Alejandro clung tightly to his mother’s dress when he saw the gravedigger take the first nail out of the bag. It was large, a palm long, rusty. The man gripped the hammer and settled into the bottom of the grave pit.
Alejandro’s father lay directly on the earth. He had a sunken part of his head, even though the mourners had done a good job repositioning the skull fragments, destroyed, according to the neighbors, by the kick of his horse Trueno during an argument with his brother Gregorio of whom nothing was known in the village.
Alejandro saw the gravedigger place the tip of the nail on his father’s right hand, raise the hammer and deliver the first dry blow.
“Mom, why are they doing that to Dad?” the boy asked. A second rumble drove the piece of iron in further. No blood came out. “That way he will not be able to get out of there to go to work.”
“It has to be this way,” murmured María, Alejandro’s mother, dressed in black. She held her skirts so tightly that her knuckles were white. “No one leaves here, Alejandro, not even after death.”
“Tell him to stop,” the boy pleaded. The gravedigger took out another nail and settled to drive it into the other hand. Behind the living, the mourners murmured prayers. “Tell him to stop, Mom! Let them go look for Uncle Gregorio, let him apologize to Dad . . . so he gets up and . . . and Dad can come back home!”
“Forget about Uncle Gregorio. He is not coming back, nor is your father. He is dead, do you understand? When you die, you do not go anywhere. You should not go anywhere. Grandma Federica explained it to you, right? Now be a good boy and say goodbye to your father in silence.”
Alejandro made an effort to contain the sobs, but it was impossible. His muffled moans mixed with the sounds of the gravedigger’s hammer and the crying of the mourners. The boy buried his face in his mother’s black clothes and covered his ears with his hands. When he stopped hearing the clatter, he dared to take a look at the grave.
They had nailed his father’s hands and feet to the ground. None of those gathered let out any sound. Alejandro hated them for their complicity with the death. Then came the shovelfuls of earth that, little by little, made the body disappear.
Alejandro left a handful of wild flowers on the grave, with no more tears to shed. He took his mother’s hand and left the village cemetery with a dry heart. At home, his grandmother Federica made a chamomile and linden tea and sat in the rocking chair with a lost gaze. No one had taken off their mourning clothes. Alejandro was resting on his grandmother’s legs full of blackened veins. His mind had become an unusual calm for a seven-year-old boy after returning from the cemetery.
However, a thought stirred in the back of his mind.
“Grandma, if Uncle Gregorio left and if Dad is not coming back,” he murmured, “who is going to tend the crops?”
“You will have to grow up, Alejandro, and start doing it yourself,” Federica answered. “Your mother will help you at the beginning, until you learn.”
“If they had not nailed Dad or thrown earth on him, he could come at night to tend the corn.”
“Who told you that?” Federica asked with a slight tone of unease. Alejandro shrugged. “Never say anything like that again, is that clear? Never! Your father will stay right where he is. We are going to make sure of that.”
Alejandro kept silent and hugged his grandmother’s withered legs like overripe fruit. In the following days, the absence of Alejandro’s father and his uncle Gregorio dissolved in the village like a puddle of mud in a torrential downpour. No one in the house spoke of the event. Alejandro did not like to pass by the corral, much less near the stable. On the ground, in front of the stall where his horse Trueno had taken refuge, he could still see a dark stain. Where the animal had kicked Alejandro’s father’s head during the argument with Gregorio.
Alejandro learned to get up before the sun rose. To go early to the family’s discreet planting to pull weeds by touch and carry buckets of water from the well to give drink to the chickens and goats. He did not approach the empty stall or the place where he knew the blood stain was. At night he saw his mother cry and stir on the table what looked like the remains of a broken clay pot. Alejandro had never seen it and did not know what it could mean for the family, because even Federica became serious when she saw her daughter run her fingers along the edge of the pieces.
It was not until the new moon arrived that a change occurred in the village. Alejandro had never seen anything like it. His grandmother Federica held a cane with a bone tip, wore a yellow kerchief on her head, her Sunday dress and a bundle on her back. María was sitting at the small table, looking at her feet inside shoes dirty with red earth from spending the day in field work.
“Search for him well,” she asked without raising her head. “Do not let him escape, Mom. Not even a splinter, do you understand?”
