That Morning Rain (a Mystery story in Villa Rica, Peru)

That Morning Rain
(The Mountain Girl from Villa Rica)



In the Valley of Villa Rica, there is a small Hamlet, a township of some 10,000-inhabitants, located in the Andes of Peru, the central region, on the edge of a Jungle. It is Coffee country, and there are a lot of plantations there. Mercedes, lives in the hill area, with her husband, Adelmo, they have a small adobe house, perhaps no more than three-hundred square feet. It rains there a lot, and the township is surrounded by mountains, and the mountains are green, full of foliage. The town has only one paved road, Main Street, all the rest are dirt roads, and Mercedes works for a plantation owner by the name of Herbert Sandoval, in the outer part of town by a stream, he lives with his wife Sara: the town’s priest is Father Sarmiento. Mercedes works in the household of Herbert, and sometimes accompanies him to the hillsides where his plantation is. There they also have a cottage for the caretaker.
Herbert, has three children, the oldest is twelve, Enrique, whom often seems to put self-interest before, compassion. The girl, Claudia, she is ten-years old, thinking and acting as if she’s going on fifteen; she is a tomboy, spoiled, and a little reckless. The younger child, is Daniel, a typical young squirt, always wanting his way, but perhaps the more tranquil of the three, the one who listens the most, and blackmails the other two older siblings, by threatening to tell their parents, this or that, if indeed he does not get his way, he gathers all the typical gossip kids like, and don’t know what to do with, because it is normally misunderstood.


(August, 2008) Mercedes, she is working in the yard, at the plantation’s cottage, Daniel is there, she’s watching him, babysitting in a way, for Sara; Mercedes husband is in Huancayo, and if she could have her way, that is where he’d have him stay—Oh, she loves him beyond reproach, beyond good senses, and he is abusive to her, perhaps because she drinks a lot, as he does, and when they are together, it is like two fires blowing in the wind, at each other.

She was just released from jail, for disorderly conduct, and was seen hanging around with the only black man in town, Patrick Lopez, a mixture of black, Mexican, and Peruvian blood.
They had painted the town red—as the old expression goes, and after her yelling and laughing and making all kinds of noise, Herbert Sandoval, came to her rescue, and bailed her out of jail, as he often has, matter-of-fact, Herbert’s wife, Sara, is a little upset because he seems to give her more consideration than her, and for a thirty-year old drunk, shapely and vicious, it is not appealing to her.
But as I was saying, Mercedes is at the cottage, with Daniel, she is a little tipsy, at the moment, had a bottle of whisky hidden in her underclothes, and every so often has went behind the cottage to have a snort.
“Mercedes,” calls Daniel, “a car is coming up the road, it looks like Father Sarmiento, and he’s with that poet and journalist, Apolinario,” but she simply continues drinking as if she didn’t hear but of course she did, Daniel is but a few feet away from here, Daniel adds, “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Of course I heard you,” says Mercedes, “can’t you see I’m busy?” (she takes the bottle of whisky, and swallows a big swallow, then grabs Daniel by the hand) “Ok boy, let’s go see what they want!”
A red truck pulls up to the edge of the road, the house is about three hundred feet from the dirt road, and Father Sarmiento can see Mercedes swaying in the morning wind, he knows she’s drunk, and he sees Daniel.
“You just never learn, do you Mercedes,” says the priest, then pushes her away from Daniel, as if to protect him from her drunken behavior, and she pushes him back, and he kicks her, and she falls down, and he kicks her in the face, and three teeth are broken, “I don’t know if it’s drugs or alcohol, or both, but you are a vegetable in the making, and you shouldn’t be in care of that young boy in your condition.” (He goes to kick her again, but Apolinario grabs the angry priest, says, “I think she got the message Father!”)
Life has not been fair with her, and she has up to now, tried three suicide attempts: once she tried to drawn herself in a lake, but it wasn’t deep enough, Wetland Lake, it was almost all dried up. The second attempt, she tried to hang herself on a banner tree, up in Herbert’s coffee plantation, on the upper plateau area, the branch was too weak to hold her, it broke, only to break the branch, and come tumbling back down, she did although have a headache for a spell. The third attempt, she ran in front of a car, it stopped in time, to be quite honest, not many folks have cars in Villa Rica, and most all streets are gravel roads, as I mentioned before, and to get the car over twenty-five miles an hour on any given street, is a task in itself.

