The great saint is buried in a vault beneath our cathedral, along with the remains of the hyenas that he collected on his travels across the water. Each morning since his death three hundred years ago, the church bells have rung at eight o’clock, sounding the beginning of the daily Mass in his honor. The bells woke me today. In my throbbing head it sounded as if they were calling out, No fruit! No fruit! No fruit! — admonishing me for another late night with the bottle, for another wasted morning. Once again I have disappointed my early customers, the people who like to eat fruit on the cathedral steps as they wait for Mass to begin. Now, with everyone filling the pews inside, the town is quiet except for the buzz of fat, dizzy f lies as they circle and dive and swarm.
I pass several minutes admiring a sturdy beetle as it rolls a dung ball many times its size through the dirt. When I look up again, I see someone running toward me from the town square. Though my vision is blurred, I know it is my friend Vargas, the carpenter. Vargas is a fat man. He runs neither often nor well. When he reaches the stand, he leans on it to support himself. He holds his side and doubles over like a man stuck by a knife. I give him the glass of lemonade I have made for myself; he needs it more than I do.
“Manolo,” he says through shallow breaths. “Come to the square. You will not believe what you see.”
“Who will watch the stand?” I ask.
“Your fruit is safe. Everyone is at Mass.”
We walk toward the square, shading our eyes from the sharp morning sun. “What news could be so important that it makes you run?” I ask.
“You would already know if you had not slept so late,” he scolds. Vargas likes to think it is his job to teach me lessons. I have told him he is wasting his time. Lessons are burdens, and I do not need any more of those.
He turns to me. “It was another one of those nights, yes? You drink and you clean the gun?” He says this quietly, with concern.
“I did not touch the gun,” I lie.
The square is at the exact center of the town, where our two alamedas cross; one runs north-south, the other east-west. In the southwest corner of the square is our town wishing well, shaped from rough-cut chunks of limestone. As we pass it, I mouth a prayer of contrition to the saint and drop in a coin, as is my custom. There is no splash, just the flat sound of the coin landing in the muck below.
Vargas leads me through the square to the mayor’s office. A scroll hangs from the door on a braided purple cord. The parchment is thick and smooth, with bright purple and yellow borders, long black leather fringes attached to the corners, and elegant script that glitters as if it has been written in gold. I want to touch it to see what the gold feels like, but Vargas grabs my wrist. “You might smear it,” he says.
“Is it the pronouncement for the Festival?” I ask.
He nods excitedly. This is strange. Usually the pronouncement comes in the form of a name scratched in charcoal on a torn scrap of paper that is nailed to the door.
“Why such a fancy scroll?” I ask. “It is only Ayala who will hang this year. No one special.”
He grabs my elbow. “That is the news,” he says, and he is shaking with excitement. “It will not be Ayala. We have someone special. Let me read for you.” Vargas knows I broke my eyeglasses in the bar last week defending my daughter’s honor, such as it is. “‘Attention citizens! The infamous bandit El Gris has been captured in our town! Next Friday he will receive his punishment at the Festival of San Humberto, where the great saint’s hyenas will run fast and hungry! Rejoice in your safety! Rejoice in our justice!’ ”
El Gris! My pulse races. It is a feeling of triumph, a feeling that everyone in town must be sharing this morning, all of us, together. El Gris is a ruthless murderer, robber, and thief, a man who shoots, then laughs, then shoots again. It is said that he has had his mane of gray hair since he was a teenager, that it turned gray overnight from the thrill of his first kill. El Gris was a plague on this land long before Lars Jarlssen ever came from across the water with all of his riches and built his house with its swimming pool and bought the village bar and turned its back rooms into a brothel and cursed us with his verminous pet spider monkey and doubled the price of tequila and stole my wife and children away from me.
“We have never had such a famous person to hang,” Vargas says.
“This is San Humberto’s doing,” I say. “The saint is showing us His hand. Reminding us of His goodness.”
“That is possible, I suppose.”
“El Gris is too smart to be caught by any man.”
“What if he wanted to be caught?” Vargas says. “What if he wanted to repent, and he turned himself in?”
I laugh and shake my head. “The heat makes you foolish,” I say. “One can bathe a hyena, but one can never remove its stink.” Vargas nods, and I tell him, “You see? I have lessons to teach, too.”
On our walk back to my stand, I see two boys running away with their arms full of my guavas. They yell and laugh. It is too hot to chase them.
El Gris has nearly taken my life twice.
The first time was twenty years ago. I was young, I was muscular, I had hair, I had many friends. I was walking home from the bar — at the time, Vargas’s grandfather owned it— and we had been celebrating the engagement of Vargas’s oldest sister. I walked through the square and turned onto the west road toward the one-room house Madalena and I had shared since we were married the year before. I heard someone clear his throat behind me. I turned and saw El Gris leaning against the wishing well, his long gray hair bright in the moonlight. “Good evening, friend,” he said, in a voice that told me I was not his friend at all. I saw his right hand move for his gun, and my instinct took over. I leaped into an alley and ran, taking a snake’s path through the west side of town, staying off the road. I hid behind the pescadería, behind a stack of crates, kneeling amid the old, stinking fish that had been left out for the dogs. I remained there for hours, trying not to breathe, watching the moon cross the sky. When I ran, I did not look back. At home I fell into Madalena’s arms and told her my story. “You did the right thing,” she said. “You have too much to live for.” Then she bathed me and made love to me. I believe this was the night Ysela was conceived.
The second time was four years ago. El Gris robbed and killed six merchants in a rampage along the west road. His path ran right past my stand, but I was not tending it that day. Madalena had left with the children only days before, and I was at home, facedown on the cool floor, trembling, sick with drink and with the loss of my family. In the echo of each shot, I prayed a ricochet would take me.
The heat lingers into the evening like a rude guest. I am exhausted after hours of making change and smiling and ignoring the knife-blade remarks like, Where are the guavas today, Manolo? Don’t you know my wife needs to make jelly for the feast? And where were you this morning? Aren’t you ashamed to be so unreliable? But my day is far from over. I must go into the hills and tell my son Rubén the good news about the Festival, about El Gris. There should be just enough daylight for me to find my way back.
Rubén left town four years ago, the day his mother married Lars. He left a trail of orange peels so I could find him. He has never come back, not even for his mother’s funeral. But each day I tell myself maybe, just maybe, he has grown tired of living alone, tired of punishing me, and he only needs an excuse to come back. Perhaps the chance to run with the hyenas for El Gris will be enough.