On the desolate plains of Montecito, my brother lay suffering from a gruesome disease. The oozing abscesses on his swollen flesh had long since turned purple. His body writhed upon soiled, crumpled sheets in the disorder of his own making. After weeks—perhaps months, I can’t remember—his diet of whiskey and prayer began to wear on me. Copal was losing his mind. He begged me to hitch his mule to the buckboard and ride to the telegraph office, which did not exist, hoping God had sent a message of healing or redemption.
“Of course, brother. Rest, for it’ll be a while before I return.”
I ignored his unhinged request, spending my absent hours in the shed, finding relief from the weight of my brother’s suffering in the arms of his wife.
Upon my false return, I walked back into the house of sickness and woke Copal.
“No answer yet from heaven. I’ll ride again tomorrow if you wish. There’s bound to be good news.”
“Don’t bother, Teofilo. I have a better idea,” he murmured, then drifted back into fitful sleep.
***
Marisol and I sat drinking pulque in the kitchen. Her arms rested on the table. I placed my hands over hers, studying her honey-colored skin and hazel eyes that turned yellow in the afternoon light.
“He’s not long for this world, Mari. I don’t feel responsible. Neither should you. He paid the price for the way he lived. It’s you I am concerned about.”
“If that is so, show kindness. I know of his sins, but he never deceived me. Perhaps that is why I fell in love with him. I was taught to shun immoral men, but my heart would not listen.”
Copal called us into his bedroom. He insisted that we bring him to the church in the village of El Sueño to seek the help of the Virgin, who would intercede on his behalf.
“El Sueño? I’ve not heard of that place,” I said.
“Maybe fifty kilometers south.”
“Desert rats have more sense than to face the peril of these scorching plains, brother.”
“I must go.” His tumid eyelids drooped as they battled fatigue. “My condition is getting worse,” he said, closing his fluttering eyelids as Marisol dabbed his forehead with a towel soaked in cool well water. “The Virgin listens to all men in need of healing.”
“Isn’t that what a wife is for, Copal? Be reasonable. The Virgin is an it, not a who. We’ll never get there alive in this heat. Show some pity for us, if not for yourself.”
Copal gestured for Marisol to hold his blistered hand, which she did.
“Would you deny me hope, dear wife?”
“No, husband, never.”
“What about you, Teo?” growled Copal. “Have you forgotten when we rode together, the wild adventures of our youth, taking whatever we desired? The same shit that runs through my veins runs through yours.”
Marisol gasped. “No, mi amor, your blood is no different from that of all men.”
“Cuñada,” I said, “please go to the kitchen and fetch more drink. My throat is dry.”
She exited the room, her hips swaying as if caught between gently shifting winds.
“Marisol is right, Copal. Only one of us is sick. It’s not in the blood, but in one’s nature.”
“Believe what you want, philosopher. I accept my punishment, and you will accept yours. But, how long must it last?” Pink spittle crept down his chin as he drooled into a bowl perched on a stained pillow. “I put my hope in you and my wife, expecting more yet receiving less.”
“I’m not offended by your ingratitude because I expect it, but damn you for blaming Marisol. The woman is half your age and lives to keep you alive. Not once has she complained, nor have I heard you thank her.”
“And for this, you despise me, Teo? You always found odd what you did not understand. It is called love, from which all actions arise.”
“You are mad. And, as for El Sueño, that idea must have sprung from a fever dream.”
He smirked. “Think, Teo. If I die on the way, Marisol will be yours. A parting gift, if only for a while. Eh, cabrón?”
My gut tightened. He was mad, but not a fool.
“I don’t much like your remark, Copal. Just say the word, and I’ll leave. I came to help while you heal. If I’m not wanted—”
“Have my words upset you?”
“I’m not upset. This sickness has twisted your mind. How can you have faith in an idol when the cure lies in your own strength?”
“¿Mi fuerza? If I had any, I’d leap off this bed and—”
“Give me ten lashings of brotherly love?”
He grabbed an empty whiskey bottle and flung it at me, his aim unpredictable as his temper. The glass shattered against the wall.
