Free Damned If I Do by Percival Everett Page A

Rosendo saying he could focus on things up close. So, Rosendo did the reading and Mauricio did the driving, having managed to retain his permit by uncannily guessing the letters on the eye chart. Each relied on the other’s constant reports. Actually, Mauricio couldn’t make out things that far away and Rosendo had to hold large print at arm’s length from his face to see that it was indeed print, so it was a safe bet that they saw the same things equally well, or poorly.
    They came out of the canyon mouth and found Mauricio’s car, a blue Datsun sedan that his daughter, who lived in Albuquerque, had given him when she bought one of those little vans that Mauricio said looked like a suppository. Mauricio wrapped up the gun in a blanket while Rosendo leaned against the car peering at nothing in particular, but in general back into the woods.
    “Let me ask you something, Moe,” Rosendo said.
    Mauricio slammed shut the trunk.
    “Do you think we’re old?”
    Mauricio looked at the same trees. “Hell, Rosie, I know for a fact we’re old. We’re the oldest people I know. But not like you’re thinking. We’re young men who still go hunting.”
    “Si, we hunt dogs, pet dogs. What was Grasa doing so far out here anyway?”
    The fact of the matter was that they were not very far from Rosendo’s home. The house was just a half-mile from the canyon, but Mauricio’s driving took them repeatedly over the same dirt lanes and through the same turns. Any trip for Mauricio in his blue Datsun took three times as long as it should have. Walking through the woods was a similar experience for them. Rosendo had killed his sister’s dog no more than a hundred yards deep into the woods, but they believed themselves to have marched two or three miles, which they had no doubt done, but in circles. When anyone saw the blue Datsun parked at the canyon opening or anyplace near the mountain, the word was spread to steer clear of the forest.
    They parked in the backyard behind the shed and sneaked inside to hide the rifle behind the drums of corn that Maria fed the wild turkeys. The birds were actually guinea hens, but one day Maria had jokingly referred to them as turkeys and Rosendo had said, “And fine-looking birds they are, too. But, Maria, they don’t sound much like turkeys.”
    “Hasta luego, Rosie,” Mauricio said, back in his car and waving good-bye to Rosendo as he drove away.
    Rosendo took a deep breath and walked through the back door of the house and into the kitchen where Maria was sitting and chatting with Carlita Hireles. “Hello, Maria,” he said and proceeded to wash his hands at the sink.
    “Aren’t you going to say hello to Father Ortega?” Maria said, sharing a smile and a quiet chuckle with her friend.
    “I’m sorry, Padre, I didn’t see you,” Rosendo said. He dried his hands on a towel, left it on the counter by the sink, and reached to shake the father’s hand.
    Carlita lowered her voice and said, “It’s good to see you, Rosie.”
    Rosendo paused at the softness of the hand and then considered it not unlikely that a hand that had never seen manual labor should feel so. “What brings you way out here?” Rosendo asked. “Somebody die?”
    “No, no, just saying hello.”
    Rosendo nodded, knowing as he passed from the kitchen into the living room that he had just spoken to Carlita Hireles. He knew because he recognized the smell of her, perfume and makeup and fancy soap that she bought from the mall down in Santa Fe. They were having a laugh on him, but that was okay, especially today as Grasa wouldn’t be showing up for dinner. It was enough that he knew it to be Carlita.
    Later, as Rosendo sat eating his dinner of posole, chiles, and sopaipillas, Maria stood at the screen of the back door looking out for Grasa.
    It was then that Miguel Rocha, Mauricio’s nephew just out of the army, and Willard Garcia drove into the backyard with much loud noise from their big-wheeled pickup. They came into the