A terrifying scream woke the two friends at the crack of dawn. After looking all around, chilled to the bone, they saw the commotion with Manuel in the car.”
“Are you crazy? Are you trying to scare us to death? Where did this scream come from?” complained Damian, unsettled by the implausable situation. “It’s like you saw a ghost!”
“I’m alive! I’m alive!” Manuel continued to scream after quickly exiting the vehicle. “I’m alive! It was a nightmare!” He ran his hands over his whole body. “My god, that was bad! Touch me Damian! Touch me to make sure I’m alive.”
“Come on, guy, that’s just queer!”
“It’s just so I can feel alive, fuck!”
“I can’t believe you’re scared of a nightmare. If every time you dream you cause such a stir you’d better always sleep alone.”
“This wasn’t just any nightmare. I dreamed about my own burial. Can you imagine that? I saw myself dead in a dream! Touch me, my boy, I want to feel the touch of being alive!”
Diego just stared at him without saying anything.
“Your own burial? You were at your own burial? It must be exciting to be present at your own burial,” said Damian with considerable irony. “How many horses pulled your carriage? Because the number of horses shows how important you are.”
“Quit joking. It’s real sad to see your own family mourning your death.”
“I’m sure in the dream there was a child with a dog in a cistern,” declared Diego without raising his voice or batting an eyelash. “A child with shorts and knee socks.”
“Yes! How do you know that? There was a boy with shorts.” His whole body shivered. His pallid face blanched even more. How could a complete stranger know details of his own dream?
“I was at that burial. I am that boy, and as you say, you were the dead man. That was a former life where we had the chance to meet. I, too, was born on the island, just like you, as much as you try to deny it. It was in a neighbor’s house in the Pastora neighborhood. Sounds right? I slipped in, and nobody came to help me. When they came back from the burial they found me drowned in that stinking cistern. Our lives are joined and our deaths are near. I met you on the day of your burial which was the day of my death. From here on out it won’t take a genius to guess why destiny has brought us together again. Tomorrow they will bury me and that will be the day of your death. It’s destiny.”
Before continuing his reasoning he spat out a big blob of tobacco. He had learned that with short pauses, listeners’ nerves were heightened and Diego was masterful at his skill.
“Our end is near, buddy. Me, drowned in a pool, you, I suppose on the road... Unfortunately, for us this is a one-way trip.”
“You’re crazy, kid! You trying to scare me? Know what I think? Prophets like you shake me up. Riff-raff! You’re just the dregs!” answered Manuel, unable to hide his nervousness. “I have never even seen you! Besides, there is only one life. Former life? You take me for an imbecile? You’re deranged. No wonder they call you Sent-up. Sent up from hell! Cause with that face you can’t have been sent up for anything good.”
“How do you explain him knowing details about the dream?” Damian asked him, admiring the sure intervention of his friend. He had prepared the ground perfectly to begin the war of nerves.
“I don’t believe in reincarnation and things like that either. But when someone is able to interpret someone else’s dreams like now, I begin to have serious doubts.”
“That’s easy. I talked in my sleep and he picked it all up.” He rationalized hesitantly. “He’s a bad omen!” Manuel didn’t even look at him. “He may be your friend but he’s a jerk that wants to ruin my day! I don’t know the town or the neighborhood he’s talking about. This guy wants to fuck with me and he’s not going to do it.”
“That’s how I know they ran you out of town for being a faggot!” declared Diego again. “Come on guy, we all know each other on the island.”
“I shit on your dead guys!” shouted Manuel, hovering over him with the clear intention of assaulting him. “You going to call me a faggot? You shitty brat! Just who do you think you’re talking to?”
With a spectacular wrestling to the ground, Damian managed to grab Manuel by the shoulders and with great effort managed to separate him a few meters from his friend.
At that moment he was very worked up and he had to be stopped before he did something crazy. Now Damian knew how to get him to go off and that was quite sufficient.
“He’s a grandstander!” Manuel, still upset, was saying, “It’s a good thing you pulled me off or I would have killed him. He would be an extraordinary actor but he’d better be careful with me because I’m not letting him get away with anything at all. That would be a son of a bitch!”
“Come on, guy, it’s over.” Damian whispered. “Let’s go to the car and continue our trip. The sun’s up and it’s getting late. It’s not worth it to fight with that loco. Can’t you see he’s trying to provoke you? Forget about him!”
“So now you acknowledge that he’s loco...So why the fuck did you let him in my car? You are the only one to blame for this. Nobody in my life has ever called me a faggot! And I’m not going to let this little shit do it! I’m not killing him because it’s not worth getting this pig’s blood on my hands. But let’s be clear about this. You’re as guilty as he is.” Manuel was still upset but not so agressive as before. “Me, a faggot? How disrespectful! That’s what happens when I let rabble in my car!”
