Sunstroke

Old the puppy went out the door and crossed the yard with a straight and lazy step. He stopped at the edge of the grass, stretched toward the scrubland, narrowing his eyes, his nose vibrating, and sat down quietly. He looked at the monotonous plain of the Chaco, with its alternation of field and scrub, scrub and field, with no more color than the cream of the grass and the black of the scrub. This closed the horizon, two hundred meters away, on three sides of the homestead. Toward the west, the field widened and spread out in a clearing, but the inescapable shadowy line framed it in the distance.

At that early hour, the border, blinding with light at noon, acquired a restful clarity. There wasn’t a cloud or a breath of wind. Beneath the calm of the silver sky, the field exuded a tonic freshness that brought to the thoughtful soul, given the certainty of another dry day, the melancholy of better-rewarded labor.

Milk, the puppy’s father, crossed the yard in turn and sat down next to him, with a lazy groan of well-being. They remained motionless, for there were as yet no flies.

Old, who had been looking for a while at the edge of the scrub, observed:

“The morning is cool.”

Milk followed the puppy’s gaze and kept his eyes fixed, blinking absentmindedly. After a moment, he said:

“In that tree there are two hawks.”

They turned an indifferent gaze to an ox that was passing, and continued to look at things out of habit.

Meanwhile, the east began to flush in a fan, and the horizon had already lost its morning precision. Milk crossed his front paws and felt a slight pain. He looked at his toes without moving, finally deciding to sniff them. The day before he had pulled out a jigger flea, and in memory of what he had suffered he licked the sore toe extensively.

“I couldn’t walk,” he exclaimed, by way of conclusion.

Old didn’t understand what he was referring to. Milk added:

“There are many jiggers.”

This time the puppy understood. And he replied on his own account, after a long while:

“There are many jiggers.”

They fell silent again, convinced.

The sun came out, and in the first bath of light, the bush chachalacas hurled into the pure air the tumultuous blare of their brass band. The dogs, gilded by the oblique sun, half-closed their eyes, softening their sloth in a blissful flutter of eyelashes. Little by little, the pair grew with the arrival of the other companions: Dick, the taciturn favorite; Prince, whose upper lip, split by a coati, revealed two teeth, and Isondú, with an indigenous name. The five fox terriers, sprawled out and dead with well-being, slept.

After an hour they raised their heads; from the opposite side of the bizarre two-story ranch—the lower one of mud and the upper of wood, with corridors and a chalet railing—they had heard the steps of their master coming down the stairs. Mr. Jones, a towel on his shoulder, stopped for a moment at the corner of the ranch and looked at the sun, already high. He still had a deadened look and a drooping lip, after his solitary evening of whiskey, longer than usual.

While he washed, the dogs approached and sniffed his boots, lazily wagging their tails. Like trained beasts, dogs know the slightest sign of drunkenness in their master. They slowly walked away to lie down in the sun again. But the growing heat soon made them abandon that for the shade of the corridors.

The day advanced just like the preceding ones of that entire month; dry, limpid, with fourteen hours of scorching sun that seemed to keep the sky in fusion, and that in an instant cracked the wet earth into whitish crusts. Mr. Jones went to the farm, looked at the previous day’s work, and returned to the ranch. All that morning he did nothing. He had lunch and went upstairs to take a nap.

The peons returned at two o’clock to the weeding, despite the hour of fire, for the weeds would not leave the cotton field. Behind them went the dogs, great friends of the cultivation since the previous winter when they had learned to dispute with the hawks the white grubs turned up by the plow. Each one threw itself down under a cotton plant, accompanying with its panting the dull thuds of the hoe.

Meanwhile the heat was growing. In the silent and blinding landscape of sun, the air vibrated on all sides, hurting the sight. The upturned earth exuded an oven’s steam, which the peons bore upon their heads, wrapped down to their shoulders by the floating handkerchief, with the mutism of their farm labor. The dogs changed plants, in search of fresher shade. They stretched out lengthwise, but fatigue forced them to sit upon their hind legs to breathe better.

