Broken Teeth

Somewhere behind him on the slope leading down to the ruined village in the valley, the machine guns opened up again. In the distance, they sounded as innocuous as the chattering of teeth, but he knew better. He turned to find out what they might be firing at now, shading his eyes with a hand and gritting his own teeth with frustration. Lately, now that the Republican forces had retreated to Barcelona, that one last bit of unoccupied Spain, and the villagers had fled in their wake, Franco's troops fired at anything that moved. The priest assumed this was mainly out of boredom. The soldiers had been assembling in the far valley for over a week, and to men whose primary pleasure came from murder and rapine, standing still and waiting was no doubt a form of torture. As he watched, the guns fired again, raising a line of dust amid the brush and stunted trees at the bottom of the slope. Father Javier thought he saw a gray blur of movement, but that was all. Next came a round of mortar fire. If they are bored enough to fire shells at rabbits, he thought, God help those who get in their way next. He bent down to climb back into the grave, but then remembered how the older priest had seemed to shrink over the last few weeks and thought better of it. It was deep enough.

One spring afternoon while a group of children played outside the chapel before catechism class, a violent storm swept up the valley, bringing with it gusts of sudden wind. Ochre clouds of dust billowed up over the ridge where the church and its outbuildings were located and tiny pellets of hail rattled across the tiled roof of the chapel. The children shrieked with delight when the rain came down. Fig sized dollops that splattered when they hit. It didn't last long. Less time than it would take to say the rosary once around. Just as the storm seemed to be subsiding, lightning struck the largest branch of an ancient oak at the edge of the cemetery. The children had taken shelter beneath this tree, and when the branch came crashing to the ground, it landed atop a child.

Father Carlos lay on the scarred oak table in the rectory kitchen dressed in his best vestments, which in these difficult times were a bit ragged. This had been the easy part. Now Father Javier had to decide how to cover the body for the grave. He had neither the materials nor the skill to construct a coffin; however, he felt the man deserved more than just a shroud. The kitchen was made of large, pale green stone blocks quarried from a spot behind the church, and as a result the room was cool and dim, but even so, the priest knew he had to get him into the ground before the heat took its toll. On the far side of the kitchen was a large, wooden trunk used to store the dishes and flatware. Father Javier wondered if his friend could be made to fit inside. The small windows along the top of the wall rattled, interrupting his thought. From the other side of the valley, Franco's Moors fired another volley of shells. The explosions caused the pans hanging above the stove to buzz like angry hornets. A bit of dust floated down from the ceiling.

"You're priests," the Italian told him in a flat voice, "but your politics are known. What do you think has been protecting you all of this time? It hasn't been the grace of God, I assure you. We Republicans are not known for our love of priests."

The Argentine put a smoke blackened hand on the priest's arm and gave him a weary look. "And if we know, they know. You've heard the stories about what they do to traitors. Surely. To them, liberal priests are no better than anarchists. Why give his Moors the satisfaction?"

"Then perhaps it's your confession I should have heard." The soldier laughed, but it was an empty sound and conveyed no humor.

Today, the priest believed the soldier had been right. Franco's men must know who I am, he thought, and what I've said in my sermons. Why else would they be shelling the church? He wasn't sure he could get away now even if he wanted to. And that, of course, was the other question. What was the point, he kept asking himself, what was the point?

With a groan, the tall wooden door at the entrance to the chapel swung open. A small creature wrapped in gray, blood spattered rags squatted in the fierce sunlight at the bottom of the steps.

What looked up was a child, perhaps a girl. Her face smeared with dust and blood. ਀吀栀攀 琀栀椀挀欀 氀愀礀攀爀猀 漀昀 最爀椀洀攀 洀愀搀攀 栀攀爀 昀攀愀琀甀爀攀猀 椀渀搀椀猀琀椀渀挀琀Ⰰ 攀砀挀攀瀀琀 昀漀爀 栀攀爀 攀礀攀猀Ⰰ 眀栀椀挀栀 眀攀爀攀 琀栀攀 搀愀爀欀Ⰰ  green color of orange leaves in September. They looked disproportionately huge in their sunken sockets. The priest waited for her to speak, but she only stared up at him, clutching at a bundle of brown burlap, the bottom of which was soaked through and dripping. More blood. Where does it end? he wondered. One more soul torn loose and broken.

The child hesitated for a moment before standing up and following him into the dusty gloom of the chapel. Yellow squares of sunlight marked a path between the rough wooden pews. The last few bits of stained glass in the windows had fallen weeks ago. The priest could hardly even remember what they had depicted. He led the child into the kitchen, glancing back at her occasionally to make sure she followed, forgetting until it was too late what was laid out on the table. But the child paid the body no mind, and it was this lack of response that wracked the priest's heart. Of course, he thought, what's another body to this child of war?

It wasn't until he tried to take her bundle away, only to set it on the stone counter so he could wash her hands, that she first spoke. No, she told him, so he let her be. Once he'd done all he could without stripping her down and giving her a bath, he stepped back and looked her over.

She just shrugged and looked down at the scabs on her knees.

In a small, clear voice, as high and delicate as a spring peeper, she said, "They say you do baptisms."

Although Father Carlos was 67 when the war started, he still possessed a wiry, compressed energy that reminded his fellow priest of a steel spring. He rose each day before dawn and worked at whatever was necessary until dark, sometimes even late into the night. It was this trait, above all, that Father Javier admired most in the man. He had the energy of a teenage boy. And so it was all the more shocking when he took to bed one morning and refused to get up. It happened the day after the Rodriguez family, the last of their parishioners, left on the rectory mule.

But Father Carlos would not relent. "The world is broken, Javier, and there is nothing either of us can do to fix it now."

"Perhaps it would be best if you did," was all he said.

"There is no point for you to stay. You are wasting yourself. I will die and then I will be dead. What can you do? You've already given me supreme unction. All that is left is for Him to take me."

She placed her blood caked bundle on a low shelf and carefully unwrapped it. Inside there was a tiny arm, no more than ten inches long. Although it had been crudely torn from its body, the arm itself was unblemished. Lying on the counter in the dim light of the baptistery, it did not quite look real. The priest took a deep breath. The girl wept without a sound. Just a line of quiet tears from either eye.

"Of course," the priest said, and without allowing himself to stop and think about what he was doing, he began the ritual again, sprinkling the tiny arm with the newly blessed water.

"And now," she said, "God will put her back together, yes?"

David Zimmerman was conceived in Saigon in fall of 1969 and spent most of his youth in Atlanta, GA. He is the author of one novel, Socket, and now lives at the edge of someone else's corn field in a small town in Iowa.