mother's sobbing, when he was a boy; the peak had threatened them then and the ground had trembled drunkenly. Some said she had been all right till that day. Some said a man had quarreled with her, beaten her, and hurled her into a corner of their hut. Manuel reached into his pocket for a shred of iguana and chewed it and said:

"What do you think ... Do you think it will get worse?"

"I don't think so. The cone is blown open now." Raul sat erect, his face set. "We have a long way to go and I'm worried about Petaca."

They soon found a trail and trotted their horses, horses and men swaying to avoid lianas and thorned branches. Manuel had his machete in its case. He slouched over the pommel and munched iguana, as if it were chewing gum. Thirsty, he wanted to drink from their gourd but something kept him from taking a sip.

Early that morning, men had fired on them as they searched for Farias, missing along the del Valle boundary. While completing his check of the upper corn crops in Sector 11, he had been taken prisoner, he and his son, Luis.

For Raul and Manuel, it had been a dismal and useless search; the hacienda people had said they knew nothing about Farias and Luis and yet someone had tipped off Raul, telling him Luis had escaped and gone back to Petaca.

Again they rode through cactus country, sandy but free of boulders, the cactus tall and strong, with lianas and vines swinging from the top of one to the top of another, a desolate camouflage, suggesting primordial days.

Sky had darkened appreciably and explosions indicated further eruptions, yet no quakes rumbled or shook the ground. When the riders topped a ridge, long-tailed, blue flycatchers winged from cactus to cactus, and parrots clattered in a forgotten language. An iguana slept on a log ... all seemed normal here.

Feeling his cinch strap slip, Manuel got off, checked the strap and yanked it up a notch. A shot rang out as he pulled the leather.

Raul felt something burn his shoulder; he felt he had been slapped by a heavy branch; then he remembered that they had not been moving and put his hand to his shoulder and saw blood.

Swiftly, throwing himself off his saddle, he lay on the ground and shouted:

"Down, Manuel. They hit me!"

Manuel let go his bridle and yanked his rifle, tearing it from its scabbard. With rifle in his arms, he looped his bridle over Chico's head and then—all in a rolling motion—buried himself in the bush.

Quietly, he asked:

"Can you shoot, Don Raul? See anyone?"

Raul hunched along the sand, dug his toes and squirmed behind a heap of vines and bush.

"Hope they don't get our horses," he muttered.

Pain drenched in a kind of perspiration over his brain and he lay motionless, eyes shut, gasping for breath. He thought: It's Pedro ... if I could only get him! It's no good, I've got to sit up, think straight. That damn bullet can't be so bad. Can't seem to see clearly. Now ... now, that's better. Cabrones, to chase us, hunt us. God damn them! Ai, chingado!

Manuel had begun firing, shooting across the trail, picking at trees and vines. His bullets clicked dry stuff and some of it shattered and the dry shattering sound emphasized the danger. A parrot squawked. A couple of shots spanged near Raul and he rolled on his uninjured side, forced himself to sit up and saw three men rushing through the bush, bent double.

"There they go!" he shouted.

Manuel fired several times, his old Remington shooting fast ... then silence.

Raul could hear Manuel crawling toward him; the horses were moving noisily, tangled among bushes; he recognized Chico's snuffling; Manuel's gun clicked against a rock; leaves scraped close by; his head appeared.

"Where did you get hit?" he asked, dragging himself closer.

"My shoulder."

"How does it feel?"

"Can scarcely see ... for the pain."

"I saw the men, had a good look. Who the hell does Pedro think he is! Here, let me pull open your shirt, Raul. You're bleeding."

"A handkerchief in my back pocket."

"I'll need it for the wound."

"Wait ... have to move," said Raul, sitting up, so Manuel could pull out the handkerchief. "Got to move more ... this way ... try to shake the pain."

"Do you think you'll be able to ride?"

"Later ... I'll manage."

"You're hit deep.... Let me tear the handkerchief and make a wad."

"Aah ... aah ... I taste blood."

"You're not hit in the chest. You're imagining that. Here, I'll tear my shirt and bind your chest and shoulder."

He was aware of the darkening sky as he ripped the shirt. He was aware, too, of the dark stalks of cactus and bush around them, the nervousness of the horses. All right, it was going to rain. All right, they'd be on their way soon enough. He'd have to steady Raul, help him mount. Lucienne's place was the closest. Tighten the bandage, help him get up. That crazy Chico might refuse to stand. All right, he would use his own horse.

Rifle in hand, he walked alongside Raul, his eyes mere slits. Raul rocked in his saddle, pain making it impossible for him to sit erect.

