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“Tell them not to kill me, Justino! Go on and tell them that. For God’s sake! Tell them. Tell them please for God’s sake.”

“I can’t. There’s a sergeant there who doesn’t want to hear anything about you.”

“Make him listen to you. Use your wits and tell him that scaring me has been enough. Tell him please for God’s sake.”

“But it’s not just to scare you. It seems they really mean to kill you. And I don’t want to go back there.”

“Go on once more. Just once, to see what you can do.”

“No. I don’t feel like going. Because if I do they’ll know I’m your son. If I keep bothering them they’ll end up knowing who I am and will decide to shoot me too. Better leave things the way they are now.”

“Go on, Justino. Tell them to take a little pity on me. Just tell them that.”

Justino clenched his teeth and shook his head saying no.

And he kept on shaking his head for some time.

“Tell the sergeant to let you see the colonel. And tell him how old I am — How little I’m worth. What will he get out of killing me? Nothing. After all he must have a soul. Tell him to do it for the blessed salvation of his soul.”

Justino got up from the pile of stones which he was sitting on and walked to the gate of the corral. Then he turned around to say, “All right, I’ll go. But if they decide to shoot me too, who’ll take care of my wife and kids?”

“Providence will take care of them, Justino. You go there now and see what you can do for me. That’s what matters.”

*  *  *  *  *

They’d brought him in at dawn. The morning was well along now and he was still there, tied to a post, waiting. He couldn’t keep still. He’d tried to sleep for a while to calm down, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t hungry either. All he wanted was to live. Now that he knew they were really going to kill him, all he could feel was his great desire to stay alive, like a recently resuscitated man.

Who would’ve thought that old business that happened so long ago and that was buried the way he thought it was would turn up? That business when he had to kill Don Lupe. Not for nothing either, as the Alimas tried to make out, but because he had his reasons. He remembered: Don Lupe Terreros, the owner of the Puerta de Piedra — and besides that, his compadre — was the one he, Juvencio Nava, had to kill, because he’d refused to let him pasture his animals, when he was the owner of the Puerta de Piedra and his compadre too.

At first he didn’t do anything because he felt compromised. But later, when the drought came, when he saw how his animals were dying off one by one, plagued by hunger, and how his compadre Lupe continued to refuse to let him use his pastures, then was when he began breaking through the fence and driving his herd of skinny animals to the pasture where they could get their fill of grass. And Don Lupe didn’t like it and ordered the fence mended, so that he, Juvencio Nava, had to cut open the hole again. So, during the day the hole was stopped up and at night it was opened again, while the stock stayed there right next to the fence, always waiting — his stock that before had lived just smelling the grass without being able to taste it.

And he and Don Lupe argued again and again without coming to any agreement.

Until one day Don Lupe said to him. “Look here. Juvencio, if you let another animal in my pasture, I’ll kill it.”

And he answered him, “Look here, Don Lupe, it’s not my fault that the animals look out for themselves. They’re innocent. You’ll have to pay for it, if you kill them.”

And he killed one of my yearlings.

This happened thirty-five years ago in March, because in April I was already up in the mountains, running away from the summons. The ten cows I gave the judge didn’t do me any good, or the lien on my house either, to pay for getting me out of jail. Still later they used up what was left to pay so they wouldn’t keep after me, but they kept after me just the same. That’s why I came to live with my son on this other piece of land of mine which is called Palo de Venado. And my son grew up and got married to my daughter-in-law Ignacia and has had eight children now. So it happened a long time ago and ought to be forgotten by now. But I guess it’s not.

I figured then that with about a hundred pesos everything could be fixed up. The dead Don Lupe left just his wife and two little kids still crawling. And his widow died soon afterward too — they say from grief. They took the kids far off to some relatives. So there was nothing to fear from them.

But the rest of the people took the position that I was still summoned to he tried just to scare me so they could keep on robbing me. Every time someone came to the village they told me, “There are some strangers in town, Juvencio.”

And I would take off to the mountains, hiding among the madrone thickets and passing the days with nothing to eat but herbs. Sometimes I had to go out at midnight, as though the dogs were after me. It’s been that way my whole life. Not just a year or two. My whole life.

And now they’ve come for him when he no longer expected anyone, confident that people had forgotten all about it, believing that he’d spend at least his last days peacefully. “At least,” he thought, “I’ll have some peace in my old age. They’ll leave me alone.”

He’d clung to this hope with all his heart. That’s why it was hard for him to imagine that he’d die like this, suddenly, at this time of life, after having fought so much to ward off death, after having spent his best years running from one place to another because of the alarms, now when his body had become all dried up and leathery from the bad days when he had to be in hiding from everybody.

Hadn’t he even let his wife go off and leave him? The day when he learned his wife had left him, the idea of going out in search of her didn’t even cross his mind. He let her go without trying to find out at all who she went with or where, so he wouldn’t have to go down to the village. He let her go as he’d let everything else go, without putting up a fight. All he had left to take care of was his life, and he’d do that, if nothing else. He couldn’t let them kill him. He couldn’t. Much less now.

But that’s why they brought him from there, from Palo de Venado. They didn’t need to tie him so he’d follow them. He walked alone, tied by his fear. They realized he couldn’t run with his old body, with those skinny legs of his like dry bark, cramped up with the fear of dying. Because that’s where he was headed. For death. They told him so.