“I suppose he must have heard it somewhere,” said Damian maliciously. “Are you a queer or not? Listen, I don’t care. Everybody can do his own thing as long as he respects others. ”
“Now you and your little fucking friend are working my last nerve!” Manuel was livid, looking like he would explode at any moment. “So you’re going to be on his side? Look Damian. I’m not responsable for my actions. Neither you nor anybody calls me a queer!”
“It’s a joke.” Damian interrupted before he went on. “You still don’t know me buddy. It’s a misunderstanding. You shouldn’t pay any attention to that foolishness. Diego has you mixed up with somebody else. He just says the first thing that comes out of his mouth but later, he’s sorry. He’s really not a bad guy.”
Manuel just looked him straight in the eyes as though warning him it was the first and last time that joke would be played on him.
“I told you we are not buddies! And if there is no respect, there’s no trip. I’ve got too many years on you to have you treat me like a buddy! And your shitty friend better not say one word or I’m not responsable for my actions.”
“Right, Right on! That’s the way it will be, like you say!” Damian gave in to calm him down. “I’ll have a talk with him and it won’t happen again. OK? Anyone can make a mistake.”
“Well he can just go fuck with his mother and not with me.”
Diego waited in the car. The two got in in complete silence. The atmosphere was tense and nobody dared to say a word. Manuel held on to the steering wheel with a brutal grip hurting his hands. He kept his gaze fixed on the road searching his mind for an explanation of how Diego could know his chilling and bitter dream. No, this mess would not end well. Besides, how did he know that he lived in the Pastora neighborhood if he hadn’t been born yet in those years? Those were pleasant memories because his childhood on the island was the only good thing he retained from that time period: Running on the beach, the old farm house, jumping off the Zuazo bridge to cool off from the heat.
With those thoughts he began to pass a truck that was moving very slowly. On looking in the rear view mirror to make sure no other vehicle was passing from behind, he saw Damian’s face. For a few seconds he studied it without seeing in it anything abnormal. It looked like any other face. Suddenly a cold, distressing chill shook his whole body. Diego’s face looked nothing like the face of the boy submerged in the cistern. Of course not! It was clear as a bell because he remembered it. Nevertheless there was something in common between the two which was unusual. The immense mole from eyebrow to eyebrow. He watched it in the mirror and they were identical. That’s why he remembered the boy because it was impossible to miss such a striking mole. His legs began to shake uncontrollably. Damian quickly noticed.
“What’s wrong Manuel? Are you sick?” He looked at his legs. “Should we stop?” Damian worried about the road. “We should stop for a few minutes. You’re shaking! Do you need help?”
“No, no...”He tried to minimize the importance of it. “I’m almost sure it’s that damn sausage from your buddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had poisoned us. I’ve known other sons of bitches like that.”
“And other jerk-offs too!” answered Diego who until then had avoided saying a word.
“Shit on your ancestors boy! Be very careful because if Manuel threatens a piece of shit he means it.” The trembling hadn’t gone away. “I said: not a word from you. Is that clear? You don’t exist for me.”
“Well now he’s getting nervous,” Damian said to his friend as he winked at him.
“Manuel, Do you want to stop for a few minutes? You need to calm down before you get back behind the wheel. Let’s have a drink!”
“No. It’s going away. Me, a queer! Haven’t I been with women all my life? Not one, You hear? Not one has even dared to even look at another man while I’ve been with her. That’s right, I had them standing in line! You can call my house at any hour and my Maria will answer the phone...Me a queer? With this fist I’ve got here...Don’t let me hear another word from you on this trip!” The trembling was going away little by little. “First that little dream trick and now this. I’m the imbecile from being so generous.” He spoke loudly. “Of course, he stands by the side of the road with that sweet little face that wouldn’t hurt a flea. And some poor soul who feels sorry for him, lets him in his car and he pays him back this way. Queer? Me? Queer? I’ll shit on your ancestors kid. Let’s go. Let’s go. And I don’t know why I don’t kick you out right now because you are the dregs.”
“If you keep shitting on my ancestors,” injected Diego, “Nobody will be able to walk in the cemetary”
“So you’re a clown too? Well who the fuck do you think you are? Didn’t I tell you I wanted you quiet for the whole trip? I can’t take any more. I’m just going to stop right here and kick you out. This creep is a son of a bitch!”
“Gentlemen! Make a truce!” Intervened Damian. “Don’t get me upset with you,” he said to Diego, winking again. “You should be a little grateful to Manuel, after all he was generous enough to give you a ride. I know you are impulsive and you say things without thinking but Manuel is our buddy and he deserves to be treated better. Tell him you’re sorry and let’s leave that incident in the dust!”
