Alejandro never knew what hit him.

The Thing That Knows What It Is
by Joyce Melton

Alejandro didn't actually speak the local language, but if you live and work in a place for a period of time, you pick up a few things, you learn a few words, sometimes not the actual meanings, but just the way they're used.

Like neen-teh meant the thing that gets hammered. Like an anvil, but no, it didn't mean anvil. Or neen-heh which meant the thing you lie on, sometimes used to translate an English word like mattress. But it didn't mean mattress, exactly. Or neen-leh, the thing that tastes good when you bite it. Juicy.

Alejandro turned to his companion, a local man who he knew spoke English as good as Alejandro's. "They're talking about me," he said, not a question.

O-teh-lu shrugged. He obviously didn't want to say.

"I know they're talking about me," Alejandro insisted, something akin to rage surging in his voice. "Tell me what they're saying about me!"

"They're saying you are good at your job," said O-teh-lu. "They say you are as kind as...a warm...bed. You are as sweet as...a sweet thing that is welcome...in the night. That it would be nice to be the one who...."

But O-teh-lu could not continue. His face twisted with the effort to contain something that wanted to break out.

"You're lying!" Alejandro screamed into the other man's face. "You're lying! They're making fun of me. I'm not a fool, I know enough of what they are saying to know I'm being made fun of! You're making fun of me!"

And Alejandro's hand went to the whip he kept at his belt.

Alejandro stood on the wharf beside the river, his hand on the whip, screaming in English at O-teh-lu. Below them the men from upriver unloaded the bales of neen-suh from their barge. They talked among themselves in their difficult local language, commenting on the world around them. Mentioning a few things they found interesting.

They didn't directly address the scene in front of them, the foreign man screaming at the local man, who was not of their tribe, but they knew he spoke their language. even several languages. He would be the one who paid them for their neen-suh, the thing that brings a good price.

One of them climbed up onto the wharf with a bale of the stuff they brought downriver. He placed it with the other bales and then moved behind the two men, where they could not see him.

"Patron," O-teh-lu protested. "It is nothing to be concerned about. They are enjoying themselves, but they don't mean...they don't want to harm you."

"Harm me!" Alejandro screamed and spittle flew from his mouth to fleck the chin, the cheeks, the lip of the other man.

O-teh-lu flinched. He wiped his face and glanced down to see that his employer had let the whip uncoil, so it lay along the foreigner's leg and on the boards of the wharf. He looked up, looking beyond Alejandro's face to the boatman who held a noan-do in his hand. O-teh-lu inclined his head a measure. Someone who spoke English might have said he nodded.

Alejandro never knew what hit him.

They took him to O-teh-vu'u-li, the one who can be paid to work miracles. A price was paid and a miracle worked. Then they took what he had become to the men who would soon sail away in their big boats to a land far away and they sold what they had to the foreigners, the bales of neen-suh and the dark-skinned woman who also brought a good price.

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Copyright 2026 by Joyce Melton