The Second Son

At just after midnight, Gabriel shut off the engine. Three jars of gasoline remained, but he knew he would have to keep a watch on them. Gasoline had a tendency to go missing with so many militiamen roaming about. Not that they had much use for it-a fire burned better with wood, a kerosene lamp might explode from the added heat- but these were anarchists. They had spent a lifetime scavenging. Why should a bit of freedom get in the way now?

Truth to tell, Osera de Ebro was not the most logical place to have set up the front. Zaragoza was still another thirty kilometers on, but this was as far as the weapons had taken them. Even so, Buenaventura Durruti- the great anarchist leader, the man who had given them Barcelona and would send Franco back into the sea-was insisting he could mop things up. The rebels had at most fifteen hundred troops inside the city. They were requetes-beret-wearing, priest-toting Navarrese monarchists who saw this as a last holy crusade-but why be daunted by that? Truth and fashion stood in equal measure on either side of the line. No, it came down to discipline and experience and weapons, and while these were all firmly in the hands of the requetes as well, Durruti still had one card to play. He had numbers, twice as many men- four times that by the end of the week-each fighting with something perhaps even more essential: a sense of the inevitable. Barcelona had proved that God had forsaken His own. Discipline and weapons be damned.

Remarkably, even the requetes knew this of their foes. In fact, the only person who seemed unaware was a Colonel Jose Villalba. Sadly, Villalba was the leader of the Republican forces and spent most of his time shuttling back and forth between Barcelona and his Aragon headquarters in Bujaraloz. Bujaraloz was another thirty-five kilometers behind the Osera line; in order to reach it, Villalba chose to take the train. The railroads were still under the workers’ control, and he reasoned that he could use the time to study maps and charts and piece together what little information he had on the men who might be dying for him. Had he decided to look out the window he would have seen that the fighting along the way was more skirmish than full-on battle, but Villalba kept the curtains drawn. It was better for the heat, he said. Reading his reports, he decided it was too early to bring the other Republican columns up to the front. He told Durruti-a colonel telling a man who disdained rank, commissions, an equal among equals-that, valiant as he was, he had plowed on too quickly. They would have to strategize together. And so Durruti began to spend much of his own time shuttling back and forth between Osera and Bujaraloz in order to convince the colonel that the time was ripe. There were no trains this far out, which meant that, with all the driving, Durruti needed to get his hands on some gasoline.

Gabriel decided to sleep in the back of the truck.

The smell of day-old flesh woke him at just after six. Gabriel looked over at the dead German nearer him and noticed that a string of flies had made camp below the right eye. Odd that they would have begun there, he thought. The back of the head was so much easier a way in.

He hoisted himself up and pulled back the flap. The heat had yet to take root, but it was already stale enough to bring a sheen to the face. Outside, the small square proved only slightly better in daylight. A few cars and motorcycles stood in a not-terribly-convincing line; two large guns-French 75s, he guessed-sat on the back of trucks, looking as if they hadn’t been fired since the last war; and surrounding it all was a huddle of two-story buildings, hunched and leaning toward defeat. It might have been the burden of insignificance or the thought that they might actually be called upon to serve some larger purpose, but either way they carried their future like the weight of an unwanted boon: Why us, why now-why?

Gabriel saw a bit of movement across the square. It was inside the house that had promised beds for the German and the woman last night. He hopped out of the truck and headed over.

As it turned out, the beds were nothing more than a few flat sections of floor with a collection of equally disappointing straw mattresses laid over them; the word “mattress” might have been kind. There were perhaps eight of them placed at odd angles, with men strewn across in various states of sleep.

Hoffner was just opening his eyes when he saw Gabriel step through the door.

“Did you sleep?” said Gabriel.

Hoffner propped himself on an elbow and shook his head.

Gabriel said, “Is she up?”

They had set up a small barricade around Mila’s piece of the floor. She said it was unnecessary-she would be sleeping in her clothes-but the woman whose house was now the makeshift barracks had insisted. It might be a new kind of war, but not that new.

Hoffner pointed over to the chest of drawers-with the three chairs and blankets spread over them-and said, “She’s in the master suite.”

Gabriel stepped over and rapped a hand against the wood. “Good morning, Doctor.”

He rapped again, then a third time, and Mila’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see her coming through the front door. She was carrying a tray.

“I’ve found some coffee,” she said, “and something that looks like cheese. They said it was cheese. I’m hoping it’s cheese.”

Hoffner sat up. She looked clean, as if she had found a washbasin. The face, though fresh, showed the weight of the night, the age lines more creased as they edged out from the eyes. She had taken care with little else, her hair pulled back to mask its wildness, and the neck speckled pink from exhaustion or the sun. It was a completely unadorned Mila who maneuvered her way through the beds, and it was this careless, untended beauty that brought a tightening to the muscles in Hoffner’s gut.

She set the tray down and handed him a cup. He found himself staring into the dark liquid.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“Four was early,” she said, as she gave another to Gabriel. “You didn’t hear the boy come in?”

Hoffner shook his head.

“He was whispering through the blanket before he finally pulled it back,” she said. “I think he was hoping to catch a glimpse of something.”

“Did he?” Hoffner drank. The coffee tasted of cheese.

“It was dark,” she said, “but let’s hope.” She pulled over one of the chairs and sat. “There was an arm that needed patching. They have a sniper-at night-somewhere up in the hills. It wasn’t so bad.”

Hoffner said, “And they don’t have a doctor of their own?”

“I’m guessing he likes his sleep.”

This was something he would have to remind himself of. Places like this held no surprises for her, at least when it came to the doctoring.

She picked up a wedge of cheese, sniffed it, and took a bite. “I told them I needed to get into Zaragoza. They said it was impossible. I mentioned you.” She sipped at the coffee as she stared at Hoffner. “They said they’re very eager to meet you.”

With no basin or water in the barracks, Hoffner was forced to do what he could to rub the sleep from his face. His eyes felt swollen and his mouth tasted of red onion as he followed Gabriel and Mila across the square and into a one-room shack. Funny, but he hadn’t had onions in days.

The place was dirt-floored and smelled of cooking oil and something sweet-crushed sugarcane or three-day- old sweat, it was impossible to say which. A woodstove stood at the back, tin cups, and a coffeepot resting on top. The exhaust pipe drove up through a hole in the ceiling that was just too wide for its spout. Had it been raining, there would have been no point in lighting it. Then again, it was August; why light the thing at all?

Three men stood leaning over a small table near the stove. Their backs were to the door, and they were pointing at various positions on a map. From the look of the clothes and the rank smell in the air, Hoffner was guessing they had been up all night.

The tallest of the three was the first to turn. He was somewhere in his twenties with a handsome face, a wild, full beard-a beard that inspired confidence-and arms the size of unstripped logs. The hair was thick there as well, as were the tufts climbing up through the top of his open shirt. Two thin suspenders kept his trousers above his narrow waist.

The man kept his eyes on Mila for a moment too long. Hoffner chanced a side glance and saw it in her face as well, a look of complicity, recognition in the light of day. Neither showed regret. Neither showed anything beyond