The Yale Quarterly an undergraduate publication

Volume 1 Summer 1980

Editor Publisher Executive Editor Designer Artistic Advisor Assistant Editors

Faculty Advisor

Philip Kushner David Frum Marina Sheriff Jessica Helfand Ken Marlow Catherine Bush Ben Fine Martha Hollander Mark Milkey Jonathan Rauch Jamie Romm Robert F. Thompson

This issue has been made possible by a grant from the St. Anthony Educational Foundation of New York City.

Letters to the Editor will be printed whenever possible. Address correspondence to 5737 Yale Station, New Haven, CT. 06520 The Yale Quarterly is published by The Yale Quarterly Corporation, a not-for-profit Connecticut Corporation. Box 5737 Yale Station, New Haven, CT. 06520. Gifts are tax-deductible.

The Cooling Sound of Rain John Hoopes

Authority and Feminist Criticism Susan Eilenberg

Sestina: Leaving David Leavitt

Escape from the Circus Dana Allin

Nijinsky: Faux Pas de Deux DavidStenn

The Color of the Garden Martha Hollander

The Youngest Karate Master Juanita Daley

Tess Gallagher David Leavitt

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12 12 16 16 18 20

t

· .~. -. i, . The Cooling Sound of .. Rain

THE nighttime rain fell in heavy sheets on the rippling metal roof as Jorge lay on his back

and dreamed of going into the city one day. He was enjoying a cool breeze in the cabin of his truck when the shuffling sound of his mother entering the house made his twilight vision disappear. Her presence kept even his mind from straying too far from home.

Sylvia moved like a huge animal, breathing softly as she passed be­tween the beds of her sleeping family. Jorge followed her slow dance through the rooms, watch­ing the flickering yellow glow of her candle as it leaped between the cracks in the rough plank walls.

Jorge looked at the roof and lis­tened to the rain as it fell from in­visible clouds so far above his house. This chilling rain sucked away the heat of the smoldering day and washed clean the outside of the dusty house. It quenched the burning air and drove the day­time's fire deep into the ground, down into the cool black mud.

Jorge rose and opened one of the screen less windows to let the breeze which brought the storm blow in cool waves over his damp body. The lapping wind touched its chill tongue to his bare skin and raised goosebumps on his arms and legs.

Jorge was sixteen now, and each day he felt a force which came from within him push hard against his family. He felt an anx­ious swelling in his gut which cried for release. With each day he grew more nervous. He knew that. the ripening fruit within him would some day explode, and he was afraid of what might happen when it did.

He crawled back beneath the filmy mosquito net which hung from the ceiling and lay with his hands on his warm belly. There was a lone dog barking down the road, a yellow dog barking at noth­ing in the yard of Severo Cruz, the man who murdered his children and fed them to his pigs. He had been arrested by the police one night in October, at the height of the rainy season. His wife still lived in the house, alone. She was very old.

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Jorge heard the distant rumbling of a truck as it struggled on the muddy road whicb-{lassed by his house. He watched the beams from its headlights rush in torrents through the horizontal cracks in the slatted walls of his room. The truck's powerful engine was grind­ing as it crawled nearer, and its mechanical roar shook the house.

Jorge was sure the truck would stop, its brakes growling to an im­patient halt outside his front door. His muscles grew tense as tight­ened wire springs, ready to shoot him out of bed. He wanted to be the first to meet the men who drove the steel monster. He had heard his father say some of the trucks came from as far away as the capital.

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'''You want to make some money, boy?" a driver had asked Jorge when he was small. "Come with us and help unload the truck. You can count, can't you? Good, you can count the bundles as we unload them. You can go on the truck first and kill all the scorpions before they sting us." He had laughed and winked at his friends. "And when the work is all done, you can go find us some women." The truck drivers roared, but Jorge was sure they were serious. He begged his mother to let him go, but Sylvia just laughed.