That’s when he knew. He began to feel that stinging in his stomach that always came on suddenly when he saw death nearby, making his eyes big with fear and his mouth swell up with those mouthfuls of sour water he had to swallow unwillingly. And that thing that made his feet heavy while his head felt soft and his heart pounded with all its force against his ribs. No, he couldn’t get used to the idea that they were going to kill him.

There must be some hope. Somewhere there must still be some hope left. Maybe they’d made a mistake. Perhaps they were looking for another Juvencio Nava and not him.

He walked along in silence between those men, with his arms fallen at his sides. The early morning hour was dark, starless. The wind blew slowly, whipping the dry earth back and forth, which was filled with that odor like urine that dusty roads have.

His eyes, that had become squinty with the years, were looking down at the ground, here under his feet, in spite of the darkness. There in the earth was his whole life. Sixty years of living on it, of holding it tight in his hands, of tasting it like one tastes the flavor of meat. For a long time he’d been crumbling it with his eyes, savoring each piece as if it were the last one, almost knowing it would be the last.

Then, as if wanting to say something, he looked at the men who were marching along next to him. He was going to tell them to let him loose, to let him go; “I haven’t hurt anybody, boys,” he was going to say to them, but he kept silent. “A little further on I’ll tell them,” he thought. And he just looked at them. He could even imagine they were his friends, but he didn’t want to. They weren’t. He didn’t know who they were. He watched them moving at his side and bending down from time to time to see where the road continued.

He’d seen them for the first time at nightfall, that dusky hour when everything seems scorched. They’d crossed the furrows trodding on the tender corn. And he’d gone down on account of that — to tell them that the corn was beginning to grow there. But that didn’t stop them.

He’d seen them in time. He’d always had the luck to see everything in time. He could’ve hidden, gone up in the mountains for a few hours until they left and then come down again. Already it was time for the rains to have come, but the rains didn’t come and the corn was beginning to wither. Soon it’d be all dried up.

So it hadn’t even been worthwhile, his coming down and placing himself among those men like in a hole, never to get out again.

And now he continued beside them, holding back how he wanted to tell them to let him go. He didn’t see their faces, he only saw their bodies, which swung toward him and then away from him. So when he started talking he didn’t know if they’d heard him. He said, “I’ve never hurt anybody.” That’s what he said. But nothing changed. Not one of the bodies seemed to pay attention. The faces didn’t turn to look at him. They kept right on, as if they were walking in their sleep.

Then he thought that there was nothing else he could say, that he would have to look for hope somewhere else. He let his arms fall again to his sides and went by the first houses of the village, among those four men, darkened by the black color of the night.

*  *  *  *  *

“Colonel, here is the man.”

They‘d stopped in front of the narrow doorway. He stood with his hat in his hand, respectfully, waiting to see someone come out. But only the voice came out, “Which man?”

“From Palo de Venado, colonel. The one you ordered us to bring in.”

“Ask him if he ever lived in Alima,” came the voice from inside again.

“Hey, you. Ever lived in Alima?” the sergeant facing him repeated the question.

“Yes. Tell the colonel that’s where I’m from. And that I lived there till not long ago.”

“Ask him if he knew Guadalupe Terreros.”

“He says did you know Guadalupe Terreros?”

“Don Lupe? Yes. Tell him that I knew him. He’s dead.”

Then the voice inside changed tone: “I know he died,” it said. And the voice continued talking, as if it was conversing with someone there on the other side of the reed wall.

“Guadalupe Terreros was my father. When I grew up and looked for him they told me he was dead. It’s hard to grow up knowing that the thing we have to hang on to to take roots from is dead. That’s what happened to us.

“Later on I learned that he was killed by being hacked first with a machete and then an ox goad stuck in his belly. They told me he lasted more than two days and that when they found him, lying in an arroyo, he was still in agony and begging that his family be taken care of.

“As time goes by you seem to forget this. You try to forget it. What you can’t forget is finding out that the one who did it is still alive, feeding his rotten soul with the illusion of eternal life. I couldn’t forgive that man, even though I don’t know him; but the fact that I know where he is makes me want to finish him off. I can’t forgive his still living. He should never have been born.”

From here, from outside, all he said was clearly heard. Then he ordered, “Take him and tie him up awhile, so he’ll suffer, and then shoot him!”

“Look at me, colonel!” he begged. “I’m not worth anything now. It won’t be long before I die all by myself, crippled by old age. Don’t kill me!”

“Take him away!” repeated the voice from inside.

“I’ve already paid, colonel. I’ve paid many times over. They took everything away from me. They punished me in many ways. I’ve spent about forty years hiding like a leper, always with the fear they’d kill me at any moment. I don’t deserve to die like this, colonel. Let the Lord pardon me, at least. Don’t kill me! Tell them not to kill me!”

There he was, as if they’d beaten him, waving his hat against the ground. Shouting.

Immediately the voice from inside said, “Tie him up and give him something to drink until he gets drunk so the shots won’t hurt him.”

*  *  *  *  *

Finally, now, he’d been quieted. There he was, slumped down at the foot of the post. His son Justino had come and his son Justino had gone and had returned and now was coming again.

He slung him on top of the burro. He cinched him up tight against the saddle so he wouldn’t fall off on the road. He put his head in a sack so it wouldn’t give such a bad impression. And then he made the burro giddap, and away they went in a hurry to reach Palo de Venado in time to arrange the wake for the dead man.

“Your daughter-in-law and grandchildren will miss you,” he was saying to him. “They’ll look at your face and won’t believe it’s you. They’ll think the coyote has been eating on you when they see your face full of holes from all those bullets they shot at you.”