"Slow enough?" asked Manuel.

"It's not bad."

"I'm taking you to Doña Lucienne's. It's the nearest place. Chico's coming along behind."

"We'd better ride home," said Raul.

"It's too far to Petaca."

"I can make it."

"No, it's much too far."

The horse shied at something and the jerk cracked pain throughout Raul's body; without Manuel he would have fallen. They rode in silence, the rain coming in little spurts. Manuel sniffed the air—his nose opening wide.

"The rain smells bitter with smoke," Manuel said. "Can you taste it? Let me get in front, to keep the branches from hitting you."

From time to time he stopped, suspecting ambush; he wanted a chance to think out his route, make it as short and easy as possible for Raul, whose gray, tense face haunted him. Such a tortured look! What an unlucky day—the eruption, the shoulder wound. It was as if old Don Fernando had power over everything.

Had he clipped one of Fernando's men? Pedro's silver-buttoned trousers had seemed close. But firing, lying down on rough ground, wasn't accurate. A bush could deflect a shot.

In a gully, among mesquite, cacti and palms, Manuel removed the bloody handkerchiefs, brushed off ticks, and wadded a strip of shirt. Their water gourd held half and he made Raul drink and then sopped the inside of his hat.

To Raul, for all the pain, the care meant a great deal, it slid him back into the past, when he had broken his arm while playing ball with Manuel; he recalled another morning on the lagoon, when the canoe had overturned ... he grinned at Manuel.

"You've been around a long time," he managed.

"Got to take care of you. Can you ride again?"

"Yes."

"Have some more water."

"I can't. You drink, Manuel."

"I can wait. Let's go on, to Lucienne's."

Raul wondered, as they rode, whether neighborhood haciendas had been damaged by the shocks: maybe San Cayetano, Palma Sola, Fortaleza, Santa Cruz del Valle.

At del Valle the Jesuits had a mayordomo nobody could reason with; someday, when things calmed down a little, he would visit Señor Oc. This Farias trouble had to be thrashed out. The hacienda folk mentioned Pedro, not Oc. Was that out of fear? He knew he wasn't thinking clearly. These border fracases were bound to lead to serious complications. Everyone said the Jesuits mismanaged del Valle through absentee supervision but something had to be done.

Jab after jab of horseback pain did away with his thinking. His eyes fogged. Clinging to the pommel, he ducked when Manuel directed, let himself be supported, swayed, straightened. Lucienne's? Where? When? They could miss the hacienda in the growing dark. The rain was turning cold.

But, as they neared the ocean, the rain stopped and the sky cleared and shortly after dusk they reached her home. A frenzy of dog barks met them, then they heard the surf and then they heard women wailing in the open, in front of the chapel. Two bodies lay just inside the door, covered with burlap, candles beside them.

Built in 1820, Palma Sola had the white spread of seaside haciendas of that period: its porch stalked on salt gnawed posts, its Marseilles tiled roof defied storm and quake, every wall was thick and every window deep set. Grilles were salty green and shutters were paintless. Nestled under palms, Palma Sola looked as though it could last another hundred years.

Manuel and a servant helped Raul into the living room, and Lucienne hurried in.

"What happened, Raul? Is he badly hurt, Manuel?"

"It's his shoulder, Doña Lucienne."

"Did Chico throw you? No—there's blood."

"Sit down, Don Raul," said Manuel, helping him.

"Not bad," said Raul.

"Sit here," said Lucienne, pulling up a chair.

Raul felt around for the chair. Dimly, he made out Lucienne; then, as strength returned, as he drank water, he saw her, her auburn hair, her look of concern. She touched him and at the same time he received a shock for there, at his feet, sat Mona, Caterina's fuzzy dog, tongue lolling. She barked happily; the bullet pain dug deeper; he tried to rise.

"Please sit down, Raul," said Lucienne, restraining him. "Jesús Peza is here. He can help you. Marta, run for Jesús."

Marta, a pigtailed girl, Lucienne's maid, dashed out of the living room, with Mona at her heels.

Raul fought his dizziness and tugged at his belt.

"Drink this," said Lucienne.

Someone had brought tequila.

Raul smelled it and the strong smell helped him before he could get it to his lips: tequila almendrada: he let the fiery stuff grab him. Why not get drunk? Why not wipe out pain that way? What could Peza do?

"Here's Peza," said Manuel, stripping off Raul's wet shirt.

"Well, Raul, what happened, man? I see you got drenched."

"Hello, Jesús."

"Where are you hit?"

"In the shoulder," said Manuel.