Reverberating now before them was a small wasteland of clay that had not even been attempted to be plowed. There, the puppy suddenly saw Mr. Jones looking at him fixedly, seated on a log. Old stood up, wagging his tail. The others rose too, but with hair on end.

“It’s the master,” exclaimed the puppy, surprised.

“No, it’s not him,” replied Dick.

The four dogs were together growling dully, without taking their eyes off Mr. Jones, who remained motionless, watching them. The puppy, incredulous, went to step forward, but Prince bared his teeth at him:

“It’s not him, it’s Death.”

The puppy bristled with fear and retreated to the group.

“Is it the dead master?” he asked anxiously. The others, without answering him, burst into furious barking, still in an attitude of fearful attack. Without moving, Mr. Jones vanished into the undulating air.

Upon hearing the barks, the peons had lifted their sight, discerning nothing. They turned their heads to see if a horse had entered the farm, and bent over again.

The fox-terriers returned at a walk to the ranch. The puppy, still bristling, advanced and retreated with short nervous trots, and learned from the experience of his companions that when a thing is going to die, it appears beforehand.

“And how do they know that the one we saw wasn’t the master?” he asked.

“Because it wasn’t him,” they answered him dismissively.

Then Death, and with it the change of owner, the miseries, the kicks, was upon them. They spent the rest of the afternoon beside their master, gloomy and alert. At the slightest noise they growled, not knowing where. Mr. Jones felt satisfied with their watchful restlessness.

At last the sun sank behind the black palm grove of the stream, and in the calm of the silvery night, the dogs stationed themselves around the ranch, on whose upper floor Mr. Jones was recommencing his whisky evening. At midnight they heard his steps, then the double fall of the boots on the plank floor, and the light went out. The dogs, then, felt more the coming change of owner, and alone, at the foot of the sleeping house, began to cry. They cried in a chorus, pouring their convulsive and dry sobs, as if chewed, into a howl of desolation, which Prince’s hunting voice sustained, while the others took up the sob anew. The puppy barked. Half an hour had passed, and the four older dogs, clustered in the moonlight, their muzzles extended and swollen with laments—well-fed and caressed by the master they were about to lose—continued to weep their domestic misery.

The next morning Mr. Jones went himself to fetch the mules and harnessed them to the cultivator, working until nine. He was not satisfied, however. Aside from the fact that the land had never been well harrowed, the blades had no edge, and with the rapid pace of the mules, the cultivator bounced. He returned with it and sharpened its shares; but a screw in which he had already noticed a flaw when buying the machine broke while assembling it. He sent a peon to the nearby logging camp, recommending the horse, a good animal, but sunstruck. He raised his head to the melting midday sun and insisted that he not gallop for a moment. He lunched immediately and went upstairs. The dogs, which in the morning had not left their master for a moment, stayed on the porches.

The siesta weighed heavy, oppressed with light and silence. All the surroundings were hazy from the burnings. Around the ranch, the whitish earth of the patio, dazzled by the plumb sun, seemed to deform in a tremulous boil, which lulled the blinking eyes of the fox-terriers.

“He hasn’t appeared anymore,” said Milk.

Old, upon hearing appeared, raised his ears above his eyes.

This time the puppy, stirred by the evocation, stood up and barked, looking for what. Soon the group fell silent, surrendering once again to their defensive fly-hunting.

“He didn’t come back,” said Isondú.

“There was a lizard under the stump,” Prince recalled for the first time.

A hen, its beak open and wings dropped and away from its body, crossed the incandescent yard with its heavy heat-trot. Prince followed it lazily with his eyes, and suddenly leaped up:

“Here it comes again!” he shouted.

Across the north of the yard the horse the farmhand had ridden on was advancing alone. The dogs arched on their legs, barking with cautious fury at the approaching Death. The animal walked with its head low, apparently indecisive about the course it was going to follow. As it passed in front of the shack it took a few steps toward the well, and progressively degraded in the harsh light.

