Chupacabras

Aardvark Patrol. It was the first and only thing I could tell apart from the battle cry outside, within the sleep that still prevailed in me. If yesterday was a dull rainy day, today was full of promise. I went down to see what it was. Opened the door only to find tens of tents all over my land and a band of boys looking at me. I had forgotten about the event for the second time and more: forgotten I had agreed to let the scouts put up their tents on my land. I was staring at them still dizzy from the sleep, while the scouts saluted me with their battle cry. I heard it and it seemed it was worth some four roosters around my house. Their leader came to talk to me.

"Nice to meet you. My name is Miguel. We, from the Aardvark Patrol, salute you and the good people of Taurinos. Andrés has spoken a lot to us about you and the things you do for the defense of the town…"

I bet he only spoke about the maintenance, not about the creation of this loony bin. I smiled at the leader of the patrol and at the boys and greeted them good-morning. They responded in unison. I remembered how Sérgio Dias or his brother said in an interview that Mutantes retired to a farm to write songs for new records and live "as if they were one".

We started to talk and they offered me coffee. I turned it down politely. Miguel asked me a lot of things about Taurinos. I said she should take heed to Andrés' and Bruno's advice on where not to go in town as the vicinities had its hazards. Overall I tried to give him the nicest overview of Taurinos I could.

"Looks like it is a challenging region for the kids", Miguel smiled.

"It is a challenging region for everyone", and I smiled.

He looked serious all of a sudden. To greater strangeness, I asked him what today's date was. He said it was January 24th 2011. I thought to myself: we're done. I smiled again and asked about Andrés. Miguel said he was off to look for water with the other scouts. It didn't take him long to return with the other boys. They saluted us and I pulled Andrés aside for a talk in private, under a slight frown of his leader.

"Andrés, we're fucked up. Their calender, as Meire's, is one and a half years ahead of ours."

"Easy, Miss Grisam, there's always a solution", replied the Mayor-scout, furtively glancing at the leader that stared at us all the time.

"What do you mean by easy? What if they start talking about their current issues that are still in the future for us and you're not able to follow their conversation? Have you stopped to think about it?"

Andrés looked at his side and it was Bruno coming closer. The two would be hosted on my land during the Jamboree. He walked closer, saluted the leader and walked up to us. I repeated to him what I had already said to Andrés. He seemed worried. Asked what should be done. I told him to ask Andrés because it seemed Andrés had a solution up his sleeve. Of course he had none. I suggested that we visited all commercial houses in town and asked their owners to remove their wall calendars from view for the time of the Jamboree. The suggestion was promptly accepted by the two so absurd it was.

"And pray that they do not ask for invoices."

"You seem to take pleasure to fuck the hell out of us", Andrés was calmly furious. Bruno, as was his habit just said nothing at all.

"Do I fuck the hell out of you??? Have you lost your mind? Have you ever thought of half the trouble you'd take in this town with this event? "

We were interrupted by the leader of the patrol approaching us.

At the end of the afternoon, master Danilo dropped by. Tied his horse out of the land, came to have a gulp of coffee with me. He came along the path greeting all of the scouts on his way with the kind expression of one who's seen a lot in life. The look of one who understands the pains and joys (wherever they may roam) of living.

"Now there's going to be trouble in all this we didn't even imagine there would be, master Danilo."

I told him about the date I was given by Varginha's scouts leader and the talk with Andrés and Bruno. He goggled at me and then he was serious, thoughtful. As though he was measuring the consequences of it all. He agreed to the idea of taking calendars off view though he knew it was no fool-proof measure at all. He agreed to the idea because he knew any attempt would be valid in a situation like this.

He had brought a sack of cheese bread loaves right from the oven. Invited me to have coffee with him at his house, see the electric power installed, "you won't even recognize it", said he, with a satisfied beam.

As we had coffee and talked, I gave myself to some quick brooding. Really. How long had it been since I last went to visit him in his house, have some coffee and talk. Maybe since my definitive passage to Taurinos. To be perfectly honest, I couldn't remember it anymore.

Our reflections were cut but the distant sound of horses. The sound of the horses then stopped as if a CD had been paused and came back as if the pause had been toggled back to action, dying away in the distance now on the opposite side. I found it odd and commented it with the old countryman.

"Dusk, hope the Obscure Police is not a trouble", said master Danilo, sighing.

Not more than five seconds had passed since his voice died away and we heard a lot of noise from the scouts outside. By the sounds around I could tell it was no good thing. We looked at each other and went out in a hurry to see what was going on. We found the scouts around a tent, the flashlight pointed at its canvas; the canvas found itself covered… with blood and pieces of guts.

We stood still in a state of shock. Not in different state were the scouts all around us, Andrés and Bruno included. The leader goggled at us and at virtually everything, astonished at what he saw. At least master Danilo and I, if not Andrés and Bruno too, had a vague idea what had happened. The Obscure Police had probably stopped time, got in my yard, eliminated one of more entrants and set time in motion again when they were already far from here. That's what felt like a pausing CD at that moment. I helped the scouts directing them to the laundry where they could fill some buckets to wash the canvas and let themselves as good gentlemen to collect and discard the guts.

I was counting the seconds until the scouts leader came to talk to us about it. We tried to mislead him as much as we could.

"It might have been a chupacabras", master Danilo said naively what almost made me laugh as hell. I managed to suppress my shout after trying really hard. The leader stared at us and his stare was weirder and weirder in time while he tried to be nice, "is really there such a thing like a chupacabras?"

"Ah, they sometimes end up here", assured master Danilo, almost making me laugh again. I thought it was two little chupacabras, but they were so much more terrible I even felt sorry for the chupacabras.