Man of Mud: By Radrook
Aug 15, 2021 11:05:20 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Aug 15, 2021 11:05:20 GMT -5
The Man of Mud
By Radrook
By Radrook
Fernando was a good twelve-year old boy who mostly kept to himself since he had relocated to the mountainous area of Nicaragua with his mom Maria after the death of his his father. He always reminded Maria of his father, because both were red-headed, and both tended to be good people, but a bit clumsy. Such clumsiness got Fernando in trouble sometimes.
Like the time that he plowed his second-hand tricycle through Señora Mercedes' tomato garden leaving behind a mashed, red mess. Or the time that he'd re-injured Don Torquatos' broken foot by accidentally stepping on it while trying to catch a runaway rooster. Or that other time that he'd attempted to break a piñata at a school party, and almost blinded his teacher with the stick when he lost his balance. So it was with a deep feeling of apprehension that Maria decided to send him on a special errand this day. The errand of paying her overdue rent to old hermit and landlord Don Jacinto.
Now, Don Jacinto was not a likable fellow. He was a loner whom some considered crazy, while others thought him just plain mean. Rumors ran rampant about how he kept two pit bulls in his yard ready to sic them on trespassers. People whispered about his fully-loaded shot-gun displayed prominently on his cabin's living-room wall. Others claimed that he’d worked as a hit-man for Emiliano Zapata during the last Mexican Revolution before relocating to Nicaragua. The rumors were as wild as the Don Jacinto’s thinning, grey, unkempt, hair, and as sordid as his small, squinting suspicious, green glass eye.
Maria, of course, hated having to climb the long, narrow, dirt-road up the mountain to Don Jacinto's decrepit hacienda, and be forced to humbly hand him the rent-money through the half-opened door and hear him growl from inside:
“Quien carajo es? Conyo?” “Who the hell is it?”
Then, when she’d answer: “Soy yo. Maria! I am here to pay the rent!” He’d grumble some indecency, thrust his tan, boney, wrinkled hand out the half-opened door, and snatch the money like a famished eagle snatches a prey from some tree- branch. Maria hated the humiliation. But she found a measure of comfort in knowing it wasn’t anything personal.
“That’s just the way he is Maria. The hombre is loco! I mean, you have to be loco to be living isolated up in a mountain like that for so many years! How long has it been now? Ten whole years with no visitors and no woman. ” her next door neighbor, Rosa Miranda, the local gossip, had told her when Maria had first arrived.
“Is he dangerous?” Maria had asked.
“No mujer! He is just weird. Not dangerous. Doesn’t seem to like human beings! But that is it. Leave him alone, and pay your rent, and no problem mija.”
Memories like that were comforting today when Maria wasn’t feeling well enough to trudge the forty-minutes uphill in ninety-five-degree weather to pay her long-overdo rent. Of course, she had little Fernando. But although the boy had long since stopped being as clumsy as he’d been before, still, the recent rains made parts of the road slippery, and if one wasn’t careful, one could very easily slide of its heavily-wooded embankments which sloped downward to the valley on one side, and to the river on the other. So she had to make absolutely sure that little Fernando kept to the middle of the road, and walked slowly both on his way there and back.
Hearing the front door slam, she knew he had just arrived from school.
“Fernando!” she called out, and he obediently stood there wide-eyed as if he knew that today he'd receive an important assignment.
“See this plastic envelope mijo?" She held out the sealed plastic envelope in one hand in a way that indicated to Fernando that it contained something precious, and carefully placed it in his small hand.
"This is the rent for the next month. I want you to take it to Don Jacinto!”
“But you told me never to go up that mountain!” he responded.
“This is a special case. Just this once because I feel ill and can’t take it myself, understand?”
"Yes!” he said and bolted for the living-room door with envelope in his hand.
“Wait just a second now!” she shouted, making him come to a full stop, and turn around to listen.
“I don’t want you to run. Are you listening carefully?" Fernando nodded.
“I want you to walk very slowly and stay in the middle of the road.”
"I can get there and back in less than an hour!”
“What did I just say?” she said, sternly pointing an index finger at him.
"You said not to run, and to stay in the middle of the road.”
