Weed Therapy
Part I
I had been told about a church and then I dreamed about it for weeks. A worn-out church in Santa Cielo, a small dusty village in Mexico. The church sits atop a small rise. From its door, I had been told, you can look out over the homes of the people it serves and see the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. In my dreams, I looked at the church from the edge of the village. The church’s cross, a wobbly piece of two pieces of wood lashed together with a thin piece of twine and reaching to the heavens, surrounded by a brilliant blue sky with a few wispy clouds lolling about. My dreams always ended before I began my hike up to the church.
I went in search of this church to find something. Most people may go to such a church on a religious pilgrimage. To find God or to speak to a god they know already exists. That was not why I went. I don’t believe in God and have no reason to find him. Or her. Or it. No, instead this church was my destination because it stands on a hill. From its windows I would be able to see the ocean stretch to the horizon. I’d have the opportunity to be swallowed by the vastness of the world that the ocean presents. My pilgrimage was not to find God, but to find peace.
In the church pews I would find solitude. I believed that I would be alone with nothing but my thoughts, which oddly enough were what I needed desperately to escape. No hustle and bustle. No horns blaring. No phones ringing – at the office, at home, even in the pocket where I kept my cell. No mindless prattle from a TV in every room. No noise, but the wind that sweeps by the church, the distant roar of the surf crashing on the beach, and the occasional laugh of a child playing in the village at the bottom of the hill. The silence the church offered would help me clear my mind and find answers to the questions that haunted me and caused my stomach to churn.
If given the opportunity, I could catalog my thoughts. Put them in a mental ledger. These go on the left side. These go on the right. Add them all up and this is where the path lies. At least that was my hope.
To get the church in little Santo Cielo, I’d have to get on an airplane, but I hated the thought of flying. On my first flight, taken when I was twenty-six, as the plane pushed back from the gate, I panicked. Convinced that I was about to die when the plane plummeted to earth and was obliterated in a fireball, I wanted desperately to get off the plane. But it was too late. The flight attendants were belted in, the doors were secured, and my death was certain. I survived and my healthy fear of flying survived with it. I had flown many times since. Every time the plane taxied to the runway, I convinced myself that my life would soon be over. It’s not exactly a thought conducive to relaxation and comfort.
I hated leaving my family behind. The moment I boarded the plane and turned my back I missed them. As my little boy waved to me and blew me a kiss, a part of me was left behind. A small hole was ripped out of me. Of course, Spence, my older son, all of thirteen had begged and pleaded to be allowed to stay home rather than accompany us to the airport. Considering what I was about to do, who was I to insist that he come along?
But it is because of my family that I made the trip. Raising a family and all that goes with it is all-consuming and I needed this time. As the plane lifted off, and that piece of me was left behind, I looked forward to my opportunity. A few days in a small town in Mexico. An afternoon sitting in a pew of a small church on a desolate hillside in Mexico. A few days? An afternoon? Who knows? Maybe more. I hoped I would return with the answers I needed. But I was uncertain. It was entirely possible, the answers would elude me and my return would never happen. I had convinced myself that I couldn’t return until I figured things out. I deserved that outcome. As did my family.
The anticipation I felt at a journey I’d never made before overrode my innate fear of flying. It wasn’t until the pilot advised us that the plane was approaching its cruising altitude that I realized we had left the comfort of firm ground behind in our aluminum cylinder of death.
The plane landed and I spent three hours in the back of a beat-up old
bus traveling barely paved roads. Across the aisle from me sat a young woman. She held in her arms a small child. For much of the trip, he slept with his head rested on her shoulder.
* * *
There was one feeling I enjoyed more than anything else. As a father, things were best when one of my kids would wrap their arms around my neck. A long hug, squeezed tightly in my arms, ending with me tickling him. A quick embrace before he’s off and moving in the perpetual motion machine of a small child.
If one of my sons rested his head on my shoulder, even if only for a second, it would get even better. And a kiss on the cheek, with their delicate lips brushing the stubble on my cheek? It was those moments I treasured most. Those moments when they would shout with joy, “Daddy, daddy, daddy,” and fun and jump into my arms and squeeze me tight. They could compensate for so much. The whining and the stomping of the feet. The ongoing battles over the most petty of things that were make or break in the minds of small children.
When Spence was four, I was already arguing with him and yelling at him. But, when the end of the day came and I said good night, he would wrap his soft, warm arms around my neck and whisper to me, “Love you, Daddy.” With those words, I would know that, at least in his mind, there were no scars left behind by the harsh words and raised voices of whatever had occurred earlier in the day.
“Love you, too. You’re a good kid.”
“You’re a great daddy.”
I felt most secure then in the love I felt for him and that it was returned. One night I lay next to him in his little bed. I don’t remember exactly how old he was. Probably four or five. As we whispered to each other about our day, I asked him, “Spence, are you my buddy?”
“Uh-uh,” he replied, nodding his head.
“Will you be my buddy forever?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Forever?”
“Uh-uh.” He kept nodding his head as I went through this litany of questions.
“I love you,” I said, kissing him first on his forehead, then on each cheek, and then on his lips.
“Love you, Daddy,” Spence replied, in that quiet voice that told me drowsiness was finally starting to work is magic. All of the spent energy of the day had finally caught up and Spence was finally winding down. I lay there quietly with him until I could tell he was asleep. I knew my hopes of the little guy holding true to his words were unreasonable, but I hoped we would be able to find a way to remain buddies. For life.
Now, at the not-so-tender age of thirteen, however, it had been a long time since Spence voluntarily submitted to a physical display of affection from his father. Buddies for life? Nah, probably not. At least not at the moment. There had been an interruption in that effort. Video games and an IPod, text messages and instant messaging with his friends, and hanging with the neighbor kid were all so much more cool than spending a little quality time with the old man.
Spence’s little brother, Jason, now making his way through his fourth year, fought me and resisted in a way that Spence never did. At least at that age. He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to persuade me of the righteousness of his cause. Instead, he simply rebuffed me and demanded his mother, who would always come running to soothe whatever it was that had ruffled the little guy’s feathers.
There seemed to be no chance that Jason and I would be able to find those few years that Spence and I had when I could do no wrong, where we truly were buddies. Laughing and telling stories to each other. Going for short bike rides with his legs peddling furiously in circles on his little bike trying to keep up with me as I tried to go as slow on a bicycle as humanly possible. No, Jason was his mother’s buddy. He certainly was not mine.
* * *
As the bus rattled and wheezed over the rough road, I looked at the woman sitting across from me with her child in her arms and thought about the tender moments that erased the traumas of parenting. There was a time when those moments were frequent and often. When I thought I had a relationship with at least my first son that would withstand the rigors of parenting and childhood. Not so much anymore.
A couple of miles from the village, I saw the church in true, living color for the first time. It stood by itself on a hill that overlooked a cluster of shacks just like I was told. There were differences, however. The cross that reached to the sky wasn’t perched on the front edge of the roof. Instead, there was a cross firmly placed in the ground in the yard in front of the church. On the roof was a small bell in an adobe frame. No clouds, wispy or otherwise, danced across the sky as far as the eye could see. Given the dryness of the earth and the lack of moisture in the air, I wondered when the last time a drop of rain fell on this arid corner of the world. Off to the right, as the bus chugged into the little village, the vastness of the endlessly rippling ocean took my breath away. Even though I had been to the ocean many times before, the brilliance of the blue water and the waves in their inexorable path to shore pushed me back against the back of my seat.
The bus dropped me off at the edge of the town. With my bag slung over my shoulder, I trudged towards the church. Down a street that wound through the cluster of buildings that make up the town until I reached a narrow trail that etched a line up the hillside to the church. Surrounded by a decades old picket fence, the paint long worn away by weather and children picking at it, the church stood alone.
I stopped at the cross and looked at it. It was a sad thing. As worn as the fence, it leaned a little to the side. A fresh coat of paint would have done it good. After a moment or two, I continued on to the entrance into the church.
As I reached out to open the church’s door, it opened and out stepped an old man, hunched at the shoulders and propping himself up with a cane. “Buenos dias, señor,” he said, squinting from the brightness of the sun. The wrinkles around his eyes formed permanent furrows that were unchanged, even when he became accustomed to the glare and his face relaxed again. Behind him I saw that the church was dark, lit only by flickering candles placed around the altar, lit no doubt by locals with special prayers in their hearts.
I looked back at the man. He wore the white collar of a priest, but it was frayed and soiled by sweat. “How can I help you?” he asked, in English so heavily accented I at first had no idea what he asked. When he repeated the question, I told him that I just wanted to spend a few minutes in his church.
It was at that moment that I realized just how crazy I was. A thousand miles from home, I had placed my faith, my future, the life I had, in a vision. A man at a bar was the first to tell me about this church. I was staring at the bottom of my empty glass, pondering whether to order another beer or go home where the noise of family life would envelope me in silence.
“I’ve been there,” the stranger next to me whispered. In response to my puzzled look, he continued, “You’re troubled. I can tell. Nobody looks at the bottom of a glass of beer like that unless their life is filled with doubt. There’s something in your life that isn’t right. Am I wrong?”
“No. No, you aren’t,” I replied. I had no idea why, but I was willing to tell this man who I’d never met, something I had yet to express out loud. Something I wasn’t even sure was true. Was I really unhappy? In a meaningful way?
“What is it? Work? Family? Marriage?” the man asked. “An addiction?”
