The Great Goat Election

In the village of Ccollpa Alta, high in the hills above the Vilcanota river, a morning's bus ride from Cusco, there were three important things.

The first was the potatoes. Ccollpa Alta grew more kinds of potato than Elias could count, and Elias could count very high. Yellow ones and purple ones, long thin ones like fingers and round lumpy ones like grandfathers' knees.

The second was the mountain. Far off, past the brown hills and the green terraces, past the valley and the next valley, there was a mountain so white and so huge that it looked painted on the sky. Apu Ausangate. On clear mornings, it seemed close enough to touch.

The third important thing was the bridge.

For as long as anyone could remember, the children of Ccollpa Alta had crossed the stream to school by jumping. There were stepping stones, nine of them, flat and grey and slippery. In the dry season, the stream was a trickle, and jumping was easy. In the rainy season, the stream became a brown, roaring, rock-rolling monster, and the stones disappeared, and the children of Ccollpa Alta stayed home, or went the long way round, which took two hours, or jumped anyway, which made their grandmothers shout.

But this year, the village had built a bridge.

It had taken all of the dry season. Everybody had helped. The ropes for the railings were twisted from grass, the old way, the way the Inca had made bridges. Even the children had carried stones. And now it stood across the stream, new and pale and smelling of wood, with a gate of carved eucalyptus at each end, waiting to be opened.

"The inauguration," said Mayor Leoncio Huamán, from the steps of the village hall on Sunday morning, to everyone in the plaza, "will be in one week."

Everybody cheered. The mayor waited for them to stop. He was a round man with a magnificent moustache, and he liked speeches the way Mamá Saturnina's goat liked laundry.

"And at the inauguration," he went on, "the first to cross the bridge will be its Guardian. Its symbol. Its protector. Its face, painted on the sign at the gate, for all the years to come." He raised one finger. "An animal of Ccollpa Alta."

There was a buzz of interest.

"And who will choose this Guardian?" said the mayor. "You will! We will have an election!" He pointed with a flourish to a table at the bottom of the steps. On it stood a row of empty clay jars, and beside them, a sack of dried beans. "Every person in Ccollpa Alta, young and old, will have one bean. On Sunday next, you will drop your bean into the jar of the animal you choose. The jar with the most beans wins."

Elias looked at the jars, and the beans, and then up at the mayor, who was smiling a very satisfied smile.