Perdido. Rick Collignon

      “She was a güera,” Delfino said to Will, who was squatted down a few yards from where Delfino and Felipe sat. Will could feel the sun through his shirt and against the back of his neck. Delfino squinted beneath the brim of his cap. “She was an Anglo girl. Pale skin, more pale than yours, and her hair was…” He looked at Felipe.

      “Blond?” Felipe said.

      “Yes, blond, and short like she thought she was a boy. If I want to, I can remember this morning very well. None of it has left me, even after so many years. I was a younger man then. In my fifties.” Will picked up a small stone and flicked it in the direction of the hog pen. Delfino pointed his chin at him. “How old are you?” he asked.

      “Not fifty,” Will said.

      “You think fifty’s old? Wait until you’re in your seventies. Fifty is like childhood.” He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself out of the chair. “Maybe someday I’ll say that about seventy,” he said and walked off, stiff legged, around the house. A few seconds later, Will heard the front door of the house slam.

      “Why do you insult the man?” Felipe said.

      “All I said was that I wasn’t fifty.”

      “You make me bring you here and you call him an old man. Worse, you say he was an old man twenty-five years ago.” Felipe closed his eyes and shook his head. “You cabrón, Will.”

      Will picked up another stone and tossed it gently at him. It bounced off the side of the house, a few inches from Felipe’s ear. “I didn’t call Delfino an old man,” he said. “Sometimes I get tired of all this. Where am I from? How long have I been here? How old am I? You don’t have to listen to any of that.”

      “He knows where I’m from,” Felipe said. “And quit with the rocks.”

      Will stood up and stretched his legs as Delfino came tottering his way around the house. He was carrying three cans of pop still looped together in plastic. He held them out to Will.

      “Take one,” he said. “They’re cold.”

      Will thanked him and jerked one loose. Delfino pulled a second can free and handed it to Felipe. Then he sat down in his chair and leaned back, resting his head against the adobe wall. He popped open the can, took a long drink, and belched deeply.

      “I was on my way to La Prada,” Delfino said. “To get potatoes. Back then, the fastest way was north and then west to the river. You crossed that bridge and in one or two hours you were in La Prada.” He drank from the can again and turned to look at Felipe. “You know that road, no?”

      “We were there yesterday,” Felipe said. “Nothing much has changed since I was small, and it’s still the fastest way to La Prada.”

      Delfino shook his head. “Eee, those roads were bad. The holes would get so big we would drive around them until we made a new road.” He looked at Will, who sipped at his pop. It was a little colder than warm, but not much. “There was no county to fix them,” Delfino went on. “You drove with a shovel always and hoped the rain wouldn’t get you. You had to watch out for cows, también. You drove that road slow. It took you a long time to cross that valley if you didn’t want to hurt your truck.” Delfino raised his pop can to his mouth and finished it off. He belched again and dropped the can to the ground.

      “You want another one?” he asked Will.

      “No, gracias,” Will said. Delfino looked at Felipe, who shook his head.

      “I left early that morning,” Delfino said. “Before light. You know that road? How it rises before it comes to the river and then dips down to meet it? You don’t see the river until you get to it. I was in that old Chevy pickup I used to have. The blue one. You remember? I sold it to Melvin Ortega when his boy finished high school. Maybe seven years ago.”

      Felipe bent forward and dragged his fingers across the dirt. He picked up something and tossed it aside aimlessly. “Oh, sí,” he said. “The one with no bumpers.”

      “It had bumpers,” Delfino said. “It had bumpers when I sold it.” He reached up and rubbed the side of his face. “Maybe it didn’t,” he said.

      Will glanced over his shoulder. The pigs lay stretched out on their sides against the cedar posts where there was still some shade. Their hides were dusty and splotched black in places with dirt. They grunted softly, whistling out air. Even from where Will crouched, he could see the flies working the air above the pen. He looked back at Delfino, who was staring straight ahead at the mountains.

      “I got to the top of the ridge,” he said, “thinking I would stop and take a piss. And I saw her.” He looked over at Felipe. “I never seen such a thing. I thought my eyes were playing tricks. I remember wiping my hand on the windshield, like that would make her go away. She looked like a little boy’s toy that flew away and got stuck. She looked like she didn’t belong there so much that at first I couldn’t tell what I was seeing.” Delfino turned to Will. “I can still see her very well,” he said. “And I’ll tell you this, that was the last time I drove that damn road.

      “It was light, but there wasn’t sun yet. The air was pale. You know how it is early in the morning. I don’t know why, but I left the truck parked in the middle of the road at the top of the ridge and I walked down to the river. There wasn’t no wind. Some cows eating the grass on the bank of the river. It was quiet, quiet. The cows just chewing and watching me walk down. You could see the rope, how it went around her neck and running up to those… those… Cómo se dice?”

      “Trestles,” Felipe said.

      “Trestles.” Delfino lowered his head, the skin folding on the upper part of his neck. Will could see patches of whiskers, white against his skin, that he’d missed while shaving. Delfino folded his hands in his lap. “She was naked,” he said. “She wasn’t wearing nothing. Not even any shoes. Her skin was like chalk, it was so white. I walked down that hill like I was walking into some strange painting God had made in the night.”

      Delfino took off his cap and turned to Felipe, who was staring down at the ground between his feet. “She didn’t look dead,” he said. “Not like you would have thought. Her eyes were open. Her arms were loose at her sides. Like this,” and he dropped both his arms and tilted his head a bit to one side.

      Felipe leaned back and blew some air out of his mouth. “Pobrecita,” he said.

      “Malo, no?” Delfino said. “Eee, you should have seen her. Her face looked like she didn’t want to be dead. Like she wanted to open her mouth and say something. And not to the cows, neither. To me. I got to the foot of the bridge and stopped and stared at her, and one of those shitty cows bawled out, and I swear, every hair on my body stood up and danced. I went back up that road backwards, a lot faster than I came down.” Delfino stretched out his leg and moved his foot around as if something itched inside his boot.

      “I sat in the truck and watched her, waiting for someone to come. After a little while, I saw that she was turning around. Slow, even with no wind. Turning round and round over the river.” He bent over awkwardly and picked up a stone. He tossed it up and down a few times and then gave out a loud shriek.

      “Damn