The Strongbox

After weathering the tyranny of Mussolini and Franco, Doña Magda arrives during the terrors of the Trujillo regime. When three sisters visit the powerful Gypsy medium to get help for their papá, the patriarch of their village, she compels them to prepare for the fall of Las Terrenas . . .

The sisters blinked in the daylight dusting the room. Leya started at the presence of the haitiano standing just inside the doorway, as if he had been there all along, watching them put on their cintas de colores. She timidly fixed her gaze on a polished copper seagull hanging among the rest of the Doña’s necklaces.

Do you like it? the Doña asked, focusing on Leya. It is all I have left of my papá’s handiwork. The rest was lost in a terrible fire.

Leya found herself looking into the Doña’s eyes, nodding with sympathy, unafraid for a moment.

There are some good men, the Doña said, studying Leya’s turquoise eyes. But most are brutal. That is why they run the world.

Ay sí, the sisters answered, nodding.

But one day a woman will champion the people of Las Terrenas, and she will be of your blood, she said. And those who lost their lands will have them back!

But Doña, we have not lost our lands, Raisa pointed out, puzzled.

Many of you will, and this rape of your lands will come soon, the Doña warned. It will take decades to be avenged, and then vengeance will come with a great storm.

Is there anything to be done? Leya asked so confidently her sisters stared at her instead of the Doña.

Learn to read, learn to write! the Doña answered quizzically. Now go! I have much to do, and I am still in mourning!

THE STRONGBOX

a novel

by Michael Pon

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or locations is purely coincidental, and in the imagination of the reader.

All Rights Reserved by the author. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the author, except short passages for the purpose of reviews.

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The Strongbox, by Michael Pon

Copyright © 2014 by Michael Pon

ISBN: 9781310447808 — eBook

9781514655566 — Trade Paperback

151465556X

Cover: oil painting by Robert Pon, The Dictator, 1999

Cover Layout by: Terry Kepner

Published May 2014.

Smashwords Edition, eBook layout by Terry Kepner

For my son, Kennedy

Acknowledgements

Many have helped and encouraged me with The Strongbox since I began imagining it many years ago. Among them are Sarah Aponte, the Chief Librarian at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, who always made time to point me toward the right reference books. Later came Martha Ellen Davis, Ph.D, whose work on Dominican folk religion was a great help. Martha also set me straight on a number of issues that strengthened my fiction. Héctor Álvarez-Trujillo, a Dominican now teaching history at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, also made suggestions and encouraged me.

Further back in time, Dr. Mac Tidwell and Dr. Dwight William of the Environmental Health Science Department of University of South Carolina School of Public Health helped me understand elephantiasis, a disease that still affects people in the Dominican Republic.

Early on, Frank Moya Pons, one of the Dominican Republic’s most important historians, told me he believed, in a novel, coconut oil could be transported by sea from Las Terrenas to Sánchez. This observation, made in a phone call he may not even recall, gave me confidence in my storyline.

Closer to home in New Hampshire, I must thank Tom Dunn, a well-traveled man of the theater, who voraciously read the long version overnight and wanted more. Pam Shepard, an educator who loves sweeping fiction, put many of my worries to rest. Shelley Nelkens, a fellow fictionist, also read the long version and has been an advocate ever since.

Mary Jeddore Blakney, a poignant story-teller, delved into the details of both the long and shorter versions to help me keep many aspects of my story plausible.

I must also thank my mother, Margaret, whose terrible years with Alzheimer’s Disease kept me home to care for her and write to save my own mind during her quieter periods. Her spirit still guides me and visits from time to time.

My father, Robert, also encouraged me to finish what I was doing, and move on to write more. His example as a dedicated fine artist, along with my mother’s, have always steered me toward exploring my own creativity and imagination.

My wife, Shannon, has always supported my yen to write and continues to hope for success and believes in The Strongbox.

Perhaps most importantly, I must recognize my son, Kennedy, and his Dominican family. Their presence in my life has taught me how resilient the people of the Dominican Republic are, despite the cruelty of so many of their dictators, especially Rafael Trujillo.

About This Book

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Forward

El Chivito

the strongman of Las Terrenas

Papito

the man of the people

Doña Magda

the Gypsy who foretold the storm

Radhamés

and the fall of Las Terrenas

El Financiero

the man of business and the campesino

Nuvia

and the fall of El Chivito

Nodi

the woman who opened the safe

Belié

el caudillo and the fragrance of old bones

Forward

The U.S. Marines of today’s world are not only dispatched to fight our enemies, but to win the hearts and minds of the populations oppressed by our enemies. This was not true of the U.S. Marines during the occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. They were there to collect a debt.