“Everything. All of that. Well, except for the addiction. I’ve managed to maintain enough control to avoid losing everything at the end of a needle or at the bottom of a bottle.” And I realized that I was unhappy in a way that was beyond meaningful. It was an unhappiness that sapped the strength from my bones and reached to the very bottom of my soul. As that realization dawned on me I almost broke down right there, in a darkened bar, surrounded by drunks nursing their drinks, and next to a stranger who had suddenly become my counselor and confessor.
He leaned closer to me and whispered even quieter, “I know how to help you.”
How could this man I’d never met know how to fix a problem, or problems, that I had just learned to acknowledge?
“It’ll sound weird to you, but trust me on this.” He paused then and placed his hand on my arm, drawing my attention to his face for the first time. His face was lined and creased with the years that had rolled by, many more than I had yet to experience. He had a glass in front of him that he twirled in his hand as he spoke. I looked at his eyes and listened.
“Many years ago, I was married, just as you are,” he began, as he casually waved towards my left hand and the ring on my finger. Before he continued, he motioned to the bartender to refill our glasses. “I thought I was happy and then something happened. I woke up one day and by the time I walked into my office that morning I realized that my life was totally unsatisfactory. There was nothing I could point to specifically and say ‘this is wrong’ or ‘that is wrong.’ I thought I loved my wife. I had three great kids. Everything seemed fine. But, it wasn’t. I just didn’t want any of it anymore. My job. My family. My life. All of it, I was ready to just chuck it. I worked on the twelfth floor in an office with floor to ceiling windows. At that moment, I thought seriously about running through one of those windows and feeling the freedom of flight.”
I picked up my refreshed beer and gulped down half of it before setting the glass carefully back down in the ring of condensation that had already formed on the bar. The old man continued without hesitation, “There are plenty of people who would say that I was just going through a midlife crisis. I’m sure that’s probably what you’re saying to yourself about your own life. ‘It’s just a phase. I’ll get through it and things’ll be fine.’” He chuckled briefly at the frown that formed on my face when he said this. “Eh, so you know what I mean, don’t you?” he asked without expecting an answer. “You know what? Sometimes it isn’t a phase.”
I found myself looking at the old man in the mirror behind the bar. There was a line of liquor bottles spread out along the wall on the counter under the mirror. The old man’s head was just visible above the tops of the tequila section. A little Cuervo, a little _____, a little ______. And an old man, just above, talking quietly to me.
“I decided to take a break from it. I explained to Sonia, my wife, who deserved better than I could give her, that I would be back. And I left. I got in my car and drove south for hundreds of miles. I crossed the border into Mexico and didn’t stop until I got to the little village of Santo Cielo. I knew nothing of the place, but I was tired and had driven far enough.
“I spent the night in my car. The village is small enough that there’s no hotel or really any other place to get a room so I had no choice.
“In the morning, as the sun rose and the first light of the day woke me up, I could see a church, a decrepit old church that perched above the village. It was almost as though the church was there to stand guard over the village and its inhabitants. I don’t know why, but I knew that I had to visit the church. I got out of my car and walked up the hill.” The old man paused for a second and took a sip from his beer.
“When I got to the church, the front door was open and nobody was inside.” I looked back at the reflection in the mirror and saw the two of us sitting side by side.
“I peered in, not sure why I was there, but knowing that I needed to be exactly where I was,” the old man sad. As he did so, he squinted a little as though focusing on a memory. As a fly on the wall, I saw as though from above and beyond, the old man sitting next to me basked in loneliness.
“I was raised Catholic, but it had been years since I had stepped foot in a church, other than for the occasional wedding and funeral. The years, however, hadn’t dulled all of my memories of the traditions. I entered the church and walked over to the candles. I lit one and prayed. An ‘Our Father’ and a ‘Hail Mary’ seemed appropriate.” As I looked, he began the gesture of crossing himself before he caught himself and stopped.
“Of course, that those were the only prayers I remembered precluded me from reciting anything else. And, then I sat down in the front pew and looked up at the altar. For hours. I had never felt the sense of peace that I felt that day. And haven’t since. By the time I stood up, my legs were stiff and I thought I knew what I needed to do.” It was uncanny. I felt something bump my leg and saw him dangling a leg off his stool, shaking it a little. As though he was shaking the stiffness out of it.
“When I turned around, an old man stood in the door way. He was the priest, Father Juan Miguel Santos. I nodded my head to him as I walked by him. ‘Have you found what you’re looking for?’ he asked me. ‘I think so,’ I replied.
“I spent the next couple of nights in my car and the days at the church, helping Father Santos. Weeding, cleaning windows, making small repairs. While I worked, we talked. Father Santos, in his heavily accented English and the occasional Spanish word thrown in and I, trying hard to understand what he was saying. To an observer, it may have appeared comical. The priest, wizened, tanned and old, and a sunburned gringo with a paunch, sweating and grunting through their ‘chores,’ saying little, but saying a lot.
“When I got home, I left my wife. Father Santos and I never actually discussed my specific problems. We danced around them, poked them with verbal jabs, but the words never crossed our lips. But, I know what Father Santos told me over those few days. Be happy. Above all, be happy.”
He looked up then after spending the past few minutes staring into the bottom of his own glass of beer while he told his tale. He caught my eye and nodded his head at our reflection.
I finally spoke. “How do you know you chose happiness?”
“Eh,” the old man nodded, “that’s a good question. I don’t know.” He patted me on the arm. “My kids never forgave me. I haven’t talked to them in years. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and, there are times when I would give anything to take it all back. But I can’t. And I won’t. It’s the decision I made and I’ve lived with it for a long time.
“Go there, if you want to find the answer you’re looking for in the bottom of that glass.”
“Sounds a little selfish to me,” I said. “I mean, what about your kids? You lost them. How can that make you happy?”
“Son, you’re right,” he said, placing his hand on my arm again. “I could have stayed for my kids. I should have stayed and made the effort to make things work. To this day, I’m still not sure what it is that made me so miserable. But, is it really selfish to seek happiness for yourself? Is it really wrong to take care of yourself first?
“Eh, you’re probably right. I’ve heard it from plenty of others.” He removed his hand and put some money down on the bar in front of us. “Think about it, though. How long do you have to sacrifice your happiness for the happiness of others?”
“Thank you,” I mumbled to the old man as he turned his back on me and left the bar. I wasn’t sure if gratitude was the appropriate sentiment, but, if nothing else, he had put enough cash down on the bar to cover my last beer.
I finished my own beer, setting the empty glass down without concern for matching the wet ring on the bar, and left with a new set of thoughts roiling around in my head. When I got home, Spence was locked in his room, music blaring. Jason was in the family room, absorbed in a Disney movie he had already seen more times than I could count. And Holly, my wife? She was sitting there, cuddling with him, and watching the movie, too. For the umpteenth time as well for her.
* * *
The priest stepped to the side, pulling the door open further. “Come in, por favor. Please,” he said. He held out his hand and waved it towards the interior of the church. As he did so, he lost his balance and almost fell over. I grabbed his elbow to help steady him, feeling nothing more than skin and bone beneath the sleeve of his tunic like a couple of twigs wrapped in burlap.
“Gracias, señor. Thank you,” the priest said with a smile on his face, a smile that hid the embarrassment of his feeble state.
Standing at the threshold of the church, I realized my foolishness. I lived in a modern world. I had a cellphone and a Blackberry. A TV in every room of my house. TiVo. A microwave capable of putting a meal on the table in minutes. All of the latest technology at my fingertips. And a family who I knew loved me. Whatever my unhappiness was about, why would the answer be found in remote cluster of shacks huddled together on a dusty road between the hills of Baja and the vastness of the Pacific? Would a decaying church led by Father Santos really do the trick? I had no doubt, even though it had likely been decades since the stranger at the bar had come to Santo Cielo, that it was still Father Santos tending to his church and his flock. He looked the same as the stranger had described, only older. Much older.
Why would this place lead me to happiness?
With a sigh, I entered the church. Its darkness, broken only by the flickering of candles, wrapped around me and sucked me farther into its belly. I knelt before the altar and crossed myself. Like the old man who had told me about the church, I had been raised Catholic and although it had been years since I attended church, the customs remained with me. Kneeling before the cross, I wondered if somehow I was simply repeating history. That this was some offbeat case of déjà vu. Not in the sense that I had experienced this before, but that I was going through the exact same motions as the old man had.
Was I doomed to the same result? Leaving my wife and kids behind? Would Spence and Jason never talk to me again? Could I actually find happiness without them? What the hell was I doing in this desolate place?
Sitting down in the front pew and absorbing the aura of the church. That was what I did. In the last few days, as I thought about making this trip, I hadn’t stopped to think about just how idiotic it all seemed. I had done the unthinkable. I might as well try. The time to change my mind, to slap myself upside the head and wake up, was long past.
For two hours I sat there, as the sun dropped towards the horizon and the darkness of the church deepened. I found myself focusing on the candles–the flames flickering in their glass enclosures and reflecting off the walls and surfaces of the church in a graceful dance of light. At the end of those two hours, I was just as clueless as always.
Defeated, I rose from my spot and turned to leave the church. The old pastor sat hunched over in the last pew, his eyes closed. I thought his age and the afternoon heat had got the best of him and he was asleep. But when I approached him, his eyes popped open and he looked at me with a smile. “Señor?”
“Yes.”
“What troubles you?” he asked. “I sit here and watch. You . . . you do not move for a long time. Only a man whose shoulders carry a lot of weight sits as you do.”
I shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
“Señor?” he asked again. Even in the gloom of the church, I could tell from his tone that he had likely raised his eyebrows, increasing the furrows on his forehead. “I am a man of God. Do not lie to me.”
