The Last Shepherd

17. HAMAZAZPI

| 98 »« I woke to voices. When I opened my eyes, the world remained dark, as if all the light had been drained from it. The voices grew louder. They came from below. A man and a woman arguing in Euskara. I tried to remember what had happened—where I was, how I got here. There had been a dancing girl from a fire. A woman with a shotgun. I was in a bed. In a room whose air smelled of damp wool. There had been a ladder. The girl from the black-and-white photo. There was a blanket over me, rough on my skin. I was naked underneath . Were the dancing girl, the woman, and the girl from the photo all the same person? Or were they three separate people? I couldn’t get it straight in my head. I focused on the voices. I recognized the woman’s: Isabelle Odolen. But the other voice, a man’s, like breaking stone, was new to me. Their words came fast, overlapped, and rose through the floor. The taste of garlic was in my mouth. There had been hot food in my throat. Hands pulling off my wet clothes. The dancing girl—no, not a girl, a woman; she tucked something next to me. I turned my head; the tip of my nose grazed soft fur. I ran my fingers over short limbs and glass eyes. It was the teddy bear the girl-woman had been dancing with. And then there was light—blinding and bright. It shot up from the floor as a trapdoor opened into the room. The hulking shape of a man climbed through. I shut my eyes against the hulking man and the light and gripped onto the teddy bear. The floor creaked as the man walked over. The odor of sweat and wine 17 h a m a z a z p i | 99« » covered me as he stood next to the bed. I kept my eyes closed, listening to his labored breathing—as if each breath took thought and effort. Ten, twenty, and then the breaking stones again. “Mutil,” the man chuckled. “You just boy.” There was a long silence as if the man was waiting for me to deny what he said. But how could I? Right then, I was just a boy, one who had woken to a noise in the night and was unwilling to open his eyes in fear that his seeing would make the monster real. “Nothing but boy.” The odor of sweat and wine lifted as the man turned away. Footsteps retreated; the door closed; the light went out. I was again alone. The voices from below grew silent. And in the silence, I remembered the walking and the rain and the house. Isabelle helping me upstairs. The girl-woman singing to me in Euskara : “Tun gulan bat, tun gulan bi, tun gulan hureran er-or-i.” I wanted to run. To find my clothes and escape. But what if the hulking man was there? Waiting for me downstairs? Sitting in the dark? Breathing. Besides, I couldn’t leave now. Not after I’d come this far. I rolled onto my side. In an effort to get the man from my head, I thought of my father. When I was a boy, he was the one who chased away the Mamu from under my bed. Who drove the ghosts from my closet. And thinking of my father took me back to “that day.” The monsoon, the tire blowing, my world turning upside down. Only I changed all that. Altered what took place. Reworked the ending. I don’t tell my father, “I’m dying here.” In place of that I say, “Pizza.” “Huh?” Dad says. “Let’s get pizza on the way home.” “For your birthday?” Dad says. “You sure that’s what you want?” “That way we’ll have time to play a game of pilota before it gets dark.” “Pilota?” Dad says. “Afraid?” “Now, then, just because it’s your birthday, Mathieu, don’t think I’m going to let you win.” Dad smiles, and I smile, and the heaviness in my chest lifts, and it is my birthday, and it is a good day. | 100« » I played the new version of “that day” in my head and, with the teddy bear tucked under my chin, let it lead me into sleep. In the morning...