Richard Zimler - Hunting Midnight

I recognized him as her uncle, Tomás Gonçalves. He was bald and barrel-chested, and he walked with a stoop, as though an invisible weight were tied around his neck.

It will sound preposterous now, but I believed then that we shared the intention of watching over Violeta from afar. I was infinitely gratified that an adult, and a large and powerful one at that, had had the exact same idea as me.

Violeta, hidden from me around a curve in the road, was now approaching the place where she had been attacked two weeks earlier. I rushed on, and when I saw her next, she was walking as though on tiptoe into a thicket of gorse. She must have heard a noise, for she knelt by a bush to conceal herself.

Then she jumped up and ran ahead. Tomás Gonçalves charged at her from the side, grabbing her arms just below her shoulders and shaking her violently.

When she shrieked, Fanny raced off, barking. I followed, screaming Violeta’s name.

By now the villain had ripped her bonnet off and gripped what was left of her hair, tugging her head back with such force that I feared her neck might break. To silence her, for she was now screaming Daniel’s name, he raised his other hand and struck her across the face.

On seeing Fanny heading straight for him, he threw Violeta to the ground. When the dog reached them, she stood behind the lass, about ten feet from Tomás, making a furious racket. Violeta, her mouth bleeding, had managed to sit up. We looked at each other, stunned. Everything had gone wrong and we both knew it.

“Run, John! Run!” she screamed suddenly, realizing that her uncle was about to try to throttle me, despite the threat of my border collie’s fangs.

The last thing I remember was him charging toward me and wrapping a handkerchief around his fist. And a very loud noise.

I woke to my mother’s moist eyes. I had no idea where I was. My head was throbbing and my mouth was dry, as though I had swallowed sand.

“Water,” I croaked. Mama lifted a cup to my lips.

I am told that I fell back to sleep immediately, my last sip dribbling down my cheek to my pillow. When I woke again, I recalled having been in the forest, but the reason escaped me. Mama, who kept vigil in my room, explained that Violeta’s uncle had walloped me on the back of my head. I had fallen and lost consciousness. All this had happened the day before. My previous awakening had been twelve hours earlier.

She had little faith in men of medicine, but Mama had allowed Dr. Silva to bleed me twice at my temples with leeches to prevent the accumulation of toxic fluids on my brain.

“And Violeta?” I asked.

“She’s safe, John. Do not worry.”

Mama took my hand. She held it to her lips and kissed it, then folded it into a fist and gave it back to me, saying, “Keep that with you always.”

Father stepped into the room and smiled down at me. “How is my wee man?”

“My head feels all broken.”

He sat down on my bed, leaned over, and kissed me on the lips. Then he took an amethyst stone he had brought back for me from upriver the week before and placed it on my chest.

“You are a brave tyke. A kelpie of merit. But you disobeyed me again. You were to come and fetch me if you encountered trouble.”

“Violeta made me promise not to tell anyone‚” I explained.

He touched his fingers to my lips to quiet me and said, “I am not cross with you, but this might have ended tragically for all concerned. We have been very lucky.”

“What happened to her uncle?”

Papa said that the loud noise I had heard was a gunshot. The same hunter Daniel and I spoke to on the day Violeta was first attacked had heard Fanny’s barks and come running. When Tomás grabbed me and hit me, the hunter fired a shot above our heads. Then, while Tomás looked around to find the source of the gunfire, Fanny leapt at him. Her teeth ripped clean through his breeches and tore a chunk of flesh from his thigh.

The hunter was still a long way off. He fired another shot aimed to do permanent damage this time, which came within inches of Tomás’s head. In fear for his life, he cursed Violeta and lumbered off.

“The hunter carried you home,” Papa told me. “We are greatly indebted to him.”

He added that if it had not been for the good stranger, I might have been awaiting burial at this moment. I could not comprehend that. I tried to imagine being dead. I stopped breathing and made my face go blank.

“What are you doing, John?” Papa asked.

“Just thinking about things. Where’s Violeta now?”

“She is with her mother, resting.”

“And does Daniel know what happened?”

“Indeed he does. I went to his house to tell him.”

“And where is Tomás Gonçalves?”

“He is no longer a problem,” Papa replied, and would say no more.

Violeta visited me the next afternoon, her wan face framed by a hideous black bonnet, which she refused to remove despite my entreaties. Mama gasped on seeing her, then fell into a disquieting silence, clearly afraid of all that might spill from her if she were to begin to express her feelings. She served us tea and sat with us, gripping Violeta’s hand. After a time, Mama got up, kissed the lass on the cheek, and left us to ourselves. When I asked Violeta what punishment had been given her uncle Tomás, she informed me that she did not know. He had vanished from their home. Her mother refused to talk of him.

Daniel must have been hiding on our street, waiting for Violeta to visit, for he knocked on our front door a few minutes later and was led to my room by Mama. It was the first time he had seen the lass since the day of her attack. His eyes were red with sleeplessness, his voice brittle. Lacking a vocabulary equal to his emotions, he grew impatient with himself and short-tempered with Violeta. Too troubled and fragile to understand that his harshness was only the result of frustration, she in turn withdrew into her own sadness. Mama joined us after a while, and her presence prevented them from attempting to voice their feelings.

While serving Violeta tea, Mama asked if she might try to cut her hair in a pleasing shape. “I have been my husband’s barber since our wedding,” she said, smiling.

Violeta unfastened her bonnet. Her hair had been shorn down to her scalp, which was covered with scabs, making her eyes appear to bulge. “Not even the most skillful barber would be of help to me now,” she said sorrowfully.

I was so overwhelmed that I could not speak, and I looked at Mama to make things right. She had set her teacup on our table and reached a trembling hand to her chest. Fighting for breath, she said, “I shall still be able to help you, dear child.”

Daniel, unable to restrain himself, demanded to know who had done this to her. In a clipped monotone, the lass explained that her mother refused to believe that her uncle had attacked her. She had ordered her eldest sons to bind Violeta’s arms behind her back and hold her down on her bed while she herself did the cutting.

“I kicked and fought, but it was of no use. It never is.” Gazing down, she whispered that if her mother caught her in one additional “lie,” then her head would be shaved every week and she would be denied a bonnet. Everyone in Porto would see that she was an incurable liar. “My mother said next time she would cut off something that would never grow back.”

“I’d like to kill your mother!” Daniel shouted.

“What would she cut off?” I asked.

“Hush, John!” Mama snapped. “Not another word from you.” There was fire in her eyes. “Listen to me, Violeta, you must never think for one moment they are right. You must remember that you are innocent.” She crouched by the lass and kissed her brow. “And you are still beautiful. They can never take that from you. Never!”