“All right, boys, that’s plenty. Loli, clean this thing up.”
Ramón heard her yell, and they laughed and told her to take him home, and then to never speak to him again. The voices were replaced with a small wail which rose like a furious, biting, howling wind, chewing at his earlobes and poking at his cuts. Then, the wind was over his face, and opening his eyes with its rough fingers.
“I’m so sorry, Ramón,” she said, her eyes shiny.
“That’s alright,” he said.
“No,” she choked. “I couldn’t do anything.”
She leaned over and dirtied him with kisses until her lips grew dry.
“I’m covered with blood, aren’t I?” he asked.
“One of your eyes is bleeding. I don’t know how to fix that,” she said.
“Call the police.”
“I can’t.”
“Call an ambulance.”
“They’ll call the police, Ramón.”
“I’m going to die.”
Loli wrung her hands. “I can’t call the police. They’re my brothers. What would I do without them?”
Ramón closed his good eye. “I’m very tired,” he said. “I’d like to go to sleep.”
Loli swept his hair back. “Wait. I’ll go get a horse.”
Her bare feet scraped and crunched on the gravel as she hurried away; after a few minutes, Ramón opened his good eye and searched overhead. His ears buzzed and the bones in his skull creaked with each painful blink. He wasn’t sure after a while if his good eye was really open, because there were no stars and there was no moon to be found. The sky, if it was the sky, looked cold and wet; not how a sky should look, but more like the quivering nose of a wild deer.