Mr. Jones came down; he was not sleepy. He was getting ready to continue assembling the weeding machine when he unexpectedly saw the farmhand arrive on horseback. Despite his order, he must have galloped to return at that hour. He blamed him, with all his national logic, to which the other replied with evasive reasons. Scarcely free and his mission concluded, the poor horse, in whose flanks it was impossible to count the heartbeat, trembled, lowering its head, and fell on its side. Mr. Jones sent the farmhand to the farm, whip still in hand, so as not to fire him if he continued listening to his Jesuitical excuses.

But the dogs were happy. Death, which was looking for its master, had settled for the horse. They felt cheerful, free of worry, and consequently were getting ready to go to the farm after the farmhand, when they heard Mr. Jones shouting to the latter, already far off, asking him for the screw. There was no screw: the store was closed, the clerk was sleeping, etc. Mr. Jones, without replying, took down his pith helmet and set out himself in search of the tool. He resisted the sun like a farmhand, and the walk was wonderful against his bad mood.

The dogs accompanied him, but stopped in the shade of the first carob tree; it was too hot. From there, firm on their paws, brows contracted and attentive, they watched him walk away. At last the fear of loneliness won out, and with a weary trot they followed after him.

Mr. Jones got his screw and returned. To shorten the distance, of course, avoiding the dusty curve of the road, he marched in a straight line to his farm. He reached the stream and plunged into the tall grass, the torrential tall grass of the Saladito, which has grown, dried, and resprouted since there has been grass in the world, without ever knowing fire. The clumps, arched in a vault at chest height, intertwine in solid blocks. The task, serious enough on a cool day, was very hard at that hour. Mr. Jones crossed it, nevertheless, thrashing through the snapping, dusty grass coated in the mud left by the floods, choking with fatigue and the acrid stenches of nitrates.

He finally came out and stopped at the edge; but it was impossible to remain still under that sun and that exhaustion; he walked on again. To the burning heat that had been growing unceasingly for three days past, there was now added the suffocation of oppressive weather. The sky was white and not a breath of wind was felt. The air was lacking, with a cardiac distress that did not allow one to finish drawing breath.

Mr. Jones became convinced that he had crossed his limit of endurance. For a while now the beating of his carotid arteries had been pounding in his ears. It felt as if it were in the air, as though from inside his head something were violently pushing his skull upward. He felt dizzy looking at the grass. He quickened his pace to put an end to it once and for all... and suddenly he came to and found himself in a different place: he had walked half a block, without realizing anything at all. He looked back and his head spun with a new vertigo.

Meanwhile, the dogs were following behind him, trotting with their tongues hanging all the way out. Sometimes, exhausted, they would stop in the shade of a tussock; they sat down, panting frantically, but returned to the torment of the sun. At last, as the house was now near, they hurried their trot.

It was at that moment when Old, who was in the lead, saw behind the farm’s wire fence Mr. Jones, dressed in white, walking toward them. The pup, with a sudden recollection, turned his head and confronted.

“Death, Death!” he howled.

The others had seen her too, and barked with their hair bristling. They saw her cross the fence, and for an instant they believed she was going to make a mistake; but upon reaching a hundred meters she stopped, looked at the group with her pale blue eyes, and marched forward.

“May the boss not walk fast!” exclaimed Prince.

“He’s going to run into him!” they all howled.

Indeed, the other, after a brief hesitation, had advanced, but not directly toward them as before, rather on an oblique and seemingly errant line, but one that must lead him right to the encounter with Mr. Jones. The dogs understood that this time everything was over, because their boss continued walking at the same pace like an automaton, without realizing anything at all. The other was already arriving. They tucked their tails and ran sideways, howling. A second passed, and the encounter took place. Mr. Jones stopped, spun around on himself, and collapsed.

The farmhands, who saw him fall, carried him quickly to the ranch, but all the water was useless; he died without regaining consciousness. Mr. Moore, his maternal half-brother, came from Buenos Aires, spent an hour at the farm and in four days liquidated everything, returning immediately. The Indians divided up the dogs, which lived on thin and mangy, and every afternoon went with a hungry stealth to eat corn cobs on other people’s farms.