Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco Page A

fell every few yards, but the boy persisted, pulling at the goat as if he were lugging a great sack full of rabbits. Having wasted a lot of time just trying to catch the goat, he now had to milk it. He would have liked to present himself at the tower bearing a tinful of milk within minutes of receiving his orders. Just to prove to the old man that he had made good use of his time with him, and that, without him realising, he had been observing his every move and had absorbed some of his knowledge. However unconsciously, he wanted the old man to feel proud of him. He tied the goat’s hind legs together, then tethered it to a rock. Placing the tin under the goat’s udder, he knelt down. The first kick landed square in his stomach and the second on one cheekbone. The wound that had reopened when he’d pressed his face to the arrow slit began bleeding profusely. He fell back, winded, unable to fill his lungs. All the breath knocked out of him. He got up and, mouth open, managed to gulp down the air he needed. After several deep breaths, he recovered sufficiently to approach the animal again and give it a kick in the ribs. The goat bleated, then immediately resumed its search for food. The boy touched his raw cheekbone and his fingers slithered over a bone he could no longer feel. He looked at his fingers and saw that they were stained bright red. Like those gleaming toffee apples you buy at fairs. He didn’t really have time to think, but the throbbing in his face was a painful reminder of the hours he had spent in the tower. His skin smeared with soot, his cheekbone burning from being pressed hard against the stone arrow slit. His hair, which was now the texture of tow, stank of stale smoke, a stench that would take him a lifetime to get rid of.
    On the other side of the wall, however, he heard the old man moan and immediately dismissed his own aches and pains. He searched about for some bits of straw and placed them before the goat, then he positioned the tin under its udder and again knelt down. He grabbed the teats with his bloodied hands and tugged. The teats stretched as if they were made of warm rubber, but no milk came out. He squeezed and massaged the teats. He spat on his palms and rubbed them together forming a film of blood, soot and saliva. He started again. His fingers moved roughly over the teats until a few drops fell onto the ground. The goat continued to munch on the straw. It took the boy quite a while to achieve anything resembling a flow of milk. The tin was too small and, at first, he couldn’t direct the stream directly into it, the milk dribbling onto the dust. He then held the mug immediately under the teat and milked using just one hand. When he had a couple of inches of liquid in the tin, he stood up and went back to the old man.
    By the time he had caught and milked the goat, the sun had risen above the wall and begun to beat down on the tower. He found the goatherd lying, unprotected, in the sun. He appeared to be unconscious, and the boy feared that he had arrived too late. He jiggled the old man’s arm and again slapped his face, but this time got no reaction. He decided to drag him into the shade. He grabbed him under the arms and pulled, but the old man was too heavy. He paused for breath, filled by a feeling of utter exhaustion and by a desperate thirst that had been building for many hours, but which circumstances had prevented him from quenching. He drank down all the milk in the tin and, even when there was not a drop left, remained standing with the tin pressed against his face.
    He set off across the dry clods of earth in search of the donkey, who was attempting to graze on what was now only a distant memory of ancient furrows. Evidence that someone had been there before them, trying to claw something out of the soil that the plain was still jealously keeping to itself. The ruined castle bore witness to that. He returned, pulling the donkey by the frayed rope that hung