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Early Morning in Chorrillo
© Timothy Davis
Short Story Fiction
Sebastian Zuniga woke with a jolt. He thought it was Chalina. Her ghost visited him occasionally and she hadn’t come for a while. But it wasn’t her. It was only the clock in his head that told him it was time.
He glanced over his shoulder to look at his wife, Graciela. His scarred neck crackled like a thick rope being twisted between two powerful hands. Graciela’s face, bathed in moonlight from the open window, looked like a ceramic mask. She’s as undisturbed as the dead, Sebastian thought. He brushed his finger across her cheek. It was smooth and cool. He watched her chest until he saw it rise. He could get up now, knowing she was alive.
If you had the patience to look hard enough, and long enough, you could read Sebastian’s whole life in his weathered face. His forehead was creased with deep furrows. They were there as reminders of the times that he worried. Like the time when he was seven and he tried to wake his mother. No matter how much he shook her she wouldn’t move. When you see such a thing as a boy, it sticks with you your whole life.
There was the time in second grade in Boquete when the nun pushed him to the front of the class to recite his part from the Bible without practice. His mother usually helped him with his verses by firelight while under the stars, smoking tobacco. He missed her very much.
The time when he saw a young girl floating in the Rio Boquete and the adults, all drinking and laughing, didn’t hear his frenzied cries and he dived into the cold, mountain water, not knowing how to swim.
The time he ran away from his father and left on a ship from Colon. The destruction he saw during the Second Great War, and the abuses he endured. The first time he saw someone die violently with the blood of his friend wet on his face. The time he looked through his sights and lined up his target and knew he had a good shot, except on this occasion it wasn’t an ocelot. It was a man. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger and watched the soldier fall. He ran forward and searched the body but he didn’t find any maps or secret enemy reports. Only a wallet with pictures of a woman and three children. That night he slipped away from the perimeter and in the darkness he hid his face and wept until he was empty. Then he shivered, and the shivering never stopped.
Buried deep in those furrows was the birth of his first child, Francisco. After Graciela went through twenty-six hours of labor that ended in a last minute caesarian, the doctor pronounced her and the baby dead. Sebastian didn’t give up and his will resuscitated them back to the living as he pounded on her chest.
The lines of worry deepened every day as he worked, wondering if he would make enough money to feed his growing family. And if his past could truly be forgotten.
Around his mouth and eyes were creases that looked like crows feet. They were small reminders of happiness when he laughed and his eyes twinkled with joy. There were always thoughts of Chalina, even though she had been dead for over twenty years; secret thoughts that Graciela would never know about. Chalina held a special place in his heart and always would.
The old man carried with him this and more. Every trait, every characteristic handed down by his ancestors. He carried them as a testament to who they were, who he was, and what those younger than him could become.
It would be another two hours before the roosters crowed, drowning the whole barrio of Chorrillo in an obnoxious sound that was worse than all the horns from the chiva buses on Avenida Central.
Sebastian wondered, like he always did in the early morning, what time it was. He told himself that today was the day he was going to buy a watch. The only problem was that watches were five dollars and he needed the money. He thought if he had a watch it would show it was three thirty. He tried to imagine in his head what three thirty in the morning looked like, and how any human could ever invent what a morning should look like except God.
He swung his legs out of bed, checked the floor for cockroaches, grabbed his sandals, shook them, and slipped them on. They always cleaned up after supper, but in Chorrillo, cockroaches were like the small gray chameleons that climbed the outside walls—they had always been there.
Sebastian shuffled a few steps to the kitchen. He poured water from the rusty spout of a tin coffee-pot into a black-stained aluminum pan. He turned the lever on the stove and struck a wooden match from the box on the shelf above. The blue flame glowed, providing a faint light. He opened the lid to a tin of café Duran and shook in what he thought was about two large tablespoons, and then a little more. If you want the thin stuff like what the Chinese drink, then make tea, he thought.
He lifted a small package encased in tinfoil from the shelf. He unwrapped it and gently removed the remains of his cigar from the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that. There was only a stub left. He wet it in his mouth and rubbed the tip across his tongue. It tasted good, just the way he liked it. He bent down to the gas flame and sucked in a deep breath. He noticed the flames around the burner flicker. The propane was almost finished. There might not even be enough for his coffee. He touched the water. It was warm enough. He turned off the gas, poured the coffee into a small tin cup, pulled the blanket back from the doorway and stepped outside.
Yes, it’s about three thirty, he thought. It was a little cool; the shadows were just right, but this is what three thirty felt like. Sebastian eyed the log bench, swept his hand across it, and sat down. He took another drag off the cigar. The heat nearly burned his index finger and thumb. One, maybe two more puffs left, he thought. The Trade Winds blew softly, rustling the palm fronds.
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