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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Prayers and Bullets” Down in the Dirt, v181 (the March 2021 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Excerpts from the Plague Years the Down in the Dirt Jan.-April 2021 issues collection book		get the 420 page Jan.-April 2021 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Prayers and Bullets

Jorge Torrente

    El Curita—Little Priest and Nino were intently watching the light armored vehicle’s slow approach after it had fired its short-stubbed cannon at the house half a dozen times. They were hiding in the cornfield next to the house and couldn’t help but see the big rubber tires biting into the loose ground as the diesel engine growled and spewed out constant black exhaust. Their hearts and minds raced. What could they do to buy time for the rest of the guerrilla outfit to escape the onslaught? The army had surprised them, and this was their last-ditch effort.
    The two rebels saw the officer in the turret’s hatchway turn around and order the five soldiers walking behind his vehicle to storm the house.
    “No one’s alive in there,” they heard the man say.
    As soon as the soldiers left the protection of the tank, Nino and el Curita shot them down and then fired at the officer, but the man had already ducked inside and closed the hatch. The tank turned and came straight at them, its machine gun raking the cornfield with high-caliber bullets.
    “The dynamite!” El Curita remembered. “Nino, go get the dynamite in the house. I’ll keep them busy.” They were lying flat on the ground under the tall corn plants.
    “What?” Nino looked up at him.
    “Damn it, snap out of it—just go! I’ll distract them.”
    Nino moved instantly, amazed that he could crawl so fast on his belly. With the machine gun bullets whizzing just above his head, Nino headed for the house. The last fifteen yards he ran bent as low as he could.
    “Lord God, Heavenly King, Almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.” After saying these words, el Curita sprang up onto his feet, shot a burst at the advancing tank, disappeared again into the corn, and crawled quickly to another spot. Moments later, little geysers of dirt jumped from the place he’d been.
    “Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father; Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father, receive our prayer.” And he repeated the maneuver.
    Nino was already inside the kitchen. The floor was covered with plaster debris and fragments of bricks. Several AK-47s were still reclining against one of the walls and a few grenades were inside a small wooden crate. He grabbed two and clipped them to his belt. The other two wooden boxes were filled with dynamite sticks. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Through the big holes in the front wall he could see the tank moving slowly toward the cornfield. El Curita is out there baiting the tank. I have to hurry. He snapped up eight sticks of dynamite and tied them snugly together with a piece of the rope they had used to tie up the sacks. He twisted the fuses into a single braid and cut it shorter with his pocket knife.
    “For You alone are the Holy One, You alone are the Lord, You alone are the Most High.” El Curita stood up again and fired his rifle at the tank. “Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the Glory of God the Father! Amen!” He ducked and rolled again. He heard the cannon fire. The shell exploded close by. The shock wave sent him careening over the uneven soil, his flailing arms and legs knocking down corn plants.
    Nino picked his way over the rubble littering the living room floor and stood close to one of the big gaps in the wall. He watched the light tank advancing slowly toward the tall corn plants, saw the cannon fire, and the spurts of the machine gun. “My God,” he said out loud, “they’re gonna kill him!” With trembling hands he lit up the short fuse with his lighter. Then, he ran out of the house through one of the gaps on the wall, carrying his rifle in his left hand and clutching in his right the bundle of dynamite sticks with their braided fuses sparkling angry.
    El Curita, dazed by the near miss, felt something wet and warm running down his left side. He patted himself. His hand came up red with blood, and he thanked his Lord for sparing him a little longer, for he knew now that God was with him.
