THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

EVERY NIGHT, JUST AROUND SUNSET, THE LIGHTS CAME ON in the big house on the hill. Felix envisioned a staff of at least twenty, each positioned in a different room awaiting the command, and a main boss—probably in some sort of uniform that involved a suit and tie, standing at the foot of the stairs with a whistle, counting down the seconds. Five, four, three, two, one. Then he would blow, hard, and each member of that staff would flip the light switches, simultaneously, and that huge house would instantly glow a warm yellow, every room lit and inviting. It was comfortable in there, Felix was sure. For him, watching the house come alive at night was more beautiful than the colors of the setting sun. Night was the enemy down there in the camp. He hated the dark, feared it. That gigantic house, that palace in the sky, was his nightlight. He focused on it and somehow didn’t feel quite so lonely. The trick was to fall asleep before they turned off the lights around ten. Each evening he prayed to sleep through the night but he rarely did.

Felix wasn’t allowed to have a lantern, or any kind of light, in the camp. There were too many people up there on that ridgeline, too many chances that someone might report him. They didn’t want poor Mexicans living in their gullies and they certainly didn’t want large pot gardens in their backyard. So when the sun set, that was it. He could use his headlamp to navigate from the tent to the latrine and he could read his bible inside the tent with the small beam of light, but otherwise he was alone in the dark, about nine hours every night.

Felix had been sleeping with knives since he was old enough to think. Even in that tiny shack back home in his village, surrounded by his family, he felt the need to protect himself. The sharper the blade the better, pointy tips that could easily puncture and tear open a heaving chest, that’s what he’d look for. As a child, he hid them under his pillow or simply slept with one clutched in his hand. He dreamt of the enemy, dark and sweaty, drenched in blood. Never a face, just an ever-present evil, waiting to attack. Sometimes his mother would discover the weapons and scold him, tell him it was dangerous to keep such sharp things in his bed, but Felix never hurt himself. His mother would ask him why. Why? Why did he sleep with cutlery? Why knives and sometimes pointed cooking forks? Why were there long sharpened sticks, like spears, wrapped up in his bedding? Why did Felix need these things? What was he afraid of?

Felix got better at avoiding detection. By the time he was eight or nine he’d made himself a little shin-strap and pouch where he could keep a small knife, hidden but easily accessible. He dreamt of swords that could sever a head in one swift stroke and life-threatening daggers. He longed for brass knuckles on both hands and a cat-of-nine-tails under the covers. It didn’t help that he was so short.

But once the sun came up, the danger disappeared. In fact, life was pretty good in daylight. As long as he could see, things were fine. The world was much more manageable. He heard that there were places, far to the north, where the sun never set in the summertime. Oh to live in such a place where darkness never falls.

The camp was better now. Felix had made a cot out of tree branches. It had taken several days to find limbs that were sufficiently long and straight, the branches here grew gnarled and bent, but he scouted a large area and finally had enough for the job. He made X braces at either end and the center then laid the sticks out plank-like and wove them together with twine. It was a surprisingly comfortable cot and much cooler during the day than that old tent. The days got hot with the sun beating down; he couldn’t bear being inside that grimy nylon enclosure and he hated lying on the dirt. He also made two tables in the same manner for the kitchen, one for food preparation and one for eating, and another smaller table over by the washing area where he cleaned the pots and his clothing. He built three small platforms amongst the limbs of the trees around the cooking area where he could store the food, up off the ground and away from animals.

This was an old camp, at least five seasons, and those who lived here before had been filthy pigs. When Felix arrived, the kitchen was swarming with flies. The stove was set up in a little shelf that had been dug into the hillside with the propane tank next to it. The last growers had obviously done their cooking then turned around and dumped the trash without so much as taking a step. In fact, you had to stand on old garbage if you wanted to cook at the stove. Disgusting. The first thing Felix did was to dig a pit away from the cooking and living areas. Then he cleared out all that old trash and buried it in the pit. There were layers upon layers of foul garbage: rusting cans of beans, El Pato, jalapenos, and tomato paste, broken tapatio bottles, eggshells, rotting cardboard, old beer cans and plastic containers of soda. The deeper he got into the trash heap, the more slop-like, slimy and black. He buried the garbage far from the kitchen then dug a new pit on the other side of the camp where he would throw his refuse. If he had to live here for four or five months, he was going to make the best of it.

