I half think that the people of Ajoya who have threatened to tie me down or force feed me alagüita so that I won’t leave the village, must be making pedamentos to the rain gods. Every time I prepare to leave for the high country, it pours! My initial departure for Verano in December was delayed for weeks and weeks because of the cabanuelas which commenced the morning after I arrived in Ajoya, and continued with the heaviest and most prolonged winter rains that the region had known in years. Now in las secas, the long spring draught, during which, according to both the villagers and the weather statistics, it never rains, it has rained twice. The first rain fell the day before Teodoro was to come to take me to Saus. Black clouds mushroomed above the mountains in the east and spread our way. Lightning began to flash, thunder to resound and children to shout and dance. Then the rain came, pounding at the dust. It lasted for two and a half days, and three days after it stopped, when I was just about to give up Teodoro for lost, he arrived and we left… a week late. The second rain of las secas was brief, but heavy, and fell the Saturday that Dimas was going to bring the mules to take me to Verano again to notify the villagers of our vaccination program. Then, when at last the sun broke through the clouds and Dimas left to bring the mules, another delay was in store for me.

It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. I was trying my best to get my medicines sorted into three groups for stations in Ajoya, Bordontita and Verano, and packed for mule transport. Little Goyo and the Chavarins, especially Julia, were helping me. But we made very slow progress as the stream of patients was almost unremittint and at times I had to leave for house calls. We were arranging the medicines in Bordontita in a large box when Goyo’s father arrived, pale and out of breath. He said he needed to talk to me in private and we went out into the yard behind the house. Goyo, who misses nothing, followed us.

“Es que mi hermano, José …”, began Remedios, “del Arroyo Grande en la vieja casa mía…. ¿Lo conoce?”

“¡Como no!”, I replied. Across my mind flashed the image of José Reyes, Goyo’s young uncle with the laughing green eyes, who had recently come to ask for more Thyroxin for his three year old cretinistic child. I recalled the radiant pleasure in his eyes as he told me that at last the child showed signs of improvement. I recalled, also, the warmth and welcome he and his young wife had given me when Goyo and I had first arrived, on burro-back, at the tiny house where they lived, the same house where Goyo had been born. I remembered the venison which José’s pretty and child-like wife, Benancia, had grilled for me and José’s pleasure at having meat in the house from his kill in el monte three days before. Yes, I knew Remedios’s brother. “Muy buena gente”, I said.

Remedios took a deep breath. “Pues es que mi hermano José mató a su senora.” Goyo’s mouth dropped open, and he quickly shut it again.

“¿Cuando?” I asked, scarcely believing what I heard.

“¡Ahora!” replied Remedios. And he proceeded to tell me how half an hour before, Goyo’s 14 year old brother, Martín, the only witness, had come running with the news. Martín was in a state of shock, and the account was not very clear. Being Sunday and a school holiday, Martín had gone to their old home in the Arroyo Grande to bring some papayas from la huerta, and had been visiting with his Aunt Benancia when José arrived, thoroughly borracho. From this point on the story became confused. Remedios way not sure how it happened, but José had shot and killed his wife with his rifle, more or less by accident, it seemed. Martín had fled in terror.

“¿Es cierto que esta muerta?” I asked.

“Es cierto,” replied Remedios.

Having told me the news, Remedios hesitated, confused. I found myself wondering why he had come all the way to Ajoya to tell me. He was obviously at a loss as to what to do and had come to me for advice and support. It was up to him to notify the family of the girl, yet he and her family were on bad terms and he feared the family would echar la culpa (throw the blame) at him. El síndico also had to be notified, and José would be arrested, perhaps mistreated, and would have to serve a prison term. I found out later that there was a chance that Remedios, as his brother, might be arrested, too.

Remedios agreed that the best thing would be for José to turn himself in. I offered to go with him to the síndico, as (he), José Mercado, respects me. (In the past week I had treated four members of his family, including his young daughter for dog-bite the day before.)

Remedios would set out for the Arroyo Grande at once, try to convince his brother to come in to Ajoya and report to the síndico, and then inform the girl’s parents, in that order, so that her family would not have a chance for revenge (except possibly on Remedios, which was the possibility which Goyo feared, as he told me later.)