“That’s exactly what I said, and you will not run. Understand?”
“But why?”
“Because the road is always slippery from drizzle up there and there is wet grass at the edges, and you might slip and fall.”
“I won’t fall!”
“You either promise you will walk slowly, or you don’t go at all. Which is it going to be?”
“OK mom. I’ll walk slow!”
“And what else eh?” she said placing the palms of her hands firmly on his shoulders.
“And I’ll stay in the middle of the road.”
“Why?
“You already told me!” he squirmed.
"But I want to hear clearly it from you.”
“Because the grass is slippery at the edges, and I might slip and fall!”
“Good! Now take the envelope to Don Jacinto, and no more from you!"
“OK mom.”
'But why couldn't he run?' he wondered. 'After all, the thrill of going up that mountain was to see how fast he could make the trip. Walking slow would make it boring. But he was just a kid, and what right did he have to say anything? His feelings were not important anyway. Just paying the rent and using him as a messenger.'
No he would not argue but left the house without giving his mother the usual peck on the cheek. It was the first time that the little Fernando had neglected that ceremonial display of affection, and it hurt Maria deeply, but she felt too ill to call him back. Furthermore it was urgent that Don Jacinto get his rent money. He had been threatening eviction for the last three months and if evicted she had nowhere to go. She watched with a feeling of trepidation as Fernando slowly walked through the pasture towards the road to Don Jacinto’s residence. Then fatigue from a recent viral illness suddenly overtook her, and she went to her room and fell asleep.
Walking was easy going at first for Fernando. His youthful exuberance was such, that neither the heat nor the humidity could quench the exhilaration of the climb. Surrounding him on both sides, the lush vegetation conveyed a cacophony of sounds and panorama of colors. Here and there, he saw and heard white rabbits scurrying at his approach or green parrots trilling warning signals before fluttering into the air.
There was a slight drizzle but he knew that it would last only a while before the sun would once more appear. It was weather he’d gotten to know on a personal basis ever since they’d moved from the city to the country. But for some unexplainable reason, the drizzle was remaining steady while thunder-claps in the distance meant a downpour. So he needed to get to Don Jacinto’s quickly. Furthermore, if the rent wasn't paid on time, then his mother would be furious. Worse yet, Don Jacinto would be furious and would certainly evict them.
Don Jacinto! Fernando had only met the old codger once when he’d come banging on the door yelling obscenities and demanding payment. That had been enough to convince Fernando that this was not a good fellow. No, he wasn’t afraid of him, since he wasn’t particularly physically imposing. A small, skinny man with a sunlight-aged face. But since he knew he couldn’t reply to any of Don Jacinto’s insults, he didn’t want to get on his bad side.
His ruminations were interrupted by a much louder rolling of thunder and a forking of lightning. Just as Fernando feared, the rain was picking up, and the money was in danger of getting wet. So Fernando began to jog a slow sloshing jog not much faster than a fast walk. But then, as the drizzle suddenly became a downpour, he broke into a dead run.
Soon, just ahead was the familiar curve that led strait to Don Jacinto’s Residence.
Although his lungs were burning and his leg muscles ached, he forced himself into a full sprint on the now muddy road. Several times he slipped slipped and slowed down, but he made up for it by going faster.
Yes, he was heeding his mother's warning by carefully keeping to the center of the road as instructed. One thing he didn’t need, was to be called clumsy again and he would prove that those clumsy days were over. Besides, his mother was absolutely right. Going over one of those ledges could injure him severely if not kill him, and he was too young to die.
To Fernando's delight, Don Jacinto’s house suddenly appeared ahead perched on the right where the road turned and leveled out into a grassy field. It was as he had heard it described, decrepit with a slanting wood balcony, dilapidated roof, boarded up windows. He could hear the distant barking of Don Jacinto's dogs.
A few hundred feet more and he’d make it. But the drizzle was getting into his eyes so when he made that final turn, he found himself going too far to his left. He shifted his weight to the right to avoid some overhanging thorned branches, but his left sneaker lost traction on a wet leaf. Then he felt a tendon pull on his inner thigh causing him to lose balance. Horrified he felt himself falling him head-first toward the left edge of the road as if shot from a slingshot.
