Already you had suffered from the drought, and the diarrhea they called. The Big Swamp, and the shootout in the bar. The shootout: one minute, everyone was beautiful and dancing and the next, you were lying with your nose in the floordust, under someone's shoe. First the music stopped, and then the screaming stopped, and it was very still.
When it was all over, people picked themselves up off the floor and laughed, " That was nothing. That was like musical chairs." and started dancing again.
You and Jao took the first bus out. The bus climbed up into the hills, then down again into flatlands bitter with swamp. The bus was express. It stopped only once: a bull with an infected penis was being loaded onto a flatbed stalled across the road. It made you think of bruised peaches. It made you happy to see everything through a window. You watched mile after mile of trees drowning into the swamp.
Jao insisted on getting off in a town so foul it stained your armpits black. He wanted to take you to see her. You told him you didn't believe in anything anymore. He took you anyway.
The woman was expecting you. She was a palm reader or a priest, maybe even a poet. She looked at the drought on your hands, the dead, angry skin, the fingers without their casings. She said, "In your house, there is someone heavy and tricky." She advised you to clean the house with ammonia, sugar, and sulfur. She prescribed a bath of nine different leaves. She said, "Your skin is not from God." She asked you to come back on Thursday or Friday for an exorcism.
Jao was satisfied. You crossed the street to a cafe where the air was fresh.
You settled your swamp with tea. Jao ate a plate of armadillo and smelled suspicious
for days.