When I was a child and played in mud, my father was still alive. “Come, m’ijo” he’d say, chewing tobacco, fingernails dirty from working the land. “The night is for monsters,” his eyes glassy from the sun, “and so is the day.”
• • • •
The men wanted our land. The land we’ve been handed by our parents. The land we’ve been taught to cultivate, to nourish, and to respect. They brought papers we’d never seen before, flashed them on our brown, sweaty faces, saying the “property” belonged to them. They came and measured our soil, talked about buildings and amenities, while, yards away, we cut our hands slicing cacao, picking coffee, and raising our chickens.
“You got thirty days to leave,” the men said, looking at our shacks, our clothes hanging out to dry. “Or we’ll burn everything down.”
• • • •
I saw you looking my way many times before.
You’ve caught me staring.
I work the land. My knees dirty with dirt.
You ride your motoconcho.
My days are spent alone, shunned and called names by my own people.
Your days you spend driving passengers from our land to town and from town to our land—Cien pesos roundtrip.
• • • •
That night we heard it for the first time. It was out there, destroying our hard work. It wrecked our harvest. It killed our chickens, sucked the blood of our goats. It sniffed under our doors, smelled the fear emanating from our bodies.
“They summoned a bacá,” someone said in the morning as we buried our goats and shook off the ants feasting on our dead chickens.
• • • •
With our land destroyed, violated by the men in power, I had nothing to do at home. I went to town to look for papers. I saw you there, at the motoconcho stop, waiting for business.
You shone a bright smile my way.
I blushed and looked away. You were brave to even look. People talk. I have a reputation.
I found the papers. It had my great-grandfather’s name and almost one hundred years of ownership.
“You need a ride?” you asked once I stepped out.
I hopped on back, wrapped my arms around your waist, and smelled the soil on your skin as we sped the road away.
“But it is not deslindada,” the men said when they saw my papers. “This means nothing.” They took my paper, ripped it to shreds in front of the brown men and women that stood behind me but not with me, including you.
• • • •
The bacá returned in the middle of the night. It killed our horses, cows, and pigs as we cowered inside the safety of our houses.
• • • •
I looked out to the moonlit night through a gap between my wooden slats. I saw the bacá, a demon trapped in a bull-like creature destroying everything in its path. It had veins that popped out of bulging muscles under thick, black skin. It huffed, sending yellow dust flying. Its bellow shook our floors and walls. Anything touched by a human turned into filth under its weight. Its eyes red with the fury of being unable to touch our houses. It destroyed to provoke, to force us out. To pulverize us the same way it did to everything.
But we didn’t take the bait.
We just waited it out until it caught up to us.
• • • •
“You’re all very lucky,” said the men. “The development will bring jobs. These people will have big houses that need cleaning, cars that need washing, gardens that need keeping. You’re all very lucky,” they repeated as they tried to convince us to give up our land. “You have ten days.”
We had nothing to sell or trade. We had nothing to buy food with. Children were starving, and our people were desperate.
They were breaking us.
They were winning.
• • • •
I stood at the back as I heard the real men talk about a plan. Their plan. “Enough hiding,” said one of them. “We’ll kill the bacá and serve its head on a plate,” said the other. “They won’t kick us out of our land.”
You were there, holding your machete up in the air like the others. You were one of them, accepted because your masculinity wasn’t in question.
• • • •
That night, right before the sun disappeared behind the mountains, we grabbed our machetes and flashlights and left our homes. We decided to lure the beast away from the houses so the children wouldn’t see the massacre. We walked as a group for a while, but then we split into smaller groups. We were to yell when we encountered it. We were to rush to the aid and slay the beast.
• • • •
I was left alone to fend for myself and to walk the dark forest of giant trees and soft soil. I heard nothing but the shiver of leaves and the gossip of crickets. I pointed my flashlight in many directions, an owl here, a jutía there, but no bacá.
Then my light landed on you. Your brown skin glistening. And I remembered the smell of soil. You looked at me with the eyes of a hunter.
“I want you,” you said.
“Te quiero ahora,” I said.
You closed the space between us, your thick lips fire on mine. You bit my ears and sucked on my neck. I unbuttoned your shirt and you unzipped your pants.
There was pain.
There was pleasure.
There were screams in the distance.
• • • •
They caught the bacá, had it tied up with ropes and chains. They branded the demon with the embers of dying fogones. The bacá howled in pain as the men celebrated, playing their güiras and taking shots of mamajuana. How they caught it, no one told, but there was a fiesta that night, and people were going to wait for sunrise to slaughter the beast.
• • • •
You and I made it out of the woods. Your shirt was half unbuttoned, pants falling, my neck bruised. The men saw us. The laughter died, and only the beast was heard struggling.
“¡Maricones!” someone yelled.
“No,” you said. “Is not what you think.”
They punched us, and they beat us.
“¡Matenlo!”
What they did to you, I didn’t know, but they threw me to the bacá to see it devour me. It bared its teeth. It looked at me with its red, furious eyes. We lay side to side, just inches away from each other.
The bacá didn’t kill me. It didn’t go for the easy target. With the last of my strength, I pulled the chains and ropes from its feet and set it free.
The drunk men had no time to react.
The doors to their homes were open.
The beast left nothing behind.
And then, when there was no one left to kill, it came for me.
• • • •
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