LORD OF THE TOP FIELD

[Neil Struthers]

Antonio Delaguerra stood with his face a few inches away from the faded ferrotype of his father, Jose, where it hung on the wall beside the kitchen door. Whitewashed bricks, a dull nail, tobacco-stained parcel string, and the man's face: the casual madness of his round and staring eyes, irises black and full, the whites brilliant against the muddy dark of his skin, matching the high straight collar of his shirt. Deep wrinkles spilled from the corners of his eyes and mouth into a pair of shadowy sunken cheeks. His thick white eyebrows were raised, giving his forehead the rippled appearance of wind-sculpted sand. He was bald but for a few white curls above and behind his great leathery ears; the sudden smoothness of his head was even more apparent against the chaos of his face. And he had smiled for posterity, by god, smiled with his scored lips twisted into a crooked, toothless smile, though the traveling photographer had pleaded with him not to.

"Forget it," he'd said, "this is for Antonio. A boy should remember his father as he was."

"But we do not smile, sir. Smiling is for gypsies and idiots."

"Take the picture."

And in the background, the same iron sink and bare pipework below the same window, the same shutters open to look out over the top field. And in the top field, right on the crest of the hill, when Antonio strained his eyes just right, he could see him, the same great horned devil, a tapering black body against a sky of brilliant white. El toro del diablo.

Antonio crossed himself, caught himself, stopped. "Papa," he said, "there is war now, papa. Spain has gone mad again. This man Franco claims the colonies, one by one, makes Quiroga and the others look like fools. And now there is more of the same trouble in the north. It is like you said, papa, there is more than one Spain trying to occupy the same space. Two bulls in the same field. It is hard to know what to do. I wish you were here. Franco says God is on his side, while the Republicans use statues of the Virgin for target practice. I suppose by now you know who is right, who is wrong. I feel a strange kind of envy."

Silence, as always, silence and the crooked smile and the devil bull in the background.

"Yes," said Antonio, "it seems I must choose a Spain to belong to. I will pay it some mind."

Silence again. It occurred to Antonio just how little he cared for either Spain. Both would be manned by the same troublemakers, zealots, profiteers. It irked him that he would one day have to bet his life on one or the other. And it would be some small thing that cemented his choice in the eyes of the town below; a few words betraying some basic sympathy with one side or the other, overheard by the wrong man. Then, days or weeks or months later, that same man might hand him a pistol or shoot him in the ear. He would have to be careful, play his cards close to his chest, or find some cards to play with at least, to give him some sense of it all, some clear and sensible way through it.

But then, but then. There were worse things than being shot in the ear. Immediate concerns. He lifted his cap from a nail on the back of the door, donned it, and nodded to his father. "Going into town now. Going to see a man about a gun." Nacho Giza ran a farm on the far side of the valley; he had a rifle.

He bolted the door behind him and strode out along the ribbon of smoothly-trodden clay that led around the lowest of his three fields. The worst of the heat had passed, and a light breeze stirred the vibrant green grass; it was a fine day. But he could not stop to admire the fat blue bowl of the sky. He dared not look uphill, towards the top field. He kept his eyes on the path, and when it forked, he took the fork that led down into town, closing the wide iron gate behind him, slamming the bolt into place with a dull metal twang.

He could feel its gaze. The devil bull. Always watching. It cast a long shadow from the crest of that highest hill, a shadow that seemed to darken everything he did, sweltering down on him like the rays of a hot black sun.

Once it had been his father's prize bull--and a handsome, placid beast it was, pride of the farm. Then the old man's heart had burst in his chest. Antonio imagined his father on his way to heaven, which he saw as a sky of rolling hills and shimmering mountains connected to the Earth--and to the crest of their top field in particular--by a narrow strip of lush golden grassland. He imagined his father in the top field, reaching for the bull's horn, patting it on the head, then somehow freeing the fine, good-natured bull spirit from its Earthly form and leading it into the sky with him. Which was all very well, Antonio thought, but in doing so his father had left an empty shell behind on Earth, a vacuum that the devil himself had risen up to fill. Within days the beast had sprouted new beef about the shoulders and legs, taut and murderous, and then it was forever snarling, head low, hooves tearing at the ground, angry as a bag of Hitlers. It had gored his mule to death. His cows were in mortal fear of it; they kept to the far end of the lower field, huddled behind the house. They were miscarrying. The milk dripped yellow and sour from their udders.

The devil would have to go.

