Blood Ties

Interlude: Euphrasio

But the souls of the just are in the hand of God,

and no torment shall touch them.

They had found his mother in the dirt of the courtyard, a bullet through her skull.

His father's face had creased like an apple left too long in the sun. Split, fluid dribbling from the corners of his eyes like the ichor from the stomach of a sheep left dead for days in the summer heat. He had fallen to his knees and cried out.

Euphrasio had left to get the priest. Wondered, at his father's reaction. Was that the part of himself that he had lost; the part that wailed and tore its hair?

He had dug the grave himself, breaking the frozen earth with a pick as the priest said his prayers. No choir, just psalms, in the priest's cracking, faltering voice.

They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;

and their passing away was thought an affliction

and their going forth from us, utter destruction.

But they are in peace.

His father knelt and sobbed. Euphrasio bowed his head and listened. Listened to the villagers as they laid coins and cigarettes round the body in its box. Their whispers as they touched his mother's face, her hair; blackshirt! A blackshirt did this. Killed his mother, and took his cousins away. They laid gentians at the grave, their petals a deep and vivid purple.

For if before people, indeed, they be punished,

yet is their hope full of immortality;

Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,

because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.

Sometimes waking up in the mornings was like waking up back in the mountains. Cold sweat, a pressure like a man sitting on his chest. The white of the snow, Damoclean, hanging over him. Danger a constant, nagging ache. His parent's smiles had become wary, tenuous things, that ended when his back was turned.

As gold in the furnace, he proved them,

and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.

Those who trust in God shall understand truth,

and the faithful shall abide with him in love:

That night, Euphrasio took his service pistol from the case under his bed. A beretta brevetta 9mm, its cold shape familiar in his hand. His papers, and a little food. His father sat in the dark in the kitchen, and raised a glass in salute as he left.

Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones,

and God's care is with the elect.

Snow fell, thick and fast, covering the tracks behind him.