Lessons in the corral.

• Author: De Garcia, Nedi Narden
• Position: Short story - Third place in contest

Did El Piche's wife know why she stayed with him? ... She piled up silences like she piled up clothes in the trunk, and the trunk and her silences were her business and nobody else's. Her housework spun out in the fine, whispering web of a harmless household spider. Chores in the hut, around the hut. They were bustling movements that whirled and subsided without managing a semblance of the order, of the neatness, that -- she was sure -- existed somewhere. In the huts of the neighbors or the relatives, perhaps. But here ... what could anyone do with this mess of jumbled hides, dirty burlaps, pots and pieces of wire, and on top of it all, her slob of a husband. a husband she could admire for his feats as a horsebreaker, but could also hate on mornings when he ordered her to unsaddle the horse that had brought him, soaked in gin, back from the bar.

The hut looked like an old ball of tangled thread amid a litter of strewn garbage. Close by was the picket-fence corral, a dismal coliseum. A round enclosure for the wild ponies, which El Piche would corner in order to pick one out ... to tie up, master and tame with firmness and wisdom. In his ways El Piche was neither wise nor firm, much less considerate. As a horsebreaker he needed a partner, and he seized upon whoever was close at hand. His wife was close at hand. She mounted, herded, shouted and rode alongside like a man ... but was a woman. The men in the bar criticized the horsebreaker for disregarding the weaknesses of women, and talked about the temerities of this local version of Old Vizcacha. (*)

Old Vizcacha ... Not because of his age. But because he was slovently and selfish, and took advantage of others. The corral in which he lassoed, hitched and broke his animals was the field of his labors and the window on his indolence. A corral with no gate to close it off! Anyway, there was always someone around to block the gap in the fence and keep the frightened beasts from bolting by waving a piece of hide, or by shouting and flailing the whip in all directions. There was always someone. In a pinch, his wife, even if his crowd carped at him for it.

But she did not learn. She simply did not learn. He had told her a hundred times that she had to hold the whip in her hand and look sharp; stand like a man and block the exit to the wild ponies he had worked so hard to herd into the corral. She did what she could, but faced with the blind jostling and prancing, she gave way, her eyes shut tight...