"How can you kill the scorpions on the truck when you can't even kill the ants that are biting you?" Jorge looked down and nearly wet his pants. He was standing on an anthill and a swarm of black in· sects covered his leg to the knee. Jorge shrieked and ran into the river, cursing at the top of his lungs. Sylvia and the truck drivers nearly died laughing.

As' Jorge listened carefully, the truck shifted gears and roared again with new breath as it passed without stopping on its way down the muddy road to Filadelfia, more than ten miles away. Filadelfia was nothing compared to the capital, but there were people there who drove cars everywhere, who watched moving pictures on little electric boxes, who just sat in the park all day without a care in the world because they had so much money. Some of them, his father had said, didn't even know how to work. Some of them had never in their lives picked up a machete, much less risen early to chop sugarcane from before sun­rise until late in the afternoon.

The rain gently ceased as the sound of the truck passed away in­to the still night. There was a brief and brittle Silence, broken by a crackling noise like that of a slow­ly spreading fire, the sound of thousands of water drops dripping from the metal roof and the trees onto the wet mud and brush. Jorge heard the restless grunting of the pigs in the yard and the dark night­time song of the tropics began again, the symphonic beating of countless insects singing in the wet shelter of the I ush vegetation.

Before long, the hungry mosqui­toes returned to scream for blood with tiny whining voices. They swarmed in angry hordes against the protective netting which envel­oped Jorge's bed like a diaphan­ous cotton cloud .

Jorge rolled onto his side and bent his knees up to his chest. In one smooth motion he covered himself with a coarse woolen blanket . He tucked its ragged edge between his head and shoulder and hugged it tightly with his jaw.

Jorge awoke to the call of roos­ters as the sun rose like a burning bubble over the blue hills in the distance and flooded his room with light. Angelica's baby started to cry, and she silenced it in softly hushing tones. Straw beds and woven hammocks creaked, the family's creased and calloused feet landed with quiet thumps on the sandy floor, and Jorge could hear his mother's steel pans ratt­ling in the kitchen.

Sylvia rose every morning at least an hour before the rest of the family . Jorge tried, but he was nev~ er able to be the first to see the new day, to wake before his moth­er was up and stand alone in front of the house, to be the first to dis­cover anything that had changed with the neW day. He never rid him­self of the feeling that his mother rose early in order to stake a claim, -to make the day her own . From the moment he awoke to the moment he went to sleep, Jorge never saw a minute which had not first pass­ed through his mother's roughened hands.

Today, there was a cool smell of wet freshness to the air. It comple­mented the salty, smoky scent which drifted through the hous.e as Sylvia blew life into the sleeping coals in the kitchen's wood stove. Enrique, Jorge's father, was down the road chopping at a tree with his machete as Jorge made his way through the muddy yard to the outd.oor toilet with a piece of newspaper in his hand. Sylvia call­ed them both to breakfast with a hearty yell. Enrique grumbled that he was not finished and came any­way. Jorge did the same.

Sylvia served them plates of steaming rice and black beans. She brought a stack of fresh tortil­las and a pot of coffee and then left to go down to the river.

Jorge's house was right on the . bank of the muddy Rio Tempisque,

which wound in thick coils through the low swamps and fed the salty

gulf to the south. The only bridge across it was in Filadelfia, so to make a few pesos for her family every day Sylvia ferried the men who worked at the sugarcane plan­tation across the river in her boat. Therewas always a crowd of them waiting outside the house when the air steamed at sunrise, with their battered hats, machetes, and plastic jugs of water. Sylvia served them coffee while she hurried to make sure that her own family was fed.

The current in the river was strong, especially after a heavy rain, and often Jorge or one of his younger brothers helped Sylvia to paddle across and back. Enrique never helped. He would have been too embarrassed when the men who had. Jobs saw him. He had been fired by the plantation for fail ­ing asleep too often .

This morning Jorge's next youngest brother was in bed with a toothache, and Jorge was busy eating breakfast, so Sylvia had to do the rowing on her own.

"So you're going today?" Jorge asked his father. "I saw you cut­ting some wood."

