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Second
Birth
Even down at the
river’s edge, the boy could still hear her screams. They came every few
minutes, and between them he could faintly hear the sobs, and moans. He threw a
stone far out into the moonlight, and heard it splash faintly, beyond sight.
The river was quiet here...wide, and shallow. He heard whispers around him, the
always present voices, but he ignored them. He felt the movement of the rivers
breath on his face, and withdrew from it, instinctively.
He
turned and walked slowly up to the small cluster of pallet and cardboard
shacks. The screams came from the one closest to the river, where the people of
the aldea stood circled, the old men and the old woman. A new Ford F-150 was parked behind them, the
lights shining toward the entrance, casting their shadows high against the
walls of her shack. The two Americans emerged, the white one fat and sweating
heavily, the Tejano also pale. They had come, they said, to gather
information about sickness along the river.
But they did not know how to cure sickness.
“She
needs a doctor,” the Tejano said, in Spanish.
“Take
her,” Abuela answered.
“No,”
he shook his head. “She’s too sick now.
The child may come, and she would die.
We need to bring a helicopter.”
The
fat white man pulled a telephone from his belt and stared at its face. He said something in English, shaking his
head.
The
Tejano looked around at the men. He was
very pale, almost as white as the other.
“We will go and get help,” he said.
“We will call for help. We can
get help from Del-Rio.”
“Yes,”
Abuela said, smiling widely.
The men climbed into their truck slowly, as
if reluctant to leave. The fat man
drove. He looked around the village, at
the men, and spoke to the Tejano, who did not answer, but leaned out from the
window. “Where are the young people,
and the children?” he asked to Abuela
“It’s
the river,” she answered, shaking her head, then pointing her cane in its
direction. “It takes them all away.”
“Takes
them,” he repeated.
“Takes
them, and keeps them,” she nodded.
He
sat back from the window, and his face disappeared from the boys view. He heard the soft word “Vamanos” and the
truck backed away and turned and crunched slowly back up the gully from which
it had come down that evening.
The
boy turned from watching the truck and entered the shelter where they had
gathered, followed by the old woman.
The pregnant woman lay on a mat in the corner, illuminated by a candle
flickering on the floor near her. Her
face was swollen and her eyes were full of pain, but they still burned with
anger and resistance. She was chanting
in the old language, the language of the bruja. Abuela cursed, and retreated.
He
walked two steps toward her and stopped, pointed at her and said, “punta.”
Her
chanting stopped, as if he had clapped his hand over her mouth. “No, Mijo” she said, suddenly muffled
with sadness.
He
shook his head, and walked back outside, as she began to have another
contraction and cried out again in pain.
The
old men were standing about, in their usual, useless way, waiting for
instructions. Abuela was now squatting,
her small and frail frame resembling a very large frog.. “We cannot wait,” she said to them.
“It
is almost time,” the boy said. “They
are here.”
The
men shuffled and coughed. They mumbled
to one another, but the boy could not hear their words.
“The
child is a demon child,” Abuela said.
“It will be evil born of evil.”
“We
will not touch her,” objected a voice from their midst.
Abuela
stirred her dirt. “I hear you, Carlos,”
she said, in a voice ancient and deep.
“It may be your demon child within her...you or one of these other
stupid men....you have ruined yourselves on the puta. You have touched
her before...you will touch her again.”
“It
is coming soon,” the boy repeated. “I
can hear him.”
“Get
her,” Abuela ordered. “Take her to the
river. Now”
“If
the child is evil, then so is the boy,” challenged Carlos. “He was born of the same witch.” The men all turned their heads to stare at
the boy. Their eyes gleamed in the
darkness, small points moonlight that floated in their shadowed faces.
“No,”
Abuela said slowly, looking at him also. “He is not evil.” But the doubt, even in her voice, was
present. None of the others could see
the spirits, or hear their whispers. He
did not have the physical signs, but he was marked. He felt afraid.
“I
have helped you,” he said. He looked at
the shack, where his mother lay, and hated her. “I told you,” he said. “I
showed you.”
“Yes,”
Abuela said.
“We
must do something,” another man said.
The sounds from the shack had melted away from the pains of labor to the
chanting again, quiet but regular, like a heartbeat. “She is hexing us now,” he said.
“Take
her to the river, you fools,” Abuela said, some fear in her voice, also.
Carlos
and three of the men entered the shack.
The boy could hear her screams of anger now as she cursed them
viscously. Two of the men dragged her
through the doorway by her legs...the others following, clumsily trying to
grasp her flailing arms. She struck at
their legs, trying to sit, but her belly was too swollen and she was too
weak. They finally managed to grasp her
arms and they lifted now and began walking down toward the river. Abuela and the boy followed behind, Abuela
singing prayers to counter evil magic.
The
woman cursed and struggled more. She
screamed in pain as they stumbled, letting her back strike the ground. “Mijo! Don’t do this, oh my Mijo”....
The
boy did not speak in return. He saw the
spirits moving in the air around them, circling them as they descended toward
the river. The evil ones were green,
and seemed to come from the river itself.
They came close, as if they wanted to see. They sometimes seemed to have shapes of human form, sometimes
seemed to walk, and sometimes only floated like small clouds. Most of the spirits were evil. The good spirits stayed farther away,
farther back, as if abandoning them, as if the whole place now was cursed.
The
woman’s cries now turned to a spell chant, but Abuela’s prayers had already
gathered strength, and her magic could not penetrate them. She became quiet, as she dangled and swung,
and kept her head twisted so that she could keep her gaze on the boy. He felt her stare, the coldness and the
hardness mixed with the pain of his betrayal
They
reached the edge of the river. The men
stood uncertainly, the woman hanging between them.
“Forgive
us,” Carlos said.
They
edged into the water, taking careful steps to avoid tripping on the stones,
wading in up to their calves. They swung her back and forth, like a pendulum,
and heaved her heavily out and up. She
fell with her arms and legs sprawled, waving and kicking.
They
scrambled back to the bank and watched her as she rolled around in the water, a
shadow in the moonlight, trying to get up, but she could not. The air around her was a gathering green
mist, luminescent. The boy lifted a
stone from the ground and threw it at her, and heard it splash. He lifted another and threw it, and heard
the thunk, and her feeble “aaii” The ground beneath him began to vibrate, as if
the earth were gathering itself against the punta witch.
He
threw another stone, and heard it thunk also.
The men joined him, able to throw larger stones, harder. Many missed, but many struck, and as she was
crawling in the water toward them, she became an easier target. As she came closer, she seemed to change
form. Her face became long, and her ears pointed high. The boy heard a growl and saw sharp teeth
bared.
The
vibration in the ground increased.
Carlos lifted a large stone above his head and heaved it at her, now
only a few yards, and it struck her in the head and she crumpled in the water,
which swirled around her. They stood
watching, feeling, as the river went over her, the green wisping and fading,
Abuela still singing, her voice hoarse
now but persisting. Somewhere near, the
boy could hear a whump whump whump sound that might have been a great
spirit from somewhere up the river, from where the evil always came. It was coming closer, looking for them. He saw movement in the water by the body,
and went closer.
There
was a small splash between the legs of a large wolfish form. He reached down and felt something warm and
small and lifted it out with both of his hands. It was the child. In the
moonlight he watched it wriggle weakly, its chest urgently but uselessly
expanding like gills. He laid it back
in the water as the whump whump whump seemed to cover the earth. He looked up and saw a great sky demon
hovering over him, a white eye sweeping the water searching for him, blowing
such a strong wind that the spirits themselves were driven away from him. He looked down, and thought for a moment
that he had seen another splash, and a fin.
The wolf was gone. He heard a
voice, over the noise of the demon, a whispering thing, the voice of the witch,
the voice of the child, or the voice of the river, calling for him. “Come with us.” He saw a stone fly by, from behind, and kick
water in the white spray of the demons wind. He looked up again, meeting the
gaze of the eye as it blazed upon him.
It was the river’s eye, he thought.
It had come to claim him, and he was glad.
Bret Lynn has published a couple poems in college in Middle Tennessee
University's creative magazine. He has been writing on and off for years,as a hobby.
He pays the bills through his employment in the health-care field as a Respiratory Therapist.
He hails from way down south in Texas.
E-mail Bret Lynn
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