Raul had jumped out of bed and grabbed his trousers and shirt. Carrying his shoes, he rushed down a tottering stairs—through the pale dawn—into the patio, where water sloshed out of the fountain, across the cobbles. Servants were screaming and shouting. Toward the mill, flames gushed up; the wall of Fernando's room crumbled: as Raul stood by the fountain, he saw blocks bulge, lean forward, crash to the floor, dust rising, as fine as flour from a smashed flour barrel.
The door to his father's room was ripped from its hinges and thrown to the ground. Rushing into the dusty room, Raul opened the outer window. Then he found his father. Death, in the midst of this disaster, seemed natural to Raul—yet not the gaping mouth and angry eyes. Their anger and derision drove him out of the room, into the patio.
"Are you hurt?" asked Sandoval, rushing up to him, a crowbar in his hand, his hat around his neck on a cord, his shirt ripped.
"My father's dead ... buried under that wall," said Raul, buttoning his shirt, wiping a smudge from his face.
"Somebody set fire to the mill; it's all in flames. I just came from there.... There's shooting."
"Do what you can at the mill—I'll find you later," said Raul. "I'm going for Manuel, I'll see about Father Gabriel.... Find Velasco. Get Esteban. Let's fight 'em off at the mill. Let's fight for this place!"
In the living room a fine old set of ivory dominoes had been hurled to the floor, the box splintering into many pieces. He saw them, as he lit a table lamp and put on his shoes. For a moment, he knelt to pick them up and then remembered his father. Suppose Manuel or Gabriel or someone else had been pinned down?
"Gabriel!" Raul shouted outside the hacienda, aware of the whitening sky. "Gabriel!"
"Raul?"
"Where are you?"