“Father Santos,” I began.
“Aah. You know of me.”
I chuckled in reply. “A guess. Nothing more than a guess.”
The old priest rose from his seat and peered up at me. “Come with me.” Without stopping to make sure I followed him, he shuffled out of the church. He walked slowly, putting his cane out and making sure that it was firmly planted on the ground before each step. I followed Father Santos as he made his away around the church, behind which was a small house made of the same material as the church. Mud bricks. Adobe. Whatever it was, it looked just as ready to fall as the church. A small bed of flowers, divided by a path, nestled up against the house’s foundation, adding the first hint of color, beyond the various shades of brown represented by the homes, dirt, and skin of the people I had seen since arriving in Santo Cielo. The dirt around the flowers was a deeper shade of that brown, revealing the first sign of moisture other than the swells of the ocean that rose and fell on the horizon.
I stepped into the little house behind Father Santos. To call it a house was charitable. I stood in the entry of a one room hovel. In one corner there was a cot. In another corner was a small, wood-burning stove. In every corner, enough dirt or dust had accumulated to round the corners. There were no hard angles left unsullied by a gathering of detritus. (need a different word)
As soon as I saw the stove, I wondered how far the Father had to go to find wood in this desolate part of Baja until I realized it probably wasn’t the Father who went in search of wood, but the people huddled in the shacks at the bottom of the hill who brought it to him. “Sit, por favor,” Father Santos said quietly, as my eyes wondered around the room.
Next to the stove was a small table and two chairs. The furniture showed just enough white to reveal that it had once been covered with white paint. I sat in one of the chairs and it wobbled under my weight. A small window let in the remaining light of the dwindling day.
The old priest turned to the stove to stoke the small fire that burned in its belly. From a hook on the wall above the stove, he took a teapot. I looked at the rust that spattered the outside and shivered at the thought of what the inside might look like. While the teapot struggled to reach the boiling point, Father Santos took a tin from the window sill. He scooped a spoonful of brown onto a square of cotton gauze and then put the spoon back in the tin. Picking up the corners of the cotton, he tied them loosely into a knot and, as the teapot reached the boiling point, he took it off the stove and gently placed the gauze package in the hot water.
“I hope you like tea.”
Still troubled by the rust on the teapot, I struggled with my response before deciding not to respond at all. Maybe he would think nothing of my silence. I looked out the window at the oranges, reds and purples that began to spread across the sky as the sun’s lower edge dipped below the surface of the ocean, the edge of the horizon. The colors rippled out across the water and reached towards me. In that moment, I don’t think I had ever seen such a beautiful sunset. And I questioned again what I was doing.
If it was peace and solitude, or the presence of a god I didn’t believe in, that I needed, I could have gone to one of my hometown’s hundreds of churches. A Mormon one, a Buddhist temple, the downtown cathedral. Pick one and I could have sat in silence there. Or I could have spread a blanket in a park and inspected each individual blade of grass in my vicinity until I found the one with a solution in it. Oprah and Dr. Phil. I could have watched them for a few days. Or read a few Dear Abby columns.
The answer to my problem could have probably been found much easier and much closer to home. Instead, here I was, miles and miles away from my family in a world that probably couldn’t have been more different than my own. This impoverished little corner of Mexico was supposed to help me? The mysterious Father Santos playing the role of my mental and emotional advisor? What the hell was I thinking?
I began to stand up for my escape when the priest placed a teacup on a saucer in front of me. As the rattling of the mismatched pieces of porcelain subsided, Father Santos poured an aromatic stream of steaming tea into the cup and motioned for me to sit back down. The creaking of the seat joined the gentle tinkling sound of the spoon Father Santos stirred his own tea with.
We sat in silence for a moment or two. I have never been much of a tea drinker so I stalled in the taking of my first sip. A small bowl of sugar sat on the edge of the table against the wall. I took a small spoonful of it and sprinkled it on the surface of my tea. As the grains of sweetener spread out over the surface, I dipped my spoon gently into the tea and began to stir it slowly.
“Will you drink it? Or only admire its look?” Father Santos asked. I looked up at him then and saw that he had been watching me with a bemused smile on his face. “It is good tea, señor,” he said as he dipped his head down and lifted his own cup to his lips.
I followed his lead and took my first sip of his rusty teapot concoction. The earthy depth of it lightened just a bit by the sugar I had added surprised me. I took another sip and felt the warmth spread down towards my stomach. Almost immediately, the tension I had felt only a few minutes before began to wane. I sat back in the chair and relaxed my shoulders.
“What is it, señor, that troubles you?” I looked at Father Santos and before I could answer, he continued. “You think I won’t understand. How can a simple priest in a town such as this understand the problems of your life?” I found myself nodding slightly in response.
“Yes, probably you are right. What could an old man know of your
troubles? But, maybe things aren’t as you think.” He looked down again, stirred his tea and took another sip. “This is good, no?”
“It is,” I replied, taking another sip. The calming effect of the tea spread even further. “I’m not much of a tea drinker, but this is good. Very good.”
Ignoring me, Father Santos leaned back in his chair. “I was married once, too,” he began while nodding towards the wedding ring on my left hand that glimmered ever so slightly in the fading light. “Surprised? Yes, probably. You see I am not a real priest.
“My wife died giving birth to Carlitos, our third child. He did not survive the birth either. They were buried together, with little Carlitos swaddled in a blanket and laying in my wife’s arms. I spent the next few years raising our other children – Pablo and Rosita – until they left me, too.
“As soon as he could, Pablo left for your country. For America. He believed the stories of the riches that awaited him. I have not heard from him since. Unlike many I have known who receive money from their family who go to America, I have never received a peso from Pablo. I do not know if he ever made it across the big river. Maybe he died in the desert. Maybe he made it and has a family now, with a home filled with children. Eh, maybe by now, there are grandchildren filling Pablo’s days with laughter and happiness. But, I do not know. I lost him to his dreams.
“Rosita left a few years later, but she went in the other direction. She went to the capital. Mexico City. Little Rosita had her dreams, too. But I do not know whether she reached them. I have heard that she had to . . .” For the first time since I met Father Santos, he hesitated with doubt. Or fear. He paused to take a sip of his tea and looked out the window, now almost black as the sun had finished its descent to the other side of the world. The only light in the small house was cast off by the glowing embers in the belly of the stove. Sensing this, too, Father Santos rose and retrieved a candle from the back of the stove.
“We need some light,” he said, setting it down in the center of the table. From a pocket, he took a match and struck it against the stovetop and with the flare and hiss of the match trailing behind him, he lit the candle. Father Santos sat down again with a sigh.
With the sun’s descent complete, plunging Santo Cielo and it’s little church into darkness, a slight breeze came in off the ocean. I could hear it rustle around outside, pause, and go on. Occasionally, the wind found a way in and a draft would whip the candle’s flame around, the shadows on the wall wavering along with the flame.
“My Rosita I have been told was forced to . . . to sell herself. I do not know if it is true and, as with Pablo, I have never heard from her again.
“What is it that I did that my children left me and believed I was not worthy of their thought or consideration? This I do not know and I struggle with it every day. I lost everything. My wife and my children.
I struggled to respond appropriately to the priest’s sadness. I wondered if that was the fate that awaited me. That my kids were already beginning the process of withdrawing from me? Whether I chose to stay or to go, when they left, would they care enough to keep me in the loop of their lives? Before I could wallow too much in this despairing thought, Father Santos continued, “When Rosita left and I did not hear from her for a year or two, I was lost. I could not stand to stay in the home I had made with my wife, who died, and where I raised our two children alone. The memories that were happy left me. I left my home and came here for no reason other than that it was not my home.
“Before I arrived, the priest who served his people from this church for more than forty years passed away. He died in his sleep in the cot over there in the corner. For several weeks the people had nobody to listen to their prayers and confessions or tell them how to live their lives.
“When I walked into the town, they believed I had been sent by the Church. But the Church no longer cared about this little town. No priest ever has been sent here. I know it is wrong, but I accepted their faith in me. I saw in their eyes, a light of hope when I was greeted upon my arrival.
“For many years now, I have led these people. I have ministered to their souls, prayed at their funerals, and blessed their marriages and their children. I think they know that I am not a real priest. When I bungled my way through the communion sacrament my first time was probably enough. But they do not care. I provide them with what they need.”
I finally interrupted him, “How old are you?”
“Señor, I do not know. Many years ago, I stopped counting. If I must guess, I would say that I have spent most of ninety years on this earth, more than half in this little town.”
Father Santos finally stopped talking and took the last sip of his tea. The empty cup clattered on its saucer when he set it down. “My, my. (try to come up with some way to say something like this in Spanish) You must be hungry.” He rose slowly, his joints creaking and cracking. Before I knew it, there were two pots on the stove, one with beans and one with rice and the old man was hurrying out the door. “I will be right back, señor,” he said as the door closed behind him. I realized that I was hungry and was grateful for what Father Santos was preparing.
Within a few minutes, I heard the soft shuffle of his feet coming back up the path. Father Santos entered the room with a metal bucket in one hand. A bundle wrapped in an old towel rested on the top of the bucket. “Aqui, for you,” he said, with a smile that brightened the candlelit gloom. He placed the bucket on the table in front of me and removed the bundle. Nestled in a mound of ice were three bottles of beer. Tecate. The old man’s perception was well-placed. Not being much a tea drinker, I definitely did not mind the opportunity for an ice cold beer.