    The growl of the tank’s diesel engine grew louder as it came closer, but he heard what he thought was someone running close by. Farther away, the unmistakable crack of rifles resonated over communist slogans and foul words. Summoning all his willpower, el Curita sat up and stumbled to his feet. “No, my God, it doesn’t hurt,” he said, trying to walk. “Don’t let it hurt, not now, please God.” He was able to catch a glimpse of Nino running at the tank and of the advancing infantry soldiers now shouting even more obscenities and shooting wildly at him as he ran in the open. “My God! They’re gonna kill him,” he mumbled, and with the last rush of adrenaline left in him, he pushed himself forward and out of the cornfield, shooting his rifle from the hip. “It is me, you motherfuckers! Me, you wanna shoot!” he shouted, as he swiftly replaced the empty magazine and started to sing loudly and with crazy eyes: “Blest be the Lord, blest be the Lord, the God of Mercy, the God who saves. I shall not fear the dark of night nor the arrow that flies by day!” The cannon boomed once more and Angel Valdés y Bravo, better known as el Curita, was blown out of this world.
    “Noo!” shouted Nino. Running among bullets, he felt a strong tug on his right leg and fell forward, managing to hurl the dynamite. Nino cursed himself when he saw the bundle land ahead of the tank, not on it. “Goddamn it! God! How can you do this! El Curita’s dead for nothing?” He moaned from the pain in his leg, for his dead friend, for what seemed like his futile action. Frozen to the ground, Nino saw the tank advancing. Finally, it rolled over the dynamite.
    “My God, my God!”
    The force of the explosion blew the tank into the air and sent Nino flying backward. The vehicle landed on its left side very close to Nino, so close that for a second he thought his fate was sealed. The advancing soldiers stalled and ducked for cover.
    “Thank you,” he murmured with his head hard against the ground. “Thank you.”
    The bolt of pain hit him hard again and he ran his right hand over his right leg in an attempt to soothe it. The leg was shattered right under the knee, bones sticking out through the skin. He was bleeding profusely.
    “Fuck, and I thought I had tripped on a stone.”
     The pain was so intense he thought he was going to pass out, but he heard the metallic sound of the tank’s top hatch opening. A hand emerged from inside and behind it a human form. It was the officer. The man’s eyes were red and teary. “Ah, fresh air,” he exclaimed halfway out, and stopped cold when his eyes focused on the barrel of the rifle aimed at his head.
    “¡Hijo de puta!” Nino garbled from a few feet away, the pain from his leg suddenly muffled by this new shot of adrenaline.
    “No!” the officer shouted, scrambling for his sidearm.
    Nino pressed the trigger and three slugs turned the officer’s right shoulder into pulp. The man cringed but, as he opened his mouth to scream, Nino pulled the trigger again. Holding on and with his jaw clenched, he smashed bullet after bullet into the man’s mouth, the bridge of his nose, and his left ear. The hot lead destroyed the officer’s lower jaw, his gums, his teeth, and shattered his cervical spine. Somehow, the victim’s tongue was uprooted from its base and jammed down through the man’s epiglottis, down his larynx, and all the way past the cricoid cartilage, into the trachea, to make sure he would die—if not from the bullets, then from choking on the same tongue that had ordered el Curita’s death.
    “Oh God!” The pain returned with a wallop. “Can’t . . . can’t let it . . . oh, God!” Without letting go of his rifle, he crawled forward with his arms the best he could, leaving a trail of blood on the ground as he went. He unclipped a hand grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and threw it through the open hatch into the tank, and then the second one for good measure. He heard voices cursing in the tank’s bowels; someone shot at him through the hatchway, barely missing.
    “Drop your weapon, you son of a bitch!” an arriving soldier ordered.
    “Don’t shoot him,” another soldier shouted. “Let’s wait for the Captain!”
    Nino looked down at his rifle and stuck the muzzle in his mouth.
    “Stop!” the soldiers shouted.
    In a split second, Nino’s entire life ran in his mind’s eye like a reel spinning out of control: drunk father calling him a sissy, the abuse, his mother’s dead eyes, the poverty. With all this running in his mind, he looked up at the sky. The celestial vault was painted in marvelous soft pastel colors and, although the soldiers were shouting all around him, he was mesmerized by the wonderful, sweet song of birds unseen, the melody inviting him to fly away with them into the heavens above.
     He didn’t have time to press the trigger.
    The tank exploded a few feet away.
    The ball of fire, the shrapnel, and the force of the shockwave killed everything in a one-hundred feet radius. Half of the soldiers perished or were severely maimed. Never before had a single insurgent been so deadly.
    His name was Antonio Rodríguez García.

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