The Tempered Horn

Felipe and Rodrigo couldn’t remember how long they’d been standing there in silence. Time no longer mattered in the face of eternity. A waft of sand crystals fluttered in and around Felipe’s nostrils. He sneezed. “Don’t touch him,” said Rodrigo, before extending a small branch and tapping the man’s torn-up pant leg. A black beetle had long been nestled into his sunken left eye socket and, if the boys were to guess, had absorbed the remaining moisture from the eyeball. Obeying Rodrigo’s instruction, Felipe lifted the cowskin sun hat off the dirt floor and pressed it against his scalp in one swift motion. “That’s not yours,” said Rodrigo.

“Whose is it?” Felipe asked.

“What if he wakes up?”

Felipe had not considered that. Looking at the man’s wide-eyed expression, it was easy to imagine him alive for fleeting moments at a time. The islands of dry blood in his vest convinced them otherwise. His blotchy, bleached skin bubbled like yolk in areas that had been most exposed to the sun. Arms, cheeks, the family of toes poking through his boot. Several teeth were missing due to hygiene deficit; two had been stolen and pawned. Their golden sheen looked legit, but the broker deemed them counterfeit. He was wrong.

As if to one-up his brother, Rodrigo pulled at the rifle strap tucked under the dead man’s thigh. It came loose and with it emerged a hibernating scorpion. Rodrigo’s instinct was to fire at it, but he fumbled with the heavy rifle’s mechanisms, never having used anything grander than plastic. Felipe removed his new sun hat and frisbee’d it across the dune of dirt—its brim landed on the scorpion, but it continued forward blindly.

Rodrigo plopped down in relief. Both hands were still choking the rifle’s wood. He examined it, snapping and pushing at its metal functions, unsure what purpose each served, but quick to learn. Felipe yanked the bullet-strewn belt from around the man’s shoulder, whose body jerked up and down from the force, shaking the unconscious beetle out of his eye and onto his chest. Quakes of dust circled the ground each time another piece of the man was pillaged and the earth underneath him sank a little bit more, as though slowly consuming him.

“Let me load it,” said Felipe.

“You don’t know how.”

“That hole on the side. That’s where the bullets go.”

“Give me one.” With a deep sigh, Felipe plucked a lead shell off the belt and handed it over. Rodrigo thumbed it inside the gate and cocked the hammer, the one mechanism he recognized. The iron sight lined up with a hovering crow, the trigger was squeezed, and nothing happened. Although he would’ve missed the target anyhow, even less would be accomplished until Rodrigo pumped the lever to chamber the round. He finally did so by sheer accident, hearing a metallic pop when he tore at the trigger guard in frustration—nearly shooting Felipe’s head off, mind. He designated his sight this time toward a nearby cactus, positioned in its way like a surrendering enemy. The explosion of powder caused an interstate echo. The bullet tore off a section of the cactus’ raised right limb. The recoil kicked back into Rodrigo’s shoulder. It felt as though a small horse had kicked both its back legs at him in retaliation for a deed he did not commit. Felipe couldn’t feel the jolt of pain surging through Rodrigo’s body, but the screaming gave him a good idea.

The rifle slipped from Rodrigo’s fingers and he began to unbutton his shirt. The skin around his shoulder had turned purple and seemed to expand outward with each throb, beating in rhythm with his heart, thumping loud between his ears. There wasn’t much Felipe could do besides sit down next to him and offer emotional support in the form of his presence, a mother’s proximity. After a minute, he idly began to fidget with the dead man’s spurs. He tore one out by the shiny stem, then the next, and stabbed the spur above the heel of his wool shoe. Without words or a gesture of permission, Felipe removed one of Rodrigo’s shoes and fit the other spur into the heel. He replaced it on his brother’s sandy foot. Rodrigo’s uncontrollable sobs slowed, the attack of hiccups which shocked his entire body quieted. He maneuvered his leg, bending and stretching the shoe from a seated position to hear the spur jangle and see it shine.

Felipe grabbed the rifle off the floor and inspected it with a new emotional distance, an eye of scorn instead of wonder, like a caveman holding a torch that had just burned his fellow primate. He ran his thumb along its rusted grooves. Rodrigo put a hand over Felipe’s to alert his attention. Over a mile in front of them stood a horned silhouette. A fastened piece of fabric appeared to flutter off their back. Rippling hot air and overhead dust further obscured the figure. From that great distance they couldn’t tell if it stood idle or fast approached them.

Felipe yanked the rifle’s lever and took aim. “Don’t,” said Rodrigo. Felipe tucked the stock tight against his armpit, took a sharp breath, and fired. The figure appeared to stumble. A ringing caused momentary deafness. Rodrigo winced and held his ear; the sound tore a tiny hole through the drum. The layer of sand which covered the ground began to swirl in the wind with malice. Felipe’s hands ached and trembled. He set the rifle down and buried his fingers in the hard soil beneath them. “I think you hit a person.”

“No, it was a bull,” said Felipe. A lizard climbed on to the man’s shirt, its tiny hand aligned with one of the holes in his chest. Rodrigo took it by the neck with two fingers, placed it in his palm, and stroked its leathery spine with the back of his hand. Felipe rose, stared at the newly upright silhouette, and scanned the surrounding horizon. He pulled Rodrigo up on his feet, who discarded the lizard. It shimmied away in haste. With a lasting glance toward the darkening skyline, the boys then started off in the opposite direction, toward home, with the horned figure in tow.