Enrique put down his fork and looked at his son. After a brief pause he said, "Yes, it has to be to­day. Or early tomorrow, otherwise there would be no time, right?" Enrique picked up his fork again and shovelled in another mouthful. " The festival is only three days away."

Enrique was dark and gaunt" with a wiry moustache etcned across his upper lip . His skin was stretched tightly over his sharp bones, and the tendons in his arm rippled like tight wires when he moved his fingers. Sylvia was huge and meaty, the way Jorge knew a mother should be. Her arms were thick and wide, and she had power­ful shoulders, the result of a life­time of pounding laundry on a flat rock in the river and chopping wood for the stove.

The two men watched as Sylvia paddled hard, steering the gray dugout across the river which flow­ed like a flood of coffee with cream. One of the passengers­she took four at a time-helped her to row the boat to the other side, but Sylvia had to paddle it back by herself. She had to aim the boat upstream so that the current wouldn't carry her too far down the river.

When all of the men had been ,ferried across, SVlvia Mauled the

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boat up onto the shore and climb­ed the muddy bank to the house. She signalled to Angelica to give her the baby and clear the empty plates and glasses from the table.

"You're leaving today , . aren't you?" she said to Enrique. "You don 't have much time left , do you?"

"And what if I don't?" Enrique grumbled, and went back outside with his machete. Angelica wash­ed the dishes and then took the baby back from her mother.

"Shaa! Sksst!" she hissed at a dog which came slinking into the kitchen . Angelica kicked it hard in the ribs with the toughened ball of her bare foot.

Jorge went to bathe himself in the muddy river. He ret· ,rned to find that his father had fashioned a new oar from the pole he was cut­ting at sunrise. Enrique was a wiz­ard with his razor-sharp machete. Given a piece of wood the right size he could hack out any imple­ment he needed. His arm was in­complete without the long knife. It extended the radius of his power by more than two feet. To Enrique, a sharp machete was more impor­tant than a pair of shoes. A man c~uld work without shoes, but not Without a mfiohete. Every year at this time, in the week before the festival, Enrique and his brother Jose Luis disappeared down the river in Sylvia's boat. They were always smiling when they returned a few days later, car­rying heavy, dripping crocodile skins which smelled like fish rolled up on sticks like something to toast in a fire. When the greenish skins were spread out on wide planks in the shade the little boys pointed and whispered and the girls shrieked and chased each other, yelling about lizards.

When a skin was rolled flat, Jose Luis crouched over it with a knife and sliced off slivers of white flesh which still clung to the tough flesh . Jorge's nose widened at the sting­ing smell of the coarse salt which his uncle rubbed briskly by the handful into the thick hide. The salt kept the skin from rotting before it reached the auctions.

An acid taste crept into Jorge's mouth as he watched his father cut the amber glands from inside the animal 's jaw. Enrique pickled them in alcohol and kept them on a shelf in a dark corner of the house. Whenever anyone had a tooth­ache, Ernrique put the gland on top of the sore tooth. Within mtnu'tes·it ·· miraculously dulled the pain and quelled its throbbing .

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Another part of the· crocodile was also useful..Enriqlle took it from the monster's throat and hung it to dry in the rafters. He himself had never used it, but his father had once given it to Sylvia as a remedy for lockjaw, and he knew it was wise to keep some around.

It was always exciting when the fami Iy went to the festival to sell the crocodile skins. Each year, Enrique had been able to take at least three of them. A good one with no holes could bring as much as two hundred pesos. That was four days' wages on the cane plan­tation , and enough to keep the family fed for over a week.

Jorge looked at his father's new oar and felt that his freedom was near. "Take me with you. I want to go hunt crocodiles," he said to Enrique. Sylvia heard him and laughed aloud.

" You? What could you do? You're just a boy. You can't even shoot the rifle. You can 't do any­thing. Why should you go?" his father said, without looking up.

"I have to," Jorge said defiantly. "Too bad," Sylvia answered with

a wry smile on her broad face. Enri­que looked at her and then at the floor. Then he looked up at Jorge.

