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When Pelayo returned he had a bag of money identical to the one they had taken from the old man the day before. They hid the money behind a beam in the chicken coop and Pelayo dug a hole to bury the two bags. For the next several days they did not leave their home except to stare into the ocean at sundown. Gradually, their son progressed. In a few days they needed more food and Elisenda went into town alone, Pelayo still too shaken to venture the trip again. Elisenda watched the road very careful for wealthy, dying men and saw none on her way to the market. She visited Father Gonzaga after filling her new basket and asked him if God may sometimes help people in strange ways, perhaps even frightening ways. The Father assured her that God acted precisely as He chose, and assigned her an array of prayers for her doubt. She was reassured as she left for home but there again in the road between the town and home was the dying old man left along the roadside embankment. Being alone Elisenda slipped down the slope herself and found the old man�s money. She grabbed his leg and dragged him into the woods over his protestations. She wasn�t very far in when she found the bodies of the old men from the previous trips to town, and a large stained rock nearby the broken remains of the men. |
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Elisenda hid the money away with the rest in the chicken coop and threw the bag into the sea without telling Pelayo. The next day Pelayo said to his wife that he was going to town, without giving any cause. He was gone all day and returned shortly after sunset. He had four identical bags in his hands. Elisenda broke down in tears. Within a week the chicken coop was being stuffed to the point where bills were poking through the boards. And so it went on. The pile of old men in the forest grew so large that Pelayo had to purchase a backhoe to bury them all, and eventually bought up the land where the repeating affair took place. When the child had grown old enough to start being curious about the details of life, he asked his parents where all their money came from. It was then that they decided they ought to do something about the wicked old man who haunted the road, which now belonged to them. |
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They drove out in the car they�d purchased on their son�s third birthday. As he had been day in and day out for years, the old man was lying at the bottom of the embankment, next to the path and the little sled Pelayo had made to make it easier for him to dispose of the old man. This time Pelayo carried the old man up the embankment slowly and deposited him in their car. They drove him to the doctor and explained to him that the old man was probably delirious and that anything he should say about repeated murders was purely fantasy. The doctor looked over the old man�s leg and also diagnosed him with liver disease, pleurisy, and acute phthisis. His estimate for the old man�s care was much more than he had in his moneyed valise, and was much more charity than Elisenda and Pelayo thought it wise to extend to him. They did not envy the position of being lenders. |
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