The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

HARVEST

Arboles de la ladera porque no han reverdecido

Por eso calandrias cantan o las apachuria el

nido…

—Las Amarillas

(Traditional Folk Song)

Raphael Baca split the skin, weeping as he uncovered the skull beneath. He slipped his fingers under a fleshy flap and tugged. The skin peeled off in one piece and he dropped it to the floor, a limp, bloody husk.

He threw the skull into a corner and kicked the skin after it. How many times would it happen? How many seasons would pass before he peeled an orange and found only fruit?

Through the winter, through the spring, he had prayed that things would be different this year. And just this morning his hopes had swelled when he discovered the first orange of the new season, for the fruit had not screamed when he chopped it from the dead branch with his machete.

But in the end it had all been the same as the year before.

Raphael sat at the kitchen table and sharpened his machete. He listened to the wind, heard the woman wailing above it as she wandered the empty streets of C-Town. Raphael prayed that he would look up from his work, through the kitchen window, and see the bruja leading the children’s ghosts through the deserted streets and away. But Raphael did not bother to look up, because the kitchen window was dirty

It didn’t matter. He had never seen the woman — not even once.

He had only heard her cries.

And then, suddenly, he could not hear her at all.

The music of the flies was much too loud.

They came, fat and black, squeezing through chinks in the window, buzzing around the bloody fruitskull, ignoring the other skulls that had been picked clean during the previous season.

A stray fly danced over Raphael’s bloodstained fingers. He listened to its music and did not move. The fly was hungry, and he would not disturb it. He would not raise his hand against even the most disgusting of God’s creatures.

He stared at the dirty window and imagined the woman out there, somewhere, weeping for an audience of ghosts.

The afternoon waned. The flies had gone, their bellies full. Raphael left the shanty. He checked the mailbox at the end of the road, hoping for a reply from the government, but there was nothing waiting for him. There hadn’t been any mail in more than a year. He started along the border of the grove, avoiding the bruja’s domain.

Not far from the mailboxes, a car was parked on the shoulder of the dirt road. Dead trees blanketed it with feeble fingers of shade, printing strange cracks on the white hood and hardtop. Raphael looked inside. He saw keys hanging from the ignition and a wallet tucked haphazardly beneath the front seat. He glanced into the grove but saw no one there.

He hurried away. The wind was rising, and he could almost hear the evil woman weeping again.

This was not the first abandoned car that Raphael had discovered. He imagined the bruja falling upon the driver, an innocent who took a wrong turn off the highway. An innocent who had no protection. These days, people didn’t believe in creatures like the one that haunted C-Town. They had no faith to protect them.

Raphael wished that he could do something to protect the people who came here, but he could do nothing. Gripping his machete, he walked to the west side of the grove, almost to the highway. The sunlight was still strong there. He skirted the dead trees and was happy at their nakedness, pleased by the spindly shadows that were much too feeble to frighten him.

He sat down and thought about the bewitched fruit. The bruja’s bugs had killed the trees when the farmers stopped spraying. Raphael imagined that the insects made her witchcraft possible, even though the trees were long dead. He wished he could find a spray that would kill the cursed bugs, and he decided that tonight he would write another letter to the government and ask if they knew of such a spray.

The sun drifted slowly from the sky. Raphael’s shadow stretched before him, as long and gray as a rich man’s gravestone.

None of Raphael’s children had gravestones. Not Ramona, not Alicia, not Pablo or Paulo. Before his wife left him, Raphael had promised her that he would buy stones as soon as he had enough money to fix the old car. They had to do that first, he said, because they needed the car to visit the cemetery. It was too far away, otherwise.

But it never worked out. His wife left him, and he never had any money. He didn’t have the car anymore, either, and the only time he visited the camposanto was when nobody came for the cars that he found near the grove.

When that happened, he would drive to the camposanto and park nearby. Then he would visit his children. He always found their graves, even though they had no headstones.

Except when the long shadows fell.

And when the shadows turned to darkness and the gravestones disappeared, he walked back to C-Town.

Alone. Crying

Shadows fell across the grove, thickening, stretching toward him. Raphael moved on and found a rabbit trapped in one of his snares. He took it back to the shanty, where he built a fire beneath a dead oak tree.

