When You Get to the Other Side by Mariana Osorio Gumá & Cecilia Weddell

Author:Mariana Osorio Gumá & Cecilia Weddell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781947627666
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Published: 2022-07-01T17:09:42+00:00

How could he follow the clues his sister left, with that overambitious heat that wouldn’t stop rising? Gregorio’s head sunk between his shoulders and his steps, which were strong at the beginning despite his limp, slowed as he pressed forward. His thoughts became scattered by the gulps he took from Vaquero’s flask, which he ended up emptying. After walking for a while, he stopped under the red-hot sun. He squatted down and waited a few minutes to regain his energy. A bit of air blew over the sandstone that covered the ground and it outlined the shapes of a hand, of a leg, of a skull. The desert’s bones, he said to himself shakily, fearing that the excess of heat, alcohol, and exhaustion were making him see things. Those unknown dead, buried by erosion, appeared every now and then like a warning.

“How shitty. To die and not even make it to your grave. That’s fucked up.”

Here and there he found a pair of pants, a shirt, a shoe. Pieces of a life, abandoned along the way.

A white hare crossed his path a few meters ahead and stole away his attention, distracting him from his exhaustion and that feeling of death that those bones presaged. For Goyo, who was a good hunter, all it took to trap a prey was a rock, a slingshot, a stick, even his bare hands. He’d learned from his father, spending whole nights with him out under the open sky, chasing down opossums, cacomixtles, and rabbits, or looking for the birds with succulent meat that nested up high. There was a time when wild ducks flew over the area, just before they’d sold the buckshot rifle. When that happened they spent all of August coming down from the mountains with two or three prey in hand, which they cooked in a spicy mole sauce that was so good they licked their fingers clean. It made Goyo’s mouth water to remember it. Afterward, during a time of crisis when they didn’t have money or hunt or harvest, and Emilio Ventura had gotten rid of the rifle — they spent a season eating roots, herbs, and fungus, living off loans, though even the people who lent didn’t have anything to lend.

A hare. The little saliva he had left reminded him of his hunger. He imagined the animal impaled by a stick, its meat roasting, its skin browning over the embers. He imagined the crunchy, greasy skin and took a dry gulp. And it was like the animal guessed his intentions: It jumped away, extending its svelte feet to go faster. Nobody could keep up with that, thought Gregorio, measuring up his own lack of strength. Even still, energized by that discovery and the possibility it brought with it, he set off in the same direction that the animal had gone, keeping it in his sight.

He remembered more: When his father sold the rifle, they still climbed up the mountain to hunt, unarmed. They had to put food on the table.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.