The Power Of The Dog by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online Page B

going on?
     
    And his uncle—his uncle will be furious. He had told them to stay away this week—to stay in Tijuana or even San Diego, to be anyplace but here. But his brother Raúl had to see this Badiraguato girl he was lusting after, and there was going to be a party, and Adán had to go with him. And now Raúl is God knows where, Adán thinks, and I have bayonets pointed at my chest.
     
    Tío has basically raised the two boys since their father died, when Adán was four. Tío Ángel was barely a man himself then, but he took on a man’s responsibility, bringing money to the household, talking to the boys like a father, seeing that they did the right thing.
     
    The family’s standard of living rose with Tío’s progress in the force, and by the time Adán was a young teen he had a solidly middle-class lifestyle. Unlike the rural gomeros, the Barrera brothers were city kids—they lived in Culiacán, went to school there, to pool parties in town, to beach parties in Mazatlán. They spent parts of the hot summers at Tío’s hacienda in the cool mountain air of Badiraguato, playing with the children of the campesinos.
     
    The boyhood days in Badiraguato were idyllic, riding bikes to mountain lakes, diving from quarry rock faces into the deep emerald water of the granite quarries, lazing on the broad porch of the house while a dozen tías—aunties—fussed over them and made them tortillas, and albóndigas, and, Adán’s favorite—fresh, homemade flan blanketed with thick caramel.
     
    Adán came to love los campesinos.
     
    They became a large, loving family to him. His mother had been distant since his father’s death, his uncle all business and seriousness. But the campesinos had all the warmth of the summer sun.
     
    It was as his childhood priest, Father Juan, endlessly preached: “Christ is with the poor.”
     
    They work so hard, young Adán observed—in the fields, in the kitchens and the laundry rooms, and they have so many kids, but when the adults come back from work they always seem to have time to hold the children, bounce them on knees, play games and jokes.
     
    Adán loved the summer evenings more than anything, when the families were together and the women cooked and the kids ran around in mad giggling swarms and the men drank cold beer and joked and talked about the crops, the weather, the livestock. Then they all sat down and ate together at large tables under ancient oak trees, and it got quiet as people first settled into the serious business of eating. Then, as hunger faded, the chatter started again—the jokes, the familiar teasing, the laughter. After the meal, as the long summer day eased into night and the air cooled, Adán would sit down as close as he could get to the empty chairs that would be filled when the men came back with their guitars. Then he sat literally at the feet of the men as they sang the tambora, listened rapt as they sang of the gomeros and bandidos and revolucionarios, the Sinaloan heroes who made up the legends of his boyhood.
     
    And after a while the men tired, and talked about how the sun would be up early, and the tías shooed Adán and Raúl back to the hacienda, where they slept on cots on the screened-in balcony, on the sheets the tías had sprinkled with cool water.
     
    And on most nights, the abuelas—the old women, the grandmothers—would tell them stories of the brujas—witches—stories of ghosts and spirits that took the forms of owls, of hawks and eagles, snakes, lizards, foxes and wolves. Stories of naÏve men enchanted by amor brujo—bewitchment—crazed, obsessive love, and how the men fought battles with pumas and wolves, with giants and ghosts, all for the love of beautiful young women, only to find out too late that their beloved was really a hideous old hag, or an owl, or a fox.
     
    Adán fell asleep to these stories and slept like the dead until the sun struck him in the eyes and the whole long, wonderful summer day started again with