Father Santos placed the towel-wrapped secret on a warm spot in the middle of the stove. He turned to the beans, stirring them with an old wooden spoon he took from a hook on the wall above the stove. Father Santos muttered to himself while he added some salt and pepper to the beans and then lifted the lid of the rice to take a look inside. The old priest began humming a quiet tune to himself as he puttered in front of the stove.
While he put two plates on the table, I opened my first beer. I took a sip, more like a gulp. I couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped me as the cold spread down, replacing the warmth of the tea.
* * *
Years earlier, I had spent some time making my own beer. It began before Spence was born and lasted until he was four or five and the demands of parenthood became too much. With the arrival of school and homework – I’m still amazed kids get homework in kindergarten – sports and other activities, I could no longer justify the hours it took to make a batch of beer, bottle it, and do it all over again.
There wasn’t a time, though, during those years of homebrew when I didn’t have at least one five gallon bucket of fermenting grains, hops, and yeast bubbling away in the garage. I rarely bought commercial beer, preferring instead my own brew whether it was good or bad.
When Spence was old enough to follow me out to the garage to see what I was doing with the tubes and bottles and buckets, he insisted on helping. My little shadow would place the bottle caps on the filled bottles of beer and watch as I sealed the caps shut. With his chubby little hands, Spence would pick the bottle up and put it in one of the boxes I stored the beers in until they were ready to drink. All the time, I worried about whether he would drop a bottle on the garage floor and send shards of glass everywhere. He never failed me though.
It was a time when I could do no wrong, when the little guy wanted nothing more than to do what I was doing. I mowed the lawn and he would follow behind with his plastic mower spewing bubbles out of the top. I sat down on the sofa with a book or magazine. Spence would sit down next to me, trying to reach his short legs out to the coffee table to match mine. In his hands, he would hold reading material, too. More likely than not, it was upside down but he tried his best.
Invariably, within a few minutes I would give up my book or magazine. It would start with a chuckle when I would glance his way and see his face screwed up in concentration. Was that what I looked like when I read? I’d tickle him or tap his magazine. Spence would look up at me then. “Stop it, daddy. I’m reading.” My control would end there. The tickle monster would come out. We’d wrestle. Spence would do what he loved best. Laying on my back, I’d let him walk up my legs, and then jump up and land on my stomach.
A couple of weeks before I left for Santo Cielo, I tried to get Jason to walk on me. He didn’t want to. When I laid down on the family room floor and told him he could jump on my stomach, he could walk on my legs, he looked at me like I was speaking a whole new language. He wasn’t my shadow. He was his mother’s shadow. Trailing behind her with his hand always reaching for her. Grabbing for her skirt or a pocket on her jeans to latch his finger into. When I held my hand out for him, he would shy away, hunching his nearest shoulder away from me, warding me off with his little boy magic.
* * *
I grabbed one of the other beers and held it out. “One for you, Father?” I considered my memories. Before he grew up, my little boy, Spence, had worshipped me once and wanted nothing more than to do what I did. Not so much anymore. His laughter and the smile that regularly lit up his face was all that I needed.
“No. No,” Father Santos replied, shaking his head. “No cerveza for me. Not for a long time. Gracias, señor. I am glad you like it better than my tea.” I put the bottle back in the bucket of ice with the knowledge that the remaining beers were for me and me alone. Another gulp and the cold spread further.
“A few minutes more,” Father Santos said. He sat down again. “Aaah. My old bones.”
He looked at me in the light of the candle. The heat from the stove kept what little cold there was in the night at bay. “Señor, you are troubled. I can see it. I can feel it. You come from far away. From where, I don’t know. You show up here and want to sit in my church. You know my name. Why?”
I downed the rest of the bottle I held in my hand and reached for my second. “Father Santos,” I began. Another sip of beer allowed me to pause and gather my thoughts. “An old man told me about you.” What better way to stall in answering the real question than by answering the less meaningful one? “He came here. A long time ago.”
“What was his name?”
Again, I felt the foolishness of my errand. I never even bothered to learn the man’s name. “I don’t know,” I said with an embarrassed shrug.
And Father Santos couldn’t help himself. “You come all this way. To search for something?” He chuckled and continued. “Because a man you don’t know told you about me? Maybe you are more troubled than I thought,” he said with a laugh.
Father Santos rose from his seat, his joints creaking and a grimace momentarily passing across his face. “I think it is ready.” He went back to his muttering and puttering at the stove. Soon, two plates appeared on the table, fully loaded with rice and beans. The bundle, he placed on the table between us and unwrapped it. “Por favor, take one. These are tortillas made by Isabella. They are the best in all of Baja.”
I reached for another Tecate from the bucket and began to shovel the food into my mouth. I hadn’t eaten since I left the airport and boarded the bus hours ago. I was famished. For the next few minutes, we ate in silence. The father mercifully allowed me to enjoy the food without having to delve into the reasons for my presence. I grabbed a tortilla and used it to scoop up more food. I couldn’t speak for other tortillas in Baja, but the tortilla was certainly the best I had ever had. Flaky, tender, with charred spots scattered across its surface.
I sat back with a sigh and drained the last of my second bottle of beer. With the last tortilla from the towel, I began to mop up the remains of my meal. I opened the final beer and sipped from it much more slowly than I had the first two.
“I hope you enjoyed it,” Father Santos said.
“Yes. It was very good. You were right about the tortillas.”
“Good. Good. Now you owe me something. I have fed you and told you my secrets and, yet, I do not even know your name. Keep your troubles to yourself, but … what is your name?”
“Kelvin. Kelvin Rockwell. My friends call me Kel. My kids, when they want to rile me, call me Kellie. They got that from their mother. They get great joy out of annoying me.”
“Kids? How many?’
“Two boys. Spence and Jason. Spence is thirteen, almost fourteen. Jason is only four and still thinks that he just might get to see real steam come out of my ears if he annoys me enough.”
“Hmmmmm,” the old man mused. “Two boys. You must love them very much.”
“Of course I do.”
“Pero? But?”
“But what?”
“Por favor, please, Señor Rockwell. You have two boys at home. Yet you are sitting across my table from me, eating my beans and rice and Isabella’s tortillas. On your face, I can see (Spanish word for pain), pain. It is written into your skin. You are here instead of at home with your Spence and Jason. I ask you again. What is it that troubles you?”
“I . . . I love my kids.”
“Si, of course. You have told me this.”
I drained the last of the beer and put the bottle on the table in front of me. I began to scratch at the paper label on the bottle as I began scratch at the surface of my pain. “I don’t know if it’s enough anymore.” I shrugged and looked at Father Santos, hoping that was enough.
“Señor. Talk. Talk with this,” he said, pointing at his chest, “instead of this.” He pointed at his head. “Let go. Don’t be afraid to feel what you are feeling.”
“Father Santos, you’re asking me to say something I’ve never said before. To . . .”
“Señor Rockwell, I am asking you to do nothing more than to speak from your heart. You come here for a reason I do not know. Maybe in the morning you will leave, but I doubt you leave any wiser. It is a long trip to make for nothing more than a plate of rice and beans and a couple of cervezas.”
In the silence that followed, I pondered his words, but I still could not
force my thoughts out. I looked at Father Santos sheepishly and shrugged my shoulders.
“Maybe in the morning your heart will open. It is late. Let’s sleep. Por favor, the cot is yours.”
“No, Father. I can’t sleep there. Give me a pillow and I can sleep on the floor.”
“Señor Rockwell, you are my guest. You will sleep on the cot. In the morning, my old bones will hurt no matter where I sleep. The cot is for you tonight.” He looked across the table, with the candle flickering between us, with a look of such certainty, I didn’t bother arguing the point anymore. Instead, I got up from the table and walked to the cot. A small pillow and a thin blanket was all the comfort it provided.
As I settled down on the cot, Father Santos moved about the room. He carried the candle back to the stove and placed it in the back near the wall. After spreading the coals around in the belly of the stove, he put the dirty pots and dishes in a box and put the box on the floor next to the door. Propping himself up with the cane he made his way back to the stove. When he passed by the table, he paused for a moment to take his dentures out and place them on a plate. He went then, to stand in front of the stove. I could see in the flicker of the candlelight that his eyes were closed. He began to mutter to himself in what I realized was a prayer. After a moment or two, he stopped, bowed his head, and then blew out the candle.
Other than the small amount of light cast off by the dying embers in the stove, the room was plunged into darkness. I could barely make out the shadow of the old priest as he lay down in a corner with a sigh. I worried that he would be too cold in the drafty room, but within a few moments I could tell that his breathing had evened out and soon he began to snore quietly.
Soon afterwards, I could feel my own eyelids grow heavy and I released myself to sleep, happy that the events of the day had not resulted in my mind whirring away at uncontrollable speeds, keeping me awake well into the night.
Part II
I woke to the first rays of light coming in through a window. It was one of only two small windows. The one above the table that let the western light in as the sun drops and this one, above the cot, allowing the morning sun to make its subdued entrance each day into Father Santos’ room. When I had first walked in the night before I thought the place was a hovel. In the early morning glow I took a second look. While it certainly contained virtually none of the creature comforts I was used to, I could see that it provided the minimum necessities for a man of few needs. A cot, a table, a stove, and a dresser with two drawers. One drawer was open enough for me to be able to see that it contained only a few items of clothing. A tattered, threadbare rug covered the middle of the floor. On the walls, a hand drawn image of Jesus in a cheap frame graced one wall, and next to the door, a small cross hung from a nail.
Before I had too much time to sink back into the misery of why I was there, I heard a quiet rapping at the door and then a girl on the other side, speaking quietly, said, “Padre? Padre?” That I understood, but it was followed by a stream of quickly spoken Spanish that far exceeded my limited understanding of the language.