Landing on his chest with a slashing thud, he began sliding face-first down the embankment. Frantically rolled several times flailing about desperately while screaming. But everything he grabbed, grass, twigs, bushes, roots gave way as if made of paper. In the distance above, he still heard the fading barking of Don Jacinto's pit bulls and below, the the approaching rush of the turgid river against its rocky banks. He only managed to a gurgle a scream as the rainwater momentarily poured into his gaping mouth.
Then he was airborne and falling feet first. Fernando expected to feel a sharp stab of pain when he finally landed. He knew that the river was too far from the top of the embankment, and so expected to fall on its rocky shore line. That would surely break both his legs. The rest he hoped would be merciful death instead of a slow one of days without water or being finished off by coyotes or wolves.
Then came unexpected "whoosh!" as his body broke the water surface, the desperate struggle to reach the light reflected from above and finally the gasp of cool, life-giving air. As he looked frantically about to get his bearings, he realized that he had landed in a thirty-foot-deep ravine filled by the overflowing river.
Now, during all this time, old Don Jacinto, who had been reminiscing on his glorious days as Emilano Zapata’s personal cook, had heard the commotion, and was up on his feet furiously loading the shotgun. After placing extra ammo in his dungaree pockets, he donned his yellow wide-brimmed straw-hat and having kicked the front door open, walked onto the porch.
“Who the hell is out there!” he shouted hoarsely.
“I said who the hell is out there?” he repeated.
Getting no response, he stood eying the road suspiciously. He was fully aware that he wasn’t a popular fellow, and that his attitude had made him many an enemy. That’s why he’d bought the shotgun and gotten his pit bulls. But letting his pits out now without knowing for sure, might injure someone innocent, and he didn’t want that on his hands. Especially since it would land him in the local prison. So using his shotgun to scare them off would have to do.
“I’ll blow your brains out! You know that! So either show yourself or get off my property" he yelled into the dense darkness.
He cocked the trigger and swiveled the double barrels toward both sides of the road as if he were about to fire. Again there was only the rustle of wind and deep silence. Now, Don Jacinto was a superstitious man and his mind began to ruminate about a dreadful local legend. A legend about a man of mud. El hombre De Fango, they fearfully called him.
The local peasants were always retelling the story around their campfires. It was about a peasant family who had been ousted from their homes by a ruthless landlord they referred to as el Patron.. The couple had cursed the landlord for his cruelty, and he had mocked them in response. Then, one day, as el Patron was tilling his fields, a man of mud appeared, grabbed him by his naked feet, and pulled him kicking and screaming into the earth.
No one saw or heard from the landlord El Patron, again and eventually the evicted family returned to live in the abandoned house. It was a story that he’d laughed at but which now with the approaching darkness and silence perturbed him.
Then he remembered Maria and her rent, and fear was replaced by anger.
"Ahah!' he said to himself,
"So that’s what all this is about-is it? Trying to scare me in order to get away with not paying the rent? So I am afraid, am I? I who fought alongside Emilano Zapata? So you will make me shiver and not collect my rent? I will show you who is afraid!'
Having gained valor from his anger, Don Jacinto started down the dark road dimly lit by a half-moon, and with shotgun at ready. Anger was his lifeblood, anger sustained him, and anger would prove him invincible. He’d show these miserable, under-educated, peasants who was the boss!
Evening darkness had arrived when Maria finally awoke from her deep slumber. She stretched her limbs, got up, and made herself a cup of coffee. The house was silent so she imagined that Fernando was reading in his room. Or else was practicing throwing his darts at the bulls eye on his bedroom wall. But she didn’t hear the familiar thudding of darts. Or maybe he was asleep recovering from his long trip to Don Jacinto's? She went to his room on tiptoe, but he wasn’t there. Then suddenly, there was a knock on the front door.
“Oh Maria I just came by to see how you are." Anna Lopez, the town gossip, said with a forced smile on her broad red lips-gracing her tanned face.
"We missed you at the Dia De Los Muertos [Day of the Dead] celebration today and…”
“Have you seen Fernando?” Maria interjected with a quivering voice.
