Copal, Copal

by Stephen Myer

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

“Ho there, brother,” said one, holding a staff, dressed in a tattered robe like his brethren. “Your burnt skin suggests you hail from Montecito. We are from the mountains.”

“What difference does it make? Men are men. Besides, I’m not your brother. Look upon a true one,” I said, pointing at Copal.

“If so, why haven’t you covered his festering wounds with clean linen? He will bleed to death,” chided the stranger. “Let me help him.”

“He doesn’t seek or deserve help, only an audience with a higher power.”

“Ah, a searcher,” said the stranger. “Those who follow me suffer the same affliction but won’t admit that Death walks among us. No one will be saved, no matter what the clerics say. Still, we trudge along this useless path, our nettled brains driven by whatever faith we have left in the power of the Virgin.”

“There is no need for a virgin if one has already tasted of her pleasures,” I said.

My words seemed to confuse him. Then he glanced at Marisol. “Ah, I see what you mean.”

Together, we traveled the same road, guided by fated pilgrims, bound like blind sailors on a ship whose cargo smelled of spoiled flesh. Lunacy served as our sextant beneath a low, dead sky.

When night fell, the crusaders howled like wolves. They pounded their fists against the ground and spun around, beating themselves, as if exchanging one pain for another. Copal joined the chaos until he collapsed in the heat. Two men carried him back to our camp.

“Where are his sandals and clothes?” I yelled over the commotion.

“He ripped them off and threw them into the fire pit.”

“Lay the fool here,” I said, unable to hide my disgust.

One man took off his robe and placed it on the ground. The other man set Copal upon the garment. They stepped back, wiping their hands on their loincloths, as if the blight of my brother’s flesh would worsen theirs.

The noise of the night’s reveling faded into the screeching winds of the colorless plains. Marisol gazed at the low sky and pressed her body against mine. I wrapped my arm around her hips, where all the sins of man are sown, then led her into the dim light carved out by a pale moon. There, we found release from the day’s aberrations. We returned to find my naked brother frantically pacing.

“Look at him, Marisol. What will it take to bring such a man down?”

She ignored my words and ran toward her husband.

“Mari, I feared you left me with those crazed men.”

“Calm yourself, Copal. Why would—”

“Please, wife, forgive me. My thinking has grown flawed. You and Teofilo endure my burden, sustaining rather than abandoning me. I cherish that. Rest, but only for a short while. We must get to El Sueño before the others, or the Virgin might run out of miracles.”

We slept for what felt like a second. Copal, clothed only in a robe, woke us, strutting in circles, crowing like a cock who had bested the weaker of its breed.

“Time to go. Keep your heads above the horizon,” he said as the hot morning rays crept across the land, alighting upon the travelers who lay motionless on crimson ground.

“Rise up. What of your odyssey?” I called.

I shook the leader. Blood trickled in a crooked stream from his neck. Beside him lay my brother’s knife. Death, whose name was Copal, had strolled among the weary during the night and claimed the entire flock.

My brother shrugged, then bowed his head as if he had committed an act of compassion. “Now, Teo, I’ll have all the miracles to myself,” he said, retrieving his knife.

It was a sensible thing to say... for a madman. We stepped around the bodies and started down the road. Marisol and I were numb to the brutality that raged beneath his illness.

“Wait,” she called, removing her rebozo. Marisol wiped Copal’s feverish forehead, then tore the cloth in half and swaddled his bare feet.

“Help me, Teo. I have little strength to bear him alone.”

We wrapped Copal’s arms around our shoulders. His ulcerated body erupted like pus-filled fountains as we hobbled forward. The ground groaned beneath our steps while low dust clouds faded in our wake.

* * *

Steel clouds cut across the crimson sky that baked El Sueño. The musty smell of desiccated plants lingered over abandoned huts that leaned like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard.

“You there,” I called to an old man leaning against a bare tree. “Where do we find the church and the Virgin?”

He approached and eyed the three of us. “There is no church in El Sueño. As for the Virgin, what is left of her, she stands alone at the end of the road.”