I looked in the corner where Father Santos had curled up the night before and noted his absence. Throwing the thin blanket off me, I got up and walked to the door. When I opened it, the glare outside, with the sun reflecting off the hard, dry earth and the walls of the church across the yard momentarily blinded me. The brightness was much harsher than the few rays that made their way through the small windows of the father’s home.
Before I could really focus, the girl let out another stream of rapid Spanish. Once I was able to look at her, she was kneeling down and placing a tray on the ground. She stood once she realized I had opened the door and looked at me. Immediately, she dropped her eyes and looked down. Another impenetrable torrent of Spanish filled the air between us.
She was no girl, but instead was a young woman. I guessed she was probably somewhere in her twenties. Her eyes were a deep brown, almost black. Her skin, a complexion of brown, and her hair another shade of the same color. Those three features – her eyes, hair and skin – and the shades of color in them, mirrored the colors of the world of Santo Cielo. The dried earth and its tan shade matched her skin. The darker brown of the mud brick and adobe buildings matched her hair.
When she finished speaking, she began to back up. “Wait.” That one word in a language she didn’t seem to know any better than I did her own seemed to have the opposite of my intent. She turned and began to walk rapidly down the hill towards the village. She almost stumbled once and gasped, but she was able to remain on her feet. When she got to the gate in the fence that surrounded the church, she glanced back at me and then turned back, her hair whipping around to follow the quick flip of her head, and passed through the gate.
For the first time, I noticed that a small boy had been playing in the dirt there. She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him down the hill with her. He looked back at me as he stumbled and reached back towards me. His face broke out in a smile and he waved to me. Once. Twice. I waved back and then they were out of sight, down the hill.
I was taken by the simple beauty of the young Mexican woman. For the few seconds she looked at me in the doorway of Father Santos’ home, I saw a depth in the dark brown of her eyes. A range of emotions were reflected in her eyes and the furrow of her brow. For the briefest of moments I allowed myself to imagine that when she looked back at me as she passed through the gate, she was throwing some of that back at me. I don’t know. It was very possible, if not virtually certain, that I was deluding myself, reading more into her actions than was really there. I was certainly desperate enough to think she might have been trying to send me a message. I couldn’t help but wonder and then think about what I felt I was missing.
* * *
I think there was a time when Holly, my wife, might have looked back at me like that. With a look that said without words that she hoped I was still watching her. But I have no memory of it. Over the years, I saw plenty of hurt. In her eyes. In her voice. In the way she ignored me and, at times, refused to look at me. There had been way too much hurt. Enough hurt that I wondered if there was anything else that we felt for each other, the hurt having buried everything else.
Any memory of such an event had been washed away by the time that had gone by. Days of neglect. Weeks of going through the motions. Months of lack of effort. Years of treading water.
I hoped, believed, that our relationship had started with a spark, but I simply could not remember it and, in light of the events of the years that followed, I couldn’t imagine such a spark ever existed. Too many dirty diapers. Too many sleep-deprived nights. Too many arguments over meaningless trivia. Too little time devoted to each other. If there had ever been a spark, why was it so difficult to recapture it, to wave our hands over its ember and revive the fire?
Of course, there’s a question. Why did I need that fire? Aren’t relationships supposed to mature into something where the fire isn’t needed anymore? Isn’t being comfortable something to strive for? Those things may all be true, but there came a time when I needed more. Comfort wasn’t enough to counteract the hurt and neglect. A little passion would have gone a long way towards healing the scars caused by the traumas of any relationship. If those embers had glowed just a bit I probably wouldn’t have found the need to flee to a church led by a priest who wasn’t really a priest in a dusty, little village on the edge of Baja California
I felt like I had never experienced it with Holly. With no recollection of passion or desire, as the years rolled by, I came to believe that our love was a love of convenience and always had been. We met at a time when we were both ready to be married and start a family. On a lot of levels we worked well together and I’m sure that Holly loved me, but I felt it was nothing more than the love she felt for her parents or our kids. Shouldn’t a man and a woman, brought together as husband and wife, feel something for each other different than what they feel for others in their lives?
Did we ever have that fire, the passion, the need for each other? Was there ever a time where we just wanted something very basic to human nature, almost animal? A carnal need that the other met?
If there was, I had missed it entirely. I wanted it desperately. I wanted a memory of Holly showing that she wanted me for more than just my pay check and my willingness to mow the lawn. I wanted somebody, anybody, but preferably the woman I had married and had two kids with to walk up to me one day and whisper in my ear, “I want you, right here, right now,” and then take the steps to make sure she got what she wanted right there and right then. I wanted to be able to look at my wife and know that she didn’t just love me, but that she loved me!
* * *
With a fleeting glimpse, she was gone, leaving me with my memories–or lack of them–and idle thoughts of her hips swaying as she walked down the hill and the brief glimpse of a glitter in her eye.
I picked up the tray from the ground where the young woman had left it and turned back into the room. It smelled like breakfast, but I resisted the urge to lift the towel that covered the tray, choosing instead to leave it on the table. Without Father Santos, I felt it would have been disrespectful to start eating. Instead, I went in search of him.
I found him in his church. Kneeling at the altar with his head bowed so low it was a wonder he hadn’t fallen forward onto the cool stone surface that spread out between him and the display at the front of the church. A single candle burned on the ground before him. I leaned against the door frame and waited for Father Santos to finish his prayers. In the still of the morning, I could hear his muttering and whispering. Every once in awhile he would cross himself, pause for a few seconds, and look up at the figure of Jesus on the cross. Then, he would bow his head again and resume his pleas to his god. For a man who claimed not to be a real priest, he seemed to be playing the role rather well.
Just as my stomach rumbled for the first time, the old priest rose from his knees. His voice rose slightly with a sharp word or two, no doubt brought about by the pain in his joints. I could hear the creaks and cracks all the way at the back of the church. He stood for a few more seconds with his head bowed, crossed himself one more time, and turned to walk down the small aisle between the pews.
“Ah, Señor Rockwell.” He smiled and walked past me on his way out the door. Before he got too far, he turned back and looked again at me. “Do you need to pray?”
“Uh. No. No, that’s okay.”
“Bueno. The church is always open for your prayers.” He turned back and walked towards the little house behind the church. When he opened the door, he made a show of sniffing the air. “Isabella must have come, no?”
“A woman brought a plate of food.”
“Was she beautiful?”
“Well,” I hesitated. Here was a priest, real or not, discussing the looks of a woman. A woman many, many years younger than him.
“It is okay. I am still a man,” he chuckled.
“Yes. She was beautiful.”
“Then it was Isabella. In little Santo Cielo, there is no other like her.” I could definitely agree with Father Santos that Isabella was beautiful.
“Come. Let us eat, if you have not already done so,” Father Santos said, crossing the threshold into his home. Father Santos sat at the table and lifted the towel. “Ah, you have much more patience than I.” On the tray were two plates piled with scrambled eggs and bacon. Another towel-wrapped bundle no doubt held more of Isabella’s tortillas. In a bowl in the center was a diced orange fruit.
“Please. Sit.” As I did so, Father Santos bowed his head. “Something I should have done last night, but I manage to forget now and then,” he said with a grin. Another stream of quiet Spanish followed as he clasped his hands together. With a clap of his hands, he finished and ordered, “Eat.”
We were silent while we ate, except when I asked Father Santos what the fruit was. “It is mamey sapote.
“It’s very good.” It tasted like ______ and was very sweet. “I’ve never had it before.”
“Mamey sapote is native to this land. Maybe, tomorrow, if you are still here, you will try sapodilla or cherimoya. They are sweet like nothing you have ever had before. Better than candy.”
We ate in silence for a few more moments. A silence broken only by the old man’s lips smacking together as he ate and the scrape of our forks on the cheap ceramic plates. Once our plates were clear–I used the last tortilla to wipe everything off my plate to make sure I got it all–Father Santos piled the plates on the tray and put it by the door.
“Come,” he said. I followed him out the door. From the side of the house, he took a pail and handed it to me. “The garden needs to be weeded.” I looked at the flowers that nestled up against the house and could see barely a sign of a weed. I looked at Father Santos questioningly.
“Please, look. There are weeds there. You must pull weeds early before they have a chance to spread.” I bent down and could see, in a few places, small shoots of green just beginning to break the surface of the dirt. “Otherwise, your garden will not grow as it should. The flowers will not be as beautiful.”
I put the pail down in the dirt next to the flowers and knelt down on my knees. I began pulling the weeds from the dirt and throwing them in the pail. “Bueno. Good, good,” Father Santos said as he walked down the path towards the church. “Pull them all. My flowers need the room.”
I was grateful that Father Santos had not begun the day by questioning me anymore. I didn’t think my heart had opened up to allow me to talk with him about my life. I preferred the idea of weeding in solitude. I began to comb through the plants, looking for weeds. The telltale sign of invaders lurking in the shadows of the flowers, full of color and life.
As the sun rose and the air warmed, I pulled my shirt off. Within an hour, I began to look much like the old man at the bar probably had all those years before. Sunburned. Probably close to the color of a strawberry. Sweating. But, hopefully, not with the paunch the old man had. I liked to think I had managed to avoid the spare tire around my waist.
I went through the flower bed once and then went back through it again, trying to find and pull every sign of a weed. I pulled them out the way my mom had taught me. Frequently over the hour or two it took me to perform my task, I could hear her in my head.
