* Translations at bottom
The chorus ended in a high shriek, almost like laughter, the strained laughter of Saints. It was the ending of a ceremony during an un-ceremonial time in the country’s history. It was a delicious irony mostly known to Latin America. A man of peace was being honored for his heroics at war and claiming an office of power he had fought tooth-nail-bala against.
Not too long ago the streets were swallowed in the blood-shit stench of a revolutionary drought. The winds dusted the earth with las mala vientos, conjuring about the evil that passes in the breeze; the evil that corrupts your very being from the depth of your lungs that leads to your soul. Or so the Diné would have us believe.
The spirits were blowing and a whirlwind was not too far behind when Arturo de los Campos stepped to the podium. He was beloved and known as the Sacerdote, more for his reverence for the word than la bala. It was his knowledge of both that kept him hidden from the spotlight for so many years. A man must seek refuge when speaking the language of death but studying the word of life.
In the beginning…
There was pain and misery and suffering. And the Buddha would have spoken of the four noble truths and the eightfold path. Arturo learned the ancient Brahman’s compassion by knifepoint. The room was a parallax view from the stage. He tried to address the crowd but was interrupted by his tears. And the people loved him more.
The grey silken sky washed over the dark hidden folds of the village shrouded in foliage and wild faith. That was two years ago, when two hours prior soldiers with candles that turn men to shades visited the Lord’s wrath against the pharaoh. Here it wasn’t only the first born that joined the tears of Persephone, blood plants soaked the earth and the butterflies were no place to be seen.
Man has an undeniable talent for destroying things he can never create.
Amidst the screaming Poinsettias, cradled under a dying tree, a discarded muñequita tilted on its side for the want of gravity, the hollow of her head exposing a purposeful sacrilege. Arturo was there day. But we’ll never know if he brought light or turned shade.
He wiped his tears and smiled at the gathering of mostly campesinos, most of whom walked miles to take part in this hard won event. Somewhere off in the back, a Tired Old Man slipped into the church hall and watched from below his straw hat. Arturo the Sacerdote had found his voice, however tremulous, and the Old Man allowed himself to fade back to memories of the makeshift lean-to of wet bark, branch, and eucalyptus leaves that sheltered his group from the tsunami of rain.
There he was just simply Arturo, sharing improvised perrerreque—corn cake, can roasted beans and the surprise ration of chichi whiskey. They were all much younger and just discovering the politics of manhood, having supplanted the politics of women. They were comrades-at-arms, young campesinos dedicated more to their milpas than to their lives. It sat hidden and safe within their ideology at the edge of the mountain, which bond men closer than solitude and deeper than meditation when your breath immediately shared.
Quietude is precious in the bowels of an upended inferno.
The Old Man lifted his head and smiled to himself. Little Arturo was an important man. He and the others were no longer brave, stupid little boys. He adjusted his hat and slowly began to make his way forward.
As far as they knew the Garden of Eden was alive and she was fighting like hell for that very life. Death was chasing her children in the wetness of night. Arturo was among them, running through the slapping winds of leaves and familiar darkness. You spend enough time in la selva and you learn the rhythm and veins leading to trees and avoiding smashing into them at breakneck speeds. He and his friends raced to catch a glimpse of a false nirvana devoid of metal shell casings, angry machetes and the vengeful men behind them.
“Vamos a matarlo!”
The soldier was coming right up on Arturo. The campesino could have kept running and let nature take its course. Arturo would have been captured, bound, tortured—most likely maimed for good measure and then killed. The campesino loved his friend and his love drove him into tackling soldier. Arturo scrambled far enough and turned to see the soldier fighting back. A second soldier was approaching the campesino. Arturo, stupid and brave, began to run to his aid… And the campesino loved him even more and shouted from him to “correr!”
And Arturo ran.
The Old Man—the campesino, stepped into the center of the aisle, the attraction of attention a necessary evil. He studied his old friend and waited for the recognition. Arturo’s hair was more grey than black, his eyelids always narrow behind ever thickening glasses and a spine no longer straight. It took him the eternity of an eclipse to remember the familiar lines lost in the old man’s face, the wicked smile still frozen behind still lips, the hidden adventure of boys lost in the woods playing soldiers.
Arturo had just enough time to whisper the remembrance of his name and that’s all the campesino needed as he pulled the revolver older than life itself from under is waist.
Here was an unjust slaughter in the making. The crowd can only see Judas revisited.
The gun raised.
Arturo jumped from the stage, running to his death. His arms extended outwards.
The ocean of bodies stopped by the insipid “pop” of a whole world lost to us.
Arturo’s palms stained in red and deep black. Arturo whispered his old friends name in a sad embrace as the gun abandoned him by the side. His friend’s pants waist held by cord undone, his strewn manhood subtly exposed. Those close enough in the crowd see…
There is morbid electricity—blood—castration.
Struggling through the open wound in the back of his head the prostrate body of a severed spine, “this is the second time I’ve saved your life.”
Francisco’s last breath came with the abrupt closing of his eyes, it rippled through the trees opening up into the clear blue and white sun soaked skies. His face slowly turned slack and Arturo, the Sacerdote, face it towards the silence of the dark void. On the final slip of life, the exhalation of his ka, Francisco would never tell the story of how he was confined for two years and tortured for two lifetimes and forced to divulge secrets at the edge of knives, the bite of electricity and the offense of bone breaking bone.
Arturo, with the aide of others picked his friend up, took him outside with great care, and they buried him among the trees at foot of the mountain where the journey to silence always begins.
Translations:
Bala- bullet
Mala vientos- bad winds
Diné- the Navajo people
Sarcedote- priest
Muñequita- doll
Campesinos- peasants
Milpas- crops
Selva- jungle
"Vamos a matarlo!"- "Let's kill him!"
Ka- the aspect of an individual that lasts after death. Akin to a soul.
About the Author:
Bio: Keith A. Miller was born but not completely bred in Brooklyn, New York. When he’s not busy corralling thirteen-year-olds (he's a teacher), he writes independent comics. He likes to play around in the science-fiction and urban fantasy genres but is not above a good slice-of-life graphic novel. He is the co-creator of Triboro Tales and Insensitives. His latest graphic novella, Infest, will hit the convention floors in 2015. He is currently producing the prison horror tale, Manticore, for Rosarium Publishing.
Miller is a graduate of CUNY Queens College, where he received a degree in Comparative Literature and Cultural Anthropology, and CUNY Law School. His interests lie in telling speculative fiction stories of people generally not represented in genre fiction so that the plucky character of color will not be the first to die . He is currently working on his first novel.
He can be found here:http://speculative-fictives.tumblr.com/
Twitter: @Kamudi72
noirtext@gmail.com
Photograph by Jenia Filatova