Remedios left, and Goyo and I went back to work with the patients, acting as if nothing had happened. I was marveling at how little Goyo reacted, for I knew he was very close to both his uncle and Benencia. It was not until I was called out to a sick house, and we were returning alone, that suddenly he caught hold of my hand and spilled out his feeling and fears. Yet he did not shed a tear. I have never seen him cry.

Returning to the house, I was met by the wife of Benigno Ríos, who asked me to come see her child who had fallen and struck his head on a stone. I told her to try to get some ice from Fidel, and that I would be along soon.

I finished labeling medicine for la gripa for two patients and as I was about to leave, the step father of Benencia arrived, panting, and informed me that they were bringing his step daughter on a stretcher from the Arroyo Grande, where she had just been shot. As chance would have it, they were taking her to the same house where I was presently heading to see the child with the bruised forehead.

So, Benencia wasn’t dead after all! I put some medicines and implements in my bag and set off. The stretcher-bearers and I arrived at the house simultaneously.

The bullet had entered her right buttock, near the base of the spine, and the bloodshed had been profuse, but had subsided. From the entry point of the bullet, I had feared for the worst, but when at last I could examine her more thoroughly (the sedative I had given her taking effect) I discovered that the bullet had passed from one side of the buttock to the other and lodged just under the skin. I considered removing it myself, but decided it was better to take her to Dr. Feliz in San Ignacio.

As fortune would have it, Antonio was in Ajoya with his camión, preparing to leave for San Ignacio with another load of swine. We carried the girl to the truck and put her on a single bench in front of the pigs. Her mother and step father and I accompanied her. Goyo begged his father, who had returned ahead of the stretcher, to let him go along, and his father agreed.

The trip went well, for I had given Benencia a hypnotic dose of sedative before we left.

We arrived in San Ignacio to find the gates of the hospitál locked with a padlock. We searched the town for the doctor, only to learn that he had left that morning in his car, but that the head nurse was asleep in the hospital. We roused her by shouting and she came out sleepily. However, she did not have the key. We had to hunt up the gardener who lived in the street below. At last, a few minutes after midnight, we managed to get the gate open, and at that moment the doctor arrived, in his new Chevrolet convertible driven by Paul. They had been enjoying themselves in Culiacán. The doctor looked tired and not at all happy to see us. We carried Benencia in on a stretcher and put her on a bed in an empty ward. The doctor gave her a sleeping pill and the rest of us slept there with her.

Benencia woke early, hurting, and I gave her a sedative to tide her over until the staff appeared. When her parents left the room and Goyo was still asleep, she took the initiative to tell me what had happened.

The morning before, José had left their small but in the Arroyo Grande to hunt for food, for they had nothing to eat. However José did not return until the middle of the afternoon, and when he came he came drunk with a bottle of vino in his hand without food. Benencia protested and began to weep. José, no doubt finding his own guilt hard enough to bear, told her to shut up. She continued to weep and he took down a palo to beat her. Benencia fled, running toward the stream between the trees. The next thing she knew there was a rifle shot and a bullet whistled past her. She stopped and was turning around to cry out, “¡No me friegues! ¡Mejor azotarme!” when the second bullet struck her and she fell, spouting a small fountain of blood.

The next thing she knew, she was in José’s arms, and he was weeping.

“¿Porque me fregaste?” she whimpered.

”¡No quise! ¡No quise!” he wept. “Iba a asustarte, no más!” (I was only trying to scare you).

“¡Pero ya me fregaste de veras!”

People began to gather, drawn by the shot, and someone took off to notify her parents, who live in Naranjo, about two kilometers downstream. When her relatives began to arrive, José left hurriedly, saying that he was going to gather together the money to cure her. No doubt, he feared for his life.

I asked Benencia if she wanted to go on living with José if she had the chance. She slowly shook her head, “Ya no…”

Two beautiful young people! To me, from the first, they had seemed very beautiful, and to me, they remain so. I had known them for their love and for their joy in the face of hardship, for their tenderness and concern for their children. I suffer for them as if they had both been killed, and yet they are both alive, and must go on, separately. Yet, I wonder how—and where.

“I have seen the same thing happen many times,” Goyo’s father had said to me. “That is why I don’t drink anymore.” *

At 10 A.M., the doctor operated (rather clumsily, I thought). The novacain did not take at all. Within a couple of weeks Benencia should be, at least physically, nearly as good as new.