“I have lived through this more times than you, I know what my job is. When the time comes, it will be yours too and you will do it according to the laws of the village. Nothing leaves.”
Alejandro peeked out the window. In the dirt streets, villagers began to wander with oil lamps. Their silhouettes were barely distinguishable in the darkness, hunched over, with canes like Federica’s. They tapped the ground here and there, like a blind man searching for obstacles.
“Where are you going, Grandma?” the boy asked.
“Do not worry about that,” said Federica and smoothed her grandson’s black hair. “You have to stay here, with your mom. You have to take good care of her. Do not let her fall asleep, that is important. I left strained coffee in the kitchen. Do not open the door to anyone. I will return at dawn.”
Federica lit the oil lamp she had left on the table and raised it. With a firm step, she crossed the threshold and closed the door behind her. Alejandro looked at his mother. She had a congested expression. The candle flame gave a yellowish tone to half of her haggard face.
At first Alejandro fulfilled his role as guardian. He sat on a stool next to María and took her hand. But the woman began to sway from accumulated fatigue during the day. So as soon as María leaned between the chair and the table and let out a weak sigh, Alejandro slipped out of her reach and, on tiptoe, peeked out the window. He saw the bright lights of the oil lamps dancing in the street in complete silence, like giant fireflies.
The boy looked at his mother once more and left the house without making noise. He stayed hidden among the neighbors’ gardens, under the window ledges. As in his own, in no house was anyone sleeping. Everyone was waiting for something. The lights danced inside and outside. Alejandro discovered that only the old women were the ones searching for something in the street. No one else. They tapped the ground with their bone-tipped canes, scraped the earth until they opened a furrow, illuminated with the lamps and, when they did not find what they were looking for, they headed toward the next virgin ground.
So as not to be discovered, Alejandro had to make a detour through the gardens. There was no child among the searchers and if he was discovered it could be a problem. If his grandmother had been honest with him, he would not have to crouch in the corners, he would have helped. When he realized it, he was near the cemetery grounds. He crouched down and with his hands felt the ground. The earth was disturbed here and there. The trail led him behind the fence. Which meant the search had begun there.
Alejandro stopped for a moment at the limits of the graveyard. It was dark and nothing could be heard. For a moment, he had the thought that, if everyone was busy searching for something, he could take a shovel, open a hole in his father’s grave and remove the nails from his hands and legs. That way the next day, his father would get up as always to tend the crops, and he could even catch up with his uncle Gregorio and bring him back along with Trueno.
Alejandro placed one hand on the rusty fence, placed one foot, but when he tried to cross, he tripped and fall full length on top of an old grave. The boy let out a moan and curled into a ball. He had hit his nose and his head near the scalp. Something warm ran down the center of his forehead. He brought his fingers to the area and felt the prick of something embedded. He probed the wound and the sensation of having something buried disappeared.
The boy stood up, scared. He retreated back to the fence, crossed toward the village and like a ferret, ran from garden to garden to avoid being discovered by the tracking old women. When he reached the house, he found the door open, just as he had left it. However, the candle had gone out. Behind his sleeping mother, there was a tall figure.
“Grandma?” Alejandro asked, fearful of being discovered.
But he soon realized it was not Federica. His heart began to beat hard. He narrowed his eyes. The apparition had no feet. Nor hands. It was there, hanging in the air, with a suit that seemed familiar. The night breeze blew until it closed the door, Alejandro startled and when he looked again, the shadow had disappeared. Alejandro remained still in the place with the sensation of having a stone in his chest.
He approached the table. His mother slept peacefully. He took the matches and lit the candle again. He saw María wrinkle her face for an instant and he ran to the kitchen. He shook his clothes and shoes well. He filled a pot with water and washed his face. When he passed his hand where he had the wound near the scalp, he did not find it, only a little piece of something hard under the skin. He served cold coffee in a mug and took it to the living room, where María was beginning to stir. Alejandro gave his mother a drink and said nothing about how long she had been asleep. He dragged the stool and sat at her feet, afraid to look at the areas where the light did not reach. He feared seeing the silhouette without hands or feet again.
At dawn, Federica returned, as she had promised. She looked older and more tired than ever. Alejandro was sleepy, but he managed to bring milk, black bread and fresh cheese to the table. The old woman left the cane leaning near her and began to eat breakfast with appetite.