“I’m NOT your buddy! Tell your friend to shut up because I swear to god that I’ll kick him out for the slightest thing. He’d better not even think of saying a word to me...He doesn’t have enough class to be able to speak to me. I don’t want rabble around me.”
“Come on Manuel, in your honor I’m going to fix a fat joint so fat even a Moor couldn’t jump over it. You’ll fly over the rainbow, you’ll see.”
“I like that better. Me, a queer? Could that possibly happen to me? I don’t know how I could contain myself. Do you still have a stash?” he asked Damian.
“Oh how I miss having a bottle of whiskey. Fuck! A good belt is what I need, not a damn joint.”
“There’s enough for two big ones.” Damian answered.
While he prepared the joint, Damian tried to figure out how his friend knew so many details about the dream. Even he was surprised at how accurate his statements were.
“Listen Diego, I’m intrigued,” he said discreetly in a low voice. “How did you guess about the boy in the cistern? I swear there was a moment where you even scared me. You are a genius.”
“Easy, bud, Even if I had done it on purpose it couldn’t have come out any better. I got up to piss in the bushes.”
“To piss?” Damian Damian was shocked.
“Fuck, to pee. I have to watch my words with you. You’ve always been so judgemental about the way we talk.”
“Well you’ve never been that refined. I went to a private school and you learned in the streets.”
“Well, there’s that...I got up to pee and on going by the car I heard a shout: ‘What’s that boy doing submerged in the cess pool?’ At first that fucker chilled my gizzard but right away I saw he was dreaming. When I came back he was saying some incoherent things I couldn’t understand but I did hear clearly: ‘grab him, he’s a queer!’ I didn’t pay much attention to those phrases until we got up and pulled that stunt. It was lucky I had to get up to pee in the middle of the night,” he said with a smirk. “And about that town, those are my own inventions. If you listen carefully, this guy has a Cadiz accent. He tries to talk refined but then he gets worked up his accent comes out.”
“You’re awesome buddy. Of course this hash is excellent, Don’t you think? Too bad there is so little left. Even so, I’ve fixed a hunk of a joint and that’ll have Manuel feeling no pain.”
“Careful! With that fat joint he might smoke it all by himself and if it hits him wrong he might leave us both in the road.”
“He can shove it. He’s as cowardly as he thinks he is tough. He’s an easy mark and I’ll get him out of the way as soon as I need to. For now let’s just play around with him. Diego, I know you. No provocations. It’s too early to push him to the limit. I need him to trust us again so we have to con him. ”
Although he didn’t want to think about it, Manuel couldn’t keep his mind from going back to the dream. He wasn’t supersticious and never believed in prophesies or ghosts, or reincarnation. He said that was just cheap witchcraft to separate marks from their dough. Nevertheless, this time he was scared, and only calmed down when Diego was out of sight. Even his nickname gave him pause, and chills. The nostalgia for the neighborhood patio was huge. Many hot nights they would sit in the doorways of their homes until the wee hours of the morning while the adults would tell stories of smuggling through the conduits of Zaporito, of mermaids on the rocks of Sancti Petri Castle, and when it was time to celebrate something they would sing and dance around the cistern until they would fall down and burst. Without noticing they were travelling at a very high speed and Diego had become very uneasy.
“Go slower you old drunk! The Yanks haven’t landed yet!”
“You afraid of speed?” Manuel’s reveries of nostalgia returned to the present.
“Afraid? No...panic, dread, terror or whatever you want to call it, but, Yo mama! Go slower!”
“Hang on, we’re going to fly. Let the rabble feel in his bones the pleasure of speed in a Mercedes!”
As he pressed the accelerator, a sadistic smile began to bloom on his lips. In the mirror he noted with satisfaction as Diego’s face changed strangely. He had a blatant fear of speed and the fact Manuel had discovered it was his undoing. He had taken it as a personal vendetta because of what had gone on and now he experienced pure joy seeing him suffer. He was infinitely ghoulish and the last straw was that Damian watched the two without trying to intervene.
Manuel wasn’t happy until his car reached its maximum speed, but just at the moment he was ready to back off the accelerator Diego opened the rear door on his side. Before Damian or Manuel could react he rolled spectacularly onto the asphalt, disappearing into the weeds that reached the ditch. Manuel stomped on the brake like he never imagined he could do. Because of the high speed, the car stopped quite a distance from the incident.
“You damn son of a bitch!” shouted Damian.
“He needed that! I let a loco in my car who takes the opportunity to announce my death and call me a queer and I should go fuck myself. So if I put the hammer down in my car...Yes! In-my-car” remarked Manuel. “I’m a son of a bitch. He jumped out himself, nobody pushed him. Your buddy is messed up and its not my fault.”
“Stop making excuses and lets go look for him.”