"Shoulder ... hmm, hmm," said Jesús, and peered into his friend's face. "The last time I saw you was when I filled a molar. A month ago, maybe two, wasn't it? Well, I can help you. I'll fix your shoulder.... You just settle back in that chair."

Jesús Peza had fixed many wounds in and around Colima: tequila wounds, dog bites, stone wounds, wire, gun, knife and horse wounds: as dentist, teeth and mouth often came last. He had not brought his kit to Palma Sola but borrowed a poniard-like knife from Ponchito, Lucienne's gardener. Jesús had the head of a gamecock and as he pecked at Raul's wound he talked fast:

"Fetch me several clean towels, Marta.... Hmm, I tell you that was a bad-enough earthquake; I don't know what's got into that volcano lately.... Fetch me a basin of water and some soap, Manuel.... Hmm, this knife is not so damn dull.... Hell broke loose in Colima, they say; I've got to get back.... Did you hear about the church, Raul ... hmm?"

"No," moaned Raul, barely hearing anything he said.

"Don't be brutal," said Lucienne, backing away.

"I'm not brutal," Jesús objected. "People who don't know anything about surgery always accuse me of being brutal. Hmm, the probe is already underneath the bullet. It's not so deep. I'll wiggle the thing out in a jiffy ... now, a towel, please. Madre de Dios, no, don't tell me I'm brutal; it would be brutal to leave the bullet in...."

Raul gasped.

"Whose bullet is it?" Jesús asked. "A friend of yours, maybe."

"Pedro Chávez," said Manuel, rolling and lighting a cigarette, wanting to give it to Raul.

"Bad chap, that Pedro. The rurales should kill him," said Jesús, and he sucked through his stained teeth for the bleeding annoyed him. His gamecock head bobbed; his comb of hair leaned to one side; he grunted and pushed.

Lucienne held another glass of tequila for Raul; she wanted to run because she could no longer look.

"Ah," said Raul, blacking out.

"Almost two hundred people were killed in the cathedral," Jesús went on, speaking of the Colima church. "Funeral ... that stupid rich Navarro died and everybody went to the funeral and the roof caved in on the people ... hmm, bad, very bad."

"Is it bad, Raul?" asked Lucienne.

"Hmm ... one should never go to funerals; I tell all my friends that. See, look, here I have it. Here's your bullet! Rifle bullet. Quite a chunk. I thought so. No wonder it went in deep." Jesús juggled the bullet in his palm and poked it with the point of the poniard, one eye shut. He was a connoisseur of bullets. Crimes of every sort interested him. Grumbling about powder and various calibers, he worked over Raul, stopped the bleeding and bandaged the shoulder.

Gradually, Raul sensed relief. Shifting in his chair he inspected the servants who had been watching. Lucienne ordered Marta to clean up, and the bloody towels and bowl disappeared. Peza, still grumbling, went outside for a cigarette. For the moment, the cool, long room, with its gray shuttered windows, belonged to Raul and Lucienne. She helped him to her sofa, backed him with pillows and opened windows. A glass between her fingers, she sipped and talked. The sea rolled its watery sound. Raul let his eyes close, and tried to imagine he had no branding iron of pain.

"... Two men died at the mill, when beams dropped and part of the mill fell on them. You remember Ortiz and Gonzales?"

She was dressed in dark gray, a flowing pleated skirt with a pleated jacket.

"... The men are lying in the chapel....

"... Jesús is going back to Colima right away. He's worried."

He tried to say he was worried about Petaca but he couldn't manage a word.

"Some of the chapel walls have cracked," she said, still standing by him.

Voices outside the house rose: a man shouted and boys began an altercation; a dog started barking.

Lucienne sat on the sofa, touched his face, his hands. For a second, she felt he was hers and the illusion pleased her; the day's trials dropped away and left her thinking of another day, on the beach. Tide low, they had walked to a cove where red-barked trees shaded the sand. Some baby manta rays had been washed onto the beach; seagulls flew low ... Raul had said....

Jesús was saying goodbye.

"Goodbye, Jesús," said Lucienne. "Thank you so much. I hope everything's all right at your home in Colima, with your family. Tell the padre about Ortiz and Gonzales. Perhaps he can send someone to bury them tomorrow. If not, we'll bury them without a priest. What else can we do?"

Jesús wore boots of brown English leather and seemed to be memorizing their creases as Lucienne spoke. His small figure, in neat khaki trousers and blue shirt, looked pitiful.

When he had gone, Raul had a cognac. He asked himself whether any bones had been broken? By the shot or by the fall, when he hurled himself from the saddle.

