The Conquistador

A Story by TaichouC9

A child plays with his imagination as he is sent to buy some flour

The bright sun shines and extends its rays to the green fields lying underneath. The blades of grass glitter like emeralds being held up to the light. Flower patches speckle the land with hues of red, blue, pink and yellow. The trees show their glory with their giant arms giving off shade to small rabbit holes. The clear skies are open to the birds in the heavens. A pleasant silent melody is heard within the meadow, but across the field laid an untouched land with thick trees and vines. There might be something hidden behind the trees waiting to attack an unexpected traveler. But he had to get through this trial and trade his gold for food for his hungry people. This is not reality and of course he knew that. In fact it was the hottest day of the year and the grass in the park looked like some sort of ink blot. It had more yellow and brown than green.

He could tell a story and act it out. Even unconsciously while playing he would narrate the story out-loud. He was a book worm as his friends called him. He was exactly four feet with dark black hair and freckles on his face. He was an eight year old boy. His form of adventure and fun was mostly in his mind. Sometimes he was a pirate, sometimes a captain or even a warrior on some foreign land. But today he was a conquistador. He had seen pictures from his father’s textbooks. Read the bits and pieces he could understand. Even if the words were too hard to enunciate or even understand, he would pretend he knew exactly what it meant. He remembered reading words such as Cabeza de Vaca and giggling at the thought of a man with a cow’s head. As he slowly mouthed the words to enunciate and try to assimilate the words and form pictures in his mind he couldn’t help but feel the adventure scheming in his mind; A story of a hero being ordered by Rey Carlos I de España to explore a new land full of wild animals and fights between the natives with bows and arrows. But now he had to cross the park to get to the corner store. His mother, now Reina Isabel, has sent him on a mission to bring flour for today’s dessert. Reina Isabel told him clearly to guard the money and the flour with his life.

He stepped outside and looked back at his house. It looked as if a green cardboard box was stacked upon another. Two windows on each side except on the front of the house where it faced the street, it had a little white porch with a matching white roof. It was a comfortable house, not as elegant as a Victorian house and not as shabby as a grass hut, but the colors could have been better. Another beige box was on top of the roof always blowing air into the house, it trembled when they would set it on HIGH COOL. In the books that he had read, he never did find the type of house he lived in. Though it may not be much it was his safe haven, his fortress, his castle, and his motherland.

He could see the solid black river waiting to be crossed. Monstrous ships passing with alarming speed. It was a simple strategy “Don’t cross when cars are coming”, but seeing how big and massive the ships were scared him to think twice about crossing. Before crossing he formed a cylinder like telescope with his hands and looked across to examine the land that was waiting for him. He looked left and then to his right, no cars. He ran forward arrived at the entrance of the park. He was ready.

He had his chain mail equipped, the gold jingling in his pockets, and the sword he picked up when he was a Greek warrior in search for the mythical Panacea. Natives started running towards him as soon as he stepped into the Eden like field. What did they want? Are they cannibals? Or are they friends? They carried spears, wore loincloths, tattoos over their bodies and ornamental bones around their neck; they resembled the extinct Karankawa Indians in Texas. But they were extinct now, he told himself. He decided to use diplomacy since he had read they had cannibalistic ceremonies. But it seemed the leader of the pack had challenged him to a duel. The boy grabbed his sword and flung it around. It was mere choreography from a viewer’s point of view, but to him it was all planned out. He liked the way the sword would cut through the wind and he imagined that he looked like the sword masters he watched on TV. He swung it high and then he swung it low. He spun around and kicked then swung the sword. He repeated this and tried being creative by changing his movements. He would dodge to incoming blows and block then parry the enemy’s weapon. He tried remembering the fight scenes he had seen on Braveheart or even on Troy. How heroic they looked with some theme music behind the fight scene. He never retaliated from the fight.

Finally, the Karankawan gave up and asked for his name as honor. He thought hard about this answer. His original name was not of a conquistador, Angel. Conquistadors were brutal and strong, Angel sounded nice and related to some kind of pacifist. He decided to go with a more powerful and fearful name such as Angel Hernando Cortes. He was given access to enter the forest.

The small conquistador tired from his battle entered. It was not a forest, but it had turned into some kind of jungle. The heat was intolerable. His hair was plastered to his sweating face. The kind of stickiness you get when you get when you play on grass on a very hot day. He felt as if he had not showered in weeks. The sweat bothered him, what scared him the most was the silence in the jungle. It reminded him of home. His father was always away in business trips. He would travel to Mexico and to Spain. It was always back and forth to give lectures in many prestigious universities. He wished that his father would tell him the information in form of stories. Last year he asked him some questions about the lifestyle of the Tonkawan tribes and the professor kept writing in his books. With a wrinkled face and black bags under his eyes he only said, “I'm busy” and shooed the boy away. It broke him. Even in kinder he had said he wanted to be like his dad. He tried various time to get close to him, but each time was worse than the last. Till the father reached his limit and slapped him across the face, then went back to reading his work.

Even his mother had thought about divorcing the professor at least that’s what he heard talking about to Old Mrs. Lopez. Loneliness had led him to find refuge in books and try to ignore the now so frequent fights. His father even though he was in town, hasn’t returned home. He had lost his train of thought so much he was trapped within his jungle. He could hear his breath gasping for air, his heartbeat breaking into eight notes. His tears of fear, solitude, anger, burned his eyes and rolled down his freckled cheeks. He was now just a boy, a boy lost in a jungle. He hated his father. He wished him to disappear and never show his face again. He wished for his father to get brutally beaten and not shown any mercy. He had cried his hatred out. Tears would not roll, they stayed in his eyes only to blur his vision and block the jungle. He cleared his mind and tried hard to erase the epic tale he had tried to complete. He still had a loving mother waiting on him. He erased his thoughts and headed to the store. As he got the flour, he thought how he had accomplished the mission. Was it cheating? No it wasn’t. But it didn’t matter anyways he was done and that was it. He crossed the dry park and crossed safely the dark road. He entered his home only to be invaded by tears, the tears of her mother. Seeing her cry in front of the television set in the dark living room. She yelled in Spanish and then some in English. Who could've done something like this? Who could've done something like this? She chanted the words, but instead of bringing consolation it brought out pain. Her cries were sad and unsteady. She would gasp for air and repeat the whole thing over again. Angel with the bag of flour in his left arm could not move.

He was not so much concentrated on his mother’s cries. Her cries were just sound as he focused on what the news were saying. It was about a man, a college professor coming from Juarez. He was brutally beaten. All he carried were a small toy telescope and a set of history books. It was all a story, an epic tale, any moment now he was going to show up and go to his study room.