Chico turned out to be the heavy-browed, sharp-eyed youth who’d questioned Fernando earlier. The other three churlish young men were called Tito, Pepe and Lalo. Pepe was very skinny, Tito was very ugly, and Lalo was very stupid. Chico, being the meanest of the bunch, was naturally their leader. All four of them glared at Fernando as he approached them across the workyard.

Fernando wasn’t discouraged at this show of unprovoked hostility in the slightest. He was used to getting along with people inclined to dislike him. He spoke to them frankly, conveying what the jefe had said. They listened to this in standoffish silence.

Chico eyed Fernando. Fernando regarded him back. Then Chico turned and spat.

“Vamos,” he said, and that was that.

All four of these young men were more or less related to Fernando, which in a town this size was no great surprise. Of the group, the unlovely Tito seemed to dislike him the most, which was also no surprise. As Chico led Fernando around the work site, instructing him in this and that, Tito hounded sourly after them.

“Why would the boss hire you? You don’t know how to do anything.”

Fernando shrugged a shoulder. “I guess he just likes me.”

Tito’s sallow, pimpled face soured further. No one had ever paid him any special favors, that was plain.

“Sweet-talked him, did you?” Tito smiled nastily. “That what they teach you in your fancy city schools?”

“Sure,” Fernando said, smiling back. “That, and how to braid our pubes.”

As Tito glowered, Chico laughed. The other two followed suit. Pepe snickered under his breath while Lalo brayed like an ass.

The rest of the day rocked along well enough. Though the sun beat down on them and the work was just as hard and relentless, Fernando labored on with grim good humor at the shit jobs Chico gave him. Along the way, he side-stepped the traps Tito kept trying to lay for him.

“Don’t you have any family in the city?”

“My father’s family,” Fernando said gruffly, hefting up the sledgehammer again.

“What are they, drowning in debt or something? Why are you working like this if they could just send you some money?”

“I like to work.”

Fernando stated this simply, because it was true. Tito’s lip curled anyway.

“You know what I think? I think you’re out here because they don’t want you around. Your father had you on the side, didn’t he? They say your mother was his—”

Fernando brought the hammer smashing down on a hunk of old slab, pulverizing it in a spray of shards. He turned and stared at Tito, just stared at him until Tito’s smug expression started to waver. Chico came over then. He glanced sharply between them.

“What the fuck’s going on?”

The boils standing out on Tito’s face had paled to the roots. “Nothing,” he said quickly to Chico, whose own mother was Carmencita’s first cousin. “Just asking city boy about his family and stuff.”

“Yeah?” Chico glanced again to Fernando, who was still staring Tito down. “Well, knock it off. I don’t want to be out here all day because you’re shooting the shit.”

Fernando wrenched the sledgehammer up from the crater he’d made like there had been no interruption whatsoever. Chico nodded and walked away. Fernando went back to work while Tito went back to scowling at him.

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy