Collection 4: "Tell Them Not to Kill Me!" by Juan Rulfo

“Providence will take care of them, Justino. You go there now and see what you can do for me. That’s what matters.”

Now that he knew they were really going to kill him, all he could feel was his great desire to stay alive, like a recently resuscitated man.

And he killed one of my yearlings.

The ten cows I gave the judge didn’t do me any good, or the lien on my house either, to pay for getting me out of jail.

They’d crossed the furrows trodding on the tender corn.

And the voice continued talking, as if it was conversing with someone there on the other side of the reed wall.

Later on I learned that he was killed by being hacked first with a machete and then an ox goad stuck in his belly.

They told me he lasted more than two days and that when they found him, lying in an arroyo, he was still in agony and begging that his family be taken care of.

“I’ve already paid, colonel. I’ve paid many times over. They took everything away from me. They punished me in many ways. I’ve spent about forty years hiding like a leper, always with the fear they’d kill me at any moment. I don’t deserve to die like this, colonel. Let the Lord pardon me, at least. Don’t kill me! Tell them not to kill me!”

He cinched him up tight against the saddle so he wouldn’t fall off on the road.