Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco Page B

down from the halter. It was a resigned, docile animal, with ulcers on its pasterns where it had been hobbled. It had a few bald patches here and there and some remnants of dried mud on its hooves. The marks left by the pool that had once existed around the reed bed.
    The rope was far too short to tie around the old man’s body; the boy needed something longer. He didn’t find what he needed, but next to the old man’s head, he found instead the bailiff’s two brown cigarette ends. He imagined the three men blithely smoking as they watched the panniers burn, and instinctively he gritted his teeth.
    He tied the rope around the old man’s ankles, but the rope was so short that, when he had managed to tie a knot, the old man’s boots were almost level with the donkey’s mouth. The boy pushed against the donkey’s chest, forcing it reluctantly backwards. The donkey brayed right in his ear, and the noise drilled into his brain. They managed to move a couple of yards. The goatherd’s lifeless arms were drawn backwards in the process. Like the rough surface of a threshing board, the grit and pebbles from the crumbling wall stuck into the old man’s flesh. He groaned out loud, and the boy put his ear to the goatherd’s mouth and heard his irregular, but nonetheless encouraging, breathing.
    He ran to the other side of the wall and returned with the saddlecloth. He tried and failed to place this between the old man’s back and the ground, and opted instead to clear away all the debris that lay between them and the shade. The sun making his scalp sting. The old man’s skin red and swollen. Flies like black teeth. He needed to stop and rest, but the old man’s need was greater. He crawled along on all fours, clearing a path through the dust, casting aside any pebbles or bits of mortar. Then he again pushed against the donkey’s chest and, at the first movement, the old man writhed helplessly, his groans now inaudible, his feet raised up by the rope, his back scraping over the ground and his arms flailing back and forth like unmanned rudders. A procession of the dead.
    He placed the blanket on the ground in front of the blocked-off door to the castle, and dragged the old man over there. Pulling alternately on the man’s arms and legs, he managed to make him as comfortable as possible. He raised the old man’s head by placing a flat stone under the blanket and then prepared himself to hear whatever the goatherd had to tell him.
    He granted the goatherd’s first wish with heartening speed and efficiency, swiftly returning with half a tin of milk. He prised open the old man’s mouth with his fingers and administered tiny amounts of milk. The goatherd’s Adam’s apple moved up and down beneath the worn skin of his throat, and the hairs of his beard moved too like a bed of seagrass at the mercy of the currents. Then, when the old man gestured to him to stop, he raised the tin to his own lips and drank what was left in one gulp.
    With his back to the old man, he tried to pee into the tin, but with scant success. For days now, he had hardly peed at all. Nevertheless, he managed to produce a little dense, yellow liquid that stank of ammonia. He turned to the old man again and, using a tattered piece of cloth torn from his trousers and dipped in the urine, he cleaned the old man’s wounds. He felt the old man flinch at every touch and saw tears leak out from beneath his closed eyelids. At one point, the old man grabbed the boy’s arm, begging him to stop. The boy waited for as long as the old man maintained his grip, then, when his grip slackened, he resumed his work, which had been the goatherd’s second request. When he finished, he tried to get up, but the old man’s hand still held fast to his elbow. So he placed the tin on the ground, lay down beside the goatherd, and they both fell asleep.

7
    WHEN HE OPENED his eyes, the brief shadow cast by