Free The Surf Guru by Doug Dorst Page B

alone.
    She holds out a pair of eyeglasses. “I found them among Mamá’s things,” she says. “I think they’re yours.”
    â€œPerhaps,” I say, although I know they are.
    My eyesight has gotten worse, but the old lenses work well enough. The gallows in the square comes into focus. I feel my eyes shift again, and now I can see all the way to the east gate. I turn to Ysela, and I see thin, shallow wrinkles in her forehead that I have never noticed before. It makes me sad, to see my daughter look as if she worries so much. But she has chosen the path she has chosen. I cannot blame myself.
    She is biting her lip again. “You know I have made a lot of money,” she says. She waits for me to nod before she continues. “I want you to visit Mamá tomorrow. There is a surprise for both of you.”
    Her name , I think. Her name, the way it should be, the way she would have wanted it. I feel like dropping this crate and running to the cemetery now. But then I think: San Humberto would frown on such a tainted monument. He would curse it.
    â€œNo,” I say.
    She looks surprised. “It is a gift,” she says. “For both of you.”
    â€œI do not want your mother’s grave defiled by whore money,” I tell her.
    The slap hits me before I see her arm move. My eyeglasses, bent, hang from one ear. Ysela clenches her teeth and shakes with anger. “You haven’t changed,” she says. “You’ll never change.” She grabs an overripe mango and heaves it into the wall behind me. Pieces of the fruit spatter on the back of my head and neck.
    â€œI have told Lars I am finished working for him,” she says. “I am going to be the new schoolteacher.”
    My voice is louder than I intend. “What can you teach children? How to shame their fathers?”
    She stomps away, then stops in the middle of the road. “You think you are San Humberto Himself !” she shouts. “You are not! You are an old and drunken fruit vendor, not a saint and not a father!”
    I want to go after her, but I do not know what I would say. I put on the glasses again and see that people have come out onto the road to stare. I take the glasses off. I cannot watch them watching me.
    I sit on an empty crate and bite into a lime. The sour juice floods my mouth. I bite again, and again. I bite, I sit, and I stare straight ahead at nothing. I do not even blink when Lars’s monkey snatches the fruit out of my hand and runs away, tittering.
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    I am dry-throated and dripping with sweat when I get to Rubén’s tree. My pulse drums in my ears. I sit on a flat mossy rock and stare up into the branches, but I can see no shadow, hear no movement. The only sound is the shrill cry of a chachalaca defending its nest. I wait, trying to think of what to say. It is difficult. I feel it has been years since I have said the right thing to anyone—not even to the saint, in my prayers. Finally, this comes out: “Rubén, I do not speak to you as your father but as a man. I am sorry for all I have done and all I have failed to do.”
    The apples fly. I close my eyes and let them find their marks. When I arrive home, I count the new bruises. Seventeen in all. One for each year of my son’s life.
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    It is time. The last traces of sunset have disappeared and the gallows is lit only by the flickering torches on the roofs. We are all gathered in the square, packed in tightly, breathing on each other. I look through the crowd for Rubén, hoping, but I do not see him. It occurs to me that I might not recognize him if he were here. Would he have a beard? Would he be taller than I am? Would he be thin and weak from a diet of apples and insects? My heart drums. I feel feverish. I cannot find Vargas, either. I do not want to be here, alone in this crowd.
    A young man climbs up the frame of the gallows and leans out over the crowd, holding on with one