Summer of the Mariposas

by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

  “You can call me Chencho,” the boy said, nodding in greeting to Pita, who eyed him from her usual safe place directly behind me. “What are you ladies doing out in this heat?”

  “We’re heading to Hacienda Dorada,” Pita said with surprising confidence. She stepped out from behind me and met Chencho’s gaze as she spoke to him directly. “But we’re running low on water. Do you know how far the nearest creek is?”

  “I would say you are about eight miles away from ojito verde, more or less. It’s the nearest source of water in these parts. But you can have some of mine if you like,” he said, looking sweetly at Pita, who had obviously caught his attention.

  Pita took the canteen Chencho offered and drank from it greedily. Then she passed it to the twins, who took turns finishing it off.

  At first, I thought it was kind of strange that Chencho seemed to be attracted to the youngest among us. Most boys reacted to the twins because they’re so pretty, but watching Pita interact with him with such self-assurance made me realize she was growing up before my very eyes. Soon she would be getting taller, shedding her baby fat, and wanting to wear lipstick. She looked both like Papá and Mamá, but she seemed to have inherited the best features from both, so she would be beautiful some day. The image of her looking more and more lovely every day made my heart tighten in my chest and I had a moment of sisterly, almost maternal, pride.

  But even as I marveled at my baby sister’s potential, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right with the boy in front of me. He was more than strange-looking, and his sudden appearance set off all kinds of red flags in my head. Looking at his hairy hands again, I suddenly felt the urge to get away from him.

  Juanita shook the empty canteen, frowned disapprovingly at the twins, and handed it back to the boy. “Where are you from, Chencho?”

  “Oh, I’m from Puerto Vallarta originally, but now that I’m all alone, I live out here by myself,” Chencho said.

  “You mean you live out in the woods?” Pita asked. Her eyes grew wide with shock, but a glint of admiration twinkled in their depths.

  Chencho grinned shyly as Pita questioned him. “Oh, yes,” he said. “There’s all kinds of places to sleep in the wild. Out here, nobody bothers me and I don’t bother anybody. I only go into town when I need to buy supplies. The countryside is the best place to be for someone like me.”

  “Well, thank you for the water,” I said. “Sorry we can’t stay and chat, but it’s late and we have to get going.” Then I turned around to talk to the girls, shutting him out.

  “Why are you traveling on foot?” he asked. “Where are your parents?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, not bothering to explain. “Let’s go, ladies.”

  “Bueno pues, you can travel with me if you like. I’m heading in that direction. I don’t have a wagon, but I have plenty of water, two more gourds, and some bread and goat cheese. It’s not much, but I don’t mind sharing,” the boy said, smiling that shy, genuine smile again. At close range, and with his choppers showing, I could see he hadn’t seen a toothbrush in quite some time, perhaps maybe never. His teeth were beyond yellow. They were downright blackened, and I wondered how long he’d been out here “in the wild” without parental supervision.

  Chiding myself for being so shallow, I concentrated on being polite. “Thank you. You are very kind, but we don’t want to slow you down. It’s better if you continue alone. We’ve got some business to take care of before we head out. Have a nice day,” I said. Then I turned around and started to push the girls back into the safety of the barn. Pita started to go in, but Velia and Delia wouldn’t budge.

  “What’s wrong with you, Odilia?” Velia demanded, glaring at me as I tried to push her into the barn. “You’re being awfully rude, you know.”

  “I’m not trying to be rude,” I said, gritting my teeth and keeping my words low enough not be overheard by the strange little boy standing only a few feet away from us. “I’m just trying to keep us safe.”

  Velia yanked my hand off her arm. “You’re being stupid right now.”

  “No, I’m not,” I whispered. “How many more monsters are you going to invite into our lives before you learn your lesson? I’m tired of you putting us all in danger. Now, you either stay here with me or head out alone, because I’m not going anywhere until I’m good and ready.”

  “Listen to her, Velia.” Delia leaned in and whispered in her twin’s right ear. “She’s got a point. We can’t be too careful.”

  “Fine. Whatever. But I think you’re both overreacting.” Velia pushed me out of the way. Delia followed her twin sister into the barn, but not before she gave me an apologetic smile.

  “Well, have a nice day,” I repeated as I waved at the little goatherd. With Juanita by my side, I looked out to make sure the boy was leaving as I pulled the barn door shut. The disheveled boy waved one last time, looking confused, before he headed up the road. I slammed the latch down to lock us in.

  Juanita helped me pick up the clothes from the barn’s dirt floor. We shook the old hay off them, folded them up, and put them back in our bags. “You really think he was dangerous?”

  “No telling,” I said. “But I’m not taking any more chances. From now on, we do things my way.”

  I waited a full hour, keeping time on my thrift store watch, to make sure we were far enough behind the goatherd to not meet up with him again.

  But all my efforts were for naught. As we made our way down the dirt path later that day, he called to us from a cluster of boulders by the side of the road. In a moment of weakness, I decided to let him join us as we continued on our journey. He was nice enough to the girls, offering us water from a different canteen than the one the girls had emptied earlier.

  “Why is your goat tied to your wrist?” Pita asked him, as she sidled up to walk beside the boy up ahead of us.

  “Oh, do you mean this halter?” Chencho asked. “See that bell on his neck? He’s the leader. Wherever he goes, the others follow. But he’s a wanderer, and if I don’t keep him close, he’ll take off on me. Then I’ll lose the entire herd. I can’t afford that. They’re my source of food. So I keep him right here, by my side.”

  “You mean, you only eat goat meat?” Pita asked, scrunching up her face in disgust.

  Chencho threw back his head and laughed. “No. I didn’t mean that. I eat lots of things, but goats are my — well, they’re my livelihood. They sustain me.”

  “Oh. But he’s so big. Don’t you get tired of pulling him along?” Pita asked, as she watched the boy tug at the goat.

  “Yeah,” Chencho said, laughing. “He’s a billy goat. They’re stubborn sometimes. But I’m a bigger mule than he is. Have as much water as you like. We can refill it on the way, when we get to ojito verde.”

  The girls had been passing the second canteen around, taking small, careful sips from it. But at his request, they drank greedily.

  We walked all afternoon by the goatherd’s side. He was quiet and shy, but he seemed to enjoy listening to Pita. She flittered around him like a pesky gnat, glad to have someone eager to listen to everything she had to say as she recounted our adventures on the banks of the Rio Grande.

  Every now and then, Chencho would turn around to check on us. At those times, the rest of us smiled and let him know that we were doing okay. No, he wasn’t going too fast, and no, we didn’t need to stop. We had to get to Hacienda Dorada before day’s end.

  It wasn’t until I saw the sun kissing the horizon that I realized we were in trouble. I looked down at the map anxiously and tried to make sense of it. My wobbly legs were telling me we had traveled far, but in actuality, the landmarks showed that we weren’t even halfway there. Going up and down hills on rough terrain was taking a lot longer than I’d anticipated, which meant we still had about seven or eight more miles to go before re
aching Abuelita’s house.

  Looking at the two hills to the left of us, depicted as twin fists almost touching each other on the map, I wanted to cry. The tiny space on the map between the twin fists and Hacienda Dorada told us we were close, but I knew better. Half an inch on paper meant we were not going to make it there before dark.

  “We’re going to have to stop and find shelter,” I said, breaking Pita’s joyful stride with my somber words.

  “What?” Pita wailed. “But you said . . .”

  “It’s going to get dark soon,” I continued. “And we need to find a nice, safe place to rest.”

  Juanita tore the map out of my hands and flipped it around looking at it from all angles. “No. We can’t stop. We’re almost there. It can’t be that much farther.”

  Chencho tugged at the billy goat’s rope. “Your sister’s right.”

  “But what about the chu — ” Pita started.

  “Hush!” I said, frowning a warning at her. “We’ll look for a cluster of trees or maybe an abandoned cabin. I’m sure we’ll find a safe place to rest for the night.”

  “An abandoned cabin?” Chencho asked, stopping to look back at us. “I know a good place to rest, up in the cerro. It’s an old sod house from the days of Pancho Villa. Of course, now it only has three walls, but it still has most of the roof. I sleep there all the time. Nobody’s ever bothered me there.”

  “Three walls?” Velia’s disbelief showed in her face and I sympathized with her.

  Chencho’s face suddenly turned red. “Well, it’s old, a relic.”

  “Come on,” Pita said, taking Velia’s hand and giving it an encouraging tug. “It’ll be like camping, only nicer because there’s a roof. Well, except that we don’t have our sleeping bags. But we can make another nest with our clothes like we did in the barn.”

  “We don’t have any other options, do we?” Juanita asked, and the girls hung their heads, defeated.

  I tried thinking of ways to get out of this. After all, we didn’t know anything about Chencho. He seemed harmless, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that his accommodating manner, his eagerness to help us, was masking something unpleasant, something more sinister in him.

  He didn’t look like the chupacabras. The chupacabras was demonic in appearance, not human, so he couldn’t possibly be it. But my suspicious mind kept telling me not to trust him too much, to be extra careful around him. We’d already gotten into trouble too many times when we didn’t heed Teresita’s warnings. Did she say something I’d forgotten that might help us to ward off the chupacabras? Whatever he was, whether a demon in disguise or just a simple goatherd, it didn’t matter. I vowed to keep my sisters safe from the evil chupacabras. I wasn’t going to get any sleep that night.

  Chencho’s place was worse than expected. There were three walls all right; three broken-down sides to what must have been a stone house ravaged during la Revolución. The windows were gaping, crumbling holes. The place was infested with sting weeds and scurrying field mice. And to make things worse, spiders and scorpions peeked out at us from under jutting rocks and fallen pieces of roof. It’s one thing to step on them or jump out of their way when you’re walking by them, but it’s a totally different ball game to have to sleep among them.

  Velia and Delia went around kicking debris out of the way with Chencho, who seemed to know exactly where everything was. He pushed aside an array of mesquite branches to reveal the furniture: remnants of a filthy old mattress, two metal stools, and an ancient, rusty pot-bellied stove.

  He smiled and jiggled a spotted blue coffee pot. “Who wants coffee?”

  “That sounds lovely,” Velia said sweetly, sounding like a heroine in one of those historical pieces on the arts channel instead of a modern-day girl stranded in the ruins of the Mexican countryside. Chencho made a fire in the center of the sleeping area, to keep us warm after dark. The twins and I drank the coffee and we all sat among a herd of twelve goats and ate the loaf of bread with goat cheese, swearing it was the best darned cheese we’d tasted in our entire lives.

  “It’s nice to have company,” Chencho said. He leaned back against the third wall, snuggled under his poncho, and smiled proudly at us as we huddled together on the mattress.

  A lone coyote howled somewhere in the dark, and we froze momentarily. Several of the goats that had settled around us lifted their heads and listened to the coyote’s call. Then, hearing it again, they bleated and inched closer to each other. We inched closer to each other too.

  I looked at Chencho and wondered what had brought him here. What could possibly make him think this was a better life than the one he had before? “So tell me, why are you here all by yourself?” I asked.

  Chencho’s voice was small, quiet, like he was. “It’s easier for me, being out here.”

  I couldn’t help but think there were things he wasn’t telling us, so I pressed on. “What happened to your parents? Don’t you have brothers and sisters? Aunts? Uncles? Someone who could take you in?”

  “No,” Chencho said. “My mother died when I was seven years old. I’m all alone in the world now. Nobody wants to take care of an orphan and I don’t much care for the street life. Sleeping on sidewalks, fighting for trash and scraps, that’s no kind of life. I’d rather be out here, raising goats, camping out every night, sleeping under the stars. It’s peaceful.”

  “Don’t you get scared out here?” Delia asked Chencho, curling up closer to her twin sister.

  Lifting his arm in midair, Chencho flexed his muscles and pointed to his puny right bicep. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he answered confidently. “Chencho’s here.”

  “What about the chupacabras?” Pita asked.

  Chencho didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up the coffee pot and poured the last of the old coffee into the grass, turning away for a long moment. Finally he turned back to look at us again. “Oh, well, there is that,” he said, sounding less sure of himself.

  “Have you seen it?” Pita wanted to know. “The demon?”

  “Seen him? Yes. We’ve had our — disagreements,” he whispered. “Once or twice, to be sure.” His words sent chills up my spine and I had the sudden urge to flee, to take my sisters and make a mad dash for it. But where? There was nowhere to hide from the demon if it were to show up here.

  “Did he attack you? What does he look like?” Velia wanted to know.

  Chencho threw another log on the fire before us and then looked at the twins sitting beside him. “I’ll never forget him,” he whispered, sounding more and more morose by the minute. “His eyes are the color of burning coals, and his fangs are bigger and sharper than a javalina’s tusks. But his claws are just as dangerous. He can rip out your heart with them.”

  Pita leaned forward to peer into Chencho’s face. “How do you know about his claws?”

  “He took my eye,” Chencho said, lifting the lock of hair from over his left eye to reveal a deformed eyelid fused together by thick scars.

  At the sight of his missing eye, Teresita’s husband’s voice crept into my head, “I injured it. Shot it through the left eye. Bullet went right into its head. It howled like a rabid dog. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.” Suddenly spooked, I sat up to inspect Chencho’s missing eye. “The chupacabras has a missing eye,” I said suspiciously. “A friend of ours shot him.”

  “That’s great!” Chencho said. He put the empty coffee pot aside and sat forward, giving me his undivided attention for the first time since we’d met him. The bloodthirsty look in his right eye told me he was glad to hear the news and wished the chupacabras was just as dead as we did, and for that reason I started to believe he was who he appeared be. “I just wish it had been me who shot it. Oh, how I wish he’d disappear for good.” Like us, he had reason to fear the chupacabras. That was probably why he’d brought us to this miserable place, to keep us
safe from the beast.

  “Is he really a bloodsucker? Did he try to bite you?” Juanita asked, leaning into our intimate circle from the other side of the campfire.

  “He’s like a vampire,” Chencho said, patting his hair down over his deformed eyelid. “He’s bitten my goats and taken several of my kids. He’s a thief, a miserable beast, forced to suck on the necks of animals to satisfy his unnatural thirst for blood. Because of his sins against mankind, he will be hunted by humans for all eternity.”

  Velia’s eyebrow rose. “A vampire?” she asked, disbelief edging her words.

  Juanita stood up and paced around the fire before she came to sit between me and Chencho. “Well, if he’s really a vampire we can kill him,” she said.

  “Nobody can kill it,” Chencho said. “God knows I’ve tried.”

  “No, listen,” Juanita put her hand on Chencho’s shoulder. “We can do this. I read this library book once about vampires and werewolves. It was written by an expert on demons, and I remember everything it said about how to kill a vampire. All you need is holy water and a stake.”

  “Holy water and stakes?” Chencho looked astonished. “We don’t have those things here! Besides, he can’t be killed. The chupacabras is immortal.”

  “So were the vampires in that book,” Juanita insisted. “I’m telling you, we can do it. We can get rid of this demon for good.”

  “We have to at least try,” Delia said. Velia and Delia jumped up to join Juanita at the foot of the mattress. “We can’t just lie here, waiting for that beast to get us in the middle of the night. Not when we know how to kill him.”

  I wasn’t as convinced that the chupacabras could be defeated with stakes and holy water. After all, a chupacabras wasn’t exactly a vampire. But Velia took up where Delia left off, and the girls’ confidence grew. “What was it Teresita’s husband said? ‘Don’t be afraid, take the nearest branch and bash its head in!’ Even Teresita herself told us we could defeat it. She said all we had to do was stick together and be brave. Besides, we have you to help us now. That makes six of us. We can take him.”