Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco

immediately filled any vacant spaces. When the goatherd saw the boy return, he pointed to the alder tree where the donkey was grazing. Next to it were two flasks. The boy went over and shook them. Then he uncorked one, filled his tin with water and drank. The water tasted muddy. He could feel the grit in his throat and between his teeth, but he didn’t care.
    They ate, sitting leaning against the tree trunks, surrounded by the goats, the donkey and the dog, who all crowded in under the trees as if, beyond the shade, lay a deep abyss. When they had finished eating, the old man got up and moved a few yards off to urinate, his back turned to the camp. He didn’t return immediately and, from his place in the shade, the boy saw him bend down and fiddle with something on the ground. He thought he must be tying the lace on one of his boots. The old man returned, however, carrying a thick aloe leaf. He sat down in the spot where they’d eaten and, with a penknife, peeled the skin off the broad base of the leaf and handed it to the boy so that he could apply it to the burns on his face.
    They spent the siesta hours beneath the trees, the boy smearing his burns with the transparent jelly from the aloe leaf and the goatherd carving a new wooden hook for the donkey’s cinch strap. Later on, when the sun had lost some of its heat, the old man picked up a sickle and asked the boy to follow him over to a clump of esparto grass growing on the far side of the pond. Before they reached it, though, the boy felt uneasy and stopped. The old man turned, expecting to find the boy behind him. Then, with the sickle in one hand, he beckoned him over. The boy, standing some way off, shook his head. The man shouted:
    â€˜Watch me.’
    He crouched down in front of a clump of grass and with two short blows cut off a thick tuft. He held it up so that the boy could see, then put it down at his feet along with the sickle. The goatherd then went back to the camp, and when he passed the boy, told him to make eight or ten bundles of grass and take them over to the alder trees. The boy turned and waited until the old man had disappeared again behind the bulrushes. Then he walked over to the sickle and for a moment contemplated the countryside around him: the little islands of scrub and the stony paths that ran between them. He went hunting for the largest clumps of grass, and when he found what he wanted, set to work. He hadn’t said anything to the goatherd when the latter had shown him how to cut the grass, but this was a job he knew how to do well because, at home, he had always been the one who kept the ground around the house cleared.
    The boy concluded his labours as evening was coming on. He gathered up the grass and started carrying it in bundles over to the shade. He left the first bundle next to the goatherd and went back for more. The old man, who was milking a goat, briefly stopped what he was doing, then immediately resumed his work. No thanks, no reward. The law of the plain.
    They dined on bread and milk and, afterwards, the boy applied more aloe jelly to his face. He fell asleep watching the goatherd making ropes by plaiting the grass he had cut that afternoon. He didn’t even hear the distant sound of hooves crossing the dark plain. Nor did he see how the goatherd’s hand trembled, startled by this sudden noise cleaving through the arid plain like a stone sword. The only thing he felt, when the time came, was the old man’s boot prodding him in the back and his voice telling him to get up.
    He did as he was told, thinking that it must be dawn already and that the goatherd would again have prepared his breakfast for him. He felt around him for the bowl, but the only thing he found was the blanket he had slept on. Everything else, including the bundles of grass, was already loaded onto the donkey.
    â€˜Pick up the blanket. We’re leaving.’
    The crescent moon was still only a yellow sliver on the