A white peacock perched in a long open window. It was quiet now and the surf-sound fumbled over the dark furnishings, desks, tables, chairs and sofas from the 70's. Things had not been well cared for and yet their good craftsmanship fought neglect and climate. The woods were mahogany, oak, rosamorada and magnolia. On the walls hung Directoire prints, oil portraits and a poor copy of an Ingres nude, all of them palely lit by a brass center lamp that swung from the ceiling on a brass chain.

"Are you feeling any better?" she asked, from a high armchair. "How far you had to ride to get here. Manuel is wonderful to you...."

"We should have been more alert."

"You can't always be," she said.

"I suppose not. Anything can happen in the campo."

"I'll fix you something to eat. Manuel must get you out of those wet trousers."

"Lucienne ... you must send word to Petaca."

"Should Manuel go?"

"I think that's best."

"Try to rest.... I'll see about it," she said.

Pain kept Raul awake most of the night. All her doctoring helped very little; again and again he saw Lucienne by the lamplight of the adjoining bedroom; she would come and bend over him and whisper something.

"Try to sleep....

"Are you thirsty?"

In the dim light, his face had about it the tragic quality that had haunted her at the burial. Death was such a wearisome thing. Dear Raul, sleep, sleep. This is really your home. We've always been kind to one another ... we can go on being kind. We have that assurance. Only a little while ago you and I were children, playing together.... I can see you in the dining-room doorway, tears streaming down your face, Mama and Papa lying dead on the floor, just as they were when they took them from the sea. Oh, love, I want to share your pain. "Let me get a hammock for you," she said, "to let the air come all around you. Maybe that will help you rest."

She slung a long white hammock for him and he found it more restful lying crosswise, swaying a little....

Mona wandered in and licked his fingers, when his hand hung over the side of the hammock. She lay underneath, on the cool tiles.

Strange, lying here in her bedroom, strange to be alive, strange that Caterina is dead ... stranger still is Angelina's coldness, her sorrow, her introversion ... what is it we say to one another, or don't say? What is it that heals us? Something for one, something else for another. She wouldn't like to care for me but she would like to look after a child. Strange sound the sea makes, strange what life is.

In a few days I'll be back at Petaca. I'll see her and she'll ask about my shoulder and I'll ask about the earthquake. There must be a way to change ourselves. Lucienne says there is no God. How does she know? Has she searched? She spends her time with her plants and her friends. Gabriel has said "God is." For him it's as simple as that. And I must talk to him, to change myself. Caterina didn't live for nothing. Her faith was real to her....

Lying alone in Lucienne's tiny servant's room (a room that had no furniture), Manuel saw his soul sitting in front of him, about three feet high, made of clay. He had often seen it. It had a bulging forehead, close cropped hair and scraggly beard. It spoke in an African tongue, faintly. He listened and tried to understand. Wasn't it repeating the same things? The voice rose. The soul seemed to grapple with something; it snuffed the air ... Manuel, breathing hard, turned restlessly on a dusty straw mat, woke and gazed about at the tiny room.

Up long before dawn, he washed in the sea, ate, talked with Lucienne about Raul's condition and then saddled his horse for Petaca.

Flashes of lightning streaked the gray sky and before he had ridden far it began to rain. He welcomed it, glad the stink of smoke and ash would vanish. A borrowed poncho wrapped around him, he felt warm and comfortable; he was sure none of Pedro's men would be out in the downpour. Passing a stone roadside cross, he thought of Ortiz and Gonzalez, dead in Lucienne's chapel. A man's luck gave out at the strangest moments. Raul's luck had died out yesterday. He would have to fight back....

Slashes of rain struck across the road and men on burros appeared out of the rain, the riders crouched under raincoats of palm, fibrous, soppy masses. Each man bore a hoe. The burros trotted wearily, heads down.

An embankment, gutted by years of erosion, led onto a bridge of sixteenth century red masonry, crumbling and narrow. In the center, on a limestone panel, a Humboldt had had a sonnet carved, before his sugar plantation had collapsed or before his mine had petered out in Jalisco. Empire builders, those Humboldts. Beyond the bridge, sweeping over fields, the rain rippled over sugar cane, breast high. Above, on a rocky hill, was the stone fence line of the Medina property, a great crooked L.

For Manuel, the green sweep of cane held a promise: he hoped for a few acres and felt that Raul would let him have them soon. Many men hoped for acres of their own. Pedro had promised land, if men sided with him, land he had never owned.

Ping of a muzzle-loader stirred a flock of duck from a Medina pond and a scrawny, lame man popped out of bushes and hailed Manuel, a duck slapping his leg.