Antonio arrived at the edge of town after a half-hour's walk along a steep and stony road. His mouth was a dusty cave; his tongue was a heap of dry guano. He fiddled with the coins in his pocket and, satisfied that he had enough for a beer, he made for the pub. He walked jerkily along steep cobbled streets, past rows of neat whitewashed houses, square steps with dark arches for doorways and tall slitted windows. Then he reached flatter ground, and strolled easily, muscles thanking him for the change of tack. He cut across the plaza, dipping his hands in the small fountain there, splashing water on his face, preening down his two week's growth of beard. He imagined how fine it would feel to pull down on the trigger and shoot the bull right between the eyes. He saw it fall, legs spasming, the smoking hole in its wide, bony head gouting that terrible black blood. And if he could find Nacho, he thought, he might even do it tonight. Then he would gather wood and petrol and burn the thing to ash. He could sleep, then, he knew. There would be no more nightmares. No more blind running from the sulphor-smelling, huffing breath, the thundering hooves, the horned shadow. Eyes closed, he smiled to himself.

He sighed deeply and opened his eyes.

The town was little more than four streets and a wide plaza. Two streets were wildly pitched, winding their way out of the valley; houses there were arranged in long terraces of mud-flecked whitewash and smoke-stained clay that grew off the central spine. Two streets were flat, running the length of the valley, and the buildings there were taller, two or three stories high, made of the same clay, lined with black timbers. And along the flat streets, canvas canopies, blustering in the breeze, red and white, covered stalls selling lemons, oranges, limes, cuts of deep red meat and silver fish hanging on iron hooks. Across the plaza, a stack of squat barrels sat unattended outside the dark square mouth of the pub.

And no people. The realisation came as a wave of creeping shock. Had he been alone for so long? It had been a few weeks, no more than that. Long enough to forget about the thousands who lived in the valley below?

He sat on the edge of the fountain and splashed his eyelids with water."Madness," he whispered, leaning forward until his head was almost between his knees. He spat. He doffed his cap and worried the soft peak between his fingers. Then he clawed at his scalp and ran his wet fingers back through his hair, pinning it back. Maybe he just couldn't see them. Could they see him? It was all the work of the bull, of course. He felt all hope leave him then, evaporating in the heat and bright un-light of that smouldering black sun. The bull would have made Nacho vanish along with the rest of them. Nacho especially, perhaps. Nacho and his gun.

Antonio looked once more towards the inviting darkness of the pub--a timber-framed rectangle of true, honest dark on the far side of the plaza--and he imagined just how fine it would be to sup on that tall glass of beer. There was something about his particular state of doom that made him especially thirsty. He resolved that he would pull the pint himself and leave money for the barman.

Well, he thought, fumbling with the sad collection of coins in his pocket.

Maybe.

The pub was refreshingly cool, and just as thoroughly empty as he'd expected. It had the look of a place abandoned, nothing tidied away; there were glasses on the bar and on each of the small round tables, drinks in various stages of consumption. Pools of froth and three-quarter full tankards not yet gone flat. Antonio passed a half-eaten bowl of the house stew; he put the backs of his first two fingers against the bowl. Still warm. A spoon sat beside it, loaded with somebody's next mouthful.

"Hello? Anybody here?" It seemed to Antonio like the thing to say. Part of him wanted desperately for somebody to answer, expected somebody to call up from the cellar, laugh at him, then explain everything; another part wanted nobody to respond, wanted the mystery to persist indefinitely, so that he might drink in peace. But then, but then. The permenant horror of the bull.

He walked behind the bar, took a glass, and filled it. He drunk it down in five seconds flat, then filled it again. Glass in hand, he walked idly over to the radio, switched it on, and slowly spun the dial. He supposed that he wanted to hear another human voice while he drank. How far the bull would go--would it, could it, empty the whole world? He imagined how disappointed the Francoes of the world would be, with no armies to lead, no Spains left to overthrow--before remembering that they'd be just as gone as everybody else. And all at the whim of the mad bull in his top field.

Static whirring, then the radio squealed to life. "Return to the farm, Antonio," it said, coolly. "Now."

And then something popped behind the bare speaker; a yellow flash, the sound of a paper-thin bulb breaking, and the radio went as dead as everything else.

Antonio drank more slowly this time. When he finished his drink, he fixed his cap, buttoned his shirt all the way up, and set a small stack of coins on the bar. It seemed like the kind of basic honesty that might serve him well in the next world, seeing as he was almost certainly going to die. Emerging from the pub, he saw that the sun had sank behind the highest terrace of vacant houses, beyond the lip of the valley, leaving behind a sky streaked with purple and grey. He held his head high, watching the tenuous strips of cloud drift slowly by overhead, holding on to the sound of his leather soles on the street and the ceaseless bubbling of the fountain.

