DUSK WAS FALLING as I skidded the Blazer to a halt in front of our farm. At first I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, I paused to admire the sparkling lights of our little town. From that distance, it looked majestic. Below, I could see the church with its tall steeple, the well-trodden football field, the criss-crossing streets and the plaza, and I felt the tension seep out of me. Then I caught glints of smashed glass. Turning the truck to face our house, I switched to high beams. The words POR SAPO were graffitied five times across the white boards in blue paint. The phrase meant FOR BEING A SNITCH.
I pounded my fist furiously against the steering wheel and exited the Blazer, slamming the door behind me. Caraquemada had accused Papá of supplying the army with water, not of being an informant. So this message could only be for me. This was further retribution; they were reminding me that this was my fault.
I was angry not only at the Guerrilla for defiling our family home and slandering my father’s good name, but also at everyone who had kept this news from me – Camila, Mamá, Uncle Leo and Colonel Buitrago. I was even angry at Papá’s friends who’d expressed their condolences. Their strange, pitying looks and vague warnings about it being too dangerous to visit the finca now made sense. Everyone had known, but no one had told me the truth.
The fact that no one had been brave enough to clean off the graffiti reminded me of how cowardly people were and how little they’d helped on the day of Papá’s execution. And I was insulted at everyone getting together behind my back and agreeing to treat me like a reckless child who needed protecting from himself. I felt thoroughly betrayed.
I sprinted up the steps. All the windows were broken. The front door was smashed. I ran inside. Even though the electricity must have been cut off long ago, I tried the light switch. It wouldn’t have made a difference; the light fittings were shattered. Taking a flashlight from the Blazer, I flicked its beam over the devastation inside. Everything was toppled, broken or destroyed – the sofa upended; the kitchen table and chairs thrown against walls; cutlery, utensils and Mamá’s crockery strewn across the floor. I wrinkled my nose at the strong odour of urine. This was not the work of thieves; the television was still there, and I could see nothing missing. Neither was it spontaneous vandalism; the destruction was too systematic. Everything had been damaged, including objects whose value hardly warranted the effort, like clothes that had been shredded and forks that must have been bent by hand. This was my punishment for burying Papá.
As I entered my room, a floorboard creaked underfoot. The bedsheets smelled of sweat. Someone had slept in my bed. When another floorboard creaked on the way out, I bent down and peeled away several boards. In the floor cavity lay a wooden crate filled with military supplies – AK47s, AK45s, RPGs, camouflage uniforms, rubber boots and binoculars. The Guerrilla trashing our house was not only a punishment and warning; it was to disguise what they were really doing. They were using our finca as a storage and supply point and also, owing to its isolation and strategic view over the town, as a lookout post.
By some miracle, Mamá’s glassware from the sideboard had survived. Taking it with me, I stormed from the house and lined it up on the front porch. I went to the shed where we stored the five-gallon gasoline cans. I poured fuel over the wooden crate, doused my bed then splashed some over the floorboards for good measure. Twisting some old newspaper into a crude fuse, I wedged it between the slats of the crate. The only thing I lacked was a match.
I went outside to the Blazer and depressed the cigarette lighter. Only then, as I waited for the coil to heat, did I notice something was indeed missing: the cross at the head of my father’s grave. I searched the ground wildly in the semi-darkness and finally found it flung far from the oak tree, broken in two and bullet-riddled. The Guerrilla had used it for target practice.
As I nailed the cross together I found myself back there on the day of my father’s death. Flailing on the dirt with the blond boy’s knee on my head, I watched Caraquemada circle Papá. The gunshot popped in my ear and Caraquemada walked away. Papá’s skull cracked on the dry ground. Wave after wave of hatred surged through me as I drove Papá’s cross into the ground. I wanted the Guerrilla dead. All of them. I wanted to burn everything down. Not only our house but the whole town.
The ejected lighter had gone cold. I depressed it again. As it heated a second time, my breathing calmed enough for me to think clearly. What was happening to me? I loved that house. I had grown up in that house. It meant everything to me and to Papá; he had spent every spare minute of the last eleven years maintaining and improving it. And I’d never doubted that it would some day be mine. Only an hour before, lying naked and peaceful by the rope-swing tree, I’d dreamed of restoring the farm and living there with my mother and Camila. But now I was planning on torching it. And why? Because I was like a child, acting out of spite. If I couldn’t have it, then no one else could.
I needed to get a hold of myself. I went to the bathroom. The mirror was cracked and the face that stared back at me was that of a stranger. I bent down and splashed water on my face, willing myself to regain control. When I was calm enough, I filled buckets with water, tipped them on the fuel and mopped my bedroom floor. I heaved the heavy wooden crate out of the floor cavity and, in short bursts, dragged it to the Blazer. Using paint from the shed, I whitewashed the Guerrilla graffiti and wrote a new message by its side:
¡AUC PRESENTE!
THE AUTODEFENSAS ARE HERE!
I returned to the Blazer and took one last look out over Llorona. It was no longer majestic. It was a wretched town with dirty streets, a church with a bent spire, a dusty football field and a decrepit plaza.
Stopping only to deposit my mother’s glassware on Leo’s doorstep, I drove furiously out of town, taking curves at speed and not deviating for potholes. I knew it was wrong to have considered burning down our family home. But I also knew that the world would never be right while men who committed acts of barbarity were alive and roaming free. I was heading back to Villavicencio. And I would make the Guerrilla pay.