♦

It is now September, 2008, and it is raining cats and dogs, and Mercedes’ belly is getting larger, everyone thinks it’s the black man, who got her pregnant, or at least that is the gossip in Villa Rica. She is at the household of her employer at this very moment, helping Sara with the dishes.
“Mrs. Sara,” says Mercedes, “have you heard anything about Adelmo being back in town, I heard he was this morning when I was cleaning up the backyard, your neighbor said he saw him at the bar last night?”
“I don’t drink, Mercedes, so I wouldn’t know.”
“But if he is, and me having this belly he’ll cut my throat!”
“Well,” said Sara, looking at her boy Daniel “we couldn’t have that, can we!” (Giving her a smirk.)
“Yaw mama, who’ll do all the work then, I hope not me!” says Daniel and runs out into the backroom.


(Evening) “I’ll take Mercedes home, Sara,” said Herbert.
“I suppose it’s because Adelmo might be in town?” replied Sara.
“Yes, that’s it in a nutshell, and he is in town, I saw him myself today walking aimlessly, half drunk down the sidewalks of town,” answered Herbert (Mercedes now trembling, thinking he’ll be lurking someplace around the house, come 3:00 a.m., with a butcher’ knife.
Now Sara had finished her dishes, and Herbert, left with Mercedes, taking her home. The rain was coming down lightly now, fog dropping in the township, and covering the nearby hills. It cooled the hot day making the evening comfortable for sleeping.

The Children want to go with their father, and so they at the last minute jump in the back of his truck, and now Mercedes and Herbert are in the front seat, says Mercedes to Herbert, “You best just drop me off, and get out of sight, I’m afraid once he sees my belly, and I suppose, gossip has told him it was Patrick Lopez, he’ll be coming to cut my throat for sure.
Herbert couldn’t control his tongue, his curiosity, said with a hoarse throat, “Is he the father?”
“I wish he was,” she said then looked out the window, “I suppose it’ll rain all night, and in the morning again, your coffee plants are getting it’s full of rainwater.” She commented.

“I don’t think Adelmo ever cheated on you, did he?” asked Herbert.
“No, and if he did I’d cut his throat, so I can’t blame him any, can I?” replied Mercedes.
Herbert didn’t know what to say, matter-of-fact, he wished he had never said what he did say, he never expected such an answer, then said; I mean, she was near, if not almost ready for him to do her in.
By the time they got to Mercedes’ shack, it was dark, and she quickly went into the hut, lit a kerosene lamp, started to cook hot water for coffee, she knew Herbert like coffee hot, black and with lots of sugar, especially his coffee beans from his coffee plants, and she had some.


“I hope Adelmo don’t kill her,” said Daniel to his brother and sister, I mean, I like her, and whose going to watch me when…” before he could finish his statement, Claudia spoke, “Who wants to raise a black child anyway?”
Said Enrique, indifferent, “Does it really matter, I mean, we all just goin’ to do what we normally do with or without her.”
There wasn’t an ounce of anxiety, in the children, perhaps some ignorance, in what was happening, taking place.
“It’s kind of dark here Enrique, isn’t it,” says Claudia, a tinge scared, a foggy gibbous moon overhead, as she walked by the side of the shanty, and Enrique and Daniel behind her.

Mercedes has left the door open, and Claudia can hear her talking to her father, she’s drinking down shot after shot of whisky, as Herbert listens to her yell about how she’d kill the child of any woman whoever would dare to give birth to a child of her husband’s, and kill him likewise, because he got her pregnant in the first place. Perhaps justifying what she was feeling would happen to her once Herbert left and Adelmo come to the house. At this point, Herbert is unsure of what to do or say, it is out of his hands he feels, as she feels also.
Herbert and the children leave, and in the morning rain, Mercedes walks to work, and as time goes by, several days, Herbert drives her home each night, and Sara is forming some hidden anger on this matter.

