Like a boulder she rolled through the room, her hips bumping the furniture that Javier had made. A heavy plank table and chairs filled the center, scarred by boys as they wrestled and laughed. She missed that noise now.
Yolanda awoke shaking. She heard the deep snoring of her father, her mother's high whistling snorts, the threshing about of her sisters as they struggled in sleep for space on the bed. All but the youngest boy, Pablo, were outside on the porch. As she moved closer to him, the hard night was pierced by the howl of a wolf.
She jumped out and ran to her grandparents’ bed, sliding quickly under the covers. Interrupted in midstride atop his wife, the old man swept her out with a swipe of his hand.
Two large chairs sat on either side of a stone fireplace. One was Yolanda's where she'd spent nights on the horsehair-stuffed cushion doing needlework or rocking babies to sleep. It bore the double bowls of her large rump and was uncomfortable to suit anyone else.The other chair had been Javier's.
He ran from all the devils that chased him.
Josip was not a young man. He grew winded, his lungs ached with a pain like a rapier slicing down through his windpipe. His jaw hung open, catching oxygen as the gills of a fish. With his life in peril, the image of Marielle burned. The musk scent of her body during their lovemaking, the little gasps of pleasure she gave as his tongue penetrated her lips. The way her fingers curled into his hair as she was nearing that time when she would flow like a river.
He ran for all this and more.