Extracts from short stories: Son; Icon; and Dance a White Horse to Sleep

From Son:

“What is really the matter, Chu?” the father asked.

“Nada, Pa,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Go on, tell me,” the father said. “You can always tell your papa.”
Chu kept gazing at the food on his plate. He was trying hard not to cry,
his face strained and looking sadder every minute. He said, “They killed Leal,
Pa.”
“Who killed your dog?” the father said.
“Mr. Tomas and his friends,” Chu answered.
“No! How could anyone be so beastly?” his mother said.
“They are beasts!” the boy said.
“Are you sure of this?” said the father. He had not gone with the boy to
search for his dog earlier that morning. He had thought nothing of it then.
Anyway, the plowing of his farm had to be done first, for he had seen signs in
the sky that told him the rainy season was coming earlier this year.
“Mr. Tomas always bragged they’d kill my dog for asocena dog meat
casserole,” Chu said.
“Oo, no!” Chu’s mother cried, imagining that maybe now the boy’s dog
was already on someone’s plate as stewed meat.
Chu sprang up from the table, tilting over his chair, and ran out of the
house. The farmer stood up, and his wife said to him, “Don’t do anything rash,
Ingo.”
“I’ll just see if Chu is all right,” he said.
“Remember, Ingo,” his wife said, “that you will not gain anything
quarreling with that sort of man.”

From The Icon:

About this time, in the house, the boy was lying on the mat on the bamboo floor
beside his mother's bed. He could feel his mother asleep in her bed. He felt it
through the dark as though he could see through it. He could not sleep himself,
and in his mind he was thinking: Mama is sweating and her face and shoulders
shiny with beads of water and she smells of fresh broken grass and crushed pot
flowers. Her face comes closer and her hair tickles my nose and she crushes me
against the damp bed sheet round her and the smell of broken grass and crushed
pot flowers become stronger in the nostrils tickling the nostrils and the man says,
Bring the boy here, Pilar; the man lying there in the bed, and he says, Come on,
bring him over, and Mama says, What for, you sweet big man? and he says, Let
him watch, Pilar, let him watch, ha, ha, ha …. and he could not finish for the
laughter that comes like little shrieks from down his chest as if he were coughing
not laughing with his chest heaving. Mama won’t let me and she says something
to the man I don’t know what the something is for the sound in her voice isn’t in
the saying of it, not even in the speaking of it. O, you're crazy. You, stop that
now, sweet crazy man, but the man doesn’t stop the laughing, chest heaving, the
sweet big man lying naked on the bed.
In the city we had a gate, too, the boy was thinking. But the gate was for all the
doors and at night it creaked, opening very loud, but not so in the day. When it
creaked in the night Mama would get up from the bed and creep darker in the
shadows and open the door and go ahead back into the room, our room. Tio
Felipe he saw him now come into the room, saw him move toward the bed.
Don't wake the boy up, Mama says.
You have a kid? the man says in the city. Tio Felipe crept into the bed, his slippers
swishing on the floor Is that your boy? the man says.
Tio Felipe made a little noise getting into the bed and the boy thinking Calla la
boca, Mama says. You'll wake him up. Inside the mosquito net a wind blew as a foul
breath and the bed creaked for the suppleness of the bamboo slats. I must not
cry, Lito told himself. There is nothing to cry about.
Is there no one else here? the man says.
The mosquito net was blowing in the wind though there was no wind. A
foulness touched it as of the foulness of an invisible breath in the mouth.
The bed is silent now, Lito was thinking. And I must not cry and it is quiet now.
The man curses, his voice hardly above a whisper, and Mama hushes me. She says, If you
don't hush now --- but now he could not stop himself from crying. He cried with
his throat not making any sound, and then the crying rushing above the throat
and he cupped his hands over his mouth and to the wind and the mat on the
supple bamboo floor he cried, O, mi tio. Mi propio tio

From Dance a White Horse to Sleep:

Immediately behind the hearse, a white horse snorts and prances while
Ciano holds the taut reins in his fists. I fling a black cloth with papalolo’s medals
and ribbons on nit across the back of the horse. The beast springs sideways and
nearly breaks away from the funeral line. Then I walk off to stand beside the
hearse and watch the horse calm down a little, still snorting, and begin to prance
again in a circle of space. Only the man holding the reins is in that empty circle.
The muscles of the horse ripple and jerk nervously underneath his wet
immaculate sheen. The white horse moves and dances on the streets, his hooves
leaving their imprint on the asphalt. This is a very nervous horse, Ciano said. And he
becomes jumpy in a crowd. Bien nervioso.
But I need a white horse, I said. It’s for papalolo’s funeral.
This horse is crazy, he said. I won’t be responsible for him tomorrow.
That’s all right, Ciano, I said. I need a white horse, a big and handsome white horse.
The asphalt melts under the bright sweltering sun, and the medals on the black
cloth shine and glitter under its oblique rays. There are privately owned jeeps
and many shiny cars. The windows of the cars are lowered, and inside the
women fan themselves feverishly. Behind the jeeps some fifty Zambtranco buses
lump and block the traffic from Buenavista to Canelar Street.
At this moment Tia Clara comes slowly down the stairs on to the redbrick path.
Tia Margarita and Tia Concha follow her a few metes down the path, and then
halt before the old moss-covered fountain in front of the pink house. Tia Clara
goes on, quickening her steps. From the street we can hear her steel-stiletto heels
clicking on the red bricks. She walks rapidly toward the iron gate, and except for
this change of pace she remains poised and calm. I watch her approach the horse,
the men opening a way for her and the crowd melting back. She has not
slackened her pace, but a shimmer of anger now flashes in her eyes and through
her wasted, hollow-cheeked face. The tenant, Ciano, holding the reins, stands
stock-still and unmoving, waiting.
Tia Clara only stops when she reaches the white horse and the tenant. Looking
quaint and delicate in her terno, she speaks, the words pouring out like torrents
through her thin and wrinkled lips: “Oy---you, Ciano, what is this horse doing
here?” The tenant says nothing, though now he’s beginning to sweat and the
muscles around his eyes and cheeks twitch and quiver. Tia Clara goes on, her
voice much lower now but with more heat and anger, saying, “If you don’t tell
me, puñeta! I’ll have you-----” This time the sweat breaks from his face and comes
down his chin, like tiny rivulets. His mouth is half open, about to speak, for the
years of servitude and tenancy of his father to Don Flavio Gonzales y Villa flow
in his veins, the servile blood of one who is a tenant himself, but now among the
few living on land remaining from the original vast Gonzales holdings of the
Spanish era. The tenant cringes and cowers before Tia Clara, the reins hanging
limp in his hands. Tia Clara’s angry voice comes like an echo of the past: full of
blood and thunder.