“No, why?” Anna Lopez replied with a frown of feigned concern.
“I sent him earlier today to deliver the rent to Don Jacinto and he hasn’t returned
yet.”
“But it’s only eight o’clock mija! Maybe he’s out with a muchacha!”
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
Anna gazed at Maria as if she had been an innocent child ignorant about common things of the world.
“Look Maria! At that age, boys go off with friends and get drunk, or even have a fling with a local loose girl.”
“Not my Fernando!” Maria shot back sternly.
“Not your Fernando? Ha! Are you saying that your Fernando is better than my Joselito? Eh?”
“No I'm not saying anything. They are two different boys.”
“Boys are boys!”
“Your boy is much older!”
“By a year and a half Maria! Only by a year and a half!”
“At that age a year and a half can make a big difference!” Maria shot back.
“Well, if there is a difference, as you say, then my boy is better off!”
“I’m not arguing…”
“Keep it up and you will make him a maricon. You hear? A real maricon. That’s what you will make him."
Maria had never been a violent woman, but before she knew what she was doing, there was a frying-pan in her hand, and she was chasing her nosy neighbor toward the living room door!
“This is what I get for trying to come and visit?”
"No! That is what you get for being a ! Get the hell out of here!”
“What’s going on Maria?”
Constancia, her other neighbor, an elderly lady of large kind brown eyes and serene face which slightly resembled Davinci's Mona Liza, appeared suddenly from the darkness outside as the other woman left in a huff of curses and blasphemies.
“My son hasn’t returned yet! I have to contact the police."
"It’s a long way to the police station, Maria."" Constancia replied. "It's also raining, and you know how slow and lazy they are." She added calmly. Then she led Maria to a couch with her arm around her shoulder as Maria wiped the tears from her face and blew her nose with a handkerchief.
"It’s still early mija. Maybe it’s like your friend said. Maybe the boy is out with a girl. So let’s just wait till at least ten, and if he hasn’t returned yet, then I will go with you to the police station."
Maria reluctantly agreed and they both sat silently staring at the clock on the wall as the seconds clicked by.
Back at the Riverbank
Fernando slowly came to his feet and checked to see if the plastic envelope with the rent-money was still in his pocket. Seeing that it was, he then looked around in the growing darkness to find out how he could get back on the road to Don Jacinto’s residence.
He knew that the embankments bordering the river ran for miles, and he wasn’t familiar with their twists and turns. So the only way back to the road was straight up. He began searching for footholds and roots that he could grab, and began slowly inching himself upwards.
The mud was everywhere: in his ears, up his nose, pasted into his hair and smeared all over his face. He had to keep wiping it away as it burned his eyes, but slowly but surely, with the energy and agility that only youth can bestow, he was making progress. Now and then, he would slip and give out a blood-curdling yell which reached Don Jacinto on his way down the road, and sent shivers up his spine.
But of course, Don’ Jacinto was too proud to break into a run. Yet, what he really felt like doing now that he was halfway down the mountain, was to turn back toward the safety of his house. Several times he stopped, but hesitated since the unearthly yells were coming from the embankment in that higher elevation. So whatever it was, he didn’t want to close the distance but to increase it.
Moonlight offered little lighting, and Don Jacinto stumbled and fell several times on his way down. The anger that had provided bravado had dissipated, and now all that was left was his willpower. But that too was beginning to wane as his skinny legs began to give out and his atrophied lungs from years of smoking Havana Brand cigars, began to fail him. Worse still, he was now beginning to vividly recall snatches of macabre conversations that he’d overheard in the town’s tavern just the day before. Conversations that had bothered him, but which he had repressed and was now remembering in all their disturbing details.
“There is something evil in those woods!” he remembered one semi-drunk peasant saying to the other in a high-pitched, tremulous voice while rapidly making the sign of the cross on his chest.
"You are too superstitious cabron!” the other semi-drunk peasant had replied!
“I swear by my mother’s grave, if you had seen what I saw on that mountain road one night, then you would have pissed in your calzones!”
“Ok tell me what you saw compadre. The man of mud?”
