“Leave me now please, for a favor,” he said. His eyes were shut with pain, the edges of the lips twitching. “I find myself very well here.”
“Here is a rifle and cartridges,” Primitivo said.
“Is it mine?” Fernando asked, his eyes shut.
“Nay, the Pilar has thine,” Primitivo said. “This is mine.”
“I would prefer my own,” Fernando said. “I am more accustomed to it.”
“I will bring it to thee,” the gypsy lied to him. “Keep this until it comes.”
“I am in a very good position here,” Fernando said. “Both for up the road and for the bridge.” He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked across the bridge, then shut them as the pain came.
The gypsy tapped his head and motioned with his thumb to Primitivo for them to be off.
“Then we will be down for thee,” Primitivo said and started up the slope after the gypsy, who was climbing fast.
Fernando lay back against the bank. In front of him was one of the whitewashed stones that marked the edge of the road. His head was in the shadow but the sun shone on his plugged and bandaged wound and on his hands that were cupped over it. His legs and his feet also were in the sun. The rifle lay beside him and there were three clips of cartridges shining in the sun beside the rifle. A fly crawled on his hands but the small tickling did not come through the pain.
“Fernando!” Anselmo called to him from where he crouched, holding the wire. He had made a loop in the end of the wire and twisted it close so he could hold it in his fist.
“Fernando!” he called again.
Fernando opened his eyes and looked at him.
“How does it go?” Fernando asked.
“Very good,” Anselmo said. “Now in a minute we will be blowing it.”
“I am pleased. Anything you need me for advise me,” Fernando said and shut his eyes again and the pain lurched in him.
Anselmo looked away from him and out onto the bridge.
He was watching for the first sight of the coil of wire being handed up onto the bridge and for the Inglés’s sunburnt head and face to follow it as he would pull himself up the side. At the same time he was watching beyond the bridge for anything to come around the far corner of the road. He did not feel afraid now at all and he had not been afraid all the day. It goes so fast and it is so normal, he thought. I hated the shooting of the guard and it made me an emotion but that is passed now. How could the Inglés say that the shooting of a man is like the shooting of an animal? In all hunting I have had an elation and no feeling of wrong. But to shoot a man gives a feeling as though one had struck one’s own brother when you are grown men. And to shoot him various times to kill him. Nay, do not think of that. That gave thee too much emotion and thee ran blubbering down the bridge like a woman.
That is over, he told himself, and thou canst try to atone for it as for the others. But now thou has what thou asked for last night coming home across the hills. Thou art in battle and thou hast no problem. If I die on this morning now it is all right.
Then he looked at Fernando lying there against the bank with his hands cupped over the groove of his hip, his lips blue, his eyes tight shut, breathing heavily and slowly, and he thought, If I die may it be quickly. Nay I said I would ask nothing more if I were granted what I needed for today. So I will not ask. Understand? I ask nothing. Nothing in any way. Give me what I asked for and I leave all the rest according to discretion.
He listened to the noise that came, far away, of the battle at the pass and he said to himself, Truly this is a great day. I should realize and know what a day this is.
But there was no lift or any excitement in his heart. That was all gone and there was nothing but a calmness. And now, as he crouched behind the marker stone with the looped wire in his hand and another loop of it around his wrist and the gravel beside the road under his knees he was not lonely nor did he feel in any way alone. He was one with the wire in his hand and one with the bridge, and one with the charges the Inglés had placed. He was one with the Inglés still working under the bridge and he was one with all of the battle and with the Republic.
But there was no excitement. It was all calm now and the sun beat down on his neck and on his shoulders as he crouched and as he looked up he saw the high, cloudless sky and the slope of the mountain rising beyond the river and he was not happy but he was neither lonely nor afraid.
Up the hill slope Pilar lay behind a tree watching the road that came down from the pass. She had three loaded rifles by her and she handed one to Primitivo as he dropped down beside her.
“Get down there,” she said. “Behind that tree. Thou, gypsy, over there,” she pointed to another tree below. “Is he dead?”
“Nay. Not yet,” Primitivo said.
“It was bad luck,” Pilar said. “If we had had two more it need not have happened. He should have crawled around the sawdust pile. Is he all right there where he is?”
Primitivo shook his head.
“When the Inglés blows the bridge will fragments come this far?” the gypsy asked from behind his tree.
“I don’t know,” Pilar said. “But Agustín with the máquina is closer than thee. The Inglés would not have placed him there if it were too close.”
“But I remember with the blowing of the train the lamp of the engine blew by over my head and pieces of steel flew by like swallows.”
“Thou hast poetic memories,” Pilar said. “Like swallows. Joder! They were like wash boilers. Listen, gypsy, thou hast comported thyself well today. Now do not let thy fear catch up with thee.”
“Well, I only asked if it would blow this far so I might keep well behind the tree trunk,” the gypsy said.
“Keep it thus,” Pilar told him. “How many have we killed?”
“Pues five for us. Two here. Canst thou not see the other at the far end? Look there toward the bridge. See the box? Look! Dost see?” He pointed. “Then there were eight below for Pablo. I watched that post for the Inglés.”