“Easy, Copal. Don’t waste your energy denying the truth.”
“¡Silencio! What good is truth when, in the end, everything depends on God, who has refused to consider my plight?” Copal’s voice softened, almost contrite. “Or, maybe He has considered and found me unworthy of grace. Still, I deserve an answer, one way or another.”
“God is no less cruel than any man, Copal. You have forgotten that He stared at His reflection when He created us.”
“That is why I must seek the Golden Virgin. She will be my conduit to the Almighty.”
“Now it’s a Golden Virgin? The Almighty is no more an alchemist than you.”
Copal flipped his hand as if to dismiss the levity of my words.
“Don’t brush me away. How many men have you killed and how many women have you ruined? You filled an orphanage with your transgressions. And, you wonder why you remain unforgiven.”
“And, you, Teo. You were no hostile witness as I recall.”
Marisol returned with my drink, then dutifully picked the glass shards off the floor and placed them in a basket. Copal’s hand touched his lips and let a kiss fly off his fingers.
“Come to me, wife,” he said. “Behind every beautiful dream lurks a nightmare. Look at my body, Mari. When one wound closes, another one opens. My brother thinks I do not deserve mercy and should remain here to die. Very well. I only ask that you not forget me when I am gone.”
“Don’t speak like that, husband. We will take Copal to El Sueño, won’t we, Teo?”
I swallowed the pulque and nodded, wanting to please the almond-eyed woman.
“You will get well, Copal,” she said, “and come back to me.”
“You mean, come back for you.”
Copal pointed to a hunting knife hanging on the wall like a crucifix. I handed him the weapon. He removed the blade from its sheath and stroked the jagged edge, cutting his thumb, letting the blood run down the shaft. I caught Marisol as she swooned.
“Here, Teo. Does my blood smell different from yours?”
***
I readied the buckboard and harnessed the mule for our journey to El Sueño, but Copal surprised us at the last minute.
“We will walk. Like flagellants who do penance by the wrath of their own hands, the sun shall be our whips. Then God will see that I am serious.”
Copal’s decree seemed more a crucible of my devotion rather than a pledge to the Almighty. I showed kindness, as Marisol requested, quietly dismissing his ravings, refraining from gutting him with the knife right there on his bed.
“What of sustenance?” I asked. “Food, water…”
“We’ll travel light along the riverbank. There we can bathe and drink. Cactus will nourish us until we reach El Sueño.”
“All right. I must be no less crazy than you,” I said, confident he had sealed his fate.
Much of the way, Marisol supported her husband with strong, firm legs that no longer served Copal’s pleasure. Deprived of her husband’s flesh, she sought comfort in mine, offering herself freely, matching my desire. But her otherwise fealty to that monster troubled me.
After days of slogging southward in the pulsing heat, what was left of my brother’s mind fractured.
“Oh, dutiful pallbearer,” wailed Copal as he slid down his wife’s back, falling to his knees on the dusty road. “I can’t go on.”
He pulled the knife out of the sheath strapped to his tender leg and held the blade against his throat.
“No, Copal! El Sueño is almost in sight,” said Marisol. “We are so close to the Virgin. It would be foolish to abandon our quest.”
He lowered the blade, believing the lie she cleverly shrouded in hope, for our destination lay far in the distance.
Copal, listless and grotesque, barely clung to life as we pressed on beneath the unrelenting sun, our footsteps measured in inches. Thirst and hunger nearly routed us before we reached the main road running alongside a bone-dry river. I snatched my brother’s knife from its sheath.
“Teo, what are you doing?” said Marisol, her almond eyes filled with fear.
“Over there. Both of you!”
“Why have you waited until now to kill us, brother? You see, Marisol. I told you he wants me dead.”
“Copal, you idiot. The plants.”
I cut into the cactus, and we sank our teeth into the prickly pear fruit. Copal scowled and looked askance at me the entire time as if convinced I planned to murder him on a full stomach.
“Listen! You hear that, Teo? Cactus wren. Hand me my blade. We will feast tonight.”
I returned the knife. “Put it back in its sheath. It’s bad luck to cross an omen.”
