Guernica 

Guernica 

By John Curran

I knew him in the years after that, he never would speak about it until the one day, and then it all came pouring out ….

Morning, the little fishing village. Columbia, the Baha de Santa Maria, and all the fishing boats were lined up on the beach, going nowhere, as it had been for two weeks now. No fishing, no trade, no tourists, no nothing. The word was there was death from the skies. The big nation, Estados Unidos, was raining deadly missile strikes on the single boats traveling across the open Caribbean. For what reason, who knows. Drugs they say. There were verified accounts from reliable sources up the coast. The people were afraid and didn’t know what to do. People here are dependent on their boats. With a boat you can do many things. Without one there is nothing.

One day my friend told me he’d had enough of the fear. There was a special mission. A little donkey had been born. A very special little donkey; the offspring of his own donkey from an arrangement he’d had with a special amigo down the coast, an old old friend. The little donkey had been the product of Dave the Great and his buddy’s hot little mare, Juanita, in return for a steady supply of corn. And so now he’d got the word, come get the cute as buttons newborn and bring plenty corn. And so with that, my friend loaded his boat.

Everyone said he should not do this. Not now. The fear was very strong, there had been sightings now, military ships, fighter aircraft. Another boat blown up, somewhere, nobody knew exactly where, or for what, they only knew all were killed every time, and no one took any blame nor gave any  explanation.  His young wife, Gabriella, she pleaded, the children cried, the fear of all now was very strong. Yet still he loaded his boat. Plenty bundles of corn. You could almost say it was bundles of something else. But no, just corn, plenty corn. And so he prepared. They chided, they begged, “No, no, not to risk it now. And for what? A baby donkey?! But no, not to be dissuaded, “Give the bastards an inch, they take your souls,” he would say.

And so at the last his wife Gabriella and the oldest boy came too. He could not tell them no, what could he do. And so they set out. A wonderful bouncy ride. The boat was not large but it would handle plenty bundles of corn and three people father mother and son, on a short run of just a few leagues down the coast. It happened coming back. They had the baby donkey, the cutest little thing, there with them, hobbled and bewildered. My friend would say even then he knew, this would grow into one fine strong animal. Ah, but such was not to be.

Just short of back home they were hit. My friend was thrown, ejected. For some reason he’d been in the far stern when the missile hit, up front. All he heard were the screams, all he remembers seeing as he hit the water was the enormous fireball and a flying head, disembodied, crossing his vision like some macabre scene from Hell. And it was not until now that he could tell it, to me, finally. We were in front of that painting that we’d come to see, and he said “yeah, that’s it. It was just like that.”

The painting was Guernica. On that bench in front of that painting we sat for a long time and he cried and he cried, did my friend. That was a long time ago. I remember him well.