"You can't go," he said. Jorge looked at his father's

weak chin and felt the tears rise hot in his cheeks: Painfully, he fought them back.

"Jorge," Sylvia said to him . "Come help me snout the pigs. They've been tearing up the gar­den."

Sylvia's pigs were like children to her. A good hog was worth sev­eral thousand pesos, and a good sow could give her at least ten pig­lets to sell. The pigs ate all the scraps from the table and all the food which was spoiled or burned in the kitchen. On hot afternoons Sylvia tied strings around their necks and led them to the shade on the other side of the road , where they nibbled at the under­brush and fell asleep.

ordeal, and en his _ mother wanted to do it Jorge had almost always managed to be elsewhere.

"Bring me the big needle from the kitchen!" Sylvia called to Jorge as she went out to catch the first pig. She held a bundle of short, sharpened wires In her firm , beefy grip.

Jorge held the squealing pig's hind legs as tightly as he could while Sylvia squeezed Its should­ers between her powerful thighs.

She laughed to Enrique and grabbed one of the struggling pig 's broad ears to lift up its head. With her left hand she clamped the anJ­mal 's muzzle shut. The terrified pig screamed through its closed mouth and Sylvia laughed again .

"They never like it, but it's got to be done, no? They ruin the garden otherwise." She set her teeth and forced the long needle through the tough flesh of the wriggling pig 's snout. A t~lin stream of blood trickled from the hole and fell in the aust. "Hold him tight, Jorge! " she said, and pushed one of the pointed wires through the hole she had made, deftly twisting its ends together to make a steel projection which would prevent the pig from ever again shoving its nose into the soft dirt of her garden.

" All right , Jorge! " she cried, and they each let go. of the pig. It sque­aled madly and ran a few steps, then it stopped and shook its head. A drop of blood fell in the dirt. The pig tried to Iludge the ground, but as soon as the ends of the wire touched the dirt it jerked up its head and shook it. Before too long the pig nibbled at some weeds, then it trotted behind the house and fell asleep.

Sylvia caught another pig, a black one, and treated it the same as the first. When they had let it go, Jorge said, "I can do the next one," in a serious voice. He held out his hand for the long n:eedle and the short wires. Sylvia was reluctant to commit her valuable pig to such in­experienced hands, but she quick­ly decided that it would be wise to let Jorge learn to be useful.

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Jorge found the next pig and grabbed its ears to pull it into place. He stepped over it and

.. grabbed its shoulders tightly be­tween his knees . He hadn't half the bulk of his mother, and it was hard for him to keep a good grip on the struggling animal.

When Sylvia knelt down behind Jorge to hold its legs, the pig went crazy. It squealed in terror twice as loud as the other pigs had and kicked with all of its might to get free. Jorge grabbed one of its ears tightly to straighten its head. His long nails dug deep into the bristly flesh.

Once he had the muzzle in hand, it took all of his strength to close the pig's mouth and hold it still. He lost his grip once and had to grab the muzzle again. The pig tried to shake its head back and forth as Jorge held it tight with one hand and gripped the sharp needle and the wires with the other.

Trying to move swiftly, as his mother had done, Jorge jabbed the needle into the pig's gristly snout and tried to force it through, but he was too far back from the end of the pig's nose, and the needle wouldn't go through. The pig jerked its muzzle out of his hand and screamed. Blood welled up from the tiny hole.

Sylvia, trying to keep a tight grip on the pig's hind legs, asked Jorge if he needed help. Jorge looked up and saw that Angelica was smil­ing , her baby's eyes ludicrously wide. Enrique was slapping his thigh, laughing like a madman .

Jorge grabbed the pig's muzzle and forced it shut again. His hand

, was covered with the pig's blood. , He took the needle in his fist and , jabbed it in at the right place, forc-

ing it through the tip of the snout, but before he could take it out and replace it with one of the sharp wires the pig whipped its head back and forth like a dog breaking the back of an unfortunate cat in its jaws.

