Doug Dorst - The Surf Guru

“Is it the pronouncement for the Festival?” I ask.

He nods excitedly. This is strange. Usually the pronouncement comes in the form of a name scratched in charcoal on a torn scrap of paper that is nailed to the door.

“Why such a fancy scroll?” I ask. “It is only Ayala who will hang this year. No one special.”

He grabs my elbow. “That is the news,” he says, and he is shaking with excitement. “It will not be Ayala. We have someone special. Let me read for you.” Vargas knows I broke my eyeglasses in the bar last week defending my daughter’s honor, such as it is. “‘Attention citizens! The infamous bandit El Gris has been captured in our town! Next Friday he will receive his punishment at the Festival of San Humberto, where the great saint’s hyenas will run fast and hungry! Rejoice in your safety! Rejoice in our justice!’ ”

El Gris! My pulse races. It is a feeling of triumph, a feeling that everyone in town must be sharing this morning, all of us, together. El Gris is a ruthless murderer, robber, and thief, a man who shoots, then laughs, then shoots again. It is said that he has had his mane of gray hair since he was a teenager, that it turned gray overnight from the thrill of his first kill. El Gris was a plague on this land long before Lars Jarlssen ever came from across the water with all of his riches and built his house with its swimming pool and bought the village bar and turned its back rooms into a brothel and cursed us with his verminous pet spider monkey and doubled the price of tequila and stole my wife and children away from me.

“We have never had such a famous person to hang,” Vargas says.

“This is San Humberto’s doing,” I say. “The saint is showing us His hand. Reminding us of His goodness.”

“That is possible, I suppose.”

“El Gris is too smart to be caught by any man.”

“What if he wanted to be caught?” Vargas says. “What if he wanted to repent, and he turned himself in?”

I laugh and shake my head. “The heat makes you foolish,” I say. “One can bathe a hyena, but one can never remove its stink.” Vargas nods, and I tell him, “You see? I have lessons to teach, too.”

On our walk back to my stand, I see two boys running away with their arms full of my guavas. They yell and laugh. It is too hot to chase them.

El Gris has nearly taken my life twice.

The first time was twenty years ago. I was young, I was muscular, I had hair, I had many friends. I was walking home from the bar — at the time, Vargas’s grandfather owned it— and we had been celebrating the engagement of Vargas’s oldest sister. I walked through the square and turned onto the west road toward the one-room house Madalena and I had shared since we were married the year before. I heard someone clear his throat behind me. I turned and saw El Gris leaning against the wishing well, his long gray hair bright in the moonlight. “Good evening, friend,” he said, in a voice that told me I was not his friend at all. I saw his right hand move for his gun, and my instinct took over. I leaped into an alley and ran, taking a snake’s path through the west side of town, staying off the road. I hid behind the pescadería , behind a stack of crates, kneeling amid the old, stinking fish that had been left out for the dogs. I remained there for hours, trying not to breathe, watching the moon cross the sky. When I ran, I did not look back. At home I fell into Madalena’s arms and told her my story. “You did the right thing,” she said. “You have too much to live for.” Then she bathed me and made love to me. I believe this was the night Ysela was conceived.

The second time was four years ago. El Gris robbed and killed six merchants in a rampage along the west road. His path ran right past my stand, but I was not tending it that day. Madalena had left with the children only days before, and I was at home, facedown on the cool floor, trembling, sick with drink and with the loss of my family. In the echo of each shot, I prayed a ricochet would take me.

The heat lingers into the evening like a rude guest. I am exhausted after hours of making change and smiling and ignoring the knife-blade remarks like, Where are the guavas today, Manolo? Don’t you know my wife needs to make jelly for the feast? And where were you this morning? Aren’t you ashamed to be so unreliable? But my day is far from over. I must go into the hills and tell my son Rubén the good news about the Festival, about El Gris. There should be just enough daylight for me to find my way back.

Rubén left town four years ago, the day his mother married Lars. He left a trail of orange peels so I could find him. He has never come back, not even for his mother’s funeral. But each day I tell myself maybe, just maybe, he has grown tired of living alone, tired of punishing me, and he only needs an excuse to come back. Perhaps the chance to run with the hyenas for El Gris will be enough.

I leave the dirt path that runs south of the town and head into the hills. I walk for an hour, following the path I know by heart: over a field of prickly maguey and sunny trumpet bushes, across a stream where dipper birds dart underwater, up a rock face flecked with quartz. When I come to the old apple tree, I stop and call his name. Silence. I see the faintest movement of a shadow in the branches. Then an apple flies down and hits me, square on the ankle. This is what usually happens; I talk, and he throws fruit.

“Rubén,” I say again. “There is exciting news from town. They have captured El Gris. He will hang at the Festival next Friday.” Another apple, this time soft, rotting. It hits me on the knee and stains my pants.

I dream of bringing Rubén back into town with me; I will cook him a magnificent dinner, then we will steal a bottle of tequila from under Lars’s pointy nose and share it as we watch the sunset from the bell tower, and Rubén will work with me at the stand and smile as he makes change and ignore all the complaints because he is so happy we are working together. But I have come to accept that, for now, he is a boy who lives in a tree and throws fruit at his father.

I did not always accept this. When I followed the orange peels and found him in the tree, I shouted at him, drunk and blind with anger. These are the things I said:

Come down from that tree! Boys do not live in trees!

You are bringing shame upon your family, such as it is!

You are as bad as your sister! Perhaps worse!

The lightning will hit you. San Humberto will see to it!

Squirrels will claw at your testicles, trying to gather them for the winter!

If there is a drought, the branches of the tree may weaken and break, and you might then fall and hurt yourself!

Why are you leaving your father alone?

Twice I have brought the gun here, drunk. On the day after Madalena was buried, I aimed it at my son, a shadow in an apple tree. Weeks later, on the day my daughter, Ysela, told me she was going to work in Lars’s back rooms, I held it to my head. On both occasions, San Humberto prevented me from pulling the trigger. For this I am grateful, most of the time.

“Do you not want to see El Gris?” I say to Rubén. “We have never had such a famous person to hang.”

Apple, apple, apple.

I turn and walk back to the road with the bruises spreading under my clothes. But I have not given up. I have decided that the capture of El Gris is a sign from the saint, a sign of order restored, a sign that Rubén and I will run with the hyenas together this year.

It is pitch-dark when I pass through the south gate into town, and I swear it is as hot as it was at noon. Though my clothes are stained with sweat and dirt and apple, I go to the bar for a bottle of tequila. It is the only way I will find sleep tonight. I do not want to see Lars, but as is his custom, he sits at his desk in the loft overlooking the bar, calling out bawdy jokes as one of the girls sits on his lap and combs his thick blond beard. The sound of coins slapping the bar is as constant as the ticking of a clock.