• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He slept on a small, flat mattress in a corner of the one-room apartment. The sagging mattress rested on a metal frame not far from the stove; still lit and glowing dimly, the stove provided the only light in the small room. The old frame was rusted from the sea breeze that blew through the window.

He smiled. The mattress was the same one he'd bounced on when he was a boy. It occurred to him now as he lay down, naked, how pure an act that had been-to bounce on the bed. It was an activity that didn't give a damn about what went before or what was coming next. It was a complete, self-contained expression of freedom and joy.

He remembered having to stop when he grew a little and made more noise. The people who lived downstairs complained. It had been a harsh thing for a child to learn, that he wasn't free. And that was only the first lesson in his lack of liberty. Until he met the General his life had been a series of surrenders and retreats that made others happy or rich. As he lay down in bed, in the bed that used to make him feel so free, Adolfo felt a taste of what it was like to be free again. Free of government regulations that told him what he could fish and fishing magnates who told him when and where he could fish so as not to interfere with them and recreational boats clogging his harbor because the boating industry had more influence in Madrid than small fishermen had. With the help of the General he would be free to make a living in a nation that once again belonged to the people. To his people. The General didn't care if you were Castilian like Adolfo or Catalonian or Basque or Galician or whatever. If you wanted to be free from Madrid, if you wanted self-rule for your people, you followed him. If you wanted to maintain the status quo or profit from the sweat of others, you were removed.

Lying on his back, staring into the darkness, Adolfo finally shut his eyes. He had done well today. The General would be pleased.

The door flew inward with a crack, startling him. Four men rushed toward him before he was fully awake. As one man shut the door the others pulled him facedown on the floor. His arms were stretched out from his sides and his palms were pressed down on the floor. They pinned him in that position with their knees and with their hands.

"Are you Adolfo Alcazar?" one of them demanded.

Adolfo said nothing. He was looking toward the left, toward the stove. He felt the middle finger of his right hand pulled back slowly until it broke with a single, flashing snap.

"Yes!" he shrieked. Then he moaned.

"You killed many men today," one of them said. Adolfo's head was cloudy with thought but clear with pain. Before he could clear his mind his right index finger was pulled back and broken. He screamed as the pain raced up to his elbow and back again. He felt something-one of his socks-stuffed roughly between his teeth.

"You killed the head of our familia," the man said. His ring finger was drawn back until it popped. They released it and the three broken fingers sat side by side, bloated but numb. His hand was trembling as they twisted back the pinky finger. It flopped down, shattered like the others. Then he felt something hard and cold on his thumb. His head was forced around and he saw a crowbar, held vertically. The curved end was resting on top of his thumb. It was raised straight up and brought down hard. The thumb burned as the skin ripped and bone cracked. The crowbar went up again and then came down, this time on the wrist joint. It came down once in the center, once on the left, and once on the right. Each blow sent a swift, hot wave of pain up his arm to his shoulder and along his neck. When it passed there was only a deep throbbing weight on his forearm, like an anvil was sitting on it.

"Your hand will never again be raised against us," the man said.

With that, they released Adolfo and turned him over. He tried to control his right arm but it flopped as though it were asleep. He caught a glimpse of blood as it trickled down his forearm. He didn't feel