Felix sat on the little rusty stool and scratched himself. Would this rash take over his entire body? Hernando had just laughed when Felix asked. It was in his armpits now and spreading down his ribs. His t-shirt was sticky, damp with the watery ooze from the open sores.

Felix had drawn circles around the rashes with a felt-tip pen. He thought of the raised welts as islands, itchy oozing masses taking root all over his innocent body. Hernando had brought the food, toilet paper, Pepsi, everything Felix had asked for. But Hernando hadn’t bothered with the lotion, said he forgot. The burrito king was a moron.

Felix’s body looked like a topographical map of a strange, foreign planet. Some continents were symmetrical, round and self-contained. Others sent out tentacles of pus-filled blisters, like spreading land bridges, in search of warm dark areas where the poison could be nurtured and thrive. There was an especially scary island on his upper thigh with a palm tree-like shape reaching toward his crotch. He was covered and he was pretty sure the rash was still spreading. And so he drew the circles. He didn’t know what he’d do once the red itchy bumps moved beyond the boundaries, but at least he could keep track.

They didn’t have this poison oak in the area of Michoacan where Felix lived. Of course Ramon and Hernando didn’t bother to warn him about the weed-like plant when he sat in it on that first day. They could have so easily pointed it out when they brought him in and explained his duties. A simple “Cuidado, watch out for this stuff.” He’d settled down right in the middle of a big patch while Ramon explained his duties. Hernando knew. He should have said something but he didn’t and now Felix’s clothes were covered in the oil and there was no way for him to get really clean.

As the sky started to fade, he added poison oak to the long list of reasons why he should never have agreed to come. It was lonely and the raccoon, deer and rabbits were crazy about the juvenile plants. Was there an animal on this earth that didn’t like marijuana? There were rattlesnakes everywhere, twice the coyotes had chewed through the irrigation hose, and the mosquitoes didn’t rest even with the heat of the day. Felix hadn’t had a proper shower since he got here and probably wouldn’t until he left. He could smell himself. There was a tiny leak in the line that ran from the propane tank to the stove and the whole area was shrouded in a vague cloud of gas. He could smell that too. Lighting the stove was terrifying and Felix had resorted to eating cold beans, right out of the can, spread on dry, crumbly tortillas. Hernando said he would replace the stove soon but you couldn’t trust anything he said.

Felix walked over to the tent and pulled out the envelope. He had two pictures of Violeta. In one, she wore a plain yellow dress, her hair pulled back into a long braid down the middle of her back. Her father had taken it last spring when she was out behind her house, beating the dust out of a rug. You could see the power in her arms and back as she swung that heavy stick. The look on her face was serious and determined. Felix knew that his girlfriend could do anything she set her mind to.

In the other picture her hair was down, falling around her broad straight shoulders. She was looking straight at the camera and smiling that lop-sided grin. Her front teeth were a little crooked, something that embarrassed her when she remembered, but Felix loved her smile. He loved everything about her.

He studied both pictures. Often during the day, he talked to her while he did his work. Tonight he told her again the story about his crossing and confessed to the terrible guilt of having pushed that man out of the way when he ran from the bandits. Did he cause the death of Victor? What else could he have done? He didn’t mean to make him fall. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He panicked. Maybe those left behind weren’t killed. Maybe it was just a robbery. It wasn’t necessarily murder. Was it? Felix kept hearing that horrible cry from the one called Luz. And the gunshots. Would Violeta still love him if she knew what he’d done?

“Please, forgive me,” he pleaded. “And wait for me, my love. Don’t go.”

The lights came on in the big house. Felix put away the pictures and started making preparations for the long night. He hoped that tonight he would get some sleep.