“No way! I’m not getting out of the car. We’ll wait for a while to see if he comes back by himself. I was hired to drive, not to be anybody’s babysitter.
“That’s inhuman! What if he’s hurt bad? Aren’t you going to save him?”
“That kind of cat doesn’t die. And if he does, let them bury him. He’s fucked with this world quite enough.”
Both stayed in the car but in silence; unmoving. After five endless minutes Damian couldn’t stand it any longer and got out. He didn’t even shut the door.
“This will be on your conscience! I’m going to look for him. If he hasn’t come back something bad has happened.”
At that Manuel showed indifference and decided to stay in his seat. If Diego didn’t appear, one less problem. Even better, because at any gas station he could notify the warden and that way earn a big reward. With that money a big part of his financial straits would disappear. It takes a real brute to jump out of a car at that speed, he thought. He was crazy. From the moment he saw him he saw he wasn’t really normal.
He lit a cigarette and turned on the radio to distract his mind which was increasingly obsessive. He tuned from one station to another without finding what he was looking for; and really, he himself didn’t really know what that was. But deep inside he wanted to pacify his tormented conscience. Then he brusquely threw the cigarette out of the window and right away, probably out of habit, lit another. After looking several times in the rear view mirror, he disgustedly stubbed out the new butt in the vehicle’s ash tray. He got out and shut the door firmly.
“Just where would I look for that clown?” he thought out loud while he moved deeply into the same direction Damian had taken.
For a good while he walked zig zagging with his eyes fixed on the ground in case he saw any blood that would provide a clue to find Diego. For an hour there was no sign of either of the friends. Tired and desperate from the fruitless search he decided to return to the car when behind some bushes he thought he heard a slight sound.
He thought it might be a rabbit warren and hurried to separate the bushes with his hands to satisfy his curiosity. It wasn’t a warren or a rabbit. A cute playful shepard puppy was looking at him with frightened eyes. And at its side a stinking glob of chewed tobacco, unmistakable sign that Sent-up had been here. He froze. A diabolical thought ran through his mind and his body was stiff with a psychic paralisis. Although he did not want to, a greater psychic force obliged him to look farther. In his titanic effort to avoid doing so he was overcome, and mechanically, almost robotically, he advanced a few steps and looked, where he never wanted to see, a couple of yards farther on. There was no doubt, there was an irrigation pond built level with the ground. He instantly felt his legs shaking. He tried to leave but could not. Or shout either. Or cry, or even look away. With footsteps so small it seemed he was not moving at all he advanced toward the edge of the well. He closed his eyes. Slowly he bent his head and again opened his clouded peepers. He knew it would be ugly but not so much. Because a dead man doesn’t see. But this one did. He looked fixedly at him even arrogantly, as though daring him to face death in the same way he had done. He knew his death was near and he didn’t mind if he found it, looked for it,... even courted it.
Diego’s cadaver looked him in the eye, indicating that in twenty four hours he, too, would die. He had predicted two deaths. And in his dream he had witnessed his burial. Destiny was already written. Manuel thought that now he had to show bravery, and to have enough composure to meet death in his own car. He was sure that the site was there, and not anywhere else.
Suddenly he fell, unconscious, to the ground. With a great effort Damian took him a few yards from the site and unhurriedly sat down and waited for him to regain consciousness. A bit later Manuel opened his eyes, unsettled. His head appeared to be bothering him.
“Did you see him?” he stammered. “Did you see him? You did see him? Fuck”
“Yes, it was him,” answered Damian evenly. “Shall we continue our trip?”
“Are we going to just leave him there? Aren’t you going to bury him? He was your friend. How can you be so cold-blooded?”
The situation became disquieting.
“The two of us could dig a hole and”
“Calm down. I pulled him out onto dry ground. Some farm worker from around here will bury him when he finds the body. This is the best resting place.” Responded Damian dryly. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be in this place any longer,” he said lowly.”I never liked the smell of death.”
“Yes, yes that’s better.”
Damian helped him to get up. Manuel walked in front fear throughout his body, and looking back, so the walk went slowly.
Suddenly, perhaps broken up by nerves Manuel grabbed a loose branch among the foliage and went running in the direction of the pool where Diego had drowned. Once there he started beating with ineffective blows with all the agression he was able to muster at the time.
“Get up you son of a bitch! You aren’t dead, you just want to fuck with me. Get up!” He repeated, very upset, and without stopping striking the water with his branch because Diego’s body was no longer there.
Understanding the situation, and since he, too, was affected by the event, Damian was in no hurry to approach the site again. He grabbed Manuel by the arm and, nearly carrying him on his shoulders, they returned to the car. Once inside, Manuel desperately looked for the bottle without finding it, since some time before he had finished it. He had to settle for a cigarette to settle his nerves.