Footsteps grew louder. Around the bend came an unexpected herd of men.
“Ho there, Brother,” said one, holding a staff, dressed in a tattered robe like his brethren. “Your burnt skin suggests you hail from Montecito. We are from the mountains.”
“What difference does it make? Men are men. Besides, I’m not your brother. Look upon a true one,” I said, pointing at Copal.
“If so, why haven’t you covered his festering wounds with clean linen? He will bleed to death,” chided the stranger. “Let me help him.”
“He doesn’t seek nor deserve help, only an audience with a higher power.”
“Ah, a searcher,” said the stranger. “Those who follow me suffer the same affliction, but won’t admit that Death walks among us. No one will be saved, no matter what the clerics say. Still, we trudge along this useless path, our nettled brains driven by whatever faith we have left in the power of the Virgin.”
“There is no need for a virgin if one has already tasted of her pleasures,” I said.
My words seemed to confuse him. Then he glanced at Marisol. “Ah, I see what you mean.”
Together, we traveled the same road like a caravan of scabrous beggars whose cargo reeked of spoiled flesh—backs bent and eyes fixed on the ground, attempting to fend off the blinding sun. Lunacy served as our sextant beneath a low, dead sky. When night fell, the crusaders howled like wolves. They pounded their fists against the ground, then spun around and beat themselves with coarse branches of dead flora. Copal joined the chaos until he collapsed in the heat. Two men carried him back to our camp.
“Where are his sandals and clothes?” I yelled over the commotion.
“He ripped them off and threw them into the fire pit.”
“Lay the fool here,” I said, unable to hide my disgust.
One man took off his robe and placed it on the ground. The other man set Copal upon the garment. They stepped back, wiping their hands on their loincloths, as if the blight of my brother’s flesh would worsen theirs.
The noise of the night’s reveling faded beneath the screeching wind of the colorless plains. Marisol gazed at the low sky and pressed her body against mine. I wrapped my arm around her hips, where all the sins of man are sown, then led her into the dim light carved out by narrow beams of an accomplice moon. There, we found release from the day’s aberrations. We returned to find my naked brother frantically pacing.
“Look at him, Marisol. What will it take to bring such a man down?”
She ignored my words and ran toward her husband.
“Mari, I feared you left me with those crazed men.”
“Calm yourself, Copal. Why would—”
“Please, wife, forgive me. My thinking has grown flawed. You and Teofilo endure my burden, sustaining rather than abandoning me. I cherish that. Rest, but only for a short while. We must get to El Sueño before the others, or the Virgin might run out of miracles.”
We slept for what felt like a second. Copal, clothed only in a robe, woke us, strutting and crowing like a lame cock who had bested the weaker of its breed.
“Time to go. Keep your heads above the horizon,” he said as the hot morning rays crept across the land, alighting upon the travelers who lay motionless on crimson ground.
“Rise up. What of your odyssey?” I called.
I shook the leader. Blood trickled in a crooked stream from his neck. Beside him lay my brother’s knife. Death, whose name was Copal, had strolled among the weary during the night and claimed the entire flock. My brother shrugged, then bowed his head as if he had committed an act of compassion.
“Now, Teo, I’ll have all the miracles to myself,” he said, retrieving his knife.
It was a sensible thing to say—for a madman. We stepped around the bodies and started down the road—Marisol and I, numb to the brutality that raged beneath his sickness.
“Wait,” she called, removing her rebozo. Marisol wiped Copal’s feverish forehead, then tore the cloth in half and swaddled his bare feet.
“Help me, Teo. I have little strength to bear him alone.”
We wrapped Copal’s arms around our shoulders. His ulcerated body erupted like pus-filled fountains. The ground groaned beneath our steps while low dust clouds faded in our wake as we hobbled toward the Virgin.
***
Steel clouds cut across the crimson sky that baked El Sueño. The musty smell of desiccated plants lingered over abandoned huts that leaned like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard.
“You, there,” I called to an old man leaning against a barren tree. “Where do we find the church and the Virgin?”
He approached, warily eyeing the three of us. “There is no church in El Sueño. As for the Virgin, what is left of her, she stands alone at the end of the road.”