On and about the tenth day, that Adelmo has been in town, Mercedes at about 3: 00 a.m., hears sounds outside her hut, and she goes to investigate, she is never seen of again, thereafter. Three days passes and Adelmo is spotted walking the streets of Villa Rica, and is picked up for questioning on the disappearance of his wife.
The following morning, during a light rain—the forth day—Adelmo is picked up for the second time, now for suspicion of murder, Herbert assuming it was a dirty deed, evil he did, and thus called the police and was jailed.
Adelmo agrees he has been out to the hut each night, ready to kill her but he didn’t and although he might have, she wasn’t there the evening before, for him to kill her anyhow. But no one believes him, until his lawyer, Joseph Dudley, an American-Peruvian living in Villa Rica, brings up the question, “Where is Father Sarmiento?” indicating he and Mercedes must have ran off, that she was his mistress. True or not he found the needle in the haystack that cleared Adelmo’s name.


Several months later, Father Sarmiento, was found dead, and buried in a small town called Huacrapuquio, buried in a shallow grave, alongside a new street the townsfolk’s were excavating, Adelmo’s hometown matter-of-fact, of 3600-inhabitants, a township where at one time, it was a terrorist haven, but Adelmo was no where to be found to answer the police inquire into this mysterious investigation. Incidentally, they never found Mercedes, but they found her shoe, it was alongside Sarmiento, in his gravesite.

Written 12-28-2008 (Written in Lima, Peru)

The Limping Gringo Stranger of Huacrapuquio (a short story)

The Limping Gringo Stranger of
Huacrapuquio



One afternoon Mayor Vladimir Rodriguez, he was told a stranger had come into town, his area of jurisdiction, the little hamlet called Huacrapuquio, in the Valley of Mantaro in the central region of the Andes, in Peru (a township of some 3600- inhabitants). The Mayor sat down in a wicker-chair, in his backyard under a patch of sunshine, listened to his Governor Theodosia Tapia speak on the matter; the Mayor pretended to be very busy, as he spoke. This was to conceal his fear, in that, someone had come into his town-let, come into it and haunted it, whom he had heard about prior to his Governor’s arrival, through the grapevine (the assistant Mayor, being the Governor of that township), was told—and he told the Mayor the same thing—if he was to stare into the stranger’s two vast, disjointed eyes, which were lit with points of coal-dark coldness, which also brought several men to trembling knees—he, himself, would notice them and endure the same fate; thus, the governor was in a state of wretched fear, confusion and dumfound ness.

But I want to go back a month or so, perhaps this will help the reader with the story, connect the dots as they say. The city was putting in a road of asphalt, and dug deep along a curves just outside the town-let, and to their amazement, uncovered an entrance to a cave— perhaps, more likened to a deep dry well, some forty-feet deep; matter of fact, one of the workers pert near fell into the open pit.
It was discovered, by shinning a flashlight down into the depths of the pit, bones of a 15,000-year old Saber-tooth cat, the size of a lion, paws larger than the man’s feet, inside his shoes. Two saber-teeth were found also, about nine inches long, matter-of-fact, 70%, of the ancient cat, that the anthropologists, and archeologist from Lima’s cultural and historical museum, figured it’s weight to be around 300-pounds, a youthful cat, and had it been older the weight would of course increased conceivably.
In the process of excavation, they noticed the arms, or front legs, paws, were twice the size of the back, eliminating the concept that such cats of ancient times resembled those of today, with bodies more proportioned. This cat had a thinner and less of a torso in comparison of the modern lion or tiger, it seemed as if it leaped upon its pray rather than trying to out run it, it would have been much slower because of those back legs—yet powerful they may have been to carry out that one time fatal leap, more so than the contemporary lion, or tiger of today.

The excavation proved—without question—to be a great find indeed, only one other such cat, was found to be so complete in the whole world, and that was found in the United States, where they had found 100% of the beast. This is what brought the Limping Gringo Stranger to Huacrapuquio, so they now say.
He had the stranger that is, a haggard voice, and those who approached him, noticed his quivering mouth as they looked into his sharp dark eyes. A few of the Peruvians had asked him, “What’s the matter?” A simple question that was never asked a second time, he was what might be called a fright-agent, he’d move his hand over his mouth, becoming inarticulate, in a despairing whisper, he’d be talking to someone, whom no one could figure out exactly who.
As you can see (or have read up to this juncture)—and I speak to you, the reader—the dots are seemingly related, that is: the appearance of the stranger, connecting to the hauntingness of his devil like eyes, and the discovery of the town folks’ ancient cat, connecting I mean, in a mysterious way, but connecting nonetheless. But in the following paragraphs, why he did what he did—be it for fame or game—no one has yet to put a figure on. Perchance, you can.

