"My flower," he said. "It smells delicious."
"Have a seat, papa. I'll have a plate to you shortly. It's your favorite."
There were four seats at the small round table, but they typically favored only two. He sat in his and only had to wait a moment before Maria brought the plate. She nudged the drawing she'd been working on. From the looks of it, it was a lily blooming in springtime with the last droplet of morning's dew dangling at the edge of its light purple petals.
When Machado found Maria those five years ago, the home she was in was littered in the drawings, as was his now. Every time he returned from one of his “business trips,” she greeted him with a new illustration, sometimes several new ones depending on how long he was gone.
Machado waited patiently until Maria was seated. The two let the food cool. And in the quiet that settled over the table and its occupants, the two took hands and prayed. His arms were almost as thin as the girl's across from him, one of the lasting effects leftover from a rattlesnake bite he’d received as a child.
As a young boy, Machado's bird-like physique cost him ridicule and abuse in both verbal and physical forms. That was before they saw past his pale, lanky body and hunched shoulders, making him look more vulture than boy, and saw that he was not actually a vulture at all. But instead, a viper.
Machado felt then, as he still did now, that in the brutal moment when the rattlesnake seared him with its venom, a transfer had occurred. In that transfer of blood and venom when the two were joined, Machado believed a communion between man and serpent took place. His destiny had been laid at his feet on his fourth birthday.
His first memory outside of the infantile amnesia boundary line in his memory was of the time he was bitten by the rattlesnake. He believed that day marked his spiritual rebirth into the world. His re-emergence came with its own personal spirit guide whose menacing rattle and slithering tongue called to him and showed him his path, one he'd been walking since that day.
It is why Machado still wrapped its leathered skin around his. The rattle of the snake that bit him still dangled its warning loosely outside of the white button-up dress shirt, cinched tight at the collar by the turquoise bolo necktie his father had worn, and the sun-faded black blazer and wide-brimmed hat of similar color and wear. Two of the items he wore had cost the life of their wearer. No matter how hard he had scrubbed, Machado couldn't get all of the blood out of the cracks and crevices of the snakeskin and necktie. And in just the right light, he could still see the stain of it. The bloody talismans served as an important milestone in Machado's life. It's when he, at the early age of nine, first killed a man.
A thief had broken in through the window in his family's home and slit his father's throat while stealing a necktie he wasn't even wearing. The thief then killed his mother, but not before the horrible things she had to endure while laying in her dead husband's blood. Things Machado endured while he watched, hiding in the hallway pantry across from the opened door of his parent’s bedroom when the burglar first entered. He’d tried and failed to block the sights and sounds.
On that day, Machado felt that he had died. The serpent whose blood pulsed through his veins swallowed his soul whole.
And on that day, a boy of nine gave himself over to the snake's power. He no longer hunched his shoulders to hide himself as he skulked about. He stood erect. He remained thin and pale. And the hat kept the promise his father had made when giving it to him. The shade continued to shield his trigger eye from the light.
The neighborhood boys stopped teasing after seeing the young Machado wandering the streets draped in his dead father's clothes. As he grew into those clothes, so did the stories of his legend.
The shake of the rattle dangling from his wrist drew an unholy fear. When he was young this had not been so because he wore it for its intended purpose, using it as a belt. As he grew past the belt's last notch, Machado, refusing to separate himself from the talisman, wrapped it around his left wrist. And there it had remained.
He secretly found amusement in the truth that what people feared most about him was built with love and worn in honor of it.
Machado found the snakeskin in a box under his parent's bed. In it was the same snake who'd bitten him. Machado knew this because he asked his father, a man who valued honesty above all else, and he had answered honestly. He could still remember the way his father would lean close when he had something important to say.
Machado's father told him he wanted to remember the day he almost lost his son. Machado had been upset by this. His father went on to explain he kept it to remember the fear he felt that day, to keep close the terrible image of his son writhing on the ground after being injected by the snake’s venom. He wanted to always know that he could go to the shoebox in those times when he needed perspective.
Machado then asked his father if it could be made into a belt. His father didn’t see why not, but before agreeing, asked why. Machado told of his bond with the snake. And how, even though he may look different, it’s those differences who made him who he was.
He remembered his father’s kind eyes in that moment. They always held a gentleness, but on that day, they seemed overly so. The warm orange glow of the setting sun sent a stray beam past the lip of his father's wide-brimmed hat stinging Machado's right eye and causing it to water. The falling teardrop trickled its way past the two scarred holes, marking the wounds that created this tear, before or after that day on the rocks, when the viper's poisoned teeth nearly blinded him.
While exploring the small farm where his parents worked, Machado came across a large rattlesnake sunning itself on the warm surface of a nearby rock. Being a boy of such a young age and curious about such things, Machado took to poking at it with a stick the length of his arm.
He could never recall the sensation of the bite itself. The snake's long, curved fangs penetrated Machado's face with such speed and force that he was knocked to his back with the snake still locked to his fleshy cheek. He woke in the local hospital two days later.
His father wiped the tear away with his thumb that smelled of the dried tobacco he'd harvested that day. He then removed the hat and placed it on the young Machado's head. Its shadow doused the light. His father pressed the hat down, firmly securing it as best he could to the top of his son's head. He spoke the words, forever etched in his mind.
What's mine is yours. Take the hat. Let it watch over you in the times I am not there. But keep it tight, because I'll be there in its shadow keeping that light out of your eye. I'll be watching on from above and when your mother and I feel it is time, we will call you forth on the voice of an angel. It will sound of your mother's dovelike voice and you will hear it rush your ear riding in on the gust of wind I send. It will swoop off your hat, no matter how tight you pull it that day. Its removal will strip away the dark shadow cloaking your every step since your fourth birthday. The light you are bathed in will call you home to your mother and me, who'll be waiting with open arms to give you the peace in death that I could not give you in life.
After Maria came into his life, Machado often thought about saying similar things to her but had not found the words. Machado's father had been a boisterous man who never seemed to be at a loss for words. Not a speaking man, Machado set out to write his feelings down. He'd secretly taught himself to write, practicing each night after Maria went to sleep.