Gun Work

“Shh, tranquilo,” said the man. “I am Jorge Estrada Gutierrez Maria Conejo Juan Sanchez Valasquez de los Piedras. I am called Mano.” He held up his hand, of which he possessed only one. “Solamente un mano,” he said by way of illumination.

“‘Of the stones?’” said Barney.

“Si, ‘de los piedras,’” he said. “My calling. I find the rocks. Agates, much opal... what do you call them, geodes? All kinds of rocks.”

“Rockhound.”

“I think I have heard that word...” His brows knit, pondering the meaning.

“Miner?”

“No.” Mano worked his tongue over his teeth, searching for a descriptive in the way one might speak to a child. “Pretty rocks.”

“Gems, jewelry?” Forming words seemed a new challenge to Barney. They tasted rather good.

“Yes, al veces. I dug up the diamond my son gave his esposa for their wedding. Some silver, some onyx, some... how is it called? Apache tear. El ojo de tigre. Yes. Here. Bebes. You must drink.”

He offered a tin cup containing tea, strong, bitter, laced with herbs. Later he would alternate this with fruit juice and plenty of water. Swallowing, for Barney, had become a newly learned behavior. Mano patiently guided him through it.

“My second son’s second wedding anniversary,” said Mano. “That is where we found you, on the bank of the Arroyo de la Llorona, where there used to be very good fishing. The fish, they have since died or gone elsewhere; the water is veneno, tosigo...”

“Poison.”

“The Arroyo feeds from many sources before it changes —” Mano dovetailed his hands, or hand and stump “— to the Rio Bramante, and seeks the sea. You were put in the Arroyo somewhere to the north, and — buena suerte — found your way to us.”

“El accidente,” said Barney.

“But for your wounds I would believe you,” Mano said sternly, like a parent. “Four bullets in you. Two remain. Los dedos...” Mano held up his only index finger and wiggled it.

It was pointless to lie. “A very bad man took them.”

Mano nodded. “Took them, then gave them back to you. I would not wish to meet such a man.”

“What do you mean, he gave them back?”

Mano seemed to be having trouble, chewing on how to properly express what he knew. “In your body,” he finally said. “You passed them en clínica.”

Sucio had forced Barney to swallow his own severed fingers.

Barney lost his grip on reality, and sailed down to embrace the blackness once more.

Broth, now, stronger. Barney felt it flow into him.

“When was I in the hospital? The clínica?”

Night, now, cooler, with cicadas razzing outside.

“Doctor Mendez says you are dead, then you are alive, then dead, and alive again. He wishes for city doctors, big equipamiento, but he is a very good and kind man. He fix your cuts, help your hands.”

Barney’s mutilations were anonymous in a fat swaddle of bandages.

“How long?”

Mano calculated. “Dos semanas, minimo.” Two weeks at least. “My son’s wife, she prays for you every night.”

No doubt to choke off the morbid idea that Barney’s appearance, floating right into the middle of her anniversary celebration, might be a bad omen. Los Catolicos were superstitious that way.

“It was her, Soleil, who insisted the priest give you last rites. I said no, you are not yet a dead man. But she insisted.”

So much for the grim specter in the clerical collar.

Mano held several vials of pills. “These, says the doctor, are for infection. These, for fever. These, for... something else. They say when to take them. You must take some now, yes?”

“Yes. More water, please — mas agua, por favor.”

“You speak the Spanish.”

Barney would have held thumb and forefinger an inch apart; would have said un poquito, muy mal, but he no longer had forefingers. Sucio had jammed them down his gullet and probably suffocated him until he gulped. What was left eventually emerged from his colon. Mano had seen them, perhaps salvaged them. Barney did not want to see them (at least not right this moment) and did not know if he even had the heart left to ask after their fate, just in case some nurse had flushed them down a toilet.

One of the pills was obviously for pain, which Barney determined by squinting at the labels. His guts felt bulldozed and his body felt hotly gravid with infection. He knew he was in the midst of biologically processing an unknown smorgasbord of organic contaminants. His neck and throat burned, his injuries restricted his movements, and it felt like a toothache had nested in his right eye.

“Why are you doing all this?” he asked Mano.

Mano just smiled as Barney drifted away.

Projectile vomiting in the middle of the next night. The soles of his feet felt aflame or peeled by acid. Blurred vision. Phantom pain from his hands. The bullet wounds radiating heat, swollen, growing ripe.