Antonio wondered what the Devil wanted with him.

His body felt oddly numb as he shut the gate behind him. Not tired at all, Antonio realised. And not in the least bit drunk. Just numb, like he wasn't entirely there.

He looked towards the top field. There it stood, as it always did, a blot in the middle of the setting sun, looking back at him along the length of its own shadow. But where was the palsying fear? Antonio felt something new in its place. Something a lot more like awe. Awe without judgement.

He kept his eyes on the bull as he circled around his middle field, found the gate, and walked through. The grass was lush, knee-high, ungrazed. No cow would eat from that middle field, not under the devil's withering gaze. Antonio left deep tracks in the grass as he pulled his way along a line that cut the field in two, towards the second, smaller gate, the gate that led to the overgrown path that led, in turn, to both to heaven and hell.

He opened the gate, closed it behind him, and turned to see the bull charging down the field from its lookout post, horns down, snorting triumphantly, throwing clods of turf into the air. Antonio watched this unfold in numb amusement.

Perhaps it was the only way.

"What are you doing?" A voice behind him, like a flat spade scraping against a hidden stone. "That bull's a mad bastard. It'll kill you dead."

"What?" Antonio spun around to see a man in a sharp black uniform, silver trimmed, leaning with his arms folded on the fence. He smiled. His teeth burned white against a pair of thin black lips. He had hard blue eyes, pupils drawn, the whites long and square, lined in black pencil, and a long straight nose that ended in a dimpled tip. Taut muscles under hard cheekbones. He wore a wide, high-crested cap, banded in the military style, black as the rest of his uniform, with a small silver skull and bones below the crest. Beneath the cap, from below the line of the neatly-trimmed blond hair, just about where the man's ears should have been, grew a curling pair of horns, crimson red, black-pointed. On his arm, a red armband, and an angular black symbol against a white circle. It was instantly familiar, but Antonio couldn't place it--something he had seen in a newspaper, perhaps. Knee-high black riding boots, highly polished, one leg resting behind the other. Flared jodhpurs and a riding crop dangling from a loop in his belt.

"Jump," said the man, raising the palms of his gloved hands into the air.

Antonio jumped the fence just in time for the bull to come crashing sideways into it, almost toppling in its struggle to stop itself. He landed on his back with a single loud clap, legs in the air.

"Hello, Antonio," said the man who was probably the Devil, offering him his hand. "Sorry about the confusion."

They sat on stools in Antonio's house. The Devil drank a glass of water, using just a shade too much of his long, purple-veined tongue for Antonio to stomach. He violated the water, Antonio thought. Antonio kept his eyes on the top field, the bull limping in a circle, the sun setting. He would throw the glass away.

"I've caused you a lot of trouble," said the Devil. "I intend to make it up to you."

"That's okay," said Antonio.

"No," said the Devil. "No, there are scales to balance. I don't owe favours, son."

"What favour?"

"I'm going to be here for a while," said the Devil. "Using your top field. That mad bull, in particular, will be my eyes and ears. So I suppose I'm renting your bull; there's your favour."

The Devil finished the last of his water. He sighed, and a curling fog of steam flowed out of his mouth. "God, they don't make it like that anymore."

"Why my bull? Why my field?"

"I think you already know part of it," said the Devil. "A serendipitous opportunity that we just couldn't pass up."

"My father?"

"I see you have a keen intuitive sense. Yes, your father's love for that bull was such that the authorities allowed him to bring it along as a companion. Heaven is very big, son. And dull as hell. So they do what they can."

"You used the bull, then. You turned it bad."

"Not me directly," said the Devil. "I leave the gruntwork to others. But yes--we fitted it with a new engine, you might say. A crazed demon with a name that even I dare not pronounce. He is just one of a number of unique souls who serve as gateways between Hell and Earth."

"Right," said Antonio, watching the bull scrape at at the ground, charging at ghosts.

"Couldn't let you get your hands on that rifle," said the Devil. "That would have caused us all kinds of problems. Including--most importantly--a major alteration to the spirit of human history, which is something, let me tell you, that the authorities don't like at all. Small things, okay, but big events--nah. You see, in the original history--before our little sightseeing tour--your bull died of dehydration a few days after your father departed with its soul. So you never asked for Nacho Giza's gun in that dim little pub, and you were never overheard by Manuel Ortega, your local representative of the Popular Front, while he ate his stew. You and Nacho were never shot, then, under the suspicion that you were Francoist sympathizers. Instead--when the shit originally hit the fan--you went on to follow the gloriously unstable Ortega's orders, round up those nuns for us, and usher in the twentieth century proper."