Jorge lost his grasp on the short wires in his fist and they fell in the form of a prickly blossom on the ground. When he reached down to pick them up the pig jumped. Jorge lost his grip on the pig with his knees, letting its forelegs touch the ground. The screaming pig made a final violent leap, freeing its hind legs from Sylvia's clutches and shaking off Jorge's slippery grip on its muzzle. It burst forward with all of its might and ran head­first into the wall of the house. The pig broke its neck with a bone· crushing knock and died on the spot.

The baby started to bawl and Enrique laughed so hard he fell down, tears streaming from his eyes. Sylvia snorted and laughed too, but when she discovered that the pig was truly dead she spat and hissed at Jorge and told him he was a fool.

Jose Luis came to the house shortly after lunch to tell them he would not be able to leave on the hunting trip until early the .&lext morning.

Enrique came and sat on-Jorge's bed in the late afternoon. "Your mother left some food warming on the stove. Why don't you come eat?" he asked, in fatherly tones which swept over Jorge like warm breezes.

"I don't want to. I'tn not hungry," Jorge scowled at hlis father, and Enrique left the room. It was still light when he fell asleep to the sounds of dogs barking and his parents talking on the front porch. He awoke a few hours later from a dream that he was burning to find himself enveloped by a cloud of mosquitoes. He brushed his arm and felt the slip of blood and the oeading of their crushed furry )odies. Jorge jumped up and let jown the mosquito netting. he -ook off his shirt and crawled back nto bed, pulling his blanket up )ver his head.

Jorge's sleep was fitful and illed with terrible visions. He saw lis father skinning strange child­'en with his machete, and his not her and Angelica forcing Jointed wires through the faces of lis brothers and sisters. He woke

abruptly when a heavy truck passed by the house, but when he went back to sleep the dream was sti II there_ When aU of h is brothers and sisters had been snouted and taken across the river in his moth· er's boat, Jorge knew that he was next. He almost screamed when someone grabbed his arm.

"Come on now, we're ready to go," he heard his father say in the darkness. " Your mother thought it would be better if you came with us."

The stars sparkled so brightly he could make out their various col· ors reflecting on the mirrored sur· face of the water as Jose Luis steered the boat along with the riv· er's current , heading far down· stream to where the thick river wound slow and serpentine through the green swamps to the place where the giant lizards slept.

Enrique snored softly and twitched in a restless sleep while his brother paddled the dugout in the dark. Jose Luis, silhouetted against the deep indigo sky, was staring silently ahead. Jorge saw his uncle's black eyes glitter when he turned and they caught the light of a star.

The sky grew paler and Jose Luis tapped his nephew sharply on the shoulder. In the east , the stars were melting into a violet blue the color of the ocean . Tiny black flies swarmed at them and his uncle snorted.

"Just wait till we get to where the lizards are. You'll find out about flies there." Jose Luis made hissing noises and swatted vio­lently at the air around him with his hat, pretending to fight off vicious swarms around his head. Then he started and slapped himself on the cheek. "You see?" he said, holding his hand out to Jorge. In it was the

6

mashed body of a huge fly with black bands on its hairy abdomen and fire-colored eyes. Jorge looked at his uncle's face. There on his cheek was a heart-shaped mark of fresh blood.

"That's the new kind of bee. It - can kill you when it attacks in a swarm." Jose Luis smiled. Life to him wasn't worth living unless it was t;langerous.

Enrique awoke before the hot sun had risen over the trees. They ate the beans and rice wrapped in broad tortillas which Sylvia has fixed for them. Enrique finished first and began to clean and load his gun. After his machete, it was the only weapon he owned.

"Brother, look!" Jose Luis whis· pered loudly and painted at the river bank. " A wooden duck!"

There was a brown duck sleep­ing on a branch in the water near the shore. Its head and beak were buried beneath a ruffled wing . Enri· que aimed, and a gunshot cracked wide the morning. They paddled to where the body was floating in the river. "Dinner! " Enrique grinned, holding up the dripping bird . Jorge looked out at the bright sparkles in the sunlit water. The heat was making him ill.

