Somewhere Between

by Russell Mickler

Shrapnel from the Stielhandgranate 24 punches through my flak jacket and tears into my chest, arms, and shoulders. The blast rips off my helmet as chunks of mortar and bricks cascade over my head — ringing lodges in my ears.

Buster barks, whines, whimpers. I try to breathe, to call him, but the wind’s knocked out of me.

“Out of the way!” Ralph tugs at my vest. “Fucking Krauts. Booby trap! Watch for wires!”

Blood stings my eyes, but nearly beyond my sight, I glimpse a crumbling adobe church bathed in twilight.

“Medic! Will somebody move this damn dog? Stay with me, buddy! Hank!”

I force a hoarse whisper. “Mateo?”

* * *

I approach a modest home with thick adobe walls of sun-dried earth, straw, and sand. Squinting away the sunlight, I rap against the doorframe.

Emerging from behind the pinewood door, a woman drapes a faded red shawl around her shoulders and cups its edges to her mouth. A boy no older than eight clings to her skirt.

“¿Quién es? ¿Qué busca aquí?”

Middle-aged, crowned with wavy black hair complemented by gray highlights, her hands — cracked, worn — are the color of clay in the rain.

I remove my hat as Buster, a lanky Galgo, squats beside my knees. “Buenas tardes, ¿Doña Isabel?” Clumsy. Fractured. Nine months in Argentina, and my Spanish still sounds like a ransom note.

“¿Sí?” Her breath hitches, and her hand flies to her chest. “Don Mateo?”

“No.” I continue in Spanish. “But I assist him, yes.” I retrieve the letter from my breast pocket. The paper is coarse, creased unevenly, yellowed, and rough-hewn.

She unfolds it, flips it sideways, then upside down, puzzled.

“May I?” Illiteracy isn’t uncommon in Espejo.

Nodding, she surrenders the letter with trembling fingers, aware of its gravity if not its words.

“¿Qué es, Mamá?”

Buster’s head swivels toward the boy.

I reorient the page to sharpen my focus and clear my throat. “My darling Isabel—”

Sobbing, she braces against the door.

“Time passes. The wind carries your name, but I cannot catch it. I remember your laugh but cannot hear it.”

She cringes as if the words tug at something long buried.

“Be mindful, love: frost will come early this year. Double your stores. Take care, and show Tomás your strength. I await the day when the wind unites us again.”

When I hand her the letter, she clutches it tightly to her bosom as if afraid it might slip away. Her dark eyes meet mine. “Gracias.”

I return my fedora to my scalp and tip its brim. “Evening.” Returning to the road, my thoughts turn to the dozens of letters I’ve delivered — words of the dead, written for the living.

* * *

Buster and I greet Don Mateo Corvalán outside the ruins of an abandoned chapel. A bruised twilight stretches over Pueblo Espejo, blurring the outlines of eucalyptus trees and adobe houses until they seem more memory than matter. The brisk air captures a thin layer of chimney smoke as a pale moon hovers over the distant hillside.

“That’s the last one,” I shout.

Mateo grunts, tossing another pine log on the fire; embers scatter like a prayer into the sky. An old man with wispy white hair, Mateo waddles more than he walks. Seized by a rasping cough, he waves as I enter the courtyard.

Buster darts ahead, disappearing into Mateo’s ramshackle home. “All right, I’m comin.’”

The chapel is a lesson in entropy, cobbled together with timber and adobe brick under a corrugated tin roof that shivers in the evening wind. The sullen, warped door lists open, exhausted from holding itself upright as warm, orange candlelight escapes through cracks in the walls.

Twilight suits this place — wedged somewhere between the earthly and ethereal.

Stripped of its religious icons and tributes, the chapel’s nave carries the scent of aged wood, mingled with a faint tang of salt, sweat, and smoke. Inside are two cots, a stack of wool blankets, and six wooden tomato crates — humble vessels storing Mateo’s worldly possessions. In contrast, my steamer trunk, with its black leather and polished brass fittings — fashioned for a world of ships and rail stations — sits alien and incongruous, a sarcophagus holding the remnants of a different life.

Buster nudges my leg, and I snicker.

I can always count on the dog.

