Ernesto Quiñonez - San Juan Noir

One of those boys was Guillermo — our fearless leader. He was one year older than we were and had been left back in the first grade. That extra year gave him superiority over me and Carlito, so we caught up to him and took our share of sugarcane.

I snapped a small piece off and began chewing on it after we’d hidden our prizes under a line of bushes not far from La Casa Blanca. We continued on our trek to school and the yellow school bus rumbled past us. We seldom took the bus, for we felt that only little kids and sissies rode it. We often imagined we were three soldiers returning home from war after killing the enemy.

It was the 1960s, after all, and imagination was a big thing.

Ahead of us was a small crowd gathered by an abandoned gas station — mostly housewives returning after dropping their kids off at school and old men too fragile to work the sugarcane fields. They were in the midst of a very serious conversation.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying at first, but when we got closer I heard someone say, “Mataron a un hombre” — a man had been murdered.

Guillermo turned to us, and I knew by the look in his eyes that we would be taking a slight detour on our way to school. We lingered close enough to the group to listen, but not close enough for them to shoo us away.

“Did someone go to the police?” one of the wives asked, her hair still in rollers, dressed in a bata — a faded housedress.

A man next to her, his brown face carved with deep wrinkles, stared at her and spat on the ground. “What for? They can’t do anything about it, he’s already dead!”

“¿Pero qué van a hacer? You can’t just leave that body out there to rot!” she said.

“Quique is already on his way,” another woman said with an air of superiority. “As soon as he finishes his route. That’s what he told me when he dropped off my milk bottles.” Quique was the town’s milkman who finished his deliveries at around eight o’clock.

“Anyone know who the man is?” another guy asked, chewing on an unlit cigar.

Nobody knew. Heads rocked from side to side.

The roller-head wife said, “I heard he’s not from here. Maybe he was a vagabond or a drunk. Maybe he was both.”

“Where did you hear that?” the old man with the wrinkled face asked, not hiding his annoyance one bit. I could tell that things would soon escalate to name-calling. “No sea tan bochinchosa, señora. Why start spreading false stories?” he added.

“Mire, señor, you don’t know me, so I would appreciate more respect. Or should I have my husband come and teach you some?”

The old man, contemplating an angry husband egged on by his woman’s quick tongue, decided to turn around. He started walking in the direction where the dead body was supposed to be.

In silence, one by one, the group followed him. The slow procession climbed the small hill and entered a wooded area. I watched as they disappeared into the trees and bushes, thinking that all the fun had ended.

Carlito and I resumed our walk to school, but soon Guillermo blocked our path with a wild, excited look on his face.

“Are you guys crazy?” he asked. “Come on, let’s go and see the body. How many times do you think we’re going to get this opportunity? Stop acting like cobardes and let’s take a look. Or are the two of you afraid of a dead man?”

How could we back out?

Besides, Guillermo was our leader, El Capitán.

We shrugged with indifference and followed him. I took out another piece of sugarcane and let the sweet juice run down my throat. Some of the adults looked back at us. “Get out of here,” a few of them said in unison.

But Guillermo wouldn’t have any of it. He ignored them and kept going, staying behind just in case they tried to send us back the way we came. Their small talk faded away into quick nods. The breaking of twigs and the dragging of feet could be heard, and a young woman complained that her sandals were getting heavier to walk in.

“That means she’s a puta,” Carlito said, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “She’s a whore. That’s why her sandals are getting heavy — means she never made it with the dead man and her heart is getting heavy because of it.”

I looked at Carlito, wondering where the hell he came up with such nonsense, and if he really expected that anyone would believe it. He’d also claimed that he saved the school bus from rolling down a hill and killing everyone inside just the month before. He hadn’t elaborated on how he did it, yet he was adamant about it.

The group up ahead stopped in front of a clearing. A long, loud gasp came out of everyone’s mouth at the same time. From where I stood I could see something on the ground. A few women turned their faces away and made the sign of the cross, and some of the old men removed their hats, either for respect or to hide whatever was on the ground.

The shock made them forget that three boys were mere inches away. Guillermo was the first to get a good look at what lay at the grown-ups’ feet. Carlito and I inched our way over to him. In retrospect, I wish I had gone to school that morning instead of being such a follower. This changed after that day.

Thank God.

The dead man was about four feet away, his eyes still open. The whiteness around his pupils shone bright, contrasting with the deep purple bruises on his face. Brownish blood was caked in the open slashes on his neck and torso. His pants were pulled down to his ankles and there was a savage hole where his penis had been.

Most of the blood had been soaked up by the ground and washed away by the previous night’s rain. I wanted to look away, but the brutality of his death was as fascinating as it was horrible. Then I saw something else that caught my attention, almost hidden by the bushes. I squinted to get a better look.

I saw a handle half-buried in the disturbed earth.

Sirens approached fast and the crowd began to disperse. I inched closer to where the handle was, and with one foot pushed it farther into the ground. Then I joined my friends. I walked down the hill without looking at them.

It had been two days since the discovery of the body. It gripped our small town in a web of suspicion and uneasiness. There’s a killer among us, was the cry heard many times. Maybe it was a wanderer and not one of us, was the argument to fight back against the paranoia that had consumed everyone.

But I knew the truth.

I walked to school alone that morning and ignored Guillermo’s and Carlito’s calls to wait for them. I kept spinning the image of the handle in my mind as I pushed it into the ground. It was my father’s machete handle, and I was sure that the blade was near the scene somewhere.

I went through the motions of the day, yet I felt like an empty vessel with no spirit inside. My spirit never left the place where the man had found his death at the hands of my father.

I had recognized the man, regardless of his disfigured face. I hadn’t known him well, but my father had brought him home just two weeks before.

They staggered in late that night, drunk and loud. So who was he? I didn’t know for sure. I never knew his name. A stranger. Perhaps the lady with the rollers had been right — a wanderer or laborer that happened to befriend my father.

And charmed my mother...

I saw him return twice, late at night after that first night, while my father was dead-to-the-world drunk. Mami had left the house and disappeared with him, only to return hours later. Always a few hours before my father woke up.

That’s what she thought.

My father was a good faker when it was to his advantage.

At age ten, in the so-called innocence of the 1960s, nothing wicked or carnal had ever crossed my mind — but I did have a vivid imagination. When school let out later that day, I slipped away from my friends and returned to the spot where the man had been killed. I went straight to the bushes.