by Francisco Attié
Iriqui is a very small town, in what some like to call the middle of nowhere. But that’s not exactly true, because the middle of nowhere, by definition, cannot be a known place. Only a lost man can be nowhere, and then the moment he realizes he’s nowhere, he has found himself and must, therefore, be somewhere.
Every once in a while we get visitors. It’s usually someone who’s gotten lost driving through the caatinga, and they always thank God they have found us, even though God had nothing to do with it. They ask for water and gas and we give them water but we don’t have gas because we don’t have cars, so we offer them a tour of the cemetery, which they tend to refuse. We try to explain that this is a very important cemetery—it’s the one that inspired Odorico Paraguaçu of Sucupira. But that tends to freak them out because they thought Odorico was just a character on a soap opera.
We tell the ones who get here in the afternoon to stay the night because there are bandits on the roads and they don’t want to risk being murdered over some jewelry. So they go to sleep and we bury them before the sun comes up. It may seem dishonest, but I promise, we’re fair-minded people. We are only following our boss’s orders. The children we tend to spare because he told us that was okay. But we can’t save them all, and burying children is the worst; they wake up before we’re through, and we’re forced to smother their screams with dirt.
This morning a brown-haired girl walked into our bakery. It was very early so most of us were still asleep. She came up to the counter and asked for coffee. She was wearing a spotless white top which nicely amplified her dark skin. Out front, she had tied her horse to the building’s square column. We asked her name and she told us she’d like to see our boss.
“He doesn’t come here often, ma’am.”
She exchanged a silver coin for her coffee and walked out, stopping just outside the door to gaze across the land. Through the remaining slits around her silhouette, the brown-almost-grey-almost-white desert landscape glowed stark as the light began to fade. Rain came over Iriqui and we stepped outside to open our water tanks. Lightning struck deep in the flats, bursting a tree into flames. Unbothered, the girl finished her coffee and got on her horse.
“Do you think he’ll come now?”
“Honestly, ma’am, he hasn’t been here in years.”
“I’d like to be buried in your cemetery.”
“You’ll have to come back in the afternoon, ma’am. It’s not your time yet.”
She thanked us and began to ride away. We shot her in the back before she could get too far and buried her after the rain stopped.
Francisco Attié. Writer. Born in São Paulo. Has been published in Lodown Magazine and Abend(b)rot in Berlin, and in The West 4th Street Review in New York. Senior in Global Liberal Studies, with a concentration in Law, Ethics, History and Religion. Digs movies and music.