Cold Grease and Diesel

The sheet-metal stove in the music room hummed with a hoarse rattle that mixed the smell of raw diesel with that of old chalk. Outside, the evening was falling apart against the canyon, stained with that heavy leaden gray that announces a snowfall before the provincial forecast even deigns to update itself.

Things a person with an ounce of sense should not be doing at six in the evening: 1. Hoping the lukewarm water from a dented kettle will work miracles. 2. Scraping with a fingernail the grease stuck to a piece of newspaper. 3. Counting the exact minutes left until the pack's blood comes to collect a debt she never signed.

There were exactly six hours left until midnight. Bianca pressed both gloved palms against the warm grille of the heater, waiting for a rush of heat that never quite reached her toes. The cold of the range does not warn when it enters; it settles slowly between the sole and the bone.

"If you keep pouring herb on top without emptying the gourd, we're going to end up drinking cement," said Pascual Meliqueo without lifting his eyes from his worn crossword puzzle.

He was sprawled out on a double bench of scratched formica, wearing a faded corduroy jacket two sizes too big and the remains of a stale fried pastry wrapped in Rio Negro Daily paper on his knees.

"The herb is expensive, Pascual. You flip the little mountain over and it yields two more thermoses."

"That's not a little mountain, Pezoa. That's a swamp."

"Drink it and shut up."

Pascual sucked on the bombilla. He made a cavernous sound, like an old pipe clearing itself out half-heartedly, but he didn't complain anymore. He had been born in Cañadón Frío with the patience of riverbed stones and a rather deficient self-preservation instinct, which explained why he was still sitting in there instead of having fled on the last flatbed truck that went down to Paso del Coihue before the frost hardened the road's mud.

"What time did you say the delegation was coming?" he asked, chewing the cold dough.

"It's not a delegation."

"Well, the tribunal. The forest boys with landowner delusions. Whatever you prefer to call them."

"At twelve. At the gate of School 12."

"Divine. Right when they cut the town's power to save the generator's diesel."

Bianca took her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket. The screen had a diagonal crack cutting right across the face of the background photo and the battery was blinking at a miserable four percent. She opened the messaging app out of sheer reflex, almost by muscle memory, and looked at the conversation pinned to the bottom of the list.

Unsent draft (17:48): "If you're going to come with the old Loncopán men, at least let me know. And give me back my wool sweatshirt, you shameless jerk."

The cursor blinked over the send button with an idiot persistence. She deleted it letter by letter with the tip of her numb thumb.

Coward.

"You're going to run out of battery before the dance starts," Pascual pointed out, stretching his legs until the tips of his rubber boots hit the iron legs of the table.

Outside, a lash of white wind shook the building and wrung a sharp groan from the zinc sheets of the municipal gymnasium.

"Better. That way I don't have to pretend I care what they say."

"Lisandro isn't one for giving speeches, Bianca. He's more of the type to make a bronze hero face and let things blow up on their own."

"Nobody asked the co-pilot for a psychological analysis."

"I'm just saying. If I were the heir to the Véliz family, I'd probably be hiding under a bale of hay rather than coming to face you. But hey, Lisandro has that habit of his of walking as if the entire range owed him money."

Bianca didn't answer. She shoved her hands into her pockets and walked toward the classroom's large window. The glass vibrated with a dull hum transmitted by the diesel engine of a municipal pickup truck maneuvering in the driveway. The vehicle's orange hazard lights spun in the gloom of the gravel patio, dyeing the frost with intermittent flashes.

And if she had only had the courage to say no when—

She clenched her teeth and left the thought cut short. There was no point in digging into last autumn when winter was already chewing on the roofs.

The main hallway of Provincial School No. 12 smelled of kerosene-waxed floors and the dampness of fifty coats that were no longer hanging on the wooden pegs. The kids had been sent home early to keep the storm from leaving them stranded on the way to Cerro Ceniza, and now only the pale flicker of fluorescent tubes remained against the wood-paneled ceiling.

Bianca walked slowly, dragging her feet over the granite tiles. Pascual came two steps behind, spinning the empty bombilla between his fingers with idle skill.

"I don't understand why you don't go home, Pascual."

"Because my old lady sent me to pick up two bags of flour at the co-op and they closed early because of the snowstorm. If I go back empty-handed she'll make me chop green coihue firewood until dawn. I prefer territorial diplomacy. It's less demanding on the back."

Bianca let out a dry, small laugh, the first in many hours.

"You're a disaster."

"I'm a rural survivor. There's a difference."

The swinging door of the north wing opened.

There was no violent bang: just the dull creak of the heavy wood against the rubber stopper and an icy gust that swept the hallway with tiny particles of frost. Pascual stopped dead. Bianca did too.

There were three of them. Two older men from the Loncopán branch, wrapped in dark ponchos soaked in sleet and with faces weathered by the summit air, and him in the middle.

Lisandro Véliz.

He was wearing his black waxed-canvas jacket open despite the cold, his dark hair plastered to his forehead by the water and that hard line in his jaw that he put on every time the weight of his last name became unbearable. He walked with long strides, his eyes fixed on the glass door at the back where the records and the elders' signatures awaited.

Bianca stood still next to the faded tiles of the wall. She waited for the gesture. The slightest deviation. A hesitating eyelash, the corner of his mouth twisting into that half-grimace he used to make when they crossed paths on horseback near the ford, any tiny sign that said I know you're standing there, Bianca.

Nothing.

He passed less than half a meter from her, bringing with him a wake of clean air and cold wood smoke, without looking at her even once. His shoulder almost brushed hers as he moved forward, blind and resolute, as if she were barely part of the flaking plaster of the hallway.

But on his right wrist, tied with two blind knots over the skin exposed to the wind, hung the raw wool red ribbon worn only by heirs betrothed to another blood.

And midnight hadn't even arrived yet.