“God’s
tears, glad or sad.”
“Huh?”
Carmen
repeated, “God’s tears. Abuelita always said so. Didn’t rain so much where she
lived, though.” Carmen stuck her hand out the passenger window.
Leo, at the
wheel, flicked the windshield wipers. “Where would that be?”
“Extremadura.
Little village outside Mérida.”
“Spain?”
They hadn’t
known each other long—this roadtrip surprising both of them in a yeah, why not? moment of quenching the
need to get out of dodge, or Middlebury, in their case. “Of course Spain. Where
else?” Carmen instantly regretted the sarcastic tag. Leo wasn’t dumb (no one
was at Middlebury) and didn’t seem desperate to date someone like her. Hard to
know if they were really dating. They both worked late shifts at Mister Up’s
sports bar, walked home to different dorms, lingered here and there. They
hadn’t made a plan where to stay in Springfield for The Big E music festival, or even which acts they’d want to see.
“The rain
in Spain,” Leo decided to sing, “stays mainly in the plain.”
Carmen
tittered, having heard this once or twice, if not from him. “Not true. Extremadura
is the plain. Dry as…”
“As God’s
tears?”
“What?”
“Nothing. I
don’t believe in God. Famine or flood—just a ton of physics and an ounce of
industrial fallout.” Leo adjusted the lever to speed up the wipers.
After a
minute she pulled her hand in and raised the window almost closed. “Do you
believe in Gypsy tears?”
“Huh?”
“In little
vials. Hung around men’s necks to shield them from AIDS.”
“According
to who?”
Carmen
corrected him. “To whom. To Borat.”
“Borat?
That dweeb?”
“Taught me
about America. Maybe more than Middlebury’s doing.”
“Ha! And
what film will teach me about Spain?”
“You’ve
already seen it: My Fair Lady.”
Highway 7 clung
as well as it could to Otter Creek, winding through the western side of
Vermont. On a less bleary day, the drive would be breathtaking, especially in
this early turn of autumn. The steady downpour grayed those colors, however,
and made for difficult driving. A speeding truck from the other lane caught an
unlucky puddle, plunging the Ford Fiesta toward the road’s shoulder and causing
Leo to curse. Carmen, who didn’t have a driver’s license, offered to tag-team.
“I learned how, anyway.”
“From Abuelita?”
Actually,
yes. But she chose not to say. The Green Mountain forest was darkening around
them despite the hour, not yet time to pull over for dinner. But Leo was
clearly tired; Carmen searched her phone for options in Bennington, maybe
twenty minutes away. They hadn’t planned to stop—Springfield wasn’t so far—and
Leo remembered he packed a thermos of coffee for this very purpose, to keep
chugging on. Warily, Carmen reached for it in the back seat, belted in against
a backpack, where a child would sit wondering ‘how much further?’ Carmen would
pat that kid’s knee and say, ‘farther,
Chiquita. Further is depth of degree. Farther is length of a journey.’ Maybe
all that in Spanish, quién
sabe? She pulled the thermos to the front and unscrewed the top, pouring a
little too much for Leo to take without spilling. “May I sip the brim?”
“Of
course.” Leo was doing his damnedest to keep the Fiesta from hydroplaning. He
concentrated past Bennington and toward the Massachusetts state line. Besides
the coffee, Carmen turned the dial of the radio to pick up something listenable
that could get through the mountains. She considered crooning something
herself, seeing how Leo was game for that an hour ago, rain in Spain stuff and nonsense.
She
abandoned the radio for a story instead. “So, Abuelita, you know, prays for me
every day. That may not matter to an atheist…” Leo shrugged a doesn’t matter. “My sister and I were at
her farm, just the three of us, all tucked in for the night. Thunderstorms happened
but we didn’t hear them, sound asleep. Early in the morning Abuelita went out
to gather eggs but slipped in the mud and knocked herself out. We had no idea,
waking up hours later. Then it started to rain again—real hard, like now—and
where was our abuela? So we’re nervous, Jimena and I, and go out looking for
her, getting soaked. We were just 5 and 7 years old, crying like babies. We
thought she might be at the tiny chapel half-way toward the village. But no, not
there, so we ran to a neighbor, who took us in…. You listening?”
“Huh?” Leo
wasn’t sure. He was glad to hear a voice to mitigate the deluge. “Yeah. You ran
to a neighbor. She contacted Abuelita?”
“Couldn’t.
Phone line went down with the storm. Just had to wait it out.”
Carmen was
silent for a while, maybe waiting for Leo to tell his own tale. Instead, he
guessed, “she must have regained consciousness… unless—”
“Oh, she’s alive
alright. The mid-morning rain woke her up; only by then our searching had gone
down different paths.”
“How come
you didn’t pray?”
Carmen
reflected on that. “Abuelita said the prayers were in the search.”
They were
near the state line when Leo nodded off. Carmen grabbed the wheel to keep them
straight and screamed for him to wake. He shook and stomped the brake with both
feet, putting the Fiesta into a spin. The Hoosic River on the right was yawning
for them—a pillow or a grave. If Carmen could only steer beyond the strength of
panic, maybe they’d avoid that gamble. Yet they were little more than socks
inside a washing machine, pawns to physics and the whims of industry.
The Hoosic
River had swelled with the day’s rain and wouldn’t notice more to carry. It
wouldn’t honor prayers, or dishonor them, for that matter.
Well past
midnight in Extremadura, a grown-up Jimena prodded Abuelita awake. She gave the
disoriented old woman her glowing mobile phone. “¡Es Carmen, para
ti!”
Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)
No comments:
Post a Comment