Apology by Jon Pineda (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

expecting Exequiel to scream again, but to his surprise, his younger brother just looked at him.

“You don’t feel that?” Paul said.

“I do.”

“It doesn’t hurt?”

“It does.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand it either,” Exequiel said.

“It will get infected,” Paul said.

Exequiel nodded and stood up, keeping his weight off his injured foot. Paul wanted to carry him back home, but Exequiel only leaned against him. He hopped back, wincing as he did, but he made no noise. He would not let on that it was painful.

The two did not wake up their mother. Paul found a pair of bent tweezers that were used for a number of jobs. Since there was no blood on his brother’s foot, Paul decided these would suffice and positioned his fingers to push on the spot again, until the glass sliver poked out. With the tweezers, he grabbed the end of the glass and pulled slowly, intent on keeping this most fragile piece intact. But Paul’s hands started to shake before the sliver could be removed all the way. The last fragment would have to be dug out. This digging is what brought forth the blood.

Finally, Exequiel prayed aloud.

Later, the echo of such shaking, the nervousness, would remind Exequiel of his brother’s inability to be who it was Exequiel desperately needed. Their father, they had somehow taken his memory and hidden it inside a game. Now Paul was leaving, and with him went the endless memories they had fought over.

When the ache rang forth again, it was in the bones of the ankle above the same foot, the very one newly shattered by the old man Nestor’s boots. He had kicked at Exequiel as if the boy were trying to keep the ball away from him. And how could Exequiel explain why, despite his mind going blank, he felt a small amount of gratitude for the bitter release?

When Exequiel woke, he felt nothing this time.

Part of the darkness lay in his throat. His head suddenly jolted back. The gag had been removed. There was a strange feeling now, though, as the entirety of the moment came back—like a bucket being lifted, smacking against the stones of a well, and the cold water spilling out and glazing the walls, some of the water falling but the majority continuing on upward, rope tightening in its weave, the excess water in the fibers wringing out as the bucket emerges into the feckless light of day—he screamed inside his head.

This is what saved him.

He had not uttered so much as one whimper. He had wanted to do more than that. He wanted to unhinge his jaw so that he could dump out the contents of his pain. So that the pain would pour forth unyieldingly.

The leg of the chair had long been removed from inside his shoulder, where it had pushed all the way through and endlessly twisted as if searching inside him for some truth. This gesture repeated until he had passed out. Now the wound was a mouth taking in air for him, as the scream continued in his head.

His wrists were still bound with twine, but one of the men had forgotten to secure his body. Exequiel sat up. He could see the bulky shadows of the men as they slept on their sides. They were little mountains of ash and smolder, mudslides all of them.

Exequiel turned onto his stomach. He nearly passed out from the bright light of his wounds, but he inched up, trying to stand. He immediately fell. His foot had been damaged, but the pain was only another version of light as his mind was gripped by only one thought now: a path.

The men continued on in their dreaming.

.  .  .  .

How far had he gone before he felt he could go no further?

His breathing betrayed him. It was not easily stifled, especially as he had to drag his newly broken foot behind him. Each jut in the path sent a bolt through him. It caused his chest to shudder in the one place that most needed to be kept still. The bolts exited his body over and again from this one wound.

He fell.

He stood up and tried to go on, but could not.

When he fell again, he wasn’t sure if he had fallen. He thought perhaps he had reached the river and that the ground had given up, as he had given up. The pain he had felt after waking, the immensity of it, had transformed within him. It was teasing him. He lay on the ground that could have been the surface of the river and floated.

Are you awake? What are you doing, Mano?

He thought he heard his brother Paul calling for him from the other side of the river. The same words came to him. He raised his head slightly, though it was through a great amount of pain that he raised himself up on his elbows and tried to look. Was it the light now filling the edges of the distant trees that made him think, just briefly, that his brother had come back to him, and not only that, but also with the gift of something bought and not handmade? Was it a stitched-leather ball that he juggled with his feet, the ball stalling in the air longer than seemed possible?

The ball across the river was held aloft in the new falling light. Then it dropped and rose erratically. He saw that it wasn’t a ball at all, just as his brother became a tree bending. The blur of the ball was a butterfly. It landed on his shoulder. The light touch of it nearly made him pass out. Then he did.

That morning Vin and some of the other boys went looking for Exequiel. When they found him, they were so scared that they didn’t think about anything other than grabbing their friend’s body and dragging him as best they could across a slower-moving section of the river, where they had