The stranger first appeared to be good natured and he was to all appearances just a stranger passing right on through the township.
For seeking out a better description, especially because of his behavior, the stranger was compared to the devil himself—quickly after his arrival—whom came to work his evil on this little hamlet, he seemed to have a sin against purity, there was no man worse in that town-let. But I am afraid—my narration is getting ahead of events.

The Mayor shook his head miserable to the governor, both of them sitting in those handmade wicker-chairs in the Mayor’s backyard, under a patch of sun. The Mayor cleared his throat, so that he could make his voice soft and say something quiet, if anything, without noticeable agony, and try to act like an intelligent politician. He then repeated to the Governor, in a devotional phrase, and he was not a man of God per se, but perhaps to act like it, in return God would help him to handle this correctly.
“Tell me what you’ve done for this man, I say, for him, and to rid this city of him?” asked the Mayor in penury.
The Governor looked at him through his near tearful eyes, and had no response, thus, the Mayor repeated himself, and again, he was reassured by the Governor’s distraught impression he created he’d have to abandon this approach.

●

The Mayor met the stranger, as the stranger had asked, which entailed seeing the remains of the ancient cat bones, still under excavation, they had been preserved in the mud, and the cave had been shut off from civilization, now to the contrary. At first, when he, Mayor Vladimir Rodriguez, met the Limping Gringo Stranger, he seemed pleasant enough—limped every other step it seemed, a bit off balance physically, matter-of-fact, they acquired a kind of commodore within minutes. But Vladimir was watchful, feeling behind the curtain of this man’s face, reverend or not at the moment, his mortal soul was alone in this situation, was in danger, and then the stranger did his labored whispering, sibilant and cautious, broken at intervals, as if he was talking to his higher priest, his words all being inaudible and in question, incoherent for the listener.
Said the stranger, the Limping Gringo, looking down at the bones, then at the Mayor, “I see someone broke the tooth during the excavation, it is not hard to fix…!”
The Mayor knew this was fact—that the tooth was accidentally broken during the process of digging it out, but how did the stranger know it was broken that way, and not in the past 15,000-years, this was in question—deep in the vaults of the Mayor’s mind, and was the Gringo implying he could fix it, really fix it to where it never was broken, or looked broken? Perhaps the stranger was teasing him, it was to the archeologists a difficult task, to say the least, and he said to the stranger with a daring voice, “This is a serious complex situation you speak of.”
The Mayor waited, straining nervously to hear what the stranger would say next, “I can fix it for you, standing up here, looking over it, if you wish?” said the stranger, in a quite clear and audible voice.
Vladimir’s turn to talk came next, he now being quite alarmed at the stranger’s statement—but the National Institution for Culture was considering building the township a small museum to house these bones, and this would be an unprincipled victory for him, if indeed he could fix the tooth, what seemed really to be unfixable, he would look even better; but it would be submitting to some kind of black magic, a weakness to his real faith—or so he proclaimed to be Christian, but living the life of one was a different road, I mean he had rosaries, and statues in his house of the Virgin Mary, and Christ on the Cross, and in his car a silver medal hanging around the mirror, but faith, that little muster seed the Good Book talks about, that was a different animal, it was far and in-between when he actually said a prayer, meant it without asking for something in return, not really believing, but going through the process, the motions to impress his onlookers as if he had that seed of faith, and if the stranger could have some kind of victory, in showing man’s weakness, in violation to humanity’s ability, so be it, let him show-off, but he would in the process stamp his association with the grayish world this man lived in, and be connected perhaps with the ebony mark of his soul. But so be it, it was a chance he was willing to take, and magic was more trick than authenticity, I mean, the Mayor believed that the devil himself had no more power that the tactician, perhaps likened to his faith in God.
Don Vladimir was almost memorized by the stranger’s eyes, “Yes, do as you say you can do, dazzle me if you can with the near to impossible,” said the Mayor to the Limping Gringo.
“Ok,” said the stranger, “I shall astound you,” and at the same time cast you into those unrepentant wild creator’s bones!”
“You are boastful,” said the Mayor, “you are taking up much of my time, and now you say, you can cast my flesh and blood into those bones, and fix the saber tooth now cracked in the blink of an eye, if you can’t what do you offer me for my time?”
The words blurred in the face of the stranger, but he kept his composure, and you could hear a husky mumble, he now hesitated as if tensely he was looking for something to offer.
“I confess,” said the stranger, “what do you want?”
Vladimir had never contemplated this before, but he had convincing ears that maybe something could be gained from this escapade. The stranger gazed at Vladimir, and fear took on a solid form for the mayor, he had not prayed at any given moment, nor tried to convince God Himself, he was in need, but nonetheless, he was in a tense emotional struggle.
And now there was beside him a most beautiful woman, she stood naked in a most shameful position, long reddish hair, youthful, “She can be your mistress for as long as you want her, a slight courtesy rendered to you, until you make up your mind, that is, what you really want.”
His heart and lungs beat fast as a trains wheels, pressing out of his chest, his face precipitately lay in the crook of his elbow, he took off his light jacket, and put it on this fleshly, shapely human looking female, as if to be a gentleman, in the devil’s world.
“Ok,” he said as if, he was ready to go home now, that there was not going to be any demoniac notion partially possessing him.
“Bless me Father,” he said to some dark face deeply imbedded into the stone wall of the cave, “My friend, he has taken a bite of temptation,” then instantly the bone of the saber-tooth cat, was mended as if it was new, then he looked at Vladimir, said, “This was really an easy task,” now the shadow of the woman, moved a little to the far corner of the narrow limestone slat that dropped forty-feet to the bones, and she waved for the Mayor to join him.
The Mayor had come to a point of exhaustion, still looking at the lovely lady, with immodest thoughts and desires, not even able to whisper the Lord’s name for help, too caught up in the evil being played upon him—the scheme of schemes, and in a strange, romantic excitement, a curious thing did happened, he fell with the damsel, and was melted into the bones of the beast, where he possessed the days and encounters of the beast when he walked the earth, 15,000-years ago.