When I first began sorting out my ideas for The Strongbox some twenty years ago, I began with the intent of writing from the point of view of the impoverished. Much has been written about the powerful, especially the dictator, Rafael Trujillo, and the upper class Mirabal sisters whose assassination tipped the scales once and for all against Trujillo. But many campesinos, the peasants of the republic, lived lives oppressed in obscurity. Their stories abound with endurance, rebellion and a resilience framed in the rich tapestry of their culture.

Today’s U.S. Marines have made great leaps toward a culture of tolerance for their differences in regards to ethnicity, gender and sexual preference. They include many Latinos, and many of them of Dominicano descent. But those U.S. Marines who invaded and occupied the republic in 1916 were all white, mostly Protestant men dispatched from a United States mired in Jim Crow laws. They invaded to collect a national debt to the U.S. the great majority of Dominican campesinos, who could neither read nor write, had no idea existed.

Oppressed by their own dictators and strongmen, the great majority of campesinos saw the U.S. Marines as yet another source of oppression. While the occupying Marines built roads connecting the provinces of the republic for the first time in its history, and organized a Dominican military constabulary, many of them also raped Dominican women and abused Dominican men, regarding them as niggers and spigs.

Trujillo, a thug who led a violent gang called the 42, joined the U.S. formed constabulary, La Guardia, in 1918 and became a favorite of the Marines. Ruthless and opportunistic, in nine years he became its commander-in-chief. During his early years in La Guardia he pimped for a U.S. Marine sergeant and became a force to reckon with in the black market. In 1930, through a series of political maneuvers, he took over the presidency with 99 percent of the vote. The American ambassador at the time commented that he received more votes than there were actual voters.

By the time he took the reins of the republic with dictatorial powers, jailing any opponents, the U.S. finally had recognized how dangerous he was. But there was nothing to be done by then. So ensued the bloodiest regime the Dominican Republic has ever endured. Only with the help of arms provided by the CIA did a small group of rebels succeed in assassinating him 31 years later.

It is against this backdrop that I tell this story of campesinos attempting to escape the stranglehold of the Trujillo regime.

El Chivito

the strongman of Las Terrenas

The villagers called the Aurelio Salazar home The Strongbox because the safe was built into its central wall. In the safe were the deeds Radhamés Salazar Reynoso, now old Salazar, the little goat, kept for collateral on the loans he gave the villagers, and then just kept. They hadn’t seen the deeds for more than forty years, since Alonso Rebozo, the Catholic the villagers called the new priest, and the only one in the village who could read and write at the time, drew them up and handed them over.

Alfredo Bruno, the day he pointed his radio at the sun and announced he would not take a loan, swayed some to reconsider. But the majority of the villagers took loans and lost their lands. Most no longer wished to think of the deeds, nor the loan contracts attached to them, the interest due amounting to so many more times what they had borrowed, even denying their existence. Others died, leaving their families to forget the lands. But there were a few, including those who called themselves Las Dos, who hoped Nodi, the housekeeper in The Strongbox, who took over for her mamá, Candelaria, after her head broke open on the freshly mopped kitchen tiles, would eventually find out if the deeds were still in the safe.

Simple parchments folded twice and tied with string, hundreds of them, they told her many times over the years. By now they must have yellowed, they all agreed.

But Nodi was not allowed in the office when the safe was open. She was to be polite, never look a family member directly in the eye, and keep The Strongbox sparkling clean. With a façade of balconies and twirled iron balustrades three stories high, it towered over the family’s small hotel and restaurant next door. It was coral pink with baby blue borders and a zinc roof with a tall, complicated antenna, which old Salazar suspected was the inspiration for his daughter’s hairdo. White curtains sailed inward behind the open glass jalousies on the top floor — the good life above the hot earth.

Old Salazar was seated in the shade on the patio under the second floor balcony, thin and wrinkled, in loose white trousers. His shirt, a pink and white vertical pinstripe, fluttered in a gust of wind. His chest was frail and pale. His bony elbows rested on the arms of his high back wicker throne. He brought a tall glass to his lips and sipped. Since the dictator, Generalísimo Trujillo, was assassinated over thirty years ago, the villagers referred to old Salazar as El Chivito, the diminutive form of Trujillo’s nickname: El Chivo, The Goat.