"Ah," said Antonio, nodding his head. "Nuns."

"Allow me to explain," said the Devil, gazing past him into some dark far-distance. "The real dawn of man, Antonio, will begin three days from now, when six elderly nuns are marched up to your middle field, ordered to dig their own graves, and then shot by your friend, Nacho Giza. That kicks off all kinds of fireworks. So much so that there is an annual comemmoration parade in hell. It's not Hitler day or anything, but it's big all the same. They serve tapas."

The Devil paused, fixed Antonio with his cool blue eyes. "So you see why I had to intervene. A subordinate of mine spotted the opportunity and set the wheels in motion, installed that crazy bastard in your bull's head, where a calmer spirit would have done just fine. For that, I am truly sorry. But we couldn't have you going and upsetting history to right our mistake."

"Yes," said Antonio, rocking on his stool. He couldn't see Nacho, fat, dim, pleasant Nacho, shooting nuns. But apparently he had. Would. He glanced at his father's picture, wondering what he would have said.

"So here's the favour I'm going to do you, Antonio. It's a biggie. A key piece of information that will eventually save your arse. And all you have to do to earn it is just keep on doing what you're doing--playing the cards you've been dealt, knowing which is the right side at the right time, et cetera." He cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles. "Just over a year from now, a General working under Franco will roll into this region with his troops. A deeply religious man, this General. Quite mad as well. I love him. He will hear about the nuns from the real Franco men in the region, the ones that Ortega's witchhunt fails to uncover." He took a long time over witchhunt, like the word was a mouthful of the sweetest honey. "And thus you, Nacho Giza, Manuel Ortega, and a host of others that you haven't heard of yet, will be publicly strung up by the balls. Which is a pity, if you ask me, after all your hard work. Which is why you're getting out, Antonio, before any of this happens. You will leave Nacho and the others to their fates, but you, you will flee East, no later than May of next year. How's your French?"

Antonio did not answer. The Devil laughed like a joke had just flared up inside his head.

"More importantly, how's your German? You might want to learn a little of both. I'm sure I have somebody who can help you with that."

"Please don't," said Antonio.

"But I insist! With my help, you are going to become the least celebrated, least known, least dead member of the French Resistance come 1945. And all you have to do is hang around France for a few years. When the time comes, they will welcome you as a brother. And I don't think the authorities will mind, overmuch, as long as you keep out of trouble."

The Devil tipped his cap, smiling. "That's the best I can do," he said, rising from his stool. "You go into town tomorrow, hang around, let Ortega come to you. At the moment he assumes that anybody professing a deep and abiding love for the Popular Front is in fact a Francoist spy. Which I suppose is why he takes to you two apathetic morons. In the meantime, we'll be watching. Be sure and give us a good show." The Devil slammed the palm of his hand down on the rough wood of the table, then lifted it, revealing a small stack of coins. "Listen, relax. Relax. Get yourself a beer or two on me."

The Devil marched out the door, knees straight and rigid, crop folded under his arm. Antonio realised that he had been drooling, just very slightly. The Devil raised one palm into the air, kicked the door shut, and screamed "vive la resistance!" at the top of his voice. Then he laughed. "God, I love Europe!"

Then there was silence. Just the wind working on the door, as it always did, and the sound of the dripping tap.

Antonio sobbed quietly for a good long while.

[Teaandcakes]

That was excellent.

[Donal Murphy]

This was fantastic. The opening, as we follow Antonio all the way down to the village, your attention to unique detail is marvelous, I loved it. And then the Devil turns up and it gets even more wonderfully evil and surreal.

[TadMack]

I'm going to reconsider history... and be grateful that it's mostly already written.

As always, the detail and description are so bizarrely good -- Antonio worrying the soft peak of his cap between his fingers, the Devil with a riding crop (!), the crazed, surreal detail of his ...plan. You really are always writing a beginning or a intro chapter to something!

[Neil Struthers]

You might also gather from this that I am dying for a nice cold pint of beer. That would be heaven right about now.

Though this is slice of fiction in itself, I realise now that it reads like the first chapter of Antonio's amoral adventures across war-torn Europe, messing with the spirit of human history, the voyeuristic Devil always on his tail. I see it now.

[Neil Struthers]

Just listening to some music and playing fast and loose with the events of the Spanish Civil War...:)