“You’ll get your share.” I approach the altar. Pulling an iron pot from a ceiling hook, I untie the twine around a cloth bundle of sheep meat and set the cuts aside to dump fresh offal — liver, kidney, and tripe — into a shallow bowl. Securing a few wrinkled potatoes, carrots, and dried oregano sprigs from a wicker basket, I ladle fresh water into the pot from a porcelain basin.

“C’mon.”

Back alongside the crackle of Mateo’s fire, Buster settles beside me as I use my pocket knife to prepare dinner.

* * *

I fold the newspaper to glance at my watch — still an hour out.

The passenger car rocks unevenly, its poor suspension jostling the canvas sacks and valises in the overhead luggage rack. A rattan-bladed ceiling fan stirs a sluggish current of air heavy with tobacco and the sour musk of unbathed skin. Nearby passengers murmur in Spanish, sharing maté from a worn gourd.

The New York Herald hired me straight out of Columbia in ’27. Young, idealistic, and naïve, I made my name during Prohibition, connecting readers with real people and real trauma. But by the mid-’30s, the national gaze shifted outward, unsettled by what they saw at home. Readers became captivated by the gaucho: noble horsemen of the Pampas, South America’s answer to the cowboy — free, resilient, untethered — so my editor sent me to Argentina to find one.

Beyond the smudged glass, the land blurs past, stretching into a rippling sea of autumn golds and pale greens swaying in the breeze. Scattered ombú trees frame the silhouettes of tall-horned oxen wading through the grass. Purple-hued hills merge sky and land on an amber horizon.

I catch my reflection in the window and sneer. It turns out foreigners searching for gauchos is a joke among Argentinians, akin to hunting for leprechauns in Ireland.

After two months of chasing myths, I arrive in Espejo humiliated, frustrated, and desperate for a story.

* * *

I churn the stew. The pot releases soft hisses of steam, and Buster stirs. I scratch behind his ears.

Wrapped in a poncho over a soiled white tunic and a tan pañuelo, Mateo’s settled into his usual spot — hunched in a rustic chair beside the well in the courtyard, studying the moon. When we first met, his voice carried the depth and richness of the upturned soil, the very loam of Puelche wisdom. But now…

I poke the fire. “Your basket’s full again. Onions, potatoes, carrots — more eucalyptus leaves for your tea.” Argentinian generosity amazes me; kindness is as foreign in New York as I am here. “Did the doctor visit today?”

“He said the same shit—” Mateo keels to suffer a rattling cough that scrapes against his chest, his breathing wet and labored. His body shakes as the fit births a strained, gasping wheeze that tries to claw free of his lungs.

Tuberculosis.

He spits on the ground. “Rest. Water. Tea.”

I put his bowl on the well’s rim. “I could’ve built the fire.”

“I am not an invalid.” Mateo rarely makes eye contact.

I outstretch my arm. “Hand it over.”

He hands me his bottle. I pop the cork to sniff its neck.

Mateo shoos me away. “I don’t have any more.”

“You’re more resourceful than you look,” I say, stepping away. “And your neighbors are too accommodating.”

Buster’s eyes follow me as I round the fire and return with a blanket and Mateo’s canteen half-full of water. I place both beside his chair.

I peer over the well’s edge into the darkness. “Think you’ll hear them tonight?”

“No,” he mutters. He glances scornfully at the bowl.

“Moon’s wrong.”

“Now come on. Don’t be like that. Eat. It’s the last meal you’re going to get from me.”

“Gringo stew. Bland Yankee—”

Another coughing fit arrests him mid-sentence.

I tug my fedora lower across my brow. “Remember the deal. I cook. You eat.”

He waves me off.

Buster perks up as I return to the fire.

At least the dog appreciates my cooking.

* * *

“Rosalía.”

“That was your wife’s name?”

“We were married here.” Mateo gestures to the chapel.

I briefly look up from my journal. “This place has been around for a while.”

“I attended mass here as a child.”

Mateo’s dog leaps from his hind legs to push his front paws against me, disrupting my writing.

“Sorry,” Mateo says, coaxing the dog to all fours. “He’s a stray, been following me around for months. I don’t know what to do with him.”

I re-examined my notes. “So, you commune with the dead?”

“Not really,” Mateo assures, “but they speak to me from the well.”

He escorts me to a circular well made of fieldstone bricks reinforced with lime plaster. Generations of hands must have smoothed the moss-mottled, cracked stone rim.