His grandson, Marcos Aurelio Salazar, in a cool white shirt open at the collar, exposing his hairy burnt sienna chest, sat at a table in the empty restaurant reading a newspaper under a ceiling fan. Presidente Joaquín Balaguer, a reporter claimed, spent over seventy million U.S. dollars on a new shrine for the bones of Columbus in Santo Domingo. Marcos read:

From the sky, it is a tremendous cement and marble cross laid out on its back in the capital, where the great navigator made his first permanent settlement in the New World. It is seven stories high and divided by an open air causeway down the central line of the cross. In the crux, shielded by clear hurricane-proof acrylic walls, a bronze and marble tomb houses what the government claims to be his remains. The galleries in the seven-story complex are being filled with historical artifacts and displays. On weekends its 149 Xenon Skytrack lasers beam a white cross into the night sky. This symbol of the navigator’s faith may be seen in fair weather for hundreds of miles across the Caribbean. It is called The Lighthouse of Columbus, The Admiral, and is the subject of great controversy.

Pope John Paul is coming to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the arrival of The Admiral in the New World on Oct. 12, 1992. Presidente Balaguer is doing what must be done to have the colossal project finished by that date . . .

Marcos approved. It would increase tourism, and he was not one to bother over petty details of funding. He routinely dismissed all the grumblings criticizing the project, blaming it on communist propaganda, supporters of Fidel Castro.

Not since Generalísimo Trujillo himself constructed his Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the Free World to celebrate his twenty-fifth year in power has anything cost so much, the dissenters complained. They despised what Balaguer was calling the beautification of the area surrounding the Lighthouse, scornfully pointing out the poor being robbed of their homes, pushed out by government bulldozers and scattered about the capital with no pesos in return for their property and no place to live.

The breeze picked up outside the restaurant and blew through its open front doors, rippling the newspaper in his hands. Marcos searched the open sea beyond the palms framed in the doorway, searching for storm clouds. A hurricane was churning its way south of Puerto Rico, so he expected turbulence, but not much, because it was so early in the season. Hardly ever did a big storm strike in June. And even though this was the second of the season, he was not worried. The palms swayed against a clear sky. He was thankful for the air during what had become a heat wave, even for the island.

Marcos’ mamá, Señora Aurelio, bustled out the back door of The Strongbox, down the cement stoop of five steps, past an organized squalor of crates stacked with empty bottles and old rice sacks stuffed with the remains of the restaurant’s daily menu a menagerie of poultry parts, fish heads, intricate white spines and the horny broken shells of crustaceans buzzing with flies with her head held high. All morning long she’d been tending to her papá, old Salazar, soaking his cuticles, polishing his nails, trimming his mustache, vexed by those stubborn hairs that dared exit his nostrils, and always having to keep an eye on Nodi, that campesina who wasn’t used to civilization, always having to tell her she should clean the bedrooms and mop the living room tiles before she scrubbed down the kitchen, or she’d track all that detergent through the house! And Nodi, in her pale yellow dress, trying to please her, to remember it all, sí señora, nodding no señora, and I will señora . . . So ignorant she was lucky to have the job!

Señora Aurelio glided through the restaurant kitchen and into the dining room. She had just finished with her papá, whom she left seated on the patio of The Strongbox with a tall glass of rum diluted with coconut water and ice. His mustache was perfect. And now it was time to pay Nodi, whose monthly payday it was. She stood by the cash register, her hair a complex of intricate coils, a result of curling and sitting under her hairdryer while her husband wasn’t at home to complain about the gas she wasted using the generator to run that thing, that nicked and khaki contraption that took up an entire corner of one of her daughters’ rooms, for he wouldn’t have that nightmare in their bedroom. How could she sit under that steaming dome in this climate? But it had been a wedding present from her maternal grandpapá in the capital, and, anyway, her husband couldn’t refuse her vanity, could he? It was this suffering she went through for him, to be the woman with the perkiest new hairdo in Las Terrenas, was it not? Her logic was insanely feminine and more complicated than politics. So he put up with her hairdryer, as long as he didn’t have to look at it: Like something out of the Inquisition! That worn pink seat cushion and those flecks of rust shining through the chrome armrests ¡Ay Dios! He’d throw his arms up in horror: Like they’d strap you into it and heat you to death for your sins! Señora Aurelio smoothed her pink chiffon dress over the bulges and creases of the body she wished she could escape, then stared at her son. He held a copy of El Diario spread in the air before him. She herself never bothered with newspapers: they were for men.

