Page 191 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

“Who?” Daisy sat down, too.

“I don’t know. But this is the way things always are in Mosquito Village. The
moment you enter this village, you’re being watched. This time, they’re all gone.
Even this family has left.”
“But you say that someone is watching us. Who’s watching now?”
Dad didn’t reply. He was listening closely. Daisy pricked up her ears. But she
quickly wearied of listening, because there was nothing to hear except for the
monotonous sound of the wind.
Daisy stood up; she wanted to look all around. When she walked to the wall,
she saw the boy. He was running south, leaping like a goat.
“Hey, hey!” Daisy shouted.
The wind broke her voice up. The boy didn’t hear her. She turned around to
look; her father was no longer under the eaves of the house. He was walking to
the back. Daisy followed him, an ominous premonition rising in her mind. She
saw a beam of white light shining on the dog shed behind the house.
The dog shed was large. Two old dogs were inside. One was missing its right
ear. They snuggled up to each other, fearfully watching the two people. They

were shaking.
“They’re cold,” Daisy said. She thought she was going to cry.
As Daisy and Dad crouched at the door of the dog shed, the wind gradually
strengthened. The dog shed shook, as if it would be blown away. The whirlwind
carried snowflakes with it; they struck Daisy and her father. In a second,
everything was dark.
“Dad, let’s get out of here! Let’s go! Now!”
Just as they dodged aside, a huge pile of snow slammed onto the dog shed.
The shed collapsed. The two old dogs didn’t run away. Without uttering a bark,
they were buried under the snow. Daisy kept asking herself, “What just
happened?”
“Let’s go back,” Dad said.
“It’s better to stay beneath the eaves, Dad. The wind is too strong. We can’t

see anything. Something could go wrong.”
As Daisy implored him, Dad, to her surprise, started laughing.
“You worry too much. What could go wrong?”
They walked into the gale. Sometimes the snow blown by the whirlwind
toppled them, and they were almost buried. Daisy and Dad did all they could to
dig out of the snow and extricate themselves. They walked and stopped, walked
and stopped. Daisy’s face was so frozen that it was numb. She couldn’t see
anything. She just followed Dad. Only one thought remained in her confused
brain: “That boy actually can live in the wilderness in such snowy weather . . .”
“They’re outsiders!” By the time Dad said this, they were home again.