Nuvein Fiction | The Jíbaro Against the Vampire by Tony Báez Milán

The Jíbaro Against the Vampire
by Tony Báez Milán

Lately the sky had the habit of turning gray after noon, which seemed rare to the inhabitants of Cuesta Abajo. But since is was summer and they had been waiting for an intense and implacable heat, the rarity that the sky had adopted was well received, though carefully and with superstitions. The town was small but with many inhabitants. Nine or ten people lived in each of the tiny houses that were constructed one against the other, together like coconuts in a palm tree.

It was because of this that Jacinto went to live in the country, because, he said, he could not whisper without the neighbors hearing him. So that one day he packed two suitcases that a rich cousin who lived in Lustre had given him, and started for the mountains. Of course his only

daughter, Isabel, had to go with him. Between the two of them they constructed a house of partly rotten wood. The house was wobbly, but that did not matter to them. Jacinto was very happy with the move from the beginning, but it took Isabel time to get accustomed to the stillness and solitude that accompanied living away from the town, with the closest neighbor half a kilometer away, almost in Cuesta Arriba.

Jacinto, who was called “Machete” for his dexterity with the tool, found work weeding a strip of a foreigner’s farm. The foreigner had become rich with that farm in only a couple of years, and the majority of the people in town were envious and talked unkindly about him. But Jacinto thought that the man, who spoke canned Spanish, was a good man -- and he paid so well.

Every day Jacinto went up to the farm before sunrise and there he stayed until dusk. All day that thin and tanned jíbaro struck the weed with his machete with abnormal fury and efficiency; at this pace it would take him a month to finish the job (for anyone else it would have taken one and a half months).

When Jacinto got home, Isabel would have dinner ready and hot. Jacinto adored that young woman, the only fruit of a union broken by death.

One morning Jacinto arrived at the farm and found his boss talking to three men. The boss was never up before sunrise and that is why it seemed curious to Jacinto to see him there in the darkness with a cup of coffee between his hands and complaining about the cold.

“Buenos días,” greeted Jacinto.

The four men acknowledged him.

The boss informed Jacinto in horrible Spanish that a cow had been found dead.

Two years here running a cattle farm and still he cannot even say not even vaca, thought Jacinto.
For the past two weeks, the man told him, dead cows had been found around the farm. This was the fifth animal that was found on the ground. One curious thing about this case was that it was the first time that evidence had been found that somebody was doing this purposely -- there were boot prints around the corpse of the cow.

Until now it had been thought that it could have been some illness, because the cows seemed dehydrated. One of them was found beside a stream; the cow was trembling and trying to reach the water with its tongue. The man who found her gave her water before shooting her mercifully.

When the sun came out, Jacinto went to see the cow they had found. The other curious thing about this case was that the cow had two inexplicable punctures just below one ear.

At dusk Isabel was inside her minute room, which had a straw bed covered with a sheet, and a deformed window. She had just taken a bath, and now she prepared to get dressed.

The last rays of the sun caressed her virgin silhouette, and she enjoyed that moment of solitary nakedness. But then she felt uneasy and quickly put on her shirt. She turned around. At the window was a man, looking at her lustfully. What Isabel did not know was that the lust the man felt was not for her body, but for her blood. That man desired that young blood more than anything; he could feel it through his centenary system revitalizing him and making him strong again.

And now he was so close.

Isabel screamed but did not hear her voice. Her mouth remained closed -- she was already hypnotized.

But then Jacinto “Machete” arrived.

Jacinto saw the man from the back, looking through the window. The guy, thought Jacinto, had to be Guencho’s son, who was a pervert and also a glue-sniffer. This one would be the last of his peeping days, because Jacinto had that machete trembling in his left hand, and when the left one trembled.... This one would be the last day this boy would count. And if his old man intervened? Well, he too would --

What the hell was that boy doing with a cape?

“¡Ey!” yelled Jacinto.

The man with the black cape turned around, and Guencho’s son he was not. This man Jacinto had never seen around those mountains where everybody knew each other.

The caped one was tall, taller than at first Jacinto had thought, much too tall to have been a son of Guencho’s. Besides, noticed the jíbaro, the man was extraordinarily white, with great black circles around the eyes; but the lips were incredibly red, so red that Jacinto thought that they were painted. And then the jíbaro observed something that made him retroceed -- the fangs, that at first sight he had not seen but that now protruded from the mouth, white, immaculate, and sharply mortal.

“Boy, are you ugly,” said Jacinto, and then recited the first verse from “Padre Nuestro.” “You better know how to use those teeth, ‘cause I’m comin’ with my blade asharpened... and look how lefty’s tremblin’.”

The vampire did not understand the jíbaro’s native language; the vampire acted on instinct. The only thing he wanted was to feed, the Hunger guided him like the shoulder of a friend guides the blind. The Hunger told him to attack, to destroy without any mercy because the prey was much too precious to let it escape.

Night fell.

The creature was in its element.

Jacinto had his machete.

The vampire got rid of the cape and prepared to fight, menacing like a gigantic cat, showing the long fans and hissing hideously. He swung his paws at the air in front of him.

“Don’t you come to me with karate,” said Jacinto, “‘cause I’m gonna stick this so deep up yo’ behind that you’re gonna lick yourself from the pain. ‘Cause I am a Roman Catholic and apostolic, coño, carajo, puñeta, praise the Lord!”

The vampire advanced towards Jacinto.

Jacinto raised the machete and swung... he missed, and felt a scratch on the shoulder that tore his shirt and made him bleed.

The vampire’s eyes bulged and he licked his lips.

And that was when the jíbaro got really pissed off, and it was no longer known which of the two was the infernal creature. Now Jacinto also was guided by instinct, but jíbaro instinct, the good stuff.

“So scratchin’ it is, ah? And you wanna suck my daughter’s blood, ah? Then you’re gonna go suck the blood out o’ yo’ mother, ‘cause my getting the gandules out of you is an old thing, you fresh vampire! They don’t call me Machete ‘cause I suck my thumb!”

Jacinto charged towards the vampire, without fear, with the purpose of swinging and striking and cutting with his

machete until making sure that that aberration of nature, that mutation, was good and dead.

The vampire stepped back, nonplused, wondering what had happened to the contender -- and was scared.

So scared that he turned around, fleeing; Jacinto went after him and crossed himself when he saw the vampire produce wings and take flight, into the night.

“Go back to where yo’ came from, back!” yelled Jacinto after the flying beast. He remained watchful for a moment, and then returned to his house. There he found Isabel crying, disoriented but fine; nothing that good tamarind juice could not cure.

That same night they hung a clove of garlic on the door, and sprinkled the surroundings of the house with their own home-blessed holy water.

There appeared no more dead cows around the foreigner’s farm, and the vampire never returned. He would forever stay in some far away country drinking the blood of kings and monarchs, but to that small town he would never come back.

The End