I leave the dirt path that runs south of the town and head into the hills. I walk for an hour, following the path I know by heart: over a field of prickly maguey and sunny trumpet bushes, across a stream where dipper birds dart underwater, up a rock face flecked with quartz. When I come to the old apple tree, I stop and call his name. Silence. I see the faintest movement of a shadow in the branches. Then an apple flies down and hits me, square on the ankle. This is what usually happens; I talk, and he throws fruit.
“Rubén,” I say again. “There is exciting news from town. They have captured El Gris. He will hang at the Festival next Friday.” Another apple, this time soft, rotting. It hits me on the knee and stains my pants.
I dream of bringing Rubén back into town with me; I will cook him a magnificent dinner, then we will steal a bottle of tequila from under Lars’s pointy nose and share it as we watch the sunset from the bell tower, and Rubén will work with me at the stand and smile as he makes change and ignore all the complaints because he is so happy we are working together. But I have come to accept that, for now, he is a boy who lives in a tree and throws fruit at his father.
I did not always accept this. When I followed the orange peels and found him in the tree, I shouted at him, drunk and blind with anger. These are the things I said:
Come down from that tree! Boys do not live in trees!
You are bringing shame upon your family, such as it is!
You are as bad as your sister! Perhaps worse!
The lightning will hit you. San Humberto will see to it!
Squirrels will claw at your testicles, trying to gather them for the winter!
If there is a drought, the branches of the tree may weaken and break, and you might then fall and hurt yourself!
Why are you leaving your father alone?
Twice I have brought the gun here, drunk. On the day after Madalena was buried, I aimed it at my son, a shadow in an apple tree. Weeks later, on the day my daughter, Ysela, told me she was going to work in Lars’s back rooms, I held it to my head. On both occasions, San Humberto prevented me from pulling the trigger. For this I am grateful, most of the time.
“Do you not want to see El Gris?” I say to Rubén. “We have never had such a famous person to hang.”
Apple, apple, apple.
I turn and walk back to the road with the bruises spreading under my clothes. But I have not given up. I have decided that the capture of El Gris is a sign from the saint, a sign of order restored, a sign that Rubén and I will run with the hyenas together this year.
It is pitch-dark when I pass through the south gate into town, and I swear it is as hot as it was at noon. Though my clothes are stained with sweat and dirt and apple, I go to the bar for a bottle of tequila. It is the only way I will find sleep tonight. I do not want to see Lars, but as is his custom, he sits at his desk in the loft overlooking the bar, calling out bawdy jokes as one of the girls sits on his lap and combs his thick blond beard. The sound of coins slapping the bar is as constant as the ticking of a clock.
There is a bottle of tequila on the corner of the bar, nearly full and unattended. I wonder, Is Lars setting a trap for me? Inviting me to steal from him while he watches me from beneath the folds of his eyelids, stroking his monkey and relishing the thought of the police dragging me away, humiliated? Well, he is right to expect me to steal from him, but he underestimates me. If I am going to steal for myself, I will not take something as insignificant as a bottle. I will steal something he loves. I do not yet have a plan, because Lars does not seem to love anything besides himself. Which is an excellent defense, I admit.
I keep my eyes to the floor and pay the bartender. I turn to leave, a new bottle in hand. “Manolo,” Lars shouts from his loft. “My most reliable customer.” I keep walking. Behind me I hear whispers, stifled laughs. “If you have come for a glimpse of your daughter,” he says, “you should know she will have nothing to do with you.”
I turn and look up. Without my glasses I see his face as a blur, but I know his expression — a scornful curl of lip under blond mustache, a creeping lopsided smile, blue eyes wide with mockery. He sits in front of a bright lamp that casts a halo around his head so that people who look up at him will think he is some kind of angel. I spit on his polished floor.
“Oh, Manolo. You must be so lonely,” he says loudly. It is important to him that everybody hear. “A nice girl would comfort you more than that bottle. One of Ysela’s friends, perhaps? I’m sure they would love to see where she came from.”
More laughter. The door seems very far away.
I know that every man in this room has paid his money to be with my daughter. Most have not said anything to me, but I can see it in their eyes when they come to buy my fruit. Some squeeze the fruit silently and stare at the ground while they hunt for money in their pockets. Others look me in the eye too directly, speak too loudly, listen too earnestly. I do not know which bothers me more. Even Vargas took his turn, once. The next morning he knocked on my door and confessed; he said he was sorry, he was drunk, he had been fighting with his wife, and Ysela was just so beautiful, and on and on. He begged me to blacken his eyes, so I did. We never spoke of it again. If I were to hold grudges, I would soon be out of friends.
“You are an evil man, Lars,” I say. I focus on a spot above his head so I do not have to meet his eyes.
Swinging from a crossbeam, Lars’s monkey screeches and bares its teeth at me. I hate that monkey, that filthy little beast in its purple velveteen coat. Lars laughs — a false, too-loud laugh that is for the benefit of everyone having a drink or waiting for a girl. “Good-bye, Manolo, and thank you for your business,” he says, waving me out.
“San Humberto punishes people like you,” I say. “If not now, then someday.” I turn my back on him and walk through the door and into the night. He shouts something that I cannot hear, and everyone inside laughs. He has the money, he gives the party, so people laugh.
I open the bottle and drink as I walk down the road. Tonight I will not touch the gun, will not clean it, will not cradle it like a baby. I swear it to myself.
In the morning, Vargas brings news from the jail, where Ayala and El Gris sit in adjoining cells. “Ayala does nothing but cry,” he says, mopping his brow with his sleeve. “He sobs so hard it is like he is having a seizure.”
“Why?” I say. “He is going to live.” It is our tradition that the worst criminal in the jail on the day of the Festival goes to the gallows. Ayala had been the only one behind bars; with the Festival so close, he must have expected he would hang. The capture of El Gris has spared him.
“Ayala wants to die,” Vargas says. “He wants to be with Concepción.”
Concepción was Ayala’s wife and one of Vargas’s sisters. She died of the green fever six months ago. The night after she was buried, Ayala went to the bar and drank himself senseless. When the bells tolled midnight, he jumped up and overturned his table, smashed bottles, kicked the monkey into the wall, and ran out. He went to the cathedral, where he stripped off his clothes and relieved himself all over the front steps. “I piss on your apostles! I shit on your saints!” he said. He shouted this again and again, dancing naked around the cathedral as we gathered in a crowd. He stopped, suddenly, and with a look of sudden, rapturous knowledge — as if he’d just glimpsed Truth itself — he said, “I will burn your God to the ground.” The police came as Ayala was pushing through the crowd, asking people if they had any matches he could borrow.