“For the love of God, señor, say something. I know you’re
there.”
It smells sour where Rosa awaits the dawn. The only light seeps through
a crack under the bolted door. She slumps on a hard cot.
“Have mercy on an old woman,” she pleads. “Just
say that you can hear me.”
The guard clears his throat, spits.
“I hear you, gringa,” he growls. “Will you shut
up or do you want your miserable life ended now?”
No, she thinks. I still have time.
He might be bluffing. There might have been some reason for the trial
and formal sentence. Otherwise she’d have been shot with the
others as they fled. She knows the leader who spared her life. His
wife cleans Rosa’s house. She has given their children piñatas
every Christmas. Yet he’d dragged her before the revolutionary
tribunal instead of helping her escape.
“I am not your enemy,” she says quietly. “I am a
daughter of the working class. My grandfather rode with Pancho Villa.”
“You’re a slumlord,” he hisses. “The plumbing
hasn’t worked in years.”
“Dios mio,” she gasps. She knows that voice. He is one
of her tenants. “I’m being murdered because of the plumbing?
Jorge, do you know how hard it is to find a plumber in this town?”
“Tell it to your maker, Señora. You reap what you sow.”
“I am very sorry,” she says. “I should have tried
harder.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“I understand.”
She knows it isn’t about the plumbing. Her number is up. Her
oldest nightmare has sprung to life and it will be her death. She
will be blindfolded at dawn and shoved against a wall. Ten campesinos
will gun her down, zealots who see her as vermin — how else
could one squeeze the trigger? But I’m good for another 20 years,
she thinks. Anger rises like bile in her throat. She swallows hard.
“Jorge, I don’t want to wait alone for death.”
“Would you like a priest?”
“Yes, por favor.” Though she has never been inside the
church she does want a priest. A rescuer? No, not likely. One last
vital conversation? Some solace? What if there’s a God after
all, an afterlife? No, not likely. Nothing but lights out, her father
used to say. He was dead before he was her age of a massive coronary,
executed with scant warning.
She hears the guard shuffle away and pick up a phone, but can’t
make out what he’s saying.
She waits. He doesn’t come back. “Jorge?” No answer.
She waits. She counts friends and relatives back in the States, who
might miss her, who will not. She has long regretted not having children.
Perhaps no one will care. But she is still alive. “It is not
my time to die,” she moans. She gets up and bangs and bangs
on the door. “I want the priest,” she shouts.
“Shut up,” he shouts back. “Do you know how hard
it is to rouse a priest in this town?”
This is a low-fat fiction workshop story based on the
seed “executed at dawn.” It was shaped by troubled dreams
and readings in history and has exactly 500 words.