Sometimes he worried about eating the rabbits. If the lawyers were right, the animals could be sick with the same disease that killed the children.

The idea frightened him. He looked at the rabbit, suddenly afraid of it. But he was hungry, and he knew that the lawyers were wrong. He had eaten many rabbits in the last two years, and he was not sick.

Still, he was afraid, because he knew that C-Town was bewitched. He hung the rabbit and skinned it, his hands unsteady, his face dripping sweat. And then he laughed and laughed, because it was only a dead rabbit, after all, and there was only good meat in the places where he had imagined that he might find sticky fruit.

That night Raphael lay still and listened to the bruja’s weeping.

He had heard of her as a boy in Mexico. The story had come from the lips of his grandmother. ^“You must be a very good little nino, Raphael,” she had said. “If you are not, La Llorona will come for you.”

“Who is she, Grandma?”

“She is a very bad bruja. Long ago, someone stole her babies. Now she steals children who are bad, because she knows that their parents will not miss them.”

Raphael wasn’t the only one who knew the story. As the children of C-Town fell ill and the doctors failed to help them, more and more people remembered the tale. Raphael’s neighbors had not spoken La Llorona’s name in years, except in jest. But death made things different, especially the deaths of so many. The priest at the little chapel near the highway tried to stop the talk. He said that it was all superstitious nonsense. But the priest only came to the chapel once a week, and soon it seemed that the stories were more than just rumors.

Epifanio Garcia said that he saw La Llorona in the grove one evening, spying on his shanty. Epifanio and his wife had two babies, and he was determined to protect them. He chased La Llorona through the grove, but he could not catch her. He said that every tree which the bruja touched was instantly blighted, its fruit suddenly heavy with huge black bugs.

Rosita Valdez said that she was walking to Mass when she came upon La Llorona drinking from an irrigation ditch. Rosita was so frightened by the evil one’s muddy leer that she ran home without stopping, and that was something, because Rosita was barely five feet tall and weighed nearly two hundred pounds.

Epifanio’s babies fell ill and died. Rosita’s daughter died, too.

Not everyone who lost children saw the weeping woman. Raphael never saw her. But everyone heard her, even over the children’s cries. Each night her wails haunted the camp, sawing through the dead trees along with the summer wind. The poor little ones feared La Llorona so much that they could not sleep at night for the terror of her. They shivered and wept and begged for God’s mercy. But God did not help them. He did not heal the sickness that stole their appetites but somehow left them as fat and bloated and bald as giant babies. And He did nothing to stop La Llorona.

The lawyers said that the sickness came from the water, but Raphael did not believe them. He knew that La Llorona was making the children sick so that they could not escape when she came for them.

She came for Raphael’s children over the space of a month. Poor little Paulo was the last to go. His final days were spent in agony. He cried and cried, promising his father that he was a good little boy and that La Llorona would not take him. Raphael wiped his son’s tears and said that he would stay with Paulo always.

Paulo was the youngest. Raphael sent him to school whenever the family was going to be at one colonias for a long time. When Paulo fell ill, Raphael brought him books to read, and Paulo taught his father how to read them, too. They slept together, holding each other close in the tiny bed.

Night after night, Raphael listened to his son weeping.

He listened to the wind weeping.

He listened to La Llorona’s cries as she walked the dirt streets of C-Town. Each night she came closer, her sobs louder in the tiny room. One night Raphael felt her breath on his face, her tears on his cheeks, and then he heard Paulo take his last breath.

Raphael awoke to the sound of a plane overhead. It came in low and shook the shanty. He ran outside, naked, and watched it fly over the dead grove.

It flew on, releasing no spray, silver wings gleaming in the morning sunlight. The roar of its engines became a hum, then the sound of an insect, then faded away to silence.

Raphael dressed, grabbed his machete and the letter he had written the night before, and headed for the chapel, where there was a mailbox.

He walked through the empty streets, listening to the silence. Everyone but Raphael was gone now. Many left when the sickness started. More left after Epifanio and Rosita encountered La Llorona. The rest abandoned their homes after the lawyers came.

One of the lawyers had talked to Raphael. He was a polite man, but he had bad ideas in his head, and Raphael had refused to sign the papers that so many of his neighbors had signed.

