THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK SIX: THE FIRST of the BOOKS of CHANGE

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Boleaga and the Jackal had slung hammocks in the General's office, on his orders, and lay deep in sleep, as did Bravo in a hammock beside Consuela's bed, upstairs, when her moanings disturbed him out of a vacuous repose. Springing up from the center of his dreamlessness, the General turned towards the window, from which an unaccustomed chill had risen. The air was growing noticeably darker and, as he stood, puzzled, darkened still.

"Ciclon!" somebody called out from the plaza and there was a commotion of benches overturned, plates banged together.

Bravo turned away and smiled, thrusting a straw into the embers of Consuela's cooking-fire to light one candle, then another.

"A fitting augur for our end," he said. "Rain which washes our sins away - come, make this place nothing... nothing..."

Consuela groaned again.

"What the hell?" he shouted.

"Niño!" cried Consuela from the General's bed, her dark hair matted with sweat, her womb agape but dry... dry as the badlands of the north, the deserts, with a white rocklike thing straining at its lip, falling, finding a place among other such objects... four of them, the General saw. Another orb filled the place of the last...

Eggs!...

One of these among the bedclothes began to shudder; a crack forming on its surface and Bravo now observed that two of the little spheres were dull and broken, empty of what they'd contained... Consuela moaned and the General's eyes rose up her belly, following the trail of something black and thin and straining towards her breast, at which another black thing suckled...

A little snake that turned its viper's head from mother's nipple and flicked its thin, forked tongue at its father.

Not exactly a viper's head...

Bravo started, disrupting a gourd of hens' eggs suspended by a rope from the ceiling lurched and the eggs began to tumble out. One struck the General upon the shoulder, another on the temple. After them the rope snapped and the gourd itself crashed to the edge of the General's desk... and small army of shells, knives and buttons upon its edge flew upwards towards the face of Ignacio Bravo. Cowering, the General batted these away from his face, uninjured, but shrieking, as if he had fallen into a beehive.

"Not again! By God... by Juan de la Cruz... not again!"

The cracked egg lurched, a triangular head more like its mortal father than any tempter of ancient Eden poked out from the shell. Another boulder rolled towards the tip of the desert cave.

"Witch!" cried the General. The metal plate that had held their fire tumbled over and hot coals scooted across the floor towards his boot. Still protecting his eyes, Bravo crept towards his saddlebags and drew his machete. The candles quivered, then soared towards his head, dropping trails of wax.

Bravo took two more steps towards Consuela and her brood.

"Now get thee behind me, Satan," called out the General, bringing his weapon up...

"Papa..." the creature at Consuela's breast wheedled, in the voice of Tomas Bravo. The General's arm began to sag but again the forked little tongue leaped from its berth and snapped at Bravo.

"I am not your father!" Bravo said, seizing the little snake in his left hand. The General's mirror cut loose from its tether and began to advance, sliding down the wall as Bravo slammed the serpent to the surface of his desk and brought the machete down, the blade flattening the infant's skull. The tremor caused the mirror to falter in its course and to collapse, not splintering at his feet as would be expected but instead seeming to burn without consumption, raising oily billows of thick, black smoke.

Bravo hurled the tiny body down with disgust. At its mother's breast, another little head poked up, weaving and flickering its tongue; the General grabbed this one and dispatched it, also, then gathered up the rest of the eggs as Consuela voided them - laying them upon the floor and stomping on them until only a bloody trail of flesh and shell remained. The rain began to lift and Ignacio Bravo stumbled towards the window, reeled backwards towards the door and shouted down the stairwell...

"Cabo! Chacol! Arriba!"

El Chacol, burst from his slumber, tramping upstairs in his shirt and stockings and the General pointed towards him with his eyes bulging, a froth bubbling from his lips. Speaking softly, he ordered Consuela taken out into the monte and put to death, and... tossing the beast his own saddlebags, charged: "Bring something back of her to prove you have done this thing, and then tell no one, never."

The Jackal's first thought was to ask whether he could enjoy Consuela before killing her but, although a man of little intelligence, he was not so stupid as to raise that possibility with his General, who clearly was in the middle of a fit. Bravo kicked as if his boots had been set afire, splattering what seemed like eggs with broken glass and metal crunching as he executed his strange little dance.

Consuela lay as one dazed, but with her eyes open, clad only in one of Bravo's old shirts. El Chacol lifted Consuela from the bed, light as an armful of twigs she sagged against the big man, looking mutely upwards towards him.

Corporal Boleaga, later in arriving for having dressed himself, appeared at the door. "Find Chankik and murder him!" ordered the General.

The Jackal looked towards Boleaga as if to shrug.

"Away with you both! Away!" Bravo called out and the Cabo hustled downstairs, Chacol following... hoisting Consuela over his right shoulder like a sack of corn and dragging Bravo's saddlebags behind him.

"I'm the General!" they heard Bravo shouting behind them. "I am Governor of the Territory, Jefe of Santa Cruz del Bravo. Mine is the voice of Juan de la Cruz, scourge of the Devil. There is no beast in the Territory that can defy my will..."

"Loco!" said Boleaga, as they reached the porch where they were hidden from their mad commander's eyes.

"What do we do?" the Jackal struggled. Consuela had thrown both arms around his waist, he felt her pressing against him through his trousers. Something seemed to arise between them and then he heard something fall and crack upon the planks that stood over the earth of the Plaza of Santa Cruz, now otherwise a sea of mud.

"Obey!" the Cabo replied. "Too bad for you... my duty will be a pleasant one, I've longed to snap the old spook's neck since we arrived here. Hai! what was that... did you see something by your foot? It moved... it wriggled away," and Boleaga pointed towards the center of the Plaza.

"I must go," said El Chacol, and swept the weeping Consuela from Bravo's porch, dragging her through the empty plaza in the rain. Corporal Boleaga looked down; on the boards lay two halves of a sphere which, when he prodded it with a toe did not crumple like an eggshell but sagged like balls of rubber or raw chicle.

"Bah!" the Cabo spat, kicking the things into the mud and fingering his pistol. Where was Chankik? First, he'd look around the church.

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