Mañanaland: Chapters 9–13

Max understood why someone would hide here. The tower was a fortress, safe and impenetrable.

“Hello!” he called, his voice sounding hollow in the cavernous womb.

He walked around the room, running his fingers over the mortared walls, tracing one of the stones. They were larger than the ones used on bridges. These were oblong with a beveled edge.

The falcon swooped overhead, its wide wings shadowing the vision. When the bird veered, whatever Max thought he saw had disappeared. Was it only a cloud shadow as Papá had said?

By Saturday, the heat wallowed and fell upon them in waves—the sun’s breath was hot and thick. The water hole beckoned, and Chuy was waiting at the fork at three o’clock as planned.

Down the steep embankment, they’d discovered a hidden pond in a shady grotto with a natural mud slide cascading into it.

They ran up and slid down the hill a dozen times, shoving and splashing each other before finally climbing onto a large flat rock. They stretched out on their stomachs, like basking lizards.

“Pay no attention to him,” said Chuy. “The coach told us there was a boy who didn’t have a birth certificate because it was lost in a fire. The league accepted his baptism papers from the church, and a letter signed by people who knew him from birth. And there was another boy who used his hospital record. But it had to be notarized.”

Buelo looked up from where he sat on the sofa, lacing his work boots. Max could tell by his flushed cheeks and mussed hair that he’d just woken from a nap.

“Why did they run away? Was there another war?”
“A different type of oppression. Countrymen fighting countrymen about what a woman could and could not do."

“The law. It was, and still is, illegal to harbor people fleeing other countries. In some places it is even illegal to be compassionate and provide water or directions to a fugitive."

If they had tried to stay in a small village like Santa Maria, and people discovered they were from Abismo, they would have been shunned. Spit upon. Or worse.

Buelo nodded. “No matter their disposition, though, I had to be calm and reassuring. And stay focused on delivering them safely. Anything could happen along the way, and I had to be ready to improvise at any moment.”

“I felt a moral obligation. How could I ignore their predicament?”

When he needed more room, he ordered, “Off, Lola!”
She skulked away.

Max watched him go, Ortiz’s words thrumming in his ears.

Could Papá or Buelo go to jail for being guardians so many years ago?
A dark qualm slithered from a hole in his mind. It leered and taunted him.

Could Papá or Buelo go to jail for being guardians so many years ago?
A dark qualm slithered from a hole in his mind. It leered and taunted him.

Max poured rubbing alcohol on the wound, cringing from the sting. Anger and determination stifled the hurt.

Papá kept anything of importance in a large metal box on the top shelf of his bedroom closet. His baptism record had to be there. He knew he shouldn’t be rummaging, but he needed to settle this once and for all.

Max quickly glanced at the first few names and notes Papá had meticulously written.

1. "Brookside Bridge—shallow and muddy channel

2. Arroyo Bridge—market road access

3. Maldonado's Bridge—dry bed during summer

Max put the map back in the pouch and tossed it on the bed. One by one, he sorted through his school report cards, invoices for bridge supplies, and receipts for tools.

Underneath the photo was a gold-trimmed certificate. At the top was the church’s name, Our Lady of Sorrows. It certified that Maximiliano Feliciano Esteban Córdoba had been baptized by Father Marco Jimenez, and that his godparents were Amelia and Rodrigo Soto.

He pulled out a piece of brown paper. On it was a stone rubbing. It reminded him of the ones people made after a burial, when family members laid a piece of paper over the gravestone and rubbed with a thick-leaded pencil to copy the impression as a keepsake.