When I was young, probably no more than six or seven, I would
pester her to let me help her with her yard work. With an abundance of patience, she would let me, but try to teach me in the process. “It doesn’t do any good to pull a weed, unless you get the root,” she would say while demonstrating the fine art of digging into the dirt with a weeder or small shovel, while grabbing the weed as far down as she could push her fingers into the dirt. I’m sure I left far too many roots in the dirt, roots that would shoot up a bigger, stronger weed in the days that followed, but she never criticized my work.
I dug down into the soft dirt of the priest’s flower bed and pulled every weed out with as much of the root as I could get. Every little sprout of green that didn’t belong came out. While I worked, I pondered Father Santos’ words. It wasn’t just a garden that could become weed-filled. It wasn’t just flowers that could get the life choked out of them.
* * *
Some nights Jason would let me tuck him in at night. I could lie down next to him for a few minutes and read one of his favorite books–Goodnight Moon or Tumble Bumble–to him. When I was done, I’d say, “I love you,” and kiss him on his cheek. Jason would say it back to me in his own way, “I uv you, Daddy,” and fling his arms around my neck to hold me there while his tender lips brushed against my cheek. I would make a game of trying to break free even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. Jason, after a few seconds of imagined struggle, would relax his grip and allow me to get off his bed.
On those nights, I would pick the stuffed animal he would sleep with and place it in his arms as he curled up. On my way out the door, I would say, “Good night,” and could tell by his whispered response that he was already slipping into sleep. It amazed me how quickly he could reach that state of peace and relaxation.
Those rare incidents of tolerance on his part and patience on mine helped bridge the chasms caused by the rest of the nights. The rest of the time, our interactions were fraught with anger, that would be me, and whining, that would be Jason.
“Hey, little guy, can I tuck you in tonight?”
“No! I wan’ mommy!”
“Jason, mommy can’t come …”
“I wan’ MOMMY!!”
“Jason, she can’t come up right now. She’s cleaning up the kitchen.” My voice rising to match Jason’s in volume and intensity, I would try to calm us both down by reaching out to him. Only to have him pull away.
“Jason, mommy can’t tuck you in tonight . . .”
And, there’d she be.
“Honey? Jason? What’s wrong? Mommy’s here.” Holly would rush into his room, wiping her hands on a towel and then shushing him in only the way she could. Jason would whimper for her. And I would stomp down the stairs to the TV or the computer.
In all of this there was a huge weed, sprouting in the middle of our family. Sucking the color and life out of us, or me at least. I couldn’t help myself. As I stomped away, too many times I would think to myself what life might be like if Jason had not come into our lives. Little Jason, with his smile and laugh. I loved him just as much as Spence. I couldn’t imagine life without him, even if he was in his “mommy” phase. But the truth? He was an accident that I didn’t want to happen.
Our little Rockwell family of three worked well together for almost ten years or as well as could be expected. I came home from work one day and Holly sat me down at the kitchen table. Spence was upstairs in his room getting his homework done. I could hear the music coming from behind his closed door.
“I have some news, Kel,” she said. Without giving me a chance to interrupt, she continued, “I’m pregnant.”
It hit me in the gut and the air in my lungs came out in a whoosh. There was a reason we stopped with Jason, or at least thought we had. I didn’t want anymore children. Holly went along with me, although I knew she wanted more kids. When we dated and it began to look like we were more than a temporary thing, we discussed kids. She wanted three or four. I wanted one, maybe two.
Once Spence was born, I was convinced after a few months that one was enough for me. The lack of sleep, crying and screaming, and throw-up virtually on demand were something I didn’t need to go through again. As the years progressed and Spence went through each of the phases–the terrible twos, the more terrible threes, the fantastic fours, the frustrated fives, and so on–I became more convinced than ever that one child was just the right number for me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. That’s what my doctor’s appointment was for yesterday,” Holly replied. “Listen, Kel, I know this isn’t necessarily what you want. It’s not really what I want at this point either. But, this is a good thing. We’re going to have another baby.” She reached out to touch my hand. I looked up at her. “It’s a good thing,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I need some time with this.” I got up from the kitchen table and went out to the backyard. Sitting down at the edge of the pool, I put my feet in the water and slowly kicked my legs back and forth. Ripples spread out over the surface of the pool while I pondered the news.
Behind me, I could hear Spence in the kitchen and the murmured voices of he and Holly having a conversation. There was quiet for a second and then he let out a whoop. “Dad!” he yelled as he slammed the screen door open and came running out to me. “I’m going to have a little brother or sister.” He had always wanted one.
A few months after Jason was born, I scheduled a vasectomy. There would be no more surprises.
* * *
Father Santos had given me no tool, other than the pail to throw the weeds into. By the time I was done, with my strawberry skin and sweaty brow, my fingernails were packed with dirt. But I had done my job well. There were no weeds in that flower patch that could grow to choke the life or color out of their blooms.
Before I could rest from my weeding, Father Santos appeared and handed me a can of paint. “Please, Isabella’s brother brought this to me today. He said to me that I should use it for the church. I would like you to pick what should be painted.”
I took the can from him and saw that it was a gallon of white. He handed me an old paint brush. “Comprende, señor, paint is for covering that which should be covered. Paint makes something look nicer. Do not waste it on something that does not need it. Or deserve it.”
And he handed me a bottle of water. “Agua, for you, señor.” I took the bottle and unscrewed the top. Before I drank, I elevated the bottle and let a bit of it pour out over my head and shoulders. The coolness felt good on my skin as I took a big gulp of the cold water. “Good. Thank you … gracias.”
“Ah, that is good, señor,” Father Santos said with a sigh. “Please, if you will. The paint. For a little bit, until Isabella brings lunch.”
For a few minutes, while I finished the water, I sat next to the flower bed and pondered the good father’s words. My first thoughts were of the apparent imminent return of Isabella. I pictured her escape earlier that morning and hoped that she would provide me with more than a flip of her hair, but who was I kidding? I was old enough to be her father and we didn’t even speak the same language. A little daydreaming never hurt anybody, though, and I allowed my mind to wander until I remembered my next task.
A can of paint. Not to be wasted. Only used on something that deserved it. That needed to look nicer. I could think of a few things that could use the paint, many more than could be covered with a gallon of white paint. The church could have used a couple of coats but that would have taken many cans of paint. The fence. The cross. The priest’s one room home, both inside and out. Again, that would have taken much more than my one can. Finally, I settled on what I would paint.
Taking a break from the heat of the day, I went into Father Santos’ home and pulled his table away from the wall. Carefully, so that I wouldn’t spill any paint on his floor, I began to paint the worn surface of the table. Through the years of use, the surface was smooth enough that no sanding was necessary. I applied a coat to the top and then began to paint the legs. Towards the bottom of each leg, I picked the table up and swept the brush down as far as I could.
Once the table was done, I continued on with the two chairs. While I painted, I became absorbed in the process of dipping the brush in the paint, wiping the excess off and then trying to smooth the paint over the surface of the table and chairs. Over the years, I had found a few activities that allowed me to erase from my mind the thoughts that pounded away otherwise. For a few years, around when Spence was born, I took up golfing. For the four or five hours I spent each weekend, walking the fairways and greens, I was able to think only about golf and not about the troubles of my life.
More recently I had taken up running. Now, when I ran, I could focus on my breathing and the pain in my legs and forget about why I hated my job or why I wanted the run to last as long as possible so I could stay away from home as long as possible. Maybe it was as Father Santos had said. These activities–golf, running, and a few other miscellaneous activities–were things I was able to do with my heart instead of my head. Maybe it was time to consider my dilemma also with my heart instead of my head.
I painted the chairs as carefully as the table, but by the time I had finished with the table and chairs, there were a few splatters of white paint on the floor. I considered trying to wipe them up, but decided not to. A couple of drops of paint weren’t going to ruin the “décor.” As I finished, Father Santos came in with two plates of food.
“Aaah,” he sighed. “Though I like your choice, it leaves us with no place to eat. Let us eat in the shade of the garden.” He handed me one of the plates and walked back outside. I followed the old priest out the door and sat with him in the path between the flower beds. The sun, almost at the top of its arc was sufficiently behind the house to cast a shadow across the flowers.
“Aaah,” Father Santos sighed again, this time from the pain as he slowly bent at his waist and then his knees. He balanced his plate in one hand while I reached out and held his other arm to help guide him down to the ground. Once he got settled, he sighed again. “Please. Sit down.”
I did so, and began to dig into the pile of rice and diced meat. The rice was unlike what I was used to at Mexican restaurants back at home. That rice, always a faint shade of red, typically had little flavor. This rice had peas and corn mixed in with it. The meat was beef, lightly spiced and tender. This time there were no tortillas from Isabella.
“Oh my. I almost forgot.” From a pocket, Father Santos pulled another bottle of water out and handed it to me. “For you.”
Father Santos let me eat in silence for a couple of minutes, but when our forks began to scrape against the plates, he started again. “Señor Rockwell, have you figured out how to open your heart?”
“I … I don’t know…”
“Please, just talk.”
“No. I don’t know where to start.”
“Señor, it is very simple. Do not think. Maybe for the first time in all of your life, empty your cabeza, your head. Fill it with air, like a child’s balloon. And, then once you have done that, speak. Whatever comes first, say it.”
“I know, Father Santos …”
“No. Nothing until your head is full of air.”
I laughed then at his suggestion that I needed to become an airhead to be able to speak freely. But, maybe he was onto something. I realized as my chuckling wound down, and Father Santos looked warily at me, that I had spent most of my life thinking before I talked. Particularly when it came to my relationships with others, I analyzed and considered my words carefully before expressing them. I did everything I could to minimize any hurtful impact my words and thoughts might have. It was time to, as Father Santos unknowingly suggested, become an airhead and stop thinking.
