The Brave, page 14
From nearby, he could hear the crackling, shifting fire. From afar, he could hear the cars and trucks on the highway.
Many times during that night as he sat by his fire, Rafael inhaled deeply, through his mouth, then only through his nose, filling his lungs with the heavy air, exhaling slowly. Each time he did this, he sent his tongue around his mouth, trying to clean out, spit out the metallic taste.
As daylight grayed the eastern sky, Rafael bathed one final time. After drying himself by the fire, feeling its heat one last time, he took the fire apart. He threw the smoldering, burning pieces of wood into the stream where they extinguished with a hiss.
Rafael dressed.
Standing one last moment by his smoldering fire, Rafael found the spent cigarette lighter in the pocket of his jeans. He dropped it on the ashes.
Thinking of Rita and his children and breakfast, Rafael limped up the path broken by discarded things along the stream to Morgantown.
It had been a short summer’s night.
s
“YOU ARE eating so much,” Rita said. “I have never seen you eat so much breakfast.”
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the travel trailer with Lina and Marta, Rafael was eating his third bowl of cereal and water that morning. He had had two cups of condensed milk and water and now was drinking a cup of powdered coffee and water.
From her nearby trailer, Faro’s portable radio was blaring dance music.
With big gestures, Lina was showing how well she could eat her cereal from a bowl with a spoon. Marta was trying to imitate her, but each time her spoon approached her mouth it tipped and her wet cereal fell to her legs or the floor.
Putting aside his own bowl, Rafael scooped Marta into the lap created by his crossed legs. He took her bowl and her spoon and began to feed her. She kept her own fist around the handle of her spoon as Rafael filled it with cereal and guided it to her mouth.
As she ate, Marta looked victoriously at her sister. “You did not take the early bus,” Rita said.
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“I don’t have to be there until eleven,” Rafael said.
“When you did not come home last night…”
“I’m fine.”
When Marta’s bowl was empty but her mouth still full, she pulled her spoon entirely away from Rafael. She began tapping her spoon against her bowl in rhythm to the loud music she heard through the windows and door of the trailer.
Rafael laughed.
Keeping Marta in the diamond of his legs, Rafael reached behind him. He snapped open the doors to the cabinet beneath the dry sink. He pulled out two metal cooking pots. He put one upside down on the floor in front of Lina and one upside down in front of himself.
With his spoon he began drumming the overturned cooking pot in rhythm with the music from Faro’s radio, matching the exact clinking Marta was making with her spoon against her bowl. Marta giggled and began hitting her bowl harder.
With her spoon, Lina hit the pot Rafael had overturned in front of her and the bowl next to it alternately.
Rafael noticed that Marta stopped using her spoon and her bowl for rhythm. Instead she was hitting her bowl in different places with her spoon, each hit producing a different note. She was imitating the melody of the song.
Laughing, Rafael double-timed the rhythm with his spoon and pot. For variation, he double-timed the rhythm against his bowl.
Before leaving the trailer to get Rafael’s clothes from the drying line, Rita stood a moment looking down at her family sitting on the floor, Rafael and Marta and Lina, making this extraordinary noise, attempting rhythms and melodies by hitting spoons against metal cooking pots and cereal bowls, nearly drowning out the music from the radio that had started them off. Now they were making their own melodies and rhythms oblivious of the radio dance music. Lina was giggling. Marta was laughing outright. Rafael was laughing so hard his eyes were wet. Rita shook her head in wonder, and smiled, loving them all so much she felt her heart swell.
When she returned, with Rafael’s new shirt and jeans over her arm, they had stopped their noise.
Both daughters were in the diamond formed by Rafael’s crossed legs. Nuzzling the neck of one, then the other, Rafael hugged both daughters to him tightly.
When Rafael looked up at Rita she saw an expression on his face she was not sure she had ever seen before, on anyone. Lively, his face radiated the greatest love and happiness.
Rita said, “I figure you can wear two pairs of socks in your boots to make it easier on your cutup feet.”
“Okay.”
Gently, Rafael lifted his two daughters off his legs and sat them on the floor.
Before taking his clothes from Rita, Rafael went to the box where Frankie gurgled. Rafael picked the baby up, swung him over his head. He hugged Frankie to his chest and kissed the top of his head.
He hugged the baby only an instant before putting him back on the rags in his cradle box.
Rafael did not turn around when Rita tried to hand him the two pairs of balled grayed white socks. She could not see his face. She dropped the socks on their bed.
The jeans and shirt he put on were a little stiff but they were warm from hanging from the line in the morning sun.
As he pulled on his boots over the two pairs of socks, Rafael said, “Okay.”
“That’ll be easier for you,” Rita said.
“Yes.”
“More comfortable.”
“Thanks.”
In the door of the trailer, Rita hugged Rafael’s neck. “Bye.”
Rafael hugged Rita. He kissed her face. He said, “Remember.”
t
MAMA CALLED through her window to Rafael as he came along the dirt track. “Are you going to work now, Rafael?” “Yes, Mama.” “Are you late?” “No, Mama.”
“I thought when you did not come back you had gone out and gotten drunk last night and you would not know what you were doing this morning. I was afraid you would miss your job.”
“I know what I’m doing this morning, Mama.” “Do well, Rafael.”
Passing the store, Rafael heard people inside but did not look to see who was there.
Walking along the track to the highway’s dump exit where the bus to the city would stop for him, the sun on Rafael’s shoulders, through his new, washed shirt, felt good.
Rafael’s brother, Luis, was coming down the track.
Luis was walking unevenly, as if fighting a strong wind. Some of his steps were to the side; a few were backward. If there had been consistent rhythm to his movements he might have been dancing. At one point, his body rushed to the side, his feet hurrying to stay under his weight.
In his right hand, carried by the neck, was a quart bottle of beer. What beer was left in the bottle was foaming from the heat, from his movements.
Rafael was close to his brother before Luis saw him, recognized him.
It took Luis a moment to focus on Rafael’s face.
“Rafael,” Luis announced. “I am drunk.”
“That’s okay,” Rafael said.
“Very, very drunk.”
“Okay.”
“I wrecked the truck.”
“That’s okay.”
“Totally wrecked the truck.”
“Okay.”
“I got very, very drunk and the truck went off the road and the wheels caught in a ditch and rolled over and over. I totally wrecked it.”
“That’s okay, Luis.”
“I thought you did it. I thought you killed that woman in the liquor store.”
“I didn’t.”
“The presents. The food. The new clothes. The big bottle of vodka.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“What would you have have said?”
“I would have said, Why are you asking me?”
“I’m sorry, bro’..
“That’s okay.”
“Where are you going now?”
“City.”
Standing near the highway in the dirt road to the dump in the bright morning sunlight, Rafael did not have to wait long for the bus.
As the bus climbed the highway along the shoulder of the hill, Rafael looked through the bus window at Morgantown slipping below, behind him. The people were moving around there as they would any other day.
Rafael saw his father going through the gap in the fence into the dump.
Under the top sheet of the bed Rita and he had shared in the travel trailer Rafael had put the bank book, the bank signature card, bus fare to the city, and the contract:
Gregory McDonald, The Brave