I lean over the edge. “How deep is it?”

“Don’t know,” Mateo says. He doesn’t bother looking in. “It is dry, though. No water. Has been ever since I was a kid.”

I tap my pencil’s eraser against my temple. “And when did they start speaking to you? These souls?”

Mateo scratches his beard. “After Rosalía’s service. It rained, and as I was leaving, I heard her—”

“Wait. You heard Rosalía?”

“Yes.”

I jot down some additional notes. “Go on.”

He rested his hand on the rim of the well. “I heard her call me from down there.” He imparts a nostalgic smile. “I came back each night for a week. She talked. She didn’t hear me.”

“Didn’t that… concern you?”

“I missed her.” He ran his hand tenderly over the well’s rim. “I ached for her. There was nothing I wanted more.”

Confused, I flipped back a page in my journal. “But you said voices?”

Mateo shrugs. “Yes. Night after night, more spirits pleaded to me from the well. They wanted to share their stories or contact loved ones living in the village.”

“So that’s when you started the courier service?”

Mateo grins; half his teeth are missing, and the others are stained brown. “When I started delivering the letters, yes.”

I flick the end of my pencil toward the chapel. “And you live here now?”

“Yes,” Mateo says, reverently upturning his gaze. “To be closer to God.”

* * *

“Okay, you’ve suffered enough.” I dish stew and place the bowl before Buster. His floppy ears perk up, eyes locked on mine, and at my wink, he lunges, devouring it in seconds.

Soon after our first interview, Mateo’s health declined, so we struck a bargain: I’d help with chores and deliver the dead’s letters in exchange for shelter and permission to publish them.

My editor was ecstatic. Months unfolded, and my stories were unlike anything in the Times or Tribune. Subscribers raved, and my column was syndicated.

But nothing lasts forever.

Mateo’s frail hands tremble as he pulls the stew into his lap, and worry creeps up from my gut. I’m unsure how he’ll manage without me.

I toss another log on the fire, gather the pot and bowls, and rinse them in the chapel. Crumbling tea leaves into a mug, their sharp aroma clings to my fingers.

I glance at my steamer.

These people, their rituals, and their solemn, simple way of life had seeped into me, like the scent of eucalyptus on my hands or the grit beneath my nails. I came chasing folklore but was instead woven into their tapestry. Leaving Mateo — Argentina — feels like excommunicating myself from something sacred.

Languid, the dog barely stirs as I return. After hooking the pot of water over the fire to boil, I ease myself against the stack of firewood. Buster curls against my thigh as I open my journal to reflect on leaving.

An hour passes before Mateo rocks back and forth in his chair. Buster jerks up from my lap, ears pricked.

It’s starting.

* * *

Dateline: 1939. War rages in Europe, the U.S. hesitates to engage, and Argentina walks on the razor’s edge of neutrality, teetering between democracy and totalitarianism.

I receive a telegram from the Herald. I’m to become a war correspondent. Bound for London, my train to Buenos Aires leaves in the morning.

I yell at my editor over the phone — the only telephone in Espejo. “James, now you listen to me. I can’t go! I won’t!”

His voice sounds tinny over the wire. “Hank—”

“Gauchos are still popular in the States. Frank Hill, at Republic? He’s tellin’ me he’s got twenty scripts green-lit and ready for casting. This stuff’s gonna be big for years! Mateo’s only got—”

“Hank,” James says, more insistent. “Austria’s fallen, Adolf’s goin’ bananas, the chief wants you there, and I ain’t got no choice, capisce?”

“Dammit!” When I slam my palm against the phone booth, a spooked chicken flutters from the hands of a woman waiting her turn. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime trick, see? Don’t be a fool—”

“Hank! You will be on that train. Mop it up!”

* * *

Buster tucks his ears as Mateo’s face empties. The old man enters a trance-like state, leaning closer to the well. His eyes close, his breath calms, and his lips move, yet he says nothing. Occasionally, he nods in affirmation or understanding, touching the well as if to offer condolences. Writing by the firelight, Mateo uses a knife-sharpened charcoal pencil on handmade pulp paper retrieved from a canvas satchel to write down what he hears. Thereafter, he folds the paper without regard to shape or symmetry and addresses it with a name.

Rising, I place the tea mug near Mateo’s feet, then pick up the page, angling it against the firelight.

