Trout Belly Up by Rodrigo Fuentes

Author:Rodrigo Fuentes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: trout belly up;rodrigo fuentes;charco press
Publisher: Charco Press
Published: 2019-01-27T13:16:35+00:00

UBALDO’S ISLAND

That’s where they came in, says Ubaldo, pointing to

the coconut grove in the distance. They came

off the road down to the beach, through that scrubland, to where we’re standing now. There were a bunch of them, he says, looking at Andrés, eight or nine, and all of them were armed when they got out of the 4x4s. Well, all except the lawyer anyway.

With the big toe of his left foot, Ubaldo draws circles in the dark sand. Andrés, you know I want to do right by the boss. But when when you’re faced with weapons like that, he says, looking up, things start to take on a whole different calibre. Ubaldo’s eyes are greyish, a bit like the dirty sea crashing on the beach. They sat me down just there, he said, pointing at the table under the thatched canopy, and started telling me about your stepdad, Andrés, about the boss. Well, they didn’t all talk: some of them circled the house, others stationed themselves under the canopy. Only the lawyer was here to talk.

Andrés takes two beers out of the blue icebox and helps himself to one of them. He leans back in the hammock and gestures to Ubaldo to drink the other, but Ubaldo just opens the can and waits, listening for a while to the sea, to the waves breaking and retreating along the beach. Finally he takes a swig of his beer, puts it on the floor and in the same movement slides down into his hammock.

It was complicated, he says from there.

An hour and a half the lawyer kept me. I was squirming,

wriggling like an eel, trying to keep him happy. Taking a hard line would have been ugly. He said your stepdad was in debt, Andrés, that he couldn’t keep his word, that’s why they’d come, to chase up all his broken promises. Just sign, said the lawyer with a pen in his hand, sign here Ubaldo, practically stabbing me with the pen, because if you don’t then you’ll be the one who’s let us down. But you know I don’t own this land, I told the lawyer, the boss does. I wish I could sign. I just live in the hut next door, I just look after the house and fix the thatch, who am I to sign away the land?

The lawyer was angry, Andrés, and clever, the bastard had an answer for everything. I wasn’t to worry, it had all been arranged with the Registry Office, my signature was more than enough; he offered me money, a lot of money. Five thousand pesos, he told me, we’ll pay you five thousand pesos, Ubaldo, all you have to do is sign and we’ll look after you, you can keep your nice little job, your hut, plus five thousand pesos a month for looking after the land. The signature was just for show, Andrés, to make sure we weren’t going to cause them any problems down here on the coast. The lawyer

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