With permission, she mewed, begging his pardon to interrupt his reading, her mouth a black orb surrounded by her ruby red lips.

Marcos Aurelio folded his paper and faced his mamá’s plumping form. These months are bad for business, mamá, he complained, glancing at the empty tables. He smirked, making his black shaggy mustache twitch.

I know, mi’jo, she lamented, full of empathy for her son, whose responsibility it was to run the family hotel and restaurant. It is always this way, and it will only get hotter in July and August. And we will be lucky to have even one tourist, she added pathetically, entwining her puffy white hands.

Ay sí, he agreed. It is not easy running a business when there is no business. He stretched and yawned. A tiny crucifix sparkled on a gold chain draped around his neck. She had given it to him on his confirmation day.

Señora Aurelio cleared her throat. It is time to pay Nodi, she bravely stated. All her life she’d had to ask her papá for money, then her husband, and now her son. She had always felt it was a battle. Ever since she was a little girl, she had wished that she had the combination to the safe, so she could take what she wanted when she wanted.

Ay sí, Marcos replied, shifting his eyes from his mamá to the cash register. Was there even a hundred pesos in its drawer? He didn’t think so — just enough to make change for the first customer, who would probably wander in late that afternoon after a day on the beach. Might as well close the restaurant in the mornings and lie on the beach myself, he grumbled as he stood up. His mamá’s eyebrows arched. She hadn’t understood what he said and was convinced it was a complaint directed at her for having interrupted his reading. There are not enough pesos in the cash register, he explained. I must open the safe.

Nodi, her straight black hair bound together at the base of her neck with a pink terrycloth elastic, busily bundled up her possessions on the counter in the kitchen of The Strongbox. Nearly ready to leave for the day, Don Marcos, she assured him as he walked in, having left his mamá to mind the restaurant. He grinned, thinking of her trying to open the cash register, which he kept locked. Nodi caught the flash of his one gold tooth and braced herself. He always grinned just before he pinched her butt, since long ago when she was taller than him. And he always did it when they were alone, so it was no use complaining. Even if she were believed she would be ignored. Even his wife would just laugh it off.

If only they knew the truth, Nodi fumed in her thoughts.

Clenching her fists as he approached, Nodi’s mind raced with the sudden howling of the wind back to the moment her mamá, Candelaria, holding her head high as her eyes welled up with tears, told her how and why and with whom she was conceived. She yearned for the day all her efforts with Las Dos — all that learning to read and saving pesos to send Maribel to the capital to study — would pay off.

Her eyes closed, she waited for the ugly pinch, too stubborn to move, refusing to show fear to those she swore she would one day destroy. But Marcos Aurelio merely sauntered past, chuckling at the notion of his mamá’s chubby fingers picking at the edge of the cash drawer, perhaps even breaking one of her long pink nails. Nodi relaxed as the wind’s unnerving whine sunk to a desperate lull. She kept her eyes on him as he shook his head and disappeared into the office.

I must open the safe, he yelled back at her as another powerful gust blew through the front door from the patio where his grandpapá was seated, infusing The Strongbox with the salt-laden scent of the sea. Then mamá can pay you!

He walked over to the jalousie behind the desk and cranked open the glass slats. Peering out between them, he watched his mamá pace by the open restaurant jalousie. He knew she would not dare leave it untended. Shifting his eyes toward the front of the building, he took in the coconut palms and the beach beyond. The scene was as dull to him as the postcards they sold to the tourists. How could anything be exciting in this heat? It was so much better when it was only warm in winter and the girls were everywhere in bikinis, especially the French girls who went topless. But now there was not a soul in sight. The locals were either hiding from the sun or cursing it. His papá and uncle were doing inventory in their general store on the other side of the village. His sisters were at university in Santiago, mostly because they were bored with life in Las Terrenas. His children were at school. His wife was at her sister’s, several houses away, moaning with menstrual cramps. She was a siren who tested his patience and rejected his advances one full week each month. So the house was still, except for Nodi waiting in the kitchen, and the wind.

Spinning the dial to the safe, a black iron square in a chalk-white wall, Marcos considered squandering a few pesos. He knew several girls who were always happy to oblige him. He bore down on the handle and tugged open the door, licking his mustache, thinking of one in particular. She had honey legs like his wife’s, breasts like rosy mangos and a delicious cunt. Ay, but what a blabbermouth, and my wife has her spies. So it is now a financial burden, señor, he had explained to the girl’s papá, who had grown fond of the extra cash. But the little witch stood behind him and threatened Marcos, telling him she would not only tell his wife, but the entire village, about their fucking unless he paid in full and kept paying. She ranted and raved despite her mamá’s pleas to come inside mi’ja! until Marcos told her papá he would terminate their tenant-farmer agreement — their only legal claim to the shack and the hectare of land they lived on — unless he shut her up. It was all they had in the world, and they didn’t even own it. Desperate, the man turned on his daughter and smacked her cheek hard, knocking her back into her mamá’s arms, where she collapsed, red-faced and trembling. Now you see the truth, you little whore, Marcos Aurelio had chided victoriously. He smiled wryly in front of the open safe, recalling the rage and fear moistening her eyes. It was fun, but it always got awkward with these village girls. It just wasn’t worth it, all that tension and intrigue for a side dish. Better to keep things distant — on the other side of the island, if possible. He smirked, picking up a stack of pesos.

Come, Nodi, he commanded absentmindedly, having counted out four hundred pesos for the month, just enough to keep her and Papito, the old crazy, in plantains, rice, beans, salt, eggs and chicken. Nodi appeared in the doorway with another gust blowing through The Strongbox, rippling the hem of her pale yellow dress. At the sight of the door to the safe, which Marcos Aurelio left ajar, her lips parted and her nut-brown eyes grew large. To cross the threshold was forbidden when the safe was open, but Don Marcos had beckoned her, had he not? Was it possible she might get a fleeting glimpse of the deeds? Would this be the only chance she would ever get to verify their existence? She blinked, sliding her eyes from the dark interior of the safe to Don Marcos, who suddenly grinned. As their eyes met he took her in. This woman, only several years younger than his mamá and more than a decade older than he, was both simple and supple. The hem of her dress hung modestly above her knees, exposing only a hint of her cinnamon thighs. Her stomach was flat and her breasts pert, virginal. He could not imagine her betraying an indiscretion, this servile housekeeper. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. The thought of taking her like he would any other woman was incestuous to him. She had been part of his childhood. But then, it was so taboo it was arousing.

Nodi grew uncomfortable, feeling as if he was looking directly through her dress. She clasped her hands in front of her pelvis and took a step backwards, dropping her gaze to the tiny crucifix hanging from his neck, realizing she had actually been looking into his eyes. I should not enter the office, Don Marcos, with the safe open, she said humbly.

He glanced from Nodi to the safe, back to the hem of her dress fluttering in the insistent breeze invading The Strongbox, then locked onto her eyes. Ay mami, he said quietly, do not worry, it is nothing, a silly tradition. Come, he commanded again, beckoning with his hand full of pesos.

Her eyes danced across the floor to the safe and back to his polished black shoes. Uncertain, she stepped across the threshold, her hands rubbing each other like anxious animals. Marcos Aurelio stood his ground, allowing the magnetism of the safe to draw her near. Casually, he flopped her pesos on the desk, so that she would have to walk past him. Nodi pursed her lips, sensing a trap: after all, he had not pinched her yet and he had grinned twice. She stopped in front of him, stalling, aligning herself with the opening of the safe, which was no more than a vertical shadow beyond which she could discern nothing. Marcos grinned again, her fascination with the safe obvious — his one gold tooth brilliant behind his unkempt mustache. Unsure of what to do or where to rest her eyes, she began to retreat, shuffling in her low gray sneakers. It was then that Marcos Aurelio draped his hand over the door of the safe and swung it open, intoxicating her with the actualization of her wish. She blinked, the wind whistling through the jalousies, then blinked again, dumfounded country girl, her mouth agape. Oblivious of the stacks of pesos and bundles of U.S. dollars on the top shelf, she stared only at the hundreds of carefully folded parchments tied with string and shelved like bars of gold bullion: the wealth of Las Terrenas.

A deep magenta rose in her olive-tan cheeks, strands of her hair blowing about her face. The deeds were so close, nearly within her reach, yet so distant and impossible. Her first thought flew to her home with Papito. To slip out of The Strongbox with the deeds meant, she believed, to own Las Terrenas.

Marcos Aurelio quietly walked over to the office door and gently swung it to, leaving it ajar. He did not want the sound of it slamming shut to jolt Nodi out of her reverie, staring into the open safe. He clicked the knob on the radio in the bookshelves by the door. It spluttered to life with the voice of a broadcaster babbling on about tourism and the poor condition of the republic’s economy. Satisfied with the noise he believed would camouflage her complaints, he eyed the delicate cavities behind her knees, the curve of her thighs at the hem of her pale yellow dress. He approached her from behind, wrapping his arm around her waist and belly, his fingers searching, finding her hip and embracing it, pressing her back to him. His other hand fondled her breasts as he nuzzled his nose into her neck.

¡Don Marcos! Nodi exclaimed, trying to push his hands away, as the broadcaster took on an urgent tone reporting on the hurricane that unexpectedly curled around the southwestern tip of Puerto Rico, gaining strength in the unusually warm waters of El Canal de la Mona.

Papito

the man of the people

Old Salazar, seated on his wicker throne on the patio of The Strongbox, as his daughter leaves him each day after his manicure, sips his coconut water and rum with ice. The eternally unfolding present — Nodi’s rustling in the house, his grandson’s voice booming, I must open the safe! — is muted by the brilliant landscape of his past, which routinely overtakes him at this hour.

As the wind groans past him into The Strongbox, he stares beyond the scattered palms and beige-white ribbon of beach, his gray eyes lost in a vision of youth: the young bull he was half a century ago in his papá’s coconut grove. Fifty-two years have passed since the day Papito told him his story. He was fourteen years old and it was the summer of 1940, he decided, counting on his fingers. He sees himself, Radhamés Salazar Reynoso, smart as a whip, trying to convince his papá to buy more plots of land . . .

So we can harvest more cocos, make more oil, and save more pesos. Do you not see, Papito? young Radhamés argued, throwing his hands up, trying his papá’s patience in the first light of day as they sat on their haunches around a fire in their dooryard.

Even when they disagreed, Radhamés called him Papito, as the villagers did in deference, acknowledging his papá as the little patriarch of Las Terrenas.

More, more, more. That is all you ever talk about, Papito protested, his face indignant, his chest heaving at having to deal with his son’s ambitious nagging even at sunrise. How could anyone need more than what we have, mi’jo? This grove is the largest and richest in Las Terrenas. It was enough to feed your mamá and your sisters — and you.

But Papito, Radhamés complained, Why save every centavo just to make a pile of pesos we do not spend?

¡Muchacho! Papito snapped, longing for the peaceful mood with which he had woken. You are only a boy of fourteen years. You know nothing of life without land or money.

I know land is worth more than pesos, which are just paper, Radhamés answered defiantly.

Papito rolled his eyes, tired of resisting and wrestling with his logic. "Sí, land is worth more than pesos which are just paper. But there is more than land to life. What if I get sick and die, like mamá, and you cannot keep up with the harvest? What will you do without pesos to eat? Eh? What if you have to pay men to harvest for you?"

Sí, Papito, I know, Radhamés agreed. But that is why we should buy more land while we are both strong, before you grow old.

And where will our neighbors go if they sell their land?

Back over the mountain, where they came from.

"Where we came from," Papito reminded him.

"Like my sisters, I was born here, Radhamés shot back. The only son of the patriarch of Las Terrenas — you, Papito. I was born with the right to take over where you left off."

You are not ready to take over anything, Papito said flatly.

Radhamés bit his lip and stared down the trail. He hated to be reminded of his tender age.

Papito smirked and stared at his pink sow grunting, straining at its tether for a plantain peel just out of reach. His two mules whisked flies off their burnished brown rumps with their coarse black tails. He tended an iron caldron of simmering coconut oil.

Fetch me fuel for the fire, Papito said quietly.

Radhamés walked off abruptly as Papito cracked a coconut with his machete and held it high, dribbling the juice into his mouth. Then he shelled it with several swipes, sliced the white fruit into the hot oil and watched the chunks shrink in the golden depths. He threw its broken shell into the flames and skimmed a bit of fibrous debris off the surface with a sieve made from an old shirt and a wire coat hanger. He knocked it clean on the caldron. The debris spat and hissed in the fire.