●

The bones, with delicacy were taken out of the trench, and put into the town’s museum, even until the last moment, when he burned his bronze flesh as if in fire, into the bones, he could see the hard-eyed incorrigible girl whom seducing him, her tight pressed fingers shoving him deeper and deeper into the bones.
The stranger, the Limping Gringo that is, felt a great relief in a job well done. For the moment, the Limping Gringo, like the commoner in the king devil’s chair, he tasted the arrogance of the state of affairs, murmured to his high priest.
And now, Vladimir, who had come to his senses, he began to repent, aloud but of course, meaninglessly, “Oh, God Almighty, I am so sorry for having offended thee… but you must fix this now, lest I remain here and walk the same paths over and over within the life of the saber-tooth cat, and my life as well.”
A minute later, a door opened up in the museum, and you could hear a woman’s voice, giving two people a tour of the bones, a man, gringo from the United States visiting the township, and a Peruvian woman (man and wife), that is when he came to the full realization of what he had done.
In spite of his wishful thinking, this subterfuge of the devil’s helper was his impossible new world, at least until the final judgment day.




Note: Written out on napkins, 12-23-2008, a day after visiting the hamlet, Huacrapuquio, Peru, and handing out hundreds of books to the children of that city for Christmas, 2008. Completed on 12-25-2008, and reedited on 12-26-2008. The story originally written out in draft at 1:15 PM; having seen the town, and the museum, and hearing about the saber-tooth cat, of 13,000 BC., the author tried to plant fiction with nonfiction, creating this story, “The Limping Gringo Stranger…” The story does not show the real character of the Mayor or Governor of Huacrapuquio, whom are to the contrary of the writers characters; and should not be assumed otherwise.

