Tempered Magazine December 2013 // January 2014 // Issue 01 | Page 48

were desperate. The money still

hill where it belonged but driving

piled nicely, but it was getting smaller

up it, towards the city, towards the

each day. Everyone tried to warn

people. At the market it veered off

her that Piscoya was approaching a

the road, plowing through market

cliff, that El Tío was ready to push.

stalls, scattering peppers and flour

She ignored them and stayed in her

and umbrellas and balloons. The

home, piling chain after chain upon

last bus was dead, the market goods

her neck, stooping low to pick up

dispersed all over. They found no

the flakes of skin that fell behind her

passengers on the bus, the bodies

husband.

disappeared throughout the market.

She heard about the accidents. First
it was a bus transporting children.
Then a soccer team. One by one,
Piscoya’s busses crashed, ran off the
road, fell off mountains, every which

Piscoya was broke, his wealth all
gone, and his bones were breaking
along with it, snapping and fracturing
at each joint.
They moved out of Potosí into the

way to make the metal twist and split, campo. Piscoya appro ached the
leaving nothing but a scattering of

edge and El Tío pushed, grasping

parts behind. Piscoya followed suit,

and tearing at bits in the fall. Now

the centrifuge spinning, the pieces

the fallen collector reads fortunes in

flying off.

coca leaves, splitting each stem and

She saw the final crash. She was
walking to the market, chains piled
on her neck, jewelry on her wrists
and anywhere else. The bus was
far from the station, not down the

48

discerning the bad luck of others.
She remembers the old days as she
fails to push his edges back together.
Don Piscoya is unraveling, spinning
away to his death, and there is
nothing she can do to stop it.