He left the house and walked to where he’d seen the smoke. Chepe’s. His steps became slower and the dusk deepened into night. When Abelito reached Chepe’s he could only see the outline of it in the moonlight, and the outline was wrong, incomplete somehow. There was a terrible smell in the air, the smell of cooked meat, and it stirred Abelito’s hunger even as it made him want to vomit the contents of his empty stomach onto the ground. He couldn’t move forward.
I do not know how long he stood there. I only know that it was with something like gladness that he saw two men in ratty clothes appear on the road, point their rifles at him, and demand he tell them who he was, where he was going, and what he thought he was doing, so close to a place of battle.
The men were the same age as Abelito, made men and not boys only by their weapons. They had simple, honest faces, though they looked scared and excited. One had a large pimple on the right side of his nose. The other, the barest beginnings of a beard. They made Abelito kneel, and even then, Abelito did not fully understand how the world had shifted, and he thought he had the right to ask questions, to look into the face of another person, to speak words and be heard. He thought this even as they tied his hands behind his back, as he knelt before the smoking tomb of his family, his village, and what was left of himself.
“What happened? Have you seen—”
The first blow came like a shock of electricity, beginning in the right jaw and echoing up into the top of Abelito’s skull, jolting through his body, which unbalanced and toppled, dust in the mouth and the world tilted sideways. The muscles of his arms strained once, twice, unaware of the new rules, of the rope cutting into his wrists. The simple, honest faces were shouting. There was no pain, only surprise and the first movements toward Abelito’s final death, a slow reordering of the way the world works, in which a boy can be helpless, truly helpless, and a blow cannot be returned with another blow.
Once, Abelito was beaten to the ground at school by Gustavo, a larger and crueler boy than the weakling Abelito had been. Gustavo’s beating hurt far worse than the one weak blow from the honest faces, but it had changed nothing in the universe where Abelito lived. Back then, with his own fists, Abelito had fought back. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, his pitiful fists had tried to shout. He knew he would lose, he knew how it would end—in blood, a chipped tooth, and shame. But while he could, he had thrown himself at Gustavo, and kept a shred of dignity.
The honest faces dragged Abelito up by his hair, hit him again, and more dirt hit his lips, the smoke in the dimming light turned into a column floating leftward, the ground rushing up to the right, and God no longer above. Even then, as they dragged him to his knees a second time, the pain rising with him, Abelito thought if he could only understand what they were asking him, or explain who he was, and what he was doing, then it would stop. He still believed in rules. He didn’t realize he had passed into another world where rules didn’t exist. They hit him a third time, then pulled him to his feet, blindfolded him, and made him walk.
Is there any reason to tell of the pathetic things done and said by Abelito as he walked back to the paras’ rally point? Does it help to say that the paras knew they were intruding on guerrilla territory? That they’d come at Chepe’s request but offered no help when the guerrilla entered the town, and no help when the gunfire started, or when the guerrilla’s rage overflowed, or when the rebellious people were herded into Chepe’s bar, or when the fire was set, or when the screams rose, death hidden from the murderers by four walls, smoke, and fire? That they waited until the guerrilla were drunk on death, and then they waited until the guerrilla were drunk on stolen aguardiente? That only then, as the guerrilla were leaving town, disorderly and sated, that the paras opened fire? Does it help to say that the honest faces had reason to be scared, that they were braced for a counterattack? That both the paras and the guerrilla were forcing villagers from their homes, shooting stragglers? That even though they were on opposite sides of the war it was almost as though they were working together to destroy all that people had built here? That the area was full of violence tonight and no one, not even the men with guns, was safe? No. Because those honest faces, faces he could barely catch a glimpse of out of the corner of the blindfold placed inexpertly over his eyes, faces shouting questions about the movements of the guerrilla, their numbers, their leadership, their weaponry, those faces cared nothing for answers.
Abelito’s jaw throbbed in tune with his heartbeat. One part of his mind remained fixed
