It’s dark when we arrive at the doorway where I spoke my long-ago goodbye as the rooster was singing one of his epics. The door’s locked. I call out and there’s no answer. The stone bench beside the door where Mamá brought my big brother into this bright world so he would saddle backs for me. But I would later ride them bare, rambling through narrow streets and out beyond—village boy that I was. This very bench of stone is where I left my hard childhood to yellow in the sun. And this doorway framed by grief? God, in His peace … somewhere else— far from this place! My horse, mere beast, snorts—he too is calling to them. He's scented something, he clops his hooves on the cobblestones, he snorts. But he’s not sure— he swivels his pricked ears. Papá must still be up. Praying. Maybe even now he’s still fretting: Something’s made the boy late. My simple-hearted sisters— incessantly whispering their busy little fantasies to each other, getting ready for a holy day that’s not coming. And almost everything has been prepared. I hope and wait. My heart’s an egg that almost… but something’s blocking it, something’s in the way. That big family we forsook not so long ago—this night nobody’s still awake, nobody’s put even one candle on the altar so that we’d come back—my soul and I. I call out again. And… nothing. I and my soul both hush. We begin to weep. The animal snorts, tosses his head, whinnies. But for all eternity they’re all asleep. Yet this is so much for the best that at last my tired horse, standing beside me, shakes his head, softly jiggling his bridle and the reins. But he falls asleep, then he wakes, he bows his head low, this night, he falls asleep again. And every time he wakes, he nods to me and he says— It’s all right. Everything’s all right.