Meza, Juan Carlos. A departed grandmother implores her grandson: Do not marry Emilia. You will bring shame and ruin upon our name.

I chuckle, recording the letter’s substance in my journal.

Retrieving another page, Mateo gently coughs as he writes out another — his penmanship jerky, rapid — each stroke harsher than the last.

Álvarez, María del Carmen. Her father cautions her to fix the roof before the spring rains.

Mateo wrenches another sheet from his satchel.

“Another one?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder.

Navarro, Luisa Verónica. The path to the river is not safe, her brother warns. Bandits. Do not go alone.

As I struggle to keep up with my notes, Mateo reaches for yet another sheet of paper. His breath turns ragged, his eyes flutter, and his hand races across the page.

“Mateo?” I’ve never seen him so prolific.

I pick up another letter.

Whitaker, Henry.

“Shit!” I release my journal. It falls to the ground. My heart pounds. Bile sticks in my throat. “Mateo!”

Straining, gnashing his rotten teeth, his eyes wide and locked on the moon, Mateo’s hand flies over the paper.

Buster growls, his hackles rising before he releases a volley of piercing, staccato barks.

My name — mine! — written in Mateo’s jagged scrawl crashes into me like a tidal wave, and pulled by the undertow, its weight drags me to my knees. I feel like I’m drowning.

The old man drops another letter before frantically launching into another.

Whitaker, Henry.

I force myself to my feet, burdened by something I cannot escape. Tempted by fate yet drawn by dread, I open the first.

05.13.40. Sedan. 49.7013° N, 4.9407° E. 1,200 tanks; 50,000 infantry.

What?

Mateo’s mouth forms numbers and letters. He desperately pens a third letter, his hand stabbing the page with the pencil.

Snatching up the second letter, I open it.

07.10.41. Smolensk. 54.7826° N, 32.0453° E. 850,000 infantry; 1,700 tanks; 7,000 artillery.

Mateo’s bloodshot eyes fixate on the moon as though it alone sustains him. His shallow, wheezing breath betrays his decline, but the pencil does not falter. The page fills with another set of coordinates, towns, and numbers — truths that bleed from his body, impressed with urgency.

07.12.43. Prokhorovka. 51.1867° N, 36.4166° E. 52,000 infantry; 700 tanks.

Mateo launches from his chair to collapse against the well. Seizing, Mateo succumbs to a rasping struggle for breath, wracked by the violence of his cough. Fireside shadows cast his face in suffocating agony.

“Mateo!” I scramble to him and grasp his shoulders to hoist his frame against the well. “Who spoke to you?” I demand, my voice breaking. I wipe the blood and phlegm away from his beard with the blanket. “Mateo! Who?!”

The fire flickers; its shadows twist.

Glazed over, his haunted eyes lock on mine as he gurgles, “You.”

* * *

I bury Mateo in the courtyard before dawn — Buster circles close, whining in shared sorrow. The grief bores deeper than the shovel ever could.

“I’m sorry, old man.” I press a cross fashioned from firewood kindling into the upturned soil. I’ve no words for him, only a modest marker for a life tied to a mystery I’ll never fully understand.

The horizon lightens pink as I shoulder my steamer trunk and hoof it to the station. Buster trots beside me, quiet, ears low, while behind us, the chapel recedes, swallowed by distance and the morning light.

The train hisses and groans at the platform. I set my trunk down to thumb through my tickets, passport, and Mateo’s letters.

A bald man leans against a lamppost, the light spilling across his dark trenchcoat and swastika armband. Sharp and probing, his eyes hold me like a command.

Taking to his hind legs, Buster jumps on me to lick my nose and cheek, thankfully snapping me to attention. Helping him down, my fingers knead Buster’s scruff to find some measure of calm.

The Nazi tilts his head to examine a photograph in his hand. Adjusting his glasses, his lips curl into something that isn’t quite a smile just as the train whistle screams.

I step into the car with Buster close behind. I stow my luggage only after the train lurches and the station slips away, but the weight of my trunk is nothing compared to Mateo’s loss settling in my chest.

Buster rests at my feet after I take my seat. Tugging the brim of my fedora, I open my journal and scan through its pages. Leaving this place, I feel lost in the twilight, trapped somewhere between Heaven and Earth — life and death — unable to shake the feeling that whatever comes next has already begun.