Missionaries

then, she is not saved? And Father Eustacio said, No, which pleased Abelito very much. And after that day Abelito nodded his head when the missionaries talked about the personal Jesus who would come to them and make them born again, but in his secret heart he remained faithful to the terrifying Holy Christ of Cunaviche.
Some days Abelito’s grandfather would take him and his smart sister, Maria, and teach them how to carve boats from chachajo, a good hard wood that also makes the best spinning tops, and they would put them in the river and watch them float downstream. Abelito’s grandfather said all water flows to the ocean, and that one day he would go there to die, the place where everything goes in the end.
Maria would carve her boats from balsa, which is easier to work, but Abelito carved from harder wood because he wanted his boats to reach the ocean. Abelito’s grandfather had been a lot of places, and told Abelito marvelous things about the lands far, far downriver, out of the mountains and into the coastal regions, where the people were lazy and stupid and spoke Spanish that sounded like they had pebbles in their mouths, where there were snakes that could kill a steer with one bite, and men with skin black as coal, and many other marvelous things.
The first time Abelito met death was with Marta, his beautiful sister, who got sick and neither the priest nor the missionaries could save her, because she’d been hexed with the evil eye. After her death, Abelito’s father gave the children bracelets with a tiny wooden cross hidden in the weaving. This will protect you, he said. At the time, Abelito didn’t understand why anyone would put the evil eye on anyone else, let alone on someone like Marta, who was so beautiful that everybody was always talking about it, what a beautiful child. Abelito would walk through the town looking carefully into the eyes of the old women to see if they were good or evil, but he never could tell the difference, and could never understand what pleasure anyone would get from killing children.
Abelito’s father liked to play games with his children. “Bear” was when he would stand by the river and growl and they would run up and try to tickle him and he would grab them and throw them into the water. “Horse” was when they would climb on his back and he would run down the street shouting “Jijiji!” Abelito would also play cinco huecos with some of the other children from Sona. They would use a stick to draw a big square in the street, and then other, smaller squares inside it. Each child would draw a little letter in each square. An A for Abelito. M for Maria, who was terrible at the game. F for Franklin, who was strong and skillful and who liked to boast and taunt the other players before throwing the ball. Then they’d turn, hold a ball in one hand and a little stick in the other, and throw the little stick over their head. If it landed in their square, they’d try to get the others out by hitting them with the ball. I don’t remember who came up with that game, but it was Abelito’s favorite. Sometimes men would drive through on motorcycles and ruin the squares with their tires, and none of the children were supposed to say anything or even look mad, because all their parents had told them these men were from the paracos.
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More than the games, though, Abelito liked working with his father on their house. Ever since Abelito could remember, they had worked on the house. As a toddler, he’d watched his father hack out a small patch in the jungle. This is where your mother will cook, he’d say, pointing to a square of dirt. This is where you and your sisters will sleep.
Then, brick by brick, he built a wall. Whenever he had money, he would buy a cheap block of cement and the children helped him mix it with water to form bricks, and he would lay them around the perimeter. Boys become men by working with their fathers, and girls become women by tending the fire, but in Abelito’s family everyone worked with his father on the house, brother and sisters alike. The work went slow at first, but as soon as Abelito’s father finished the big room they moved in, all of them, so they could stop paying rent. And as soon as they stopped paying rent, Abelito’s father had more money for cement, and the work went faster.
The missionary school opened up around the time they finished the kitchen, and Abelito’s parents sent him and his sisters to get an education. Abelito’s first year there was the year many dead bodies floated down the river, and the school closed for a month, and Abelito’s father stopped playing Bear with his children. Then the bodies stopped, and the children saw fewer and fewer paracos, and the school reopened.
When Abelito was eight, he saw his first guerrilleros. These were the men that the paracos supposedly fought. He was with his father in the boat and saw a group of ten men and four women on the far side. They wore uniforms and carried long guns Abelito had not seen before. They waved Abelito over and asked him to ferry them across and he did. When they left, Abelito’s father told him, “When men with guns ask for something, there are no favors. You only obey.”
The leader of the guerrilla was called the Carpenter, after Saint Joseph, and people said the name came from the pity he showed to the children he turned into orphans. He never killed children, they said, even though he ran the risk of them seeking revenge. And sometimes he would make a big show of giving children some of the money he had stolen from their parents. There were