“You can be calm, Mari,” she said suddenly to Alejandro’s mother. “Nothing escaped, not even a splinter.”
“Did you check from the cemetery?” María asked and Alejandro felt a shiver.
“We started there, but it seems there are no pending matters, or he wants to leave things as they are,” Federica answered.
Alejandro did not ask about the conversation. His forehead burned. He felt something dangerous nearby. He did not like his grandmother’s cane. He could not be near it. It was repulsive. Sacrilegious.
“If only we could recover Trueno,” María sighed.
“That bastard is not going to return anything. I bet he left at full gallop to the nearest village, he will abandon the horse and go to the city.”
María made a click of her tongue out of pure annoyance. Alejandro looked at the table and saw the fragments of the pot that his mother used to hold since his father died. A memory that was not his invaded him: he had kept in the clay container every coin earned with the sweat of his brow. The savings of his life to take his family to a better place, far from the village where he always had his feet full of mud and stank of crowded goats. Alejandro rubbed his head. No. He had not kept anything. They did not give him money. Or did they? He looked sideways at his grandmother’s cane and continued with breakfast.
When they finished eating, María and Federica announced that they would go to sleep and suggested that Alejandro do the same. The village was wrapped in the drowsiness of a bad night searching for who knows what things. Alejandro waited for his grandmother and mother to retire to their rooms and approached the cane, leaning near the kitchen. Behind the shadow cast by the raw cloth curtain, he saw a silhouette without hands or feet.
Alejandro took the bone-tipped cane and carried it to the patio, where the chickens and goats were making noise. He placed it in the goat corral. He looked for a machete and with all his strength, struck with the edge again and again the cane until he splintered it and broke it into pieces. He tried to destroy the bone tip, but it jumped in every attempt to break it. He tried to touch it and felt a burn on the tips of his fingers. It was dangerous. It was dangerous! With a cloth, he picked it up and put it in the bales of hay for the goats. Let them take care of chewing it.
Back in the common corral, Alejandro stopped in front of Trueno’s stall. There he had discovered Gregorio with the saddled horse and his pockets full of money. His money. Of course, he had hit the bastard Gregorio until he split his mouth. He knocked him to the ground. He did not count on the fact that, when trying to recover his family’s money, Gregorio would raise a stone and embed it in his head that exploded into dozens of bone shards. Alejandro made a grimace of pain and brought a hand to his hair, where there should be a shattered skull, with bloody gray mass showing like the pulp of a rotten fruit.
Alejandro staggered. He had never fought with his uncle Gregorio, nor did he have any idea that in the clay pot his father kept the family’s savings. His father had been killed by Trueno with a kick, not his uncle with a stone. He approached the stain that had almost disappeared. There he had writhed for an instant before Gregorio crushed his head brutally again and finally died. No. Alejandro was alive and had no wounds. He brought a hand to his forehead and felt the small, hard bone splinter embedded under the skin. He felt a strange taste in his mouth. Iron.
No.
Alejandro felt the taste of freshly dug earth flooding him up to his throat and retched. He blinked. Saliva ran between his tongue. He looked at Trueno’s stall. The silhouette without hands or feet was in the shadows, as if suspended from the ceiling. Alejandro understood. It had been unfair. He himself had thought that night of going to dig up his father from the cemetery so he could return. But he did not know why. Now he understood.
The boy looked at the house. Nothing could be heard. The entire village was silent after a night of unsuccessful search. Rules could exist, but on the other side there were also rules. The bones always returned to their blood.
Alejandro closed his eyes when he felt the pressure of something that began to crush him. He brought his arms and legs together. He felt the pain of the nails that did not allow him to escape. The boy wanted to breathe, but it was as if someone had placed a pillow over his mouth and nose. He writhed, but his lungs burned. He was suffocating. He wanted to scream. Call his mother, his grandmother, he murmured incoherences to himself. He could no longer see. The smell of cemetery earth entered his nose like a plug. He had spasms until, finally, he remained still, limp.
Meanwhile, outside the grave, the body of Alejandro, an apparent seven-year-old boy, left flowers on his own grave before leaving to resolve his pending matters.
