House Made of Dawn

“Yo heyana oh…heyana oh… Abelito…tarda mucho en venir

July 21

Abel slept through the day and night in his grandfather’s house. With the first light of dawn he arose and went out. He walked swiftly through the dark streets of the town and all the dogs began to bark. He passed through the maze of corrals and crossed the highway and climbed the steep escarpment of the hill. Then he was high above the town and he could see the whole of the valley growing light and the far mesas and the sunlight on the crest of the mountain. In the early morning the land lay huge and sluggish, discernible only as a whole, with nothing in relief except its own sheer, brilliant margin as far away as the eye could see, and beyond that the nothingness of the sky. Silence lay like water on the land, and even the frenzy of the dogs below was feeble and a long time in finding the ear.

“Yahah!” he had yelled when he was five years old, and he climbed up on the horse behind Vidal and they went out with their grandfather and the others—some in wagons, but most on foot and horseback—across the