All good. You guys keep going. Pump and reel, pump and reel. She’s hugging the bottom. Get her up, get her up.
She’s coming! She’s coming up!
Enero leans over the side. Sees it draw closer. A stain beneath the surface of the river. He takes aim and fires. Once. Twice. Three times. The blood rises, gushing, washes away. He sits up. Puts back the gun. Tucks it in the waistband of his shorts.
Tilo from the boat and El Negro from the water lift the creature out. Grabbing it by the fleshy grey frills. Throwing it on board.
Watch the stinger!
Says Tilo.
He takes the knife, cuts the barb from the body, sends it back to the depths of the river.
Enero sits down with a thud on the seat in the boat. Sweaty-faced, head buzzing. Drinks a little water from the bottle. It’s warm, he drinks anyway, long gulps, then tips the rest over his head.
El Negro climbs in. The ray takes up so much space there’s almost nowhere to put his feet without treading on it. Must be some two hundred pounds, maybe two hundred twenty.
Christ she’s ugly!
Says Enero, slapping his thigh and laughing. The others laugh as well.
Fought us pretty hard.
Says El Negro.
Enero picks up the oars and rows into the middle of the river and then turns and carries on, following the shore around to where they’d set up camp.
They’d left town at dawn in El Negro’s pickup. Tilo in the middle brewing the mate. Enero with his arm resting on the open window. El Negro at the wheel. They watched how the sun slowly climbed above the asphalt. Felt how the heat began to burn from early on.
They listened to the radio. Enero took a leak by the roadside. At a petrol station they bought pastries and filled up on hot water for the mate.
All three of them pleased to be hanging out together. They’d been planning the trip for a while now. With one thing and another it kept getting called off.
El Negro had bought a new boat and wanted to try it out.
While they were crossing to the island in the brand-new boat they remembered, as usual, the first time they’d brought Tilo, who was still only tiny then, barely even walking, and how they’d got caught in a storm, the tents blown to shit, and the kid, little pipsqueak that he was, wound up sheltering in the boat propped on its side among some trees.
Your old man had hell to pay when we got back.
Said Enero.
Again they told the story Tilo knows off by heart. How Eusebio smuggled the kid along without a word to Diana Maciel. He and Diana’d been split up pretty much since Tilo was born. Eusebio had him at weekends. And of course, that would be the weekend she realizes she’s forgotten to pack, in the bag with his clean clothes, some medication Tilo was taking. Diana stops by the house and there’s no one there. A neighbour tells her they’ve gone to the island.
And then the storm that tore through the whole area. The town as well. Diana with her heart in her mouth.
We were lucky, all of us.