Toni Sala - The Boys

What could you expect from towns like Sils? That’s the way it was. Some car accidents, some flashers, some embezzlements, some robberies at some farmhouses, some pederasts, and a few crimes of passion. Married women whose kids were at school chatted all day with men like him, until they were found out by their husbands, the ones who had jobs to support the family, who couldn’t devote their time to such amorous refinement. Who knew what fantasies they entertained about their wives’ affairs after those wives informed them they were leaving them for someone else. The first thing that went through the husband’s head was to run to the kitchen and find a knife. There was a case every year, in Sils or Riudarenes or wherever; not long ago it was a policeman in Caldes, his wife had left him and gone to live with her sister: the cop slit his sister-in-law’s throat in the yard, in front of his nieces — It’s your fault! You filled her head with lies! Then he stabbed his wife, but immediately regretted it: he drove her to the emergency room where they saved her life; meanwhile, the sister-in-law bled to death as her daughters screamed and cried.

He turned off the music. In the Serramagra industrial park, also empty, its large buildings covered with FOR SALE / FOR RENT signs, an independence flag waved above a concrete wall covered in graffiti. He stopped the truck in front of the gate. He honked the horn, and Isma came out to open it for him. The walls enclosed a large lot filled with piles of tires. There were hundreds, piled up by size: truck, car, and touring motorcycle. Isma was a guy his age. He made his living from his contacts with mechanics and dealers. When a junker came down the pipeline they called him and gave him a couple of hours to switch the tires for some completely worn out ones from the shop. For Isma, the accident in Vidreres was a business opportunity.

Today, Miqui hadn’t come to get tires for his truck, but rather twenty or thirty useless ones for a moving job. There was a huge mountain in the middle of the yard, and on top hung the independentist flag he’d seen from outside, shiny and new at the top of a long pole.

“I have to go pick up a boat,” Miqui said. “The owner hasn’t paid rent on the mooring for months, and they don’t have a boat trailer. It’ll fit on the flatbed, but I need some cushioning for the base and sides.”

They threw some tires onto the truck bed. Then they spread them out on the floor and tied some to the walls.

“Any news from Ahmed?” asked Isma.

“He must be in Morocco.”

“He’s lucky he can leave this piece-of-shit country.”

“Yeah, like the rats.”

“Fuck off, you antisocial jerk. You want to stay here, don’t you? Look what I do to make a living. I had to sell my motorcycle. All I have is this shitty van to go pick up tires. It’s even older than your truck. I sold off my car for next to nothing and then my bike. Not you, you’re not married. I walk here every day, I’ve got enough dough for three or four months, and then it’s over: I’ll have to sell the apartment at a loss, and I’ll be lucky to find a buyer. What do you think they’ll give me for it? They’re lying in wait. I’m in hot water up to my neck and all because of fucking Spain and this den of thieves. Holy hell, Miqui, they screwed us every chance they got, and now they’re squeezing the last bit of life out of us; soon we won’t even be able to complain, because we won’t have any strength left. They’ve fucked up my whole life, and yours, and your father’s too — they made out like bandits. I don’t understand where you get your patience. Look at the king and his family. Millions and millions of euros in their pockets, the whole government is corrupt, everyone here is on the take. . everyone except us, we’re the ones who pay the price. I really don’t get you. They fucking screwed your father! They stole everything; they’ve been making trains nonstop so they can get the commissions, high-speed rail in a country that needs to keep buying cars, for fuck’s sake, they don’t care that they’re ruining our industry, they couldn’t care less, they’ve killed the hen that lays golden eggs. . look at me. You think I deserve this? You know how hard I’ve worked? We’ve got to open our eyes, Miqui. I’m up to my neck. I can get by for four months, tops, then I’ve got nowhere to go except back to my parents’, and Tere and the boy will go to her parents’, because we won’t all fit in my in-laws’ apartment. . We need to move toward independence, everybody knows that, and fast.”

“They’ll line you all up against the wall in front of a firing squad.”

“Fuck you. Europe won’t let that happen.”

“No, they’ll rush to save you all. That’s why you put up the flags. Never seen such a thing. You guys have put up your own targets.”

“Now you’re telling me you’re afraid. You? You want a flag? Why don’t you put a flag in your cab? Maybe you’ve got it wrong and they’ll shoot everyone who doesn’t have one. We’re past fear. Young people have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.”

“Young people never get off the Internet. They have no idea about the world.”

“If we have to defend ourselves, we will. I have a 3-D printer. You know what that is, right? You can make a gun.”

“A plastic gun? You’re an idiot,” said Miqui, opening the passenger-side door so Isma could see his shotgun. “I want to hang it from the roof. Can you help me?”

“Are you getting ready?”

“I’m always getting ready.”

He passed Llagostera on the left, with its church above a row of houses, then went down the Alou glen and entered the Aro valley. In Castell d’Aro they’d put up a Catalan flag as large as a swimming pool. It overshadowed the valley and waved in the tramontane, the dry, luminous, cleansing north wind that burnished the coast. Against the backdrop of the sea you could already see the small white skyscrapers of Platja d’Aro, the summer apartments that were now empty. He turned onto the tourist stretch, filled with deserted shop windows and closed bars. He crossed the Ridaura bridge and reached the canals of Port d’Aro. They had built up the whole area in recent years, putting in a complex with movie theaters, supermarkets, a gas station, a hotel, and new apartment buildings.

He passed a closed campground on the side of a hill, and found the chain-link fence at the end of the street open. Two men were waiting for him at the foot of the launching crane. Miqui got out of the truck and glanced at the yachts, sailboats, and cruisers that swayed in their moorings. The port was deserted, the brunt of the tramontane was concentrated right there, he could see it and hear it, like the wind awakened the present moment. The tinkling of rigging, the creaking of naked masts, and the grazing of metal cables reached him so clearly that it was as if it were all right beside his ear. He would like to have a boat: offset the kilometers of asphalt with nautical miles; float freely on the weekends in a world made entirely of roadway; go fishing in the winter; speed off to the horizon with an outboard motor in the summer, the nose lifted and some chick sunbathing on the bow — a flesh figurehead. And then dive into the sea; the cruiser would be an island for the two of them, the sea a mattress of water, far from everyone, and one day they’d sail leisurely to Morocco to see Ahmed. Hey, Ahmed, take a look at this!

He consoled himself, watching the boat he’d come to take away arrive slowly. Beside the registration numbers there was a name in Cyrillic letters. Some fucking Russian was losing his pleasure cruiser. It was being towed by a teenager in a workboat. The boy stopped beneath the travel lift, tied up his vessel, and jumped onto the motorboat. It wasn’t small, it had a command bridge for the driver, berths with portholes, and a Spanish flag on the front. The boy led the straps that hung from the crane down under the hull, first on the stern and then on the bow. He jumped on land, and the lift began to hoist. The boat rose out of the water like a large dead fish. The lift operator lowered it slowly, still dripping, onto the truck, fitting it between the tires. Miqui strapped it down. The whole gunwale stuck out, white with a steel railing, and the command bridge was taller than the truck’s cab.