The cooking oil he and the rest of the villagers processed was shipped in a yawl around the Samaná peninsula to Don Pedro’s factory in Sánchez. It was stacked in the bilge in five-gallon cans sealed with metal lids. In the factory it was bottled in labeled plastic gallons, packed four to a crate. Then it was loaded into boxcars on the Ferrocarril Dominicano, the railroad running between Sánchez and La Vega, and then distributed to bodegas throughout El Cibao, in Moca, San Francisco de Macoris, even as far away as Santiago, where Don Pedro was born.

Tending the caldron was work his woman, Mimita, had done before the fever took her, while he was in the farthest reaches of their grove, climbing the palms and cutting the coconuts out of their crowns. He would husk them on a steel point stuck straight up in the ground, then load the nuts in baskets strapped to his mules and lead them to their dooryard, where Mimita shelled and fried them down in the caldron. But Mimita had died many years ago and his daughters were grown and tending their own families and caldrons, so now it was his son’s work, and his own. Every Saturday morning, along with the rest of the villagers, they loaded their mules with their cans of oil, led them down to the beach and piled them on the pier Don Pedro had them build out of palm trunks.

Mimita, where are you? Papito murmured under his breath, yearning for her light to appear.

Several weeks after Papito buried Mimita under the most magnificent royal palm in their grove, the sun had descended to earth and danced on her grave. Papito had been alone that day and astounded by this, what he considered to be, a miracle. Colors had exploded before his eyes, growing even brighter when he shut them tight and covered them with his hands: fluorescent flowers and zigzagging streaks like fireworks had scored the black universe in his head. His children had found him at sunset, rubbing his eyes and wandering among the long shadows thrown by the palm trees in the high grove. They’d thought he had been stricken by a massive bout of grief.

Since that day, he did not bother to visit her grave again, for he was convinced she was no longer in the ground. Instead he started a fire under the caldron during the earliest shades of dawn and waited for her to come and whisper in the ears of his mules. When she appeared, her singsong hush made their heavy black lashes fall serenely over their glossy brown eyes. She also kneeled by the sow to scratch her back, making her squeal and hoof at the earth and crane her neck. There were moments when she stared directly at Papito, filling him with her quiet joy. She was young and sweet as the day the fever took her, aglow, ravenous for the infinite. He would sometimes stop in the middle of the day in some remote corner of their grove, positive he could divine her radiance, like a flame nearly invisible in the sun, wearing the dress he had buried her in — the one she wanted so much, a lacy white gown she’d seen advertised in a bundle of old newspapers. He had taken her to the capital with him to buy it. That was the only time they’d left Las Terrenas in all their years there. Because he felt more than ever Mimita was finally his alone, he never mentioned her presence, not even to his children. He looked for her now, but only found the memory of her, leaving him to counsel their son alone.

§

How long must we go on doing the work of both women and men? Radhamés complained, throwing down a burlap sack full of dried coconut husks in the dooryard. Will you ever pick another woman?

Soon you will pick one, mi’jo, Papito answered, staring into the caldron.

Radhamés blinked. He had almost done it one night on the beach, but the girl squirmed out of his clutches at the last moment and slapped him. Then she had laughed as he fell back on the sand, stunned, his chinos bunched around his ankles and his dick pointing at the full white moon. She had ran off before he could get up, but he was convinced she would let him get her the next time. Her name was Vitalia. He gazed at the lush green foliage rolling into their dooryard, imagining her in his embrace.

Papito had made his decision. The first ray of sun cut through the morning mist and ignited a yellow, green and blue haze above the roof of their palm thatch bohío. His son’s muscular silhouette brimmed in its iridescence. Radhamés now had three years shinnying palm trunks in the grove.

You have grown strong, mi’jo. But strength alone does not make a man.

Radhamés shook Vitalia from his head and looked at Papito.

Sit down, mi’jo, Papito said. I have a story to tell you.

Now? When we are ready to work?

The story of my life will be work enough for this morning.

But Papito, I know all the stories of your life. I have heard them from everyone since I was small.

Maybe so, but you have not learned their lessons.

You started the new Las Terrenas. You are the patriarch who chased the rats away. I know all this.

But you have not heard it from me. You were too young.

What difference does that make, Papito? Is it not better that we work?

Sit down, mi’jo, Papito said firmly.

Muy bien, Radhamés agreed, settling on his haunches.

Papito tapped the side of the caldron with his coat hanger sieve, allowing the silence to clear his mind. Radhamés frowned, wondering how long this would take, but Papito merely stared into the fire.

My boots, Papito began, referring to the pair of old leathers crisscrossed with laces up to the top of