I thought about a golf course near my home where I frequently had golfed years before. In my mind, I visualized one particular hole, the only par 5 on the course. I saw myself taking my second shot from the fairway. Tony and Fred, the friends I frequently golfed with were spread out along the fairway, waiting to take their next shot. From a birdseye view, I saw myself take a swing and the ball soar into the air and, then, as it usually did, begin to slice to the right. And slice more to the right, until it ended up in the trees that lined the fairway. I knew, as I pictured this scene that the ‘me’ down on the course thought about nothing other than how to fix that damn slice and worried about nothing more than whether I would get to the green and sink a putt and save a bogey.
Bringing myself back to Santo Cielo, I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them again, I looked into the old priest’s deep brown eyes and felt my head clear. “There’s so much I could …”
“No, Señor. Do not explain. Just talk.” And, so I began.
“You know what bothers me?”
“You tell …”
“When I told Holly, my wife, that I was making this trip,” I began the answer to my own question, not giving Father Santos a chance to finish his own reply. “I sat her down and told her that I needed to leave for awhile. I told her I would be going to a little town in Mexico. And you know what she said? ‘Okay.’ She didn’t ask me where the little town was. When I told her I was coming here because I needed a break ‘from everything,’ she barely batted an eye.
“You know what she was most concerned about?” I asked, not waiting for an answer again. “Little Jason’s birthday is next week and I couldn’t promise I’d be back for it. She got mad at me for that.”
I paused for a moment and looked out beyond the church. “Holly told me that Jason would never forgive me for missing his birthday. I don’t think so, though. These days he probably won’t even notice that I’m gone.” Down the little hill I could hear children laughing and running through the one street of Santo Cielo. Every once in awhile, a woman would yell something in Spanish and for a few seconds, but not much more, the children would be a little quieter.
“The only thing he’ll care about is what’s in the packages and whether his mom is there to rub his back.” Beyond the cluster of shacks, if I focused closely enough, I thought I could see the curve of the earth out there where the brilliant deep blue of the sky and the subdued more intense blue of the ocean joined together.
I turned back to Father Santos. ”Holly never asked me why I had to leave. She didn’t ask me what was wrong. She didn’t try to talk to me about whatever it was that was propelling me to leave. She never has. I’ve tried to talk to her for years about how I feel. She goes through the motions, but she’s never gone beyond a very superficial effort. We talk and nothing really changes because don’t every really get to it. You know what I mean?” He nodded reassuringly, but I have no idea if he really did understand.
“She didn’t try to stop me from leaving. I’m sure she thinks I’m just going through a mid-life crisis and I’ll come back and everything will be fine. But what does that mean? What does ‘fine’ mean? Does it mean that I just go back to how I was for years? Just accepting things how they were and not striving for something better? I’m sure that’s what she hopes for. Those days when life just goes on. Or does ‘fine’ mean it’s time to really shake things up?
“Holly just said ‘okay’ and when I was finished telling her my plans, she got up and went outside where Jason was playing in the backyard. For a few minutes, I watched her out there with our little boy. As soon as Jason saw her coming out, a huge smile lit up his face and he yelled ‘mommy, mommy’ and ran to her and jumped up into her arms. I wanted to run out there and wrap my arms around them and feel … Oh, hell, I don’t know what I wanted to feel. I don’t know if I’ve ever even felt it.
“I wanted, in that moment, to feel like Jason loved me unconditionally like he did his mother. I wanted to wrap my arms around Holly and Jason and feel warmth and love. I wanted Spence to come down from his closed bedroom without his stupid IPod on and join us, wrapping his arms around us to. I wanted, without words to be spoken, for all of us to commit to the idea of a family.”
I looked back out at the ocean and the neverending waves that lapped at the beach below Santo Cielo. “Unfortunately for Holly, I don’t think this is a midlife crisis.”
I returned to my lunch and finished the last of the spicy meat and rice on my plate. “Well, Father Santos, is that enough for you?”
“The question, señor, is whether it is enough for you,” he said with a shrug. “Please, give me your plate. I will take it to Isabella. You have more painting to do.” He took our plates and began to shuffle down the hill.
I picked up the can of paint and followed in Father Santos’ footsteps. Before I got to the gate though I stopped and looked around. There was the cross looking more worn and decrepit in the bright light of the mid-afternoon sun than it had the day before. It was time for it to get a fresh coat of paint. Before I started to paint, I reached up with the brush. I wanted to make sure I would actually be able to reach the top. Standing on my tiptoes, with my arm extended as high as I could stretch it, I could just reach the top of the cross.
For the next hour I painted the cross. I was careful to cover it in several coats. Where the wood had begun to decay and where there were deep grooves, I filled the brush with paint and jabbed it into the spaces to ensure they were covered as well. I thought about Father Santos’ words.
* * *
When we first moved in together, we had this little argument most nights. I usually got to bed first and would lie down and read. Holly, when she finished getting ready for bed, would get in bed next to me and expect me to lean over to kiss her good night. It was silly really.
“Aren’t you going to give me a kiss good night?” she would ask when I reached over to my light to turn it off.
I would sigh and lean over to kiss her. “You know, you could kiss me good night every once in awhile, too. I’m already lying down and you can just kiss me when you get in bed,” I pointed out to her.
I don’t remember anymore what her reply was, but considering that the ‘argument’ repeated itself almost nightly for quite awhile, I’m guessing she didn’t look too favorably on the idea. She simply refused to take responsibility for sharing the burden of a good night kiss.
For years, I said those three little words on a daily basis. “I love you,” in the morning. “I love you,” when I got home. “I love you,” when I provided the obligatory good night kiss. Then, I realized she almost never told me the same thing on her own. It was always in response to my expression of affection towards her. Eventually, I began to say “I love you” a little less. And then a little less. In part, it was my passive aggressive approach to her lack of affection towards me. If it wasn’t important to her than why should I bother?
I have a fundamental believe that relationships, to survive, have to be reciprocal, that the effort has to be, if not equal, at least close to it. I felt in my marriage as though the effort wasn’t there. I said the words and took the actions that provided the paint that kept the appearance of our marriage glossy and colorful. There was nobody else with a brush.
And there were the other issues that began to create a divide between us. Issues of parenting. Issues of money. Stupid, little, nitpicky issues like who’s supposed to take the garbage out and do the dishes after dinner. So many issues that I began to grow tired of how things were and just didn’t feel like telling her, “I love you,” as often as I once did. The bloom had definitely gone from the rose. The honeymoon period was over. Convenience and running the family business, the business of maintaining the family and not much more, had settled in.
Then there was this. A weed. Maybe the equivalent of crabgrass that chokes the life out of an otherwise lush and green lawn. I could no longer remember the last time I had told Holly that I loved her and felt like I really meant it. If we said those three little words to each other more than a handful of times during the course of a year I would have been surprised. When it did happen, it was routine. Robotic. The words had no meaning.
Could three little words paint over the rot underneath? If we had been able to maintain the communication of love and affection would all those differences have blossomed into a patch of crabgrass spreading its tentacles through our marriage?
* * *
I finished painting the cross and looked at my work. It was covered in white now, but the grooves and pits that the elements had carved into the surface were still obvious if you looked close enough. The paint had done what it could, just like those three little words might have done. They can only do so much, particularly when they aren’t really, truly felt and believed, just like paint really can’t hide the scars that mark an old cross, weathered and battered by the years. Given that, what’s the point un uttering those words.
I closed the can of paint and took it, along with the brush back to the Father’s house. I left them by the front door and took the opportunity to sit in the shade of the flower bed. I turned my gaze to the ocean again and watched the roll of the waves. After a few minutes, Father Santos had not reappeared. It was time to do the one other thing I had wanted to do since the bus pulled into Santo Cielo just twenty-four hours before.
I walked down the hill and skirted the village, on my way towards the beach. As I crossed the road at the south end of the village I looked down the road into the heart of the village. I saw three children looking at me, three little heads peering at me from around the corner of a house. Their eyes were wide open. The youngest one, at the bottom of the “stack” was the first to break when they saw that I had spotted them. He turned and ran down the gap between the houses. The others lasted for a split second longer, following their playmate with laughter and giggles echoing back to me.
When I got to the beach, I looked back at the village and was pleased to see that it was mostly shielded by a small rise between the beach and the homes. All I could see were a few roof tops and above them all was the church. From the vantage point of the beach, it stood sentry over the village, silhouetted by the blue sky. I could see the cross, too. Up close, the grooves and pits were still obvious, but from that distance, it shined with a radiance that hadn’t existed just a couple of hours before. All because of a little white paint.
As soon as I reached the sand, I slipped my shoes and socks off and carried them down to the highest reach of the waves. I could feel the warm sand between my toes and the sun on my face. The sand offered yet another shade of brown, very light, almost white, to go with the rest of Santo Cielo.
The salty, briny scent of the ocean penetrated my consciousness and by the time I got to the ocean’s edge, I was ready to dive into the water. One more glance back confirmed that the villagers could not see me from their homes. I paused long enough to strip my shorts off and dropped them in a pile next to my shoes and socks. With my baggy, sweaty boxers sagging from my hips, I sprinted into the surf, splashing and laughing as I went. For the first time in a long time, I felt like a kid again. I wasn’t Kelvin Rockwell, 43-year-old married man, father of two. I was Kel Rockwell, a kid having fun, because that’s what kids are supposed to do.
