I want to do this right. He looked me straight in the eyes, and for the first time in a long time, someone looked at me without pity, without contempt, without judgment. He just looked at me as if I were a person.
Then it’ll take about three weeks. I’ll need materials: wood, tiles, nails, lime, rope. I can bring it all, but you’ll have to pay. I’ll pay. He nodded. We made the deal right there.
It would start next Monday. I would provide the food, he would bring the work. When she left, she paused in the doorway and looked back. Are you alone on this hill? Yes, I am.
He remained silent. Then he said almost in a whisper, “Then be careful. This hill is far away, and there are people who like their distance. That’s precisely why I felt a chill.”
I thought about the footsteps I heard the night of the hoop, but I didn’t say anything, I just thanked him. Don Lorenzo returned on Monday with a borrowed cart full of wood, tiles, and tools.
And he began. He worked from early morning until sunset with a firm and silent discipline I had never seen in a man. He didn’t complain, he didn’t stop to chat, he just worked.
I would cook the food: beans with eggs and a hearty stew with corn tortillas, and coffee brewed in a clay pot with piloncillo. I would eat without speaking, nod my thanks, and return to work.
But little by little, as the days went by, we opened up. He was the one who first spoke about his wife. We were sitting under a large tree at the end of the day, resting. The sky was orange and red.
The cicadas were chirping loudly. He held a cup of hot coffee and gazed at the horizon. “It’s been four years since I buried my Juana,” he said softly. Fever. It took her in three days.
I didn’t even have time to call the healer; I didn’t answer. I just listened. The children left afterward, one to Mexico City, the other to Monterrey. They said it was to work, but I know it was to escape the sadness.
I built this house I live in for her. Now it’s just me and the silence. She took a sip of coffee. And you, why are you here alone at the end of the world?
I told him. Not everything, but I told him. I spoke of Jacinto, of the expulsion, of the humiliation, of the cold words that still hurt. He listened to everything without interrupting. When I finished, we remained silent for a long time.
“A son who does that to his mother isn’t a son,” he finally said. “It’s something worse.” And he didn’t need to say anything else, because in that silence we understood each other, two helpless souls, two forgotten ones.
Two who knew the weight of carrying loneliness like a stone on their chest. Weeks passed, the house changed, the walls were reinforced, the roof was repaired, the new tiles shone in the sun.
Don Lorenzo built a heavy wooden door with a bolt on the inside, leveled the floor, covered it with wide planks, and made a small window in the front wall. Now light came in, and the wind no longer blew through.
Little by little, it stopped being a shack and was becoming a home, but the fear didn’t go away. Every night, before going to sleep, I would go to the corner, lift the board, and look at the sacks.
They were still there, untouched, but the fear that someone might find out gnawed at me. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking I’d heard footsteps again. I’d peer through the crack in the window—nothing, just shadows and the undergrowth.
Until one afternoon Don Lorenzo called me. “Doña Teodora, come and see this.” He was crouched in the corner of the house, near where the hoop was. He had lifted some old boards that he hadn’t touched yet and was looking at the ground with a strange expression.
I approached, my heart racing. “What’s wrong?” He pointed. “This earth was disturbed, and not long ago my blood ran cold.” “What? Do you see these marks? Someone dug here and covered it up again.”
Less than a month ago. I was breathless. My legs trembled. Don Lorenzo stood up and took my arm. “Are you alright, Doña Teodora?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
My head was spinning. If someone had ended up there, then someone knew about the treasure. Someone had returned or was going to return. Doña Teodora. Her voice became lower, more serious.
If there’s something here you’re not telling me, it’s best you speak up now. I looked into his weathered face, his tired but honest eyes. And for the first time in weeks, I felt like trusting him, like sharing the burden, like not carrying it all alone.
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