“I swear by the Virgin of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it was the Man of Mud himself compadre, and he held the Patron’s head dangling from one bloodied hand”
“Really”
“Serio!”
"And you know what bothered me most compadre?” the peasant had paused to take a long swig of Vino Sangria straight from the bottle as if trying to drown the vivid horrifying memory of what he was about to reveal from his memory.
"What was that?” the other had slurred drunkenly.
"That the Patron's head was still alive and it screamed!”
At this point Don Jacinto forced himself to stop remembering, but he was drenched in cold sweat, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably.
Back at the embankment, Fernando continued his struggle to make headway against the slippery mud and slimy leaves and roots. Finally he was just below the ledge from where he had fallen, and all he needed was to pull himself up. But try as he might, he just couldn’t get a grip. Several times he’d almost succeeded, but each time he’d slid back bruising his knees hands and elbows. To make matters worse, the sound of Don Jacinto's yelping dogs had been replaced with the occasional distant keening of a wolf or a ululating coyote.
This howling incentive gave him the adrenalin rush for one desperate all or nothing effort. Hearing the keening getting closer he latched on to the roots and shrubs with his teeth, and with a Herculean effort, finally managed to pull himself back on the road. Feeling himself triumphant over nature, he gave out a long victorious screaming hoot which Don Jacinto heard below as the scream of the devil himself. Coyotes and wolves Don Jacinto understood, but this was no sound that a normal animal could make.
His fearful, beady green eyes flitted everywhere. He had never been a religious man, but now he knelt in the middle of the muddy road in the darkness and began to promise that he would go to confession and say all the hail Mary's prescribed by the priest. That he would never again go to town to the bordello to see Rosita the town prostitute. That he would not kick his dogs just to see them howl. To prove his sincere faith, he flung his shotgun over the ledge and fervently entrusted himself to God.
On he went until the slashing sound of approaching feet interrupted his fervent feverish supplications. Timorously looking uphill in the sound’s direction, he at first could see nothing. But then, as if bursting from the bowels of hell itself, he saw it as it was briefly illuminated by the moon which cast its light through a momentary break in the clouds.
It didn’t walk normally, it ran with a limp as did all creatures that haunted Don Jacinto’s nightmares. And its skin, Madre de Dios! It had mud for skin. “El Hombre de Fango!” he yelled as Fernando appeared totally caked in mud with his red hair tussled into what appeared to Don Jacinto as horns and the rent money envelope stretch forward in one hand in what appeared to Don Jacinto as the handle of a trident.
“Madre de Dios” he repeated and leaping to his feet from the kneeling position, swiveled on the balls of both feet, fell and slid along with his chin plowing an indentation into the mud. Then he frenetically flailed himself to his feet again and was off on his cadaverously skinny legs in a sprint that would have made an Olympic runner wince with envy. Behind him followed Fernando who had caught sight of Don Jacinto far in the distance and was trying to yell for him to stop so he could pay him the rent, but only managing to devilishly grunt and snort due to sheer exhaustion.
Back at the house Maria and her friend were standing on the porch about to head for town to contact the police, when they suddenly caught site of someone coming toward the house screaming and at a dead run. Of course they didn’t imagine it was Don Jacinto because, well, Don Jacinto didn’t seem like the athletic type. But lo and behold! It was indeed he!
“That is Don Jacinto!" Maria uttered in deep awe.
“He must really be mad about the rent to come running like that at this hour," her neighbor added. Then they saw him frantically look back, heard him scream, watched him fall, get up and continue.
“I don’t think this is about the rent” Maria said.
Don Jacinto staggered the last few feet and held himself up by leaning on the yard’s iron balustrade. His eyes were wild with terror and he kept gesticulating, but nothing came out except gurgling sounds. Then he looked behind him, saw Fernando approaching,
"You owe me nothing! Do you hear? You owe me nothing!" he yelled as he took off toward the town at a dead run.
Maria recognized Fernando immediately by his red hair. He was now walking after seeing Don Jacinto take off for the town.
"What happened son? Where have you been? She said hugging him and kissing his mud caked face.
“I was trying to pay Don Jacinto his rent but he kept running away from me!”
“That’s OK son. We’ll pay him some other day.