Machado found the snakeskin in a box under his parent's bed. In it was the same snake who'd bitten him. Machado knew this because he asked his father, a man who valued honesty above all else, and he had answered honestly. He could still remember the way his father would lean close when he had something important to say.
Machado's father told him he wanted to remember the day he almost lost his son. Machado had been upset by this. His father went on to explain he kept it to remember the fear he felt that day, to keep close the terrible image of his son writhing on the ground after being injected by the snake’s venom. He wanted to always know that he could go to the shoebox in those times when he needed perspective.
Machado then asked his father if it could be made into a belt. His father didn’t see why not, but before agreeing, asked why. Machado told of his bond with the snake. And how, even though he may look different, it’s those differences who made him who he was.
He remembered his father’s kind eyes in that moment. They always held a gentleness, but on that day, they seemed overly so. The warm orange glow of the setting sun sent a stray beam past the lip of his father's wide-brimmed hat stinging Machado's right eye and causing it to water. The falling teardrop trickled its way past the two scarred holes, marking the wounds that created this tear, before or after that day on the rocks, when the viper's poisoned teeth nearly blinded him.
While exploring the small farm where his parents worked, Machado came across a large rattlesnake sunning itself on the warm surface of a nearby rock. Being a boy of such a young age and curious about such things, Machado took to poking at it with a stick the length of his arm.
He could never recall the sensation of the bite itself. The snake's long, curved fangs penetrated Machado's face with such speed and force that he was knocked to his back with the snake still locked to his fleshy cheek. He woke in the local hospital two days later.
His father wiped the tear away with his thumb that smelled of the dried tobacco he'd harvested that day. He then removed the hat and placed it on the young Machado's head. Its shadow doused the light. His father pressed the hat down, firmly securing it as best he could to the top of his son's head. He spoke the words, forever etched in his mind.
What's mine is yours. Take the hat. Let it watch over you in the times I am not there. But keep it tight, because I'll be there in its shadow keeping that light out of your eye. I'll be watching on from above and when your mother and I feel it is time, we will call you forth on the voice of an angel. It will sound of your mother's dovelike voice and you will hear it rush your ear riding in on the gust of wind I send. It will swoop off your hat, no matter how tight you pull it that day. Its removal will strip away the dark shadow cloaking your every step since your fourth birthday. The light you are bathed in will call you home to your mother and me, who'll be waiting with open arms to give you the peace in death that I could not give you in life.
After Maria came into his life, Machado often thought about saying similar things to her but had not found the words. Machado's father had been a boisterous man who never seemed to be at a loss for words. Not a speaking man, Machado set out to write his feelings down. He'd secretly taught himself to write, practicing each night after Maria went to sleep.
Machado was a perfectionist in all matters of his life. The letter he challenged himself to write was no different. It was also the only letter Machado had written or ever planned to write. He had finished before his last trip and it rested atop the pile of cash lining the wall of his pantry. The letter waited patiently, for Maria knew she was not to go into the pantry unless he was dead. She asked him how she would know whether he was dead. He answered with a number. “Two.” If Machado had not returned home within two days of his expected arrival, she was to immediately go to the wall behind the pantry.
She never looked to see what was behind the false wall. Machado had a thin piece of fishing wire hooked to the inside and in all the years she'd lived with him, Maria never looked inside.
Machado had grown weary of it all in recent years, but in his profession, retirement came in only one of two ways. Instant death, or a long, painful one. Machado had delivered both in equal measure over his years of service.
Machado knew well enough that he would probably never be able to enjoy a proper retirement but the money, nonetheless, accumulated to a sizeable rainy-day fund. And for Maria, his little flower, the three-hundred-thousand dollars resting underneath the letter would surely be sufficient to give her a bright future, should his life abruptly end.
She, of course, did not know any of that. She only knew that there was money if she needed it when he didn't return. He always wondered what her face would look like when she opened that pantry, knowing he would never get to see it.
Machado sat across from Maria as she delicately picked at her food. She looked at him and did not see what everybody else saw. To Maria, her father's tattered and sun-beaten suit, worn by Machado every time he stepped out to do his employer's business, didn't signify the coming of the Reaper's scythe. To the teenager across from him, Machado wore the wide-brimmed hat and suit of matching color to honor the man he loved most, in the hopes his father was indeed looking down on him from above and would one day keep his word, calling Machado home when his path had run its course.