He spat at the heat, then passed us and disappeared into the haze of the burning sunset.

* * *

“Look, Copal, it’s her,” I said, winking at Marisol. “The Golden Virgin.”

“Take me to her, brother. The sun has marred my eyes.”

We approached a stone statue whose features were pitted by the harsh winds off the plains. As Copal knelt before it, I pressed my lips to Marisol’s ear and let my hand roam over her body.

“You see, Querida, there are virgins of all kinds willing to perform miracles,” I said, inhaling the scent of her sweat.

She wiped her brow, watching Copal as he raised his hands in supplication.

“Mari, Teo. The Virgin heard me. A tear has fallen from her eyes.”

We stepped in for a closer look. The tear he assigned to the Virgin slid down his cheek.

“Come. It is time to leave,” said Marisol. “Our journey is at an end.”

“No, wife. It has begun anew.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “You poured your heart out to a block of stone.”

Copal drew his knife from its sheath, then leaned forward as if to pray. By the time we lifted his body, he was dead. The color of his spilled blood matched that of the menacing sky. Marisol knelt and placed his head in the crease of her lap. She stroked his hair while I removed the knife from his gut and wiped it clean on my sleeve.

We dug his grave in the hard earth of El Sueño, pulling clods of dirt with our bare hands, rushing to conceal Copal in that pit so he would no longer trouble us with his stench. She wanted him in heaven. I wanted him in hell. That left Copal in limbo — his soul wandering about. Risky business.

Marisol neither cried nor spoke during our trek home. Each step took us no further from shame, as if our memories were forever doomed to tamp down the restless soil covering my brother’s leaking body.

Ahead of us stretched the scorching plains of Montecito and, in the distance, the squalid house of misfortune. Upon arrival, Marisol burst into tears as if she were wringing out the filthy rags of our sins.

* * *

She entered Copal’s room and removed the linens, curtains, and everything else he had touched. We built a fire and burned it all. Still, his foul odor had seeped into the walls. Razing the house wouldn’t guarantee his departure.

We stayed for a while but couldn’t make it a home. It was a haunted way station where we pledged ourselves to each other before heading north across the plains toward the cooler air of El Otro Lado, putting as much distance as possible between the living and the dead.

Along the northern road, we stopped to rest and enjoy the luscious fruit that fell from sapodilla trees lining the banks of a peaceful river. We rarely spoke during those moments of wasted splendor as Marisol mourned the loss of Copal while I struggled to find the words that would comfort her.

She awoke every night, trembling from the same dream where winds scattered the dirt over the grave where we buried my brother. Copal pulled her into his ditch and held her until she surrendered.

I thought I knew this woman and, even if I didn’t, she had become the only thing I craved in this miserable world. Although Marisol had promised herself to me, the vow seemed meaningless, for her spirit was still tethered to Copal’s.

“He has come back for me, just as he said he would, Teo. He holds me against his cold body, and I become one with him again. ‘There is still time, Mari,’ he says in his firm voice I remember so well. ‘Let me save you from his tainted blood.’ Who is he talking about, Teo? Copal is driving me over the edge,” she cried, beating her fists against her perfect thighs, then leaning her head upon my shoulder, drawing me deeper into her despair.

“Copal refuses to rest, Querida, but only in dreams.”

“He lives in both worlds, Teo.”

“Give Death time to sweep him away.”

“Perhaps I do not wish to.”

* * *

Each night, beneath a purple moon, the ground bathed Marisol in an eerie, lavender glow. She floated beneath me as I scattered kisses like seeds over her belly, hoping to drive away the jealous spirit of my brother. The more I labored, the more her desire waned, until I no longer satisfied this woman; her fantasies had replaced me. I could only wait for Copal to ignite her passion.

* * *

Nothing turns out the way you want it to. Marisol’s lips parted; her almond eyes grew large and round until her body quivered in release. “Copal, Copal,” she moaned as I spilled myself inside her. Then I raised my brother’s knife and plunged it into her swollen flesh.