Dedicated to the town folks of Huacrapuquio, Peru

The Dead don't Forgive (short story, part of "The Lore Machaco..." in Villa Rica, Peru)

The Dead do not Forgive
(Life for Katita after the ordeal)



The following year, a year after the ordeal, she had visited her home city of Huancayo again, more afraid of taking the bus than ever, not because of the robbers per se, more so because of the vast bus accidents, between Lima and Huancayo, so many of the drivers unchecked by the owners of the different bus lines, falling to sleep while driving, and the bus falling into the river by La Oroya, and around the bends in the Andes, three in one week. They drove tired, with loud music on trying to keep them awake, only one driver, no shift changing, and some drunk.
In any case, she, Katita, made it the second year, back home, heavy rain all about, it was December, the rainy season, many of the buildings and adobe houses had tin roofs, you could hear the rain drops, She was happy, she noticed a police officer detaining a drunk in the plaza de arms area, then let him go. It made her think, She had forgiven her captors long ago, perhaps even being a little selfish in the process, or in the vain of self-interest, her father once told her—and now it came to mind, “If you can’t forgive the person for forgiveness sake, do it for yourself, so you can let go, and go forward in life,” and she did just that, and it made sense to her back then, and now she needed it, but there was an issue unsettled in her mine.

For a while now, she remembered Johnny’s eyes, those pitying eyes of irony, and now looking into the glass of a clothing shop near Puno and Real streets, she saw her reflection, her scrutinizing eyes, those eyes that, her prominent dissect eyes that, they were not the ones that killed him, she exclaimed to herself, “oh no,” she muttered, nor the ones that killed Juan Diego, or Carlos—thus showing little sign of emotion, she wondered why she wanted to laugh, but didn’t, insisted on showing no emotion, for they were all dead now, she knew even Angel was dead, she read about the police finding his corpse buried near where she was buried. Or that is what she remembered anyways.
Her soul told her she wanted to be in compliance with God’s rules, to forgive, so she could be forgiven. Perhaps she had emptied all that out in what was now an abandoned mine—; then came thunder and lightening overhead, and she woke up for her little trance, her daydreaming, and thoughts, she escaped the radiogram that was being sent to her by her subconscious, contorting her soft little body to keep those thoughts, unforgiving thoughts, away from her, adopting a passive attitude, she started walking, looking about, and stopped and talked to the father, a priest as he was checking the prayer books at the Cathedral in the pews, and she told him her thoughts, and asked what to do.
“Tell me father, “she pleaded, “Have I sinned because my heart is not as forgiving as my mind?”
The priest looked deep into her eyes, “Oh, the magic of the devil,” he said, with a convicting tone, “those evil spirits that haunt a man, and a woman, twist things, nothing young lady is black and white in the invisible world, not even witches in the seeable one, the laborer of forgiveness is not straight forward either, you forgave joylessly—so it appears, but you forgave nonetheless, and with a touch of contempt I gather, and now you feel the blood they shed, that has been shed is stained on you, like ink on sheepskin, there forever. We all fumble like blind men here on earth, fighting the unequivocally missing links. To tell the truth, as I think you have done, no hold no concrete accusations in your heart, you are doing right, and you have implied that the two of you, that is, God and you, are working this out. The devil puts ideas in everybody’s head, looking for weak points. It is true what they say about him, he surrounds you then vanishes, into a gray blur, leaves you lost in the labyrinth of the underground mines. Go child, shrug him off, and everything will work out, so don’t despair.”
And she did what he said to do, she left, serious, yet staring at him, somewhat fascinated he had the words—some words of comfort, why didn’t she? With her bulging eyes, listening to the music in the park, music that seemed to come out of the water, defused throughout the park, she knew she’d not miss anymore sleep, and even though still disoriented and confused on some matters, she had buried most of her discontent, inside the rags they took off her to rape her, and bury her alive, she buried those shapeless sins with those rags—once and for all, thinking, if God says he forgives, He must also forget—thus was her conclusion, and then she heard a voice whisper, it was her mother’s, “Funny bumping into you here,” she mentioned, “Lets get some Pantone?” And she loved that idea, they both loved Pantone, and there was a little café across the street, a Japanese gentlemen owned it, and thus, she went and they had coffee and Pantone until their hearts were content.


Written at 3:45 a.m., Friday, 12-19-2008