Excerpt from There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

An Alternate History of El Salvador or Perhaps the World

THE SPANISH SHIPS LEAVE THEIR DOCKS, but there is no crash landing, no savior knocking at the isthmus's shore—only civilization as it was and continues to be. A tempest thrashes La Niña around as men fall off her side in a choir of shrieks and prayers. An empire-size wave swells and crashes down on La Pinta, splintering the cork-oak frame and pine planks. The Santa Maria sinks, full of salty-sweet water, until it sits on the ocean floor. Bottom-feeders nibble on dead Spaniards' skin.

Another attempt, decades later. This is how the story goes: Thousands of Pipil stand before the Spanish soldiers with spears in their hands, obsidian blades pointed toward the rain clouds as they prepare for a battle that will determine who stays and who leaves this land they know as Cuscatlán or San Salvador; one name Spanish, one name true. The Spanish are on horses, the Pipil on foot, and the air soon fills with the sound of gunfire and screams, the battlefield soaked in gunpowder and horse blood.

The Pipil soldiers find themselves on the precipice of defeat. Enslavement is almost guaranteed. Their skin branded with a red-hot iron, their bodies shipped to a land other than this. They fight, though their cotton-armor is soaked and heavy. Outmanned, losing men by the second, they continue swinging and jabbing. Mud makes their dark skin darker.

Then the clouds shift. The rain intensifies, each droplet expanding into a heavy orb. In the deluge, a Pipil soldier sees an opening and lunges forward. The Spanish army commander's hair sticks to his forehead as he falls from his horse, pierced in the side by a spear tip. He tumbles into the quagmire, and his blood mixes with brown water. If he doesn't die there, an infection will inevitably kill him.

The Pipil win the battle, and the Spanish never return. 1524 marks a continuation. The year signifies neither murderous start nor massacred end.

Onward, forevermore. The coast is quiet. Death is just a part of the rainforest's life cycle, a cosmic part of Earth's give-and-take. There is no war, no aftermath, no nation. No blood or sweat or singed skin in the dirt.

He Eats His Own

EVERY MORNING, AT 8:05 A.M., Neto pulled out his white plastic cutting board and placed one fresh mango on it. As if conducting an autopsy, he placed the tip of the knife at the top and made a slow, deliberate incision down to the base of the fruit. He repeated the action five times, cutting around the seed until he ended up with six perfect slices. Neto picked each one up by the skin, careful to avoid touching the soft yellow flesh, and dropped it into a bowl he'd pulled from above the counter.

Then he washed the cutting board in the sink, dried it with a freshly pressed dishrag, and put it away, out of sight. Neto's kitchen was spotless, everything hidden in the cabinets above the marble counter. It was the opposite of the clutter his parents kept at their home when he was growing up, the kind that accumulates when ghosts from the third world prevent you from throwing anything away.



Around 4:30 P.M., Tomas climbed down from Neto's mango tree slowly, careful not to disturb a single leaf. He'd broken a branch once, sending three mangoes toppling to the ground, and received a beating that left him sore and with a scar that never quite went away. Tomas clutched the day's harvest close to his chest, secured the padlock on the corrugated metal fence protecting the tree, and ran down the trail leading back to his home.

The brick-wall, dirt-floor home his family lived in had two dining tables. The first was a rectangular table with chipped black paint. This is where they ate dinner. The second was mahogany, covered with a plastic sheet that was easy to disinfect. This was where the mangoes went.

Excerpted from There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes. Copyright © 2024 by Ruben Reyes. Excerpted by permission of Mariner Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.