They arrived at the swamp in the heat of the afternoon: The humid air hung quiet as death where the river meandered slowly back and forth in wide loops. Jorge watched the riverbanks anxiously for the slightest movement. He wanted to be the first to see a crocodile. He could hear heavy bodies slide into the water as the boat drifted past muddy islands covered with tall grass, but the movements were always outside of his sight. Fat , slimy logs floated in the tepid water, some of them with crews of turtles basking in the tropical sun. BJack iguanas with long claws and tails pressed their bellies flat against the thick arms of the trees on shore and scuttled up and down the furry trunks. The biting flies were ravenous, and the men cov· ered their heads with cloths to pro­tect the tender flesh on the backs of their necks.

"There's the spot," Enrique said . He pointed to a fallen tree which lay on its side in the water. "Get the rope, Jorge."

They poked the mossy limbs with their machetes, checking them for snakes, and tied the boat in the shelter of the spreading branches. The moist air was hot and soupy.

"Now here's what we do " said Enrique, his leathery face d;iPPing

f-

with sweat. "Jorge, you strip and wade to shore. When the ' biggest crocodile comes after you , whistle to us and then swim like hell back. to the boat. That's why we brought you along, you know. For bait." Enrique looked at his brother and they both burst into hilarious laughter. Jorge looked out at the shore. Something big rustled in a bush.

"Look over there!" he whis­pered. Jorge pointed to a clump of weeds. The blunt snout of a dozing crocodile was barely visible in the tall grass.

"Quiet!" Enrique said in a harsh whisper. " Be quiet, or you'll wake it. We'll sneak up on it while it's asleep." The oppressive heat of the swamp made Jorge dizzy. For some reason he felt afraid.

"Can you get him, brother?" Jose Luis whispered when they were near enough to see the animal breathe. The air smelled like rotting fish and the huge rep­tile suddenly awoke and raised its head. It waved its nostrils and then flattened its body against the green earth . Enrique raised the rifle to his shoulder. The crocodile blinked and quickly started for­ward . Enrique fired, stopping it dead with a bullet which pierced its skull. The lizard's head dropped into the shallow, scummy water near the shore.

"You COUldn't want a better shot! Right on top of him!" Enri­que said with pride. He cautiously placed his hand on top of the croc­odile's head to finger the bullet hole. Jorge was silent.

They pushed the boat up onto the . muddy shore where the dying crocodile twitched its toes and .tail. The lizard was almost twelve feet long .

"Wait till they see this monster! Sylvia will know she has a man in her house, no?" Enrique boasted. Jose Luis laughed with a knowing sn icker at the thought of the stor­ies they would tell.

Jorge took the machete and stepped out of the boat first. With swift ,strokes he cleared away the brush from around the dead beast. His father and uncle skinned the huge reptile, slicing it open down the middle of its back to preserve the most valuable part - the smooth white underbelly with a pattern of wide rectangles.

It took about an hour to cut away the skull, roll the beast on its back, and pee'l away. the skin without tearing it . The biting flies buzzed in swarms around their heads and fat mosquitoes dotted the mens' arms. As soon as they were fin­ished, the white corpse was crawl­ing with black ants. Soon the vul­tures would arrive.

Jose Luis was busy cleaning off small pieces of flesh and rubbing salt into the hide when Jo.rge look­ed up and saw the other crocodile. It was sliding slowly through the underbrush, and they were sitting between it and the river. The croc­odile walked with a swinging gait about fifty yards away, its belly high off the ground. It shifted its body from one side to the other, carefully and deliberately grasping the mud with each wide-toed foot­step.

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Jorge saw it first and pOinted it out to his father, but Enrique said it was best if they kept quiet and let the lizard go past them . They could run back to the boat , he said, if the crocodile got too close . Jorge's mouth fell open. It was clear to him that his father was a coward.

