If Fernando was going to make a proper pen and shelter for the goats, he was going to have to buy the materials to do so. His money had run out about the time he’d arrived in Cortez. He could send word back to Bogotá for more, but he found himself reluctant to do so. His life in Bogotá felt like another life to him. He didn’t want to mix these two worlds.
He took some extra goat cheese, wild roots and exotic jungle fruits he’d scavenged to market. In addition to these, he brought along some fish he’d netted in a forest stream while his grandmother had been taking her siesta, as well as some pheasants he’d shot with a sling out of sheer boredom. The sum total he got in return for this bounty was a pittance, nowhere close to what he needed even to purchase junkyard scraps. He bought a cheap greasy lunch with his sad earnings and trolled about town, looking for work.
There was precious little to be found. Eventually, he came across a worksite where he saw a group of local laborers milling about on their smoke break. They were a pack of young men about his age—mean-eyed, dark and rough. They gave him surly looks when he approached them. He told them who he was and asked if the jefe was taking on any more hands.
“The old witch is your grandmother?” asked the leader of the pack.
“She is.”
“You’re staying up there with her, in that creepy old shack in the woods?”
“I am.”
“De dónde eres?”
“Bogotá.”
The young workers glanced between themselves, muttering.
“You want to work here?”
“If your boss will have me.”
The hard-faced youth who’d asked him these questions ground the butt of his cigarette beneath his bootheel. He nodded toward a trailer on the site.
“He’s in there. Go ask him yourself.”
Fernando crossed the construction zone to the trailer. The peeling, rusty door stood open at a crack. Fernando rapped his knuckles against the scalding frame. A grunt from beyond bid him enter, and he did.
Inside the stifling hot trailer, the jefe leaned back in his chair with his boots crossed on the desk before him. These were cowboy boots, not workbooks. He wore a cowboy hat too, dark jeans and a dark rancher’s shirt. A thick sweaty mat of chest hair showed through the unbuttoned collar. The turquoise clasp of his bolo tie glinted beetle-like from this wiry thicket.
The air was smoky and slightly spicy from the cigarillo he was puffing. A small fan near the edge of the desk barely stirred the smoke as it gusted toward his damp, blotchy face. Across from him on a shelf, an old radio blared out folk songs, while muted soap operas glared from the television beside it.
This modern day vaquero was a small man who styled himself a big man. He had the swollen, waxy look of one who is more or less always drunk. His dark eyes looked small and piggish in his puffy face.
He regarded his visitor narrowly where he stood—not so much to get the measure of Fernando as to gauge Fernando’s measure of him. Knowing this, Fernando kept his expression mild. His stepmother’s piercing eye had given him much practice at this.
The conversation that ensued was almost identical to the one Fernando had already had outside. It gave him a chagrined sense of déjà vu.
“You want to work here?” the jefe asked him, with something like mistrust.
“If you’ll have me,” Fernando replied.
“What skills do you have?”
“None to speak of, but I learn quickly.”
The jefe grunted. “You seem sure of yourself.”
Fernando smiled. “I wouldn’t waste your time if I wasn’t.”
Leaning back a bit farther in his chair, the jefe sized him up again, more favorably. “I’m a busy man, it’s true. I could use more workers, but I don’t need any more trouble.”
“Sí, señor.”
“Go with Chico. He’ll show you what to do.”
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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy