The poem

In Santa Eulalia Rio

The Eulalia Rio -is wild today-

high white water, quickly

slapping, running, jumping in all directions

from bank to bank, and more.

In the foothills of the mountain-

the town of Santa Eulalia resides

embraced by the Andes of Peru!

I love the soft sound of the river.

while it passes me

the warm sun, warming my old bones

am,

makes me feel alive-

A butterfly flies by, a bee

is busy, buzzing nearby-

Another day, just another day

to be alive…

(So ​​it is this morning

in San Eulalia Rio).

No: 2919 ((26-03-2011) (11:11 a.m.))

The strange thing was that the morning had been so quiet and calm, unlike the afternoon; I don’t know why everyone didn’t scream at that moment. We were in the dance area of ​​’Paradise Recreo’, assimilated to a country restaurant, next to the Santa Eulalia River in Peru. (one hour away from Lima) (it was 11:11 am), all fifty-two of us, inside the group, and there were other people in this outside restaurant (We had all ordered Pachamanca, a plate of food, which is cooked over an underground fire, covered with earth and hot stones: potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, chicken, pork, lamb, and humita or mashed corn).

We were all in the dance area, after having eaten Pachamanca, drunk a little wine, the sun was hot, and the River was high and the rapids were wild, running, you could hear the sound of the white water flowing, It wasn’t more than a hundred feet from where we were. There was a stage in front of us, a man was singing with music in the background, and no one started screaming.

Before the incident, Manuel instructed me to give the ax to someone in the group that was dancing around this tree that was in the middle of the dance area, they had cut it down and put it in a hole with stones holding it, gifts. they were tied to tree branches just like balloons, once cut the fifty of us would run to get those attached gifts, it was called the Dance of the Yunsa, it meant that each person in the group would get the ax one or two or maybe even five or six times like I had it, as one person passed it to the next and hit the tree. The one who cut the tree, that is, when the tree fell due to the thrust of that last person’s axis, he or she was the person who, the following year, would pay for the next party. This is how it worked.

Manuel pointed to me, the preacher’s deacon, you might say, and a friend, a very nice friend and a guy, to my wife and me, said with a smiling face, “You, Mr. Evens, take it and give it to someone!”

I couldn’t imagine who, so I saw a lady right in front of me, of Peruvian-African origin, and I handed it to her and her partner, and she struck the first blow.

Then later, when it looked like the tree would fall with one or two more ax blows, I said to my wife Rosa, “This man is dancing like crazy, swinging the ax in all directions, we have to back off!”

And sure enough, it hit the tree so hard that the tall, somewhat heavy tree with all the presents began to fall. This man had run up to the group out of nowhere, and someone out of the blue, handed him the axe, and when that tree hit the ground, he started stabbing, that is, hacking in the head, in the groin area, in the back, legs, torso, neck: eighteen people injured, killing at least seven. Restaurant workers and shortly after, rescuers from the Municipality had gathered to help the wounded.

“The worst,” the announcer said that night on television, “was the women with dead children.”

Oh yes, more rigorously, I told myself. You couldn’t get women to give up their dead children… from then on. Nothing you could do about it. Although the gender of the seven dead was not immediately known, with two seriously injured and eleven others wounded. Manuel told the police and the media:

“The suspect came here to kill people, none of us knew him.”

And another person told the reporter, “At first, he sat at our table and said, ‘I’m tired of life.'”

And still someone else said, “He had rented a car in Lima, drove fifty miles to the restaurant, and it looked like he had just taken the ax out of someone who was dancing, and he was jumping, jumping while dancing, and chopping down the tree.” all simultaneously, and the next thing he was killing people with that axe, and he ran out and into a crowd, jumped into a vehicle and drove off.”

Then there was an old woman, the most extraordinary case. I told the police, and they said it couldn’t be true, that I was lying, “There was this old lady,” I said, “sitting in a wheelchair, and I couldn’t help but look at her as he ran past her, and just then she died, I guess from fright; he had thrown the ax at her, but it never hit her, and she went absolutely rigid. Her legs stretched up automatically, her torso stiffened,” the officer said. of cop. the medical staff and they told me it was impossible. But the body had been moved out of the area, into the city proper, into her mortuary, before she could insist.

It was as if there had been an earthquake or something, a ghost, had appeared in broad daylight, one that we never knew, they never knew what hit them.

I had sat by the river that morning, at 11:11 am, waiting for the Pachamanca, to be ready, I ordered some cheese and corn for my wife, I wrote this poem called “Santa Eulalia Río”, The river was high, the wind was blowing my hair, I had seized the moment, you could say, a poetic moment truly. I got up and walked near the river, I saw a dog getting wet, drinking its fresh and cold water from the Andes, obviously it was raining in the mountains, because of the white water. I had become so dreamy about things. Amazing how a few hours later, everything is covered with something else; the darkest cloud that hell has to offer.

No.: 784 (03-26-2011)