He spat at the heat, then passed us and disappeared into the haze of the burning sunset.
***
“Look, Copal, it’s her,” I said, winking at Marisol. “The Golden Virgin.”
“Lead me to her, brother. The sun has marred my eyes.”
We approached a stone statue whose features were pitted by the harsh winds off the plains. As Copal knelt before it, I pressed my lips to Marisol’s ear and let my hand roam over her body.
“You see, Querida. There are virgins of all kinds willing to perform miracles,” I said, inhaling the scent of her sweat.
She wiped her brow, watching Copal as he raised his hands in supplication.
“Mari, Teo. The Virgin heard me. She has shed a tear in my favor.”
We stepped in for a closer look. The tear he assigned to the Virgin slid down his cheek.
“Come. It is time to leave,” said Marisol. “Our journey is at an end.”
“No, wife. It has begun anew.”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “You poured your heart out to a block of stone.”
“My wish has been granted.”
Copal drew his knife from its sheath, then leaned forward as if to pray. By the time we lifted his body, he was dead. The color of his spilled blood matched that of the menacing sky. Marisol knelt and placed his head in the crease of her lap. She stroked his hair while I slowly removed the knife from his gut and wiped it clean with my sleeve.
We dug his grave in the hard earth of El Sueño, pulling clods of dirt with our bare hands, rushing to conceal Copal in that pit so he would no longer trouble us with his stench. She wanted him in heaven. I wanted him in hell. That left Copal in limbo, his soul wandering about—risky business. Marisol neither cried nor spoke during our trek home. Each step took us no further from shame, as if our memories were forever doomed to tamp down the restless soil covering my brother’s leaking body.
Ahead of us stretched the scorching plains of Montecito and, in the distance, the squalid house of misfortune. Upon arrival, Marisol burst into tears as if she were wringing out the filthy rag of our sins.
***
She entered Copal’s room and removed the linens, curtains, and everything else he had touched. We built a fire and burned it all. Still, his foul odor had seeped into the walls. Razing the house wouldn’t guarantee his departure.
We stayed for a while, but couldn’t make it a home. It was a haunted waystation where we pledged ourselves to each other before heading north across the plains toward the cooler air of El Otro Lado, putting as much distance as possible between the living and the dead.
Along the northern road, we stopped to rest and partake of the luscious fruit that fell from sapodilla trees lining the banks of a peaceful river. We rarely spoke during those moments of wasted splendor as Marisol mourned the death of Copal while I struggled to find words to comfort her.
She awoke each night, trembling from the same dream where crosswinds scattered the dirt off the grave of my brother. Copal pulled her into his ditch and held her against his wormy flesh, pawing at her until she surrendered.
“He has come back for me, just as he said he would, Teo. He holds me against his cold body, and I become one with him again. ‘There is still time, Mari,’ he says in a firm voice. ‘Let me save you from his tainted blood.’ Who is he talking about, Teo? Copal is driving me over the edge,” she cried, beating her fists against her perfect thighs, then leaning her head upon my shoulder, drawing me deeper into her despair.
“Copal refuses to rest, Querida, but only in dreams.”
“He lives in both worlds, Teo.”
“Give Death time to sweep him away.”
“Death is not strong enough. You do not know your brother. He loves me so much.”
Her words revealed what the Virgin had granted.
***
Beneath a purple moon, the ground bathed Marisol in a cloudy, lavender glow. Her tormented body floated beneath me as I scattered kisses like seeds upon her breasts, hoping to cast out the inexorable spirit of my brother. The more I labored, the more her desire waned, until I could no longer satisfy this woman. Dire fantasies replaced me. We silently waited for Copal to arrive and ignite her passion.
Nothing turns out the way you want it to.
My brother’s vile secretions lingered on Marisol’s parted lips. Her almond eyes widened, releasing tears of the damned while her body trembled in ecstasy.
“Copal, Copal,” she moaned as I spilled myself inside her, then raised my brother’s knife and mercifully plunged it into her swollen flesh.
[Image Credit : Photo by Andrés Sanz on Unsplash]
by 
Stephen Myer
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