Gently, Like a Whisper

         Flavio scratched his naked boney back against the cinderblock hut that was the village's general store while the rest of the villagers gathered down by the sycamore. His juvenile brown skin was greasy from the humidity, and he tried to stay under the Bullhorn acacia that was pouring over the corrugated tin roof. He looked up at its branches, and paused to watch the sparse and lazy clouds beyond them for a moment. At some earlier time, before the war, there'd been the sweet aroma of hibiscus and lilac about the shack, but that aroma had since been beaten into submission by the odor of grease and metal, and of pale mud.
         "Flavio," said the large old woman, leaning though the hole that stood for a window in the cinderblock wall , "You won't see anything from here. Go on down by the path with the others."
         He sniffed and covered his shorts' pocket, but didn't say anything.
         "You want to see, don't you? Everybody wants to see El Libertador." She hacked, then spat, "And of course, Delia, no? Don't you want to see your sister?"
         He looked at her, his head twisting sideways, squinting under the crush of the tropical sun. "Tía," he said, flicking his head up at the branches of the acacia, "I can watch from up there?"
         "Up there?" she said incredulously, "In the thorns and ants??"
         "But it's higher than the crowd, and you know how small I am."
         She leaned further through the hole and peered up at the branches. The acacia would be a most uncomfortable place to be; it had thorns, and stinging ants... Why would anyone want to abide there? The boy might be able to navigate the thorns, she thought, but the ants? He'd be down soon enough. The old woman decided it would be a good lesson, maybe even funny, and she shrugged permission. After all, he'd not hurt the roof as much as the acacia would hurt him.
         It was a small matter for him to mount and climb to the shack's roof, making sure to step only in the shadows, lest the baking metal burn his naked feet. He pushed to the edge of the branches and the metal beneath him buckled slightly. It was much hotter up on the roof, despite the acacia's shade, and already the thorns had begun collecting their due, and the ants had started in on his feet, particularly on the inside of his ankles.
         El Libertador, he snorted. The only thing of importance that the colonel had ever "liberated," as far as Flavio was concerned, was his parents from their lives, and his older sister from her virtue (apparently willingly so). After all, she was coming back to her home village at his side, was she not?
         The villagers congregated tightly at the road under the sycamore at the path's elbow when the whine of the jeeps could be heard. Flavio stiffened, his breath locking stride even when the thorns were pressed into his flesh by what might otherwise have been a cooling breeze. The first jeep bursted from the jungle's dirt throat, as if the trees were vomiting it, followed by a second jeep. A third jeep carried El Libertador, with the concubine he'd murdered a family's generation to have. Flavio watched from within the thorns, motionless despite the feeding on his flesh. But then, in a way, having his blood in and on the tree made him a part of it. They were one now, he and the thorny acacia, and as long as it stood, he would stand as well. He stood quietly, looking down on the cows that where gathered under the sycamore. How he despised them, cowardly away-lookers who allowed their own to be dragged away in full view without so much as a soft murmur of advocation. Even a whisper would have meant something to the boy. Why had there not been so much as a whisper from any of them? And yet, they expected that he should mingle down under the shade of the sycamore with them?
         He watched his aunt waddle down to the road quickly. She paused to see if Flavio was still in the acacia, and when she saw him up there, still abiding amongst the thorns and ants, she could only wonder what would make some one choose to remain in such a painful, uncomfortable, place. But there he was, nonetheless, and she could see part of him deep within the leaves and branches, looking almost as if he were where he belonged. She shook her head as she continued her rapid waddle toward the sycamore, to where the rest of the villagers had gathered, just as El Libertador and Flavio's sister dismounted the jeep to greet the peasants.
         Flavio leered down at the murderer of his parents, and the cows gathering around. They all looked so comfortable, there within the cooling shade of the sycamore while he felt the runs of his own blood. He just so despised them all, especially the one who'd made him an orphan. And it was this which had made the painful acacia his place in the world, and he preferred it's thorns and ants greatly over the shade of the sycamore.
         The crack of his long pistol was louder than he'd thought it would be, and its report echoed throughout the village and off the packed, lifeless mud before being swallowed by the surrounding trees. A moment after his glorious shot, the stings from the path below, from the soldiers, pushed him even further into the piercing branches. Still, though, he felt immense satisfaction in dying within its thorns and among the ants, his brothers, his survival by proxy.
         He'd hit his mark perfectly, and there was a small smile beneath his quickly dulling stare; she'd fallen gently, just a whisper.