Free Blood of Paradise by David Corbett Page B

if there was a problem, and tears welled in the drunk’s eyes as he pointed to the roadbed. The carcass of a dog, hit by a passing car, lay in the dusty gravel. Jude went over, knelt beside the animal, and saw that the neck had been snapped—the dog, about the size and shape of a greyhound, lay at a violent angle, blood crusting its head, its eyes dull, chest still. Aguacateros , they were called, the stray mutts that slinked around everywhere, the males fully packaged, the females bearing swollen teats from nonstop litters. This one, he noticed, was a female. And apparently, somehow, somewhere, she’d found a friend. Or the friend had found her.
    The vagabundo shuffled up behind, muttering a slur of heartbreak and anger. Jude said he was going to move the body a little farther off the road—out of respect, to spare it being crushed by another passing car—and the man mewled his thanks. Jude reached under the skeletal body, lifted the dead animal in his arms—so light, he thought, she would’ve died of starvation soon regardless—and carried her toward a bed of chichipince and set her down in the dense, dry vinery. The vagabundo followed and perched himself uneasily on a nearby stone, reaching down to stroke her cold flank.
    Jude thought about asking her name, but didn’t want to inherit her ghost, so he merely whispered, “Lo lamento” —I’m sorry—and squeezed the man’s shoulder, his hand coming away with grimy dust that he wiped against his shirttail as he walked back to the truck.
    He climbed behind the wheel and Eileen said, “I feel awful about what I said when you were getting out. What you did just now, it was …” She screwed up her face, trying to think of the one word that would absolve all the others. “I don’t know. I’m just sorry.”
    The darkness remained still except for the wind shivering through the trees overhead, the waves throbbing at the bottom of the hill.
    â€œYou must think I’m terrible,” she said.
    â€œI think we’re all terrible.” He turned the key in the ignition and waited till the six-cylinder kicked back to life with an oily cough of black smoke out the tailpipe. “But only some of us are sorry, and that’s the problem.”

8
    They continued on in silence and in time passed an evangelical church girded with whitewashed stone, the landmark Jude had been waiting for. He slowed for the steep turn into La Perla—a village of rustic-to-shabby homes made of brick or cinder block with barbed wire coiled around every yard, every rooftop, even the central pen housing the community’s chickens. He’d driven right past it at least twice during his search for Eileen way back when, one of dozens of tiny coastal pueblitos along the Carretera del Litoral he hadn’t given a second thought. No way he could’ve checked out every village, and yet he still felt unlucky. If you’d found her then, he thought, the spat you just had would’ve been over a month ago.
    â€œJust follow this road back all the way to the beach,” Eileen said, pointing the way. Then her hand reached across the seat and squeezed Jude’s knee. “Look, I want to clear the air, make sure you realize how sorry I am for some of the things I said.”
    â€œIt’s not necessary. Really.”
    â€œI just wanted to explain where people’s heads are at, mine included. I don’t hold you personally responsible or anything for how things are down here, okay? I’m not that dense. And I shouldn’t have gone on and on the way I did, either. I was just bothered by the way Aleris treated you and I get chatty when I’m nervous.”
    Jude liked the sound of that but he liked the feel of her hand more. He felt stirring in the bone zone and squirmed a little to squelch it as she added, “It’s not like I don’t know where you’re coming from. Like I said,