"Cubo," said Manuel.

"Manuel—que tal?"

Manuel rolled a cigarette, the man walking toward him.

"Any word about Farias?" he asked of this family servant.

"Not a word."

"Raul was shot by one of Pedro's men. He's at Palma Sola. I've just come from there."

"Is he badly hurt?"

"Pretty bad. In the shoulder."

"Madre de Dios."

His old musket and old bare legs and thin arms seemed to have been eaten by the rain. His torn whites stuck to the quivering bird. Thinking of Raul, he rubbed his fingers over his powder horn.

By the time Manuel reached Petaca it was nearly noon; pigeons drowsed on the roof; dogs snoozed on the cobbles. Manuel stabled and rubbed his horse and, while he rubbed the flanks, whistling a little, a man hurried in: El Cisne, the stable hands called him, a flour-skinned fellow, young, tubercular looking.

"Farias is back," he said. "And Luis, too."

"Good," said Manuel. "I want to talk to Farias. Where is he?"

"He's at the mill."

Manuel's horse pushed her nose against her feedbox to ward off flies.

"I'll be right along."

"Where's Don Raul?"

"Injured—at Palma Sola."

"Qué malo!"

They walked toward the mill, the flour-skinned fellow behind Manuel, his whites billowing with air as he strode.

Here and there, tiles had crashed during the quake; an adobe hut, where plows were stored, had collapsed, dumping adobes like dominoes. From a distance, the residence seemed to have escaped. Manuel did not question El Cisne. The path led quickly through an orange grove to the mill, an eighteenth century building, with French earmarks, even a few fleurs-de-lis. A Medina had hired a Gascon architect to do both mill and house but the French influence had long ago disappeared from the house, due to quakes and remodelings.

New ragged cracks appeared in the east wall of the mill, Manuel noted. Men sat by the pool, Farias among them. He and Manuel greeted each other heartily, slapping each other on the back.

"Tell me what happened."

"Pedro tried to keep me, a deliberate mix-up with some del Valle men, to cause trouble. It's just as Luis told you. They'd have kept us both if they could."

"You got away today?"

"I got away yesterday, but it took time to reach Petaca."

"The fools—to keep you. Raul is wounded and at Palma Sola. Pedro tried to get him when we were riding in the campo."

Several workers stood up. One of them stopped whittling.

"What's that?" demanded Farias, instantly blaming Don Fernando. "Tell us again."

"They tried to get Raul, out in the campo. A rifle shot. It's a nasty wound ... deep in the shoulder."

"Did you see Pedro's men?" someone asked.

"Sure, we saw them," said Manuel.

"God damn that Chávez," a man cried.

"Jesús Peza removed the bullet.... When did Luis come in?" Manuel asked Farias. "We lost him day before yesterday."

"He came in yesterday," said Farias. "He's dog tired but he's all right. They stole his horse."

Above the mill, the volcano released streamers of smoke, smoke that fanned wider and wider as it climbed. It had commenced as they talked; now everyone saw it, considered it silently, as if hypnotized. Manuel thought, as he looked, Raul will die. The haciendas will fall. In the smoke he saw the bodies of peasants, dead cattle, rifles, machetes, trees, women, children. Destiny ... the force that takes us, one by one.

Farias stepped up close to Manuel.

"The Clarín tried to kill Raul," he said. "The man's insane." Years of resentment went into his remark; he rubbed chaffed wrists and galled hands and regarded his Petacan friends, most of them bearded, in their fifties and sixties; they had stomached Don Fernando with patient desperation; all of them craved freedom.

"Don Fernando wanted another killing," someone said.

"You'd think he'd have enough by now."

"Of course he put Pedro up to it."

"His own son ... anything to have power over us."

"Times will go worse for us, now that Raul's wounded," said a one-eyed man, with machete dangling from a cord around his neck.

Almost superstitiously, they felt the old man would regain his power and impose his violence. Hunger, sickness and fear had crucified their faces and yet there seemed to be room for this new dread. A paunched man tipped back his hat and fumbled a cigarette. Another coughed and spat....

Ashes from the volcano sifted on the pool, gray, powder-fine, moving in tiny eddies; the same ash flecked the men's hats, beards, shoulders and sleeves. A swallow dipped over the pool and then banked away, as if repulsed by the ash. Silence kicked at the walls of the mill, at the jacarandas and palms, at the fields beyond them.

"I must go and speak to the señora about Don Raul," Manuel said, heading toward the main house. "See me later, in the kitchen, Farias."