Chapter 2

Chapter 2 begins peacefully, with Antonio recounting how Ultima became a part of his family's daily lives after moving into their home. He helps her gather her medicinal herbs and she teaches him their names and to appreciate the beauty of nature. But the story quickly turns to violence in an act that will have a profound affect on the young narrator.

On a Saturday night, after the family has retired early so they can go to mass the next day, their neighbor Chávez runs to their house and awakens them with frantic yelling. Chávez's brother, the town sheriff, has been killed by a man named Lupito. Lupito is known in the town to be psychologically damaged since his return from fighting in World War II. Chávez recruits Antonio's father Gabriel, as well as several other men from town, to hunt down and punish Lupito. Antonio secretly follows the party of angry men to the river, were he hides in the tall grass along the banks. While hidden in the grass, Antonio see Lupito hiding there as well, and sees the look in Lupito's eyes -- that of a "trapped, savage animal". Most of the men in the party are bent on revenge, and wish to shoot Lupito, but Gabriel tries to persuade them not to do it. Narciso, the town drunk but also a friend of the Márez family, joins Gabriel's plea for mercy, and tells the band of men to "act like men", reminding them that Lupito is not an animal, but a man made sick by his time in the war. But Lupito stands, revealing himself, and begins shooting into the air as if he has given up and is purposely trying to draw the fire of the men hunting him. The men shoot Lupito, and Antonio, who has witnessed it all, begins to pray and continues to do so as he runs home.

Antonio fears for the fate of his father's soul for being party to a murder, and for the soul of Lupito, and imagines that the river will now forever be stained with Lupito's blood. Antonio's fear is allayed when he hears Ultima's owl singing to him as he comes home, and he realizes that the owl has been with him the entire night. Ultima greets him in the dark as he slips back into his house, and he knows that she knew he was gone and where he had been but will keep his secret. When Antonio asks her if Lupito will go to hell for what he has done, Ultima tells him that it is not for them to say, and that Lupito was sick. Of the men who shot him, she only says "men will do what they must do".

Ultima tends to the scratches Antonio received running through tree branches on the way home from the river, and gives him medicine to help him sleep. That night, Antonio dreams of his brothers, who are away at war, and in his dream he argues with them about whether he belongs to the Lunas of his mother's side of the family, and will become a farmer and priest, or if he belongs to the Márezs of his father's side, and belongs to the llanos. A cry is heard near the river in his dream, and his brothers think it is La Llorona, the Weeping Woman of the river, or the tormented soul of Lupito, but Antonio tells them that it is the presence of the river itself. Antonio, dressed in a priest's robe, intercedes with the river on behalf of his brothers, and the river lets them pass to the opposite bank where they build a castle. Antonio's dream ends with his mother crying and moaning because each day her young son is growing older.


Discussion Questions:
1. What is the role of dreams in the novel?
2. Do you think that Antonio's dreams are glimpses of the future, or just his subconscious mind trying to work through the conflicts he is experiencing as he begins to mature?
3. What do you think Antonio's dream the night of Lupito's murder means?