"Go after it!" Jose Luis whis­pered, and Jorge started forward . He was amazed at his own cour­age; all he held was the machete. The crocodile stopped and looked at them with a menaCing gaze. Enrique was sure it was going to charge, and he ran forward, forget­ti ng to cock the rifle.

There was a sudden swish in a clump of swamp grass behind them and Enrique grabbed his leg with a yell, dropping the rifle in the green mUd. A long black snake was clamped like a leech to his thigh , writhing madly and jamming its fangs deep into the muscle of his leg . As swiftly as it had strUCk, the snake released its hold , dropped to the ground, and zipped away across the mud .

Jorge picked up the rifle and found that it was useless. It hadn't even been reloaded in his father's rush to plunder their first victim.

Jorge looked up in time to see the big lizard charge. It raced for­ward, hissing like water on a hot stone, its pink mouth open wide . Jorge gripped the long machete and swung it with all his might.

In the instant the blade slammed into the meaty part of the croco­dile's upper jaw, Jorge and lizard were frozen like statuary in the dripping green swamp. The sun broke through the heavy leaves

above them and the flies stopped their bu~ing. The blade stuck for a moment before Jorge could jerk it out for another blow, and as he raised the knife again the lizard snapped its jaws shut and began to whip its powerful tail'. Jorge planted his bare feet in the mud and brought the machete down with both hands as the tail came forward . He swung the sharp knife with all his strength and heard the crack of bone as the blade split the lizard's skull and sliced into its brain. The mighty tail fell with a thump and the crocodile shivered. Its cold eyes stared up at Jorge, and he felt a cool breeze descend into the swamp and lick him lightly on the cheek.

• Jose Luis came running when -he

heard Enrique's yell . When he ar­rivea, he found Jorge cutting open the leg of his father's papts.

"Fer-de-lance!" Enrique spat, and rolled back_ moaning in the black, organic mud. His breathing was getting heavier and he bent his head back. His mouth gaped open and his eyes were wide, 'like the eyes of a tremendous fish.

Jose. Luis wrapped a rope around Enrique's thigh and tied it tightly. He spit on the machete and wiped it on his pants. With its razor-sharp edge he sliced into the wound on his brother's leg. Blood welled up, and Jose Luis suc~ed hard, spitting the tainted b.lood on the slimy ground.

Enrique moaned with a raging fever that night while Jorge and his uncle forced their way back up­stream under the cold and heart­less stars. -

They pulled the boat up onto the bank below the house in the early morning. The only trace of day­break was a narrow band of blue on the horizon which was rapidly shrinking beneath black clouds bulging like breaats in the sky.

The rain began as Jorge climbed the muddy hill to his house. A vio­lent downpour crashed down upon his head as he stopped and stood outside an open window and stared down at his mother's bed, where Sylvia lay sleeping beneath a White mosquito net.

A light breeze blew and Jorge felt a chill. He had seen the day while Sylv'ia was still lost in sleep. She lay like a mountain beneath a grey blanket, her face buried in a thin pillow. Jorge watched her for a long time; for as long as he could remember, he had never seen her sleeping.

The rain plastered his black hair against his forehead in heavy spikes through his thin clothes. They clung to his body like a loose skin about to be shed. The rain­drops beading on his cheeks look­ed like bright tears, and streams of water ran down the sides of his mouth.

Jorge climbed dripping throUl'lh : I t~e window and crept silently past his mother to unbolt the door. He went to his room and packed a bag of old workclothes .

He heard a rumbling in the dis­tance and hurried outside to stand in the shelter of his front porch. The grinding roar of a truck filled the air, and Jorge saw it crawling through the rain, coming towards him on the rutted, muddy road. Its windshield wipers smacked back and forth with a loud cracking of rubber on steel. Jorge was sure the noise would wake his mother. He waved, and the truck rumbled to a halt._

The icy rain beat like angry hands on the cab of the bouncing truck as Jorge rode towards Fila­delphia. H is machete was at his side, and the cold steel burned like fire,

John W_ Hoopes