July Thirty First

Josue Salamanca lay in the dirt with the side of his face covered in pig shit. The hot Mediterranean sun baked his back and the soles of his gnarled feet. One sandal had broken a strap and lay a meter from where he bled. Tears, saliva, and blood created a crusty sludge against his cheek and lips. It tasted nauseating. A lone magpie squawked in the old oak tree by the barn.

“Por favor, Señor.” He whispered.

The four men couldn’t hear him. Not that it would have mattered.

Josue looked at his wife about twenty meters away. She also lay on the stony ground, but without seeing him. She screamed in incomprehensible shrieks as two men held her down. Her pale buttocks reflected the late afternoon light. Josue thought of watching her make the clothing which the strangers were now tearing from her body. She would have to remake everything.

He hadn’t seen the men before coming from behind the lean-to. Josue was a farmer and had been working since early morning caring for his chickens and hogs. Sweat stains darkened the underarms of his shirt. His forehead creased and his eyes narrowed as he stepped around the corner, trying to make sense of what he saw. The men looked large and threatening around his little family.

“Hola, comrades,” Josue had said.

They turned and he saw that they were peasants like him. But all four were carrying rusty rifles. Josue had never seen a rifle, much less held one. Two of them looked to be about his age. The oldest had an ancient pistol tucked into his waistband. The last was a teenage boy.

Josue took the oldest to be the leader. He wore a patchwork of peasant clothes covered with an unbuttoned military tunic. Josue knew it was the ad hoc uniform of the Spanish Republicans.

The others half-raised their rifles as the leader walked in his direction. Josue saw hatred and ignorance in the man’s eyes. His work-hardened fingertips started to tremble, and he dropped his pail without noticing. 

“Where are your weapons, Fascist?”

“We have no weapons, Señor. I’m only a farmer. And I am not a Fascist. I’m a Republican, like you.”

“Liar. Everyone who lives around here is a Fascist.”

“No, Señor. I swear. Please. Let us give you a chicken for your supper.”

“¡Liar!” The man hit Josue with the back of his hand.

“Por favor, Señor. Please. We take no part in the fighting. Let me and my family get back to our work.”

“I think we need to question the woman. Take her to the barn.”

“Please Señor, take me instead. My family is innocent!”

The man turned and struck Josue in the head with the butt of his rifle. Josue fell back into the dust, dazed. It had all happened so fast. Only minutes before, he had been washing his neck in the cool water of the trough. Now he was bleeding from a deep cut on his forehead. The blood ran down and Josue could taste his own blood. The man hit Josue again and continued beating him. He didn’t notice that Josue had lost consciousness.   

Before striking Josue, the man had called him a Fascist. Josue lived in an area populated by peasants who supported the King of Spain. Josue was not one of them. Nor was he a communist. Most of the peasants only hoped for an end to generations of poverty. But many in this region remained loyal to the monarchy. And citizens loyal to the throne of Spain sided with the military and Fascists. On the other side, the Republican government had even more peculiar alliances. The chaos had erupted into a cacophony of violence and confusion with no end in sight. 

When Josue awoke, he noticed that they hadn’t made it to the barn. Maria faced away from him as the first assailant took her by force.

“¡No! Please. Leave my family alone.”

His plea resulted in a kick to the face, breaking Josue’s jaw and knocking out several of his teeth. He lay contorted on the ground with his arm twisted underneath at an awkward angle. His broken face was a pulpy mess. He struggled to maintain consciousness. A hot breeze blew a leaf onto the faded red tiles covering the roof.

That shingle in the middle of my roof needs to be replaced, he noticed.

Many with whom Josue spoke seemed to look forward to a revolution. Some boasted that they couldn’t wait to eradicate communists and other liberals. They relished the idea of killing their fellow countrymen without repercussion. Still others believed they were on the side of God and the Church and would be cleansing Spain of unpatriotic vermin. If they thought about it all, they imagined themselves as the only ones pulling a trigger. Most never considered that atrocities might befall themselves or their families. 

These men are Republicans, like me. We are supposed to be comrades. How can they do this?

As the second in line unfastened his trousers, Maria’s screams had turned into quiet sobs. Josue couldn't hear them. Ringing filled his skull. He was in terrible pain and couldn’t move. His two children stood terrified in front of the earth-colored wall of their home. His boy, Enrico, had a black eye. He could see overturned chairs behind them through the open door. Josue remembered when he was a small boy and his father painted the door and shutters emerald green. His mother protested the color. But Josue always liked the contrasts between the cream color of the house and the olive trees in the hills. 

When the second man had finished with Josue’s wife, he stood and pulled up his trousers.

“Alejandro, it’s your turn,” the leader said.

Alejandro resisted taking part in the rape. He was only about fifteen and had left a similar home only weeks before. He thought of his own mother. Regardless, swept up in the instability of the past days, his comrades persisted. There is solidarity in shared guilt, after all. When Alejandro stepped back, he stood looking at what he’d done. The leader pulled his pistol and fired a single shot into Maria’s head. 

Dear Father in heaven, if it is not Your will to stop this, please let me die so I don’t have to see any more.

Josue had intended to join the Republican movement, but he had his small farm to care for. He didn’t have much and the upkeep of his livestock would fall to his family if he left. He had worried about what he should do if fighting broke out. But the immediate needs of his farm had overcome thoughts of joining. Then, when the civil war had started, inertia held him in place. He hadn’t seen any outright signs of war himself. But he heard that bands of lawless men from both sides were terrorizing the countryside. 

The boy Alejandro expressed his confusion and rage by shooting a large sow. It had been rooting in the yard with her newborn piglets. The sow slumped over with a squeal and began kicking. The boy ignored the sow and stomped on the piglets he could reach. Then he began shooting those too far away and any other livestock he could see within range.

“Don’t waste the bullets, Alejandro. That’s all we have,” the leader said. 

Josue wasn’t sure how Fascists justified their supposed patriotism to themselves. They were fighting against the elected government and attempting a coup by force. To him, this was the exact opposite of patriotism. Any others who shared his sympathy for the Republican government stayed quiet. Out of fear, Josue also kept his opinions to himself. But these men weren’t Fascists. 

The leader walked to the house and put a single bullet into Enrico’s forehead. Josue’s son dropped straight down like his bones had evaporated. Then the man drug Josue’s daughter into the house. Josue felt rage and humiliation and impotence. He listened to her screams until another shot silenced them. 

Querido Dios, por favor.

A beetle crawled past Josue’s field of view and his swollen eyes registered the striped patterns on its red and black carapace. Behind him, he heard a lorry grind its way up the nearest hill and pull into the yard. Two more men climbed out and the leader watched as the others loaded a sack of chickens and the dead sow into the back. Everyone climbed into the truck and headed North, leaving Josue alone to live or die.