“Mr. Baca,” the lawyer said, “I know money cannot replace the loss of your children, and I know that appearing in a courtroom can be a frightening thing. But unless we fight them, the people that did this to you will do the same thing to other people, as well.”

Raphael didn’t know how to explain it to the man. C-Town had been a good colonias before La Llorona came. The fruit was delicious and the water was plentiful, and his family had made the most of both resources. They had worked in C-Town every season for the past ten years, and they had never fallen ill before.

C-Town was not the real name of the place, of course. That was the name the lawyers used — Cancer Town, the place that killed little children by poisoning their blood.

Raphael tried to explain that La Llorona was taking the children, but the lawyer could not understand. He was too intent on explaining things to Raphael. He said that the corporation that owned the land was attempting to declare bankruptcy to avoid his lawsuit. He said that there would be no more work in C-Town, and that Raphael should not stay, because C-Town was a very dangerous place to live, even for adults.

Raphael agreed. C-Town was dangerous because La Llorona was there. But he would not leave. He had nowhere else to go.

One day, long after Raphael’s neighbors had moved on, a man came from the corporation that owned the land. The man told Raphael that he would have to move. Raphael tried to tell him about La Llorona, but the man was just like the lawyer and wouldn’t listen.

Raphael asked if the man knew of anyone who would listen to his story. The man thought about it for a long time. Finally, he gave Raphael the address of the Department of Agriculture. Raphael thanked him very sincerely. The man must have been pleased with that, because his smile became very broad, indeed.

Raphael wrote many letters to the Department of Agriculture. He never received an answer. He thought that it must be his fault. He was a good reader, but he had trouble writing. His printing was not nearly as neat as that of his teacher, Paulo, and sometimes he did not know the right words to use.

Still, he thought that his latest letter was the best yet. In it, he told the Department people not to listen to any lawyers. He promised that he would tell them all about La Llorona and the dead children if they would only come to C-Town.

The afternoon was cloudy, the sky the color of a wet stone.

Raphael cut across the grove, hurrying to mail his letter before a summer shower hit. It was very still among the trees. Raphael’s boots crunched over dead twigs. His steps came faster and faster, and he found that his throat had gone very dry.

“Thirsty, Raphael? My fruit is so gooood. Sweet and juicy, Raphael. Come and taaaste… ”

The bruja seemed to be standing next to him. Raphael’s gaze darted through the grove. He saw nothing, but heard everything. A ripping sound, flesh being tended from bone. A scream. And then another sound, a moan of pleasure as La Llorona sucked at the horrid fruit.

Raphael ran. The sky was darker now. Above him, dead branches creaked against a rising wind. One broke loose and crashed to the ground in front of him. He tripped and fell, his hands skidding over wood that was pitted and hollow with the efforts of many insects.

The weeping sounds washed over him as he lay there. Not just the cries of La Llorona. A dozen tiny sobs rang in his ears, each choking with pain and fear. Raphael rolled away, eyes closed.

He felt something grabbing him, holding him still.

The branches. The grove was coming alive…

He opened his eyes. The fruit loomed above him, suspended from a dead branch by a net of shadows. Its pink lips moved around white teeth.

“Raphael… it said. “Raphael Baca…”

Raphael lashed out with his machete, severing the fruit. It dropped and rolled against a tree trunk, and a great shard of bark came loose and fell on it. Raphael ran to the shanty, hands over his ears, but he could not escape the ghostly weeping or the anguished cries that poured from his own lips.

Morning brought the sun, and silence.

Raphael went outside, into the light.

A truck was parked in front of the shanty.

There were words on the door of the truck. Big gold letters. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. But there was no one inside the truck, and no one on the streets of C-Town.

Raphael walked to the edge of the grove. Nothing moved there. No fruit hung from the naked branches. No sounds drifted on the warming breeze. Not the weeping of La Llorona. Not the cries of the dead children.

Raphael knelt down. He prayed that the person from the Department of Agriculture had not entered La Llorona’s grove.

He waited for someone to appear, thinking how best to explain things.

He waited a long time.

When no one came, he got his machete and went into the grove, searching for another orange.