When the ocean reached above my knees, I twirled around once or twice and then dove in, skidding along the bottom of the ocean until it got deep enough that I no longer had a sense that the surface was just above me. I stopped and floated for a few seconds looking around me. Small fish darted back and forth, the undulations of the ocean’s waves continued to move the sand in little rivelets along the ocean’s bottom, a never-ending pattern of ridges of sand moving back and forth, but inexorably towards the beach.
With the breath in my lungs running out, I pushed off and rocketed up, breaking the surface just as a mild wave rolled over my head, filling my mouth and nose with water. The shock of it scared me and sent me back underwater. I struggled to regain the surface with my lungs filling with water. The image of me drowning in the shallow and calm ocean waters off of Santo Cielo’s beach flashed briefly in my mind and I thought it would be quite an ending to my life story. My body would drift out to sea and no one would really know the truth of my disappearance. The only remnant that would suggest the nature of my demise would be my shorts, shoes and socks, piled at the ocean’s edge. A great mystery that would need to be solved, featured some day on a late night reality show.
“On a beach by the sleepy town of Santo Cielo,” the narrator would intone, “Kelvin Rockwell disappeared, leaving behind a distraught wife and two children, along with a pile of clothing at the water’s edge.” The camera, focused on the same endless waves reaching towards the shore that had tantalized me since my arrival in Santo Cielo, would pull back and show my shirt, shoes and socks on the beach. “He came in search of something. Did he find death? Or did he disappear even further into the untamed land of Baja California in search of his own mystery?”
It certainly was one way to take care of a mid-life crisis and maybe then Holly wouldn’t think it was ‘okay’ that I had decided to leave. A series of images flashed through my mind. Spence graduating from high school and only Holly there to celebrate with him. Jason hitting a game winning home run in a Little League game watched only by his mother, sitting in a chair behind home plate. The three of them at my funeral, my boys, even Spence, with tears in their eyes as Holly tried to comfort them.
I wasn’t ready for death to take me yet, though, and I kicked my feet and breached the surface of the ocean again, sputtering and gasping for air. Moving my arms and legs to keep afloat, I looked back to the beach and was shocked at how far I had pushed myself out into the ocean. The features of the beach, Santo Cielo, and its church blended together into shades of color without the individual features distinct enough to make out. Unlike my brief submersion from the wave when I momentarily thought of my death in a far-off way, this time I considered it a real possibility. Never a strong swimmer, I felt the fatigue in my arms and legs caused by a day of weeding and painting, and my brief swim out into the ocean. The fear seemed to sap even more strength from my limbs.
“Shit!” I took a deep breath and went below the surface again and began the slow process of swimming back to shore. Every few strokes, I poked my head up and looked at the shore. Inhaling more air, I dipped again into the water and continued along until I needed more oxygen in my lungs and I came up. Gasping, yet again. The push and pull of the waves left me in a feeling of stasis. One moment, I felt like I was being pushed every closer to shore. The next, I felt as though I was pushing against a current created just to make my struggle that much harder.
After a few moments I could tell that I had made steady progress. On one glance, I could see the outlines of the church on the horizon and just make out the shapes of the rooftops. A couple of glances later, I could see the beach. I was getting closer, but at the same time I realized the flow of the current was pushing me down the coast towards an outcropping of rocks that jutted out into the ocean. I couldn’t see beyond those rocks and was convinced I didn’t want to know what was there. I pushed harder and faster and angled back to the spot where I thought I had left my clothes.
Most likely, it only took a few minutes, but what felt like hours later, when I dipped below the surface, I could see the ocean’s bottom begin to rise precipitously closer to me. A few more strong pushes forward and my feet touched the bottom again. A few more, and I was able to stand and keep my head just above water. Although it felt precarious, buffeted by the waves moving around me, I stopped for a moment, breathing heavily and waving my arms back and forth to maintain my balance before beginning to walk towards the shore, pushing against the ebb of the tide.
After a few strides, I turned around and flipped onto my back on the water’s surface. I began to kick my legs and bring my arms up and sweep them down, propelling myself slowly towards the beach. When, a kick brought one of my feet in contact with the sandy bottom of the ocean, I stopped and let myself float for a few minutes. I kept my arms and legs moving enough to ensure that I didn’t drift away from the beach. Every few seconds, I dipped a foot to make sure I could still easily make contact with the ocean floor.
All the same, I floated so I could catch my breath and calm my thoughts but I couldn’t stop myself from replaying in my mind the wave coming over my head just as I rose to the surface. I felt the salt water in my mouth and the gagging caused by the water in my nose. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat, or a memory I wanted to relive. Without a god to thank, I eventually just accepted that I had survived. And I floated.
* * *
I wished her dead once. Okay, ‘wished her dead’ is a little stronger than reality. I imagined her dead. Many times. What’s worse? To wish somebody dead one time or imagine them dead over and over. The truth was the latter. I never wished her dead. But she brought it on herself.
“I’m leaving now, Kel,” Holly would say, leaning over to give me the obligatory good-bye kiss.
“What time do you think you’ll be home,” I’d ask, annoyed that I had to answer the question. She never volunteered the information and if I allowed her to leave without my asking, I’d have new clue when to expect her to return. How is it that she could have reached adulthood without learning the lesson that you let those who care know when they can expect you home. So, they don’t worry. It’s a basic idea, isn’t it?
“Oh, probably around 10:00,” she’d reply. “Bye.”
“Bye,” I’d mumble as she walked out the door. I fully knew what to expect.
By 10:30, I’d start to get angry. No call and no sign of her.
By 11:00, I’d get angrier and begin to worry.
By 11:30, I’d let the worry take over. What adult never learns the lesson of letting those who care that he or she is running behind, that she’ll be a little later than expected? Can it really be difficult in this age of cell phones in every purse and pocket? It’s not like she needed to search for a pay phone.
Like a movie preview, images and scenes would flicker through my mind. Her car in a ditch, smoke coming from under the hood. Holly’s face bloodied, her body lifeless. The boys and I spend the next few years on our together. And a part of me liked that picture. Being able to raise Spence and Jason the way I wanted, without her interference and sabotage. No more sending them to bed and having Holly waltz upstairs twenty or thirty minutes later with the dog in tow, disrupting their attempts to achieve peaceful slumber. No more arguments about how much television they watch. No more of so much.
Yes. I imagined her dead. Too many times to count. Always when she couldn’t bother to let me know she was running late and there was nothing to worry about.
Part III
I could float no more. I stood up and turned towards the beach. There, standing next to the small mound created by my shoes, socks and shirt, were Isabella and her little boy. As soon as I saw them, the boy pointed at me and began to smile and then to laugh. He tugged on Isabella’s hand and looked up at her to make sure she also saw what he saw. A sunburnt white man in saggy boxers rising out of the ocean. I suppose it was better than the boy shrieking in fear. If I had been in his shoes, I probably would have been laughing, too.
I walked towards the dry sand, trying the best I could to protect what little dignity I had left. Before I left the water, Isabella shouted, “Señor! Padre Santos,” followed by Spanish I couldn’t comprehend. When she was done, I did the only thing I could think to do. “Huh?” I said with a shrug.
Apparently, “huh” is a universal word because she repeated herself, only much more slowly this time, while pointing towards the church.
“I don’t understand. No comprende?”
Isabella looked at me more closely. I got lost in her eyes until she brought me back. “Señor?” I pulled away from her eyes. She bent down and picked up my shorts. “Por favor.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” I took the last few steps towards her and grabbed the shorts from her.
“Por favor,” she said, once I had slipped the shorts on. She motioned with her hand for me to follow her and began to walk up the beach towards the village and the church behind it. She held her little boy’s hand and tugged him along while he stumbled to keep up and looked back at me with a smile on his face. His round eyes and that smile showed such simple joy for life. I felt like an old woman, feeling an irresistible urge to run to him and squeeze his cheeks.
I put my shirt on, picked up my shoes and followed. At first, I hung back to be able to watch Isabella walk ahead of me. She had wavy brown hair that reached just below her shoulders. Her narrow waist flared out to hips that begged to be caressed. Catching my breath and pushing that thought out of my head, I walked faster to catch up. When I reached Isabella, I walked with her for a few seconds before I tapped her on her shoulder to stop her. When she looked at me, I pointed at her and asked, “Isabella?” She nodded her head slightly. I pointed at myself. “Kel.”
“Kel,” she repeated quietly. I pointed at her son and shrugged my shoulders. Her eyes lit up then and she smiled for the first time since I had met her. “Llamas es Ivan.” (need to make sure I’ve got this right.) More rapid-fire Spanish that I couldn’t understand streamed from her mouth. I shrugged again. This time helplessly.
“Si. Si. No comprende,” she giggled. Isabella picked Ivan up and he looked at me with another smile as he rested his head on his mother’s shoulder. “Por favor, señor. Father Santos.” Isabella pointed again beyond the village towards the church.
“Si,” I sighed with another shrug. She laughed again at my use of Spanish.
We walked, side by side, around the village and up the path towards the church. I kept stealing glances at her, admiring her profile. I kept being drawn to her hips, wishing I could put my hands on them. As we approached the church, I pushed the thought from my mind. There was no chance I’d have that opportunity, but it was certainly a nice thought while it lasted.
“Señor?” We had reached the entrance to the church. I turned to face Isabella as she pointed first at me and then at herself. Finally, she made a walking motion with her fingers and looked at me. When she was sure she had my attention, she said, “Gracias,” before dipping her head down, turning away from me and practically running back down the hill.
