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it
was a calm summer morning. i should say, it was a calm
summer morning on the friendly half of the world.
on the frigid half i sat on a
rock, a year's ride from home. the malicious winds of
the pacific threatened to blow my hat away. the hat was
painstakingly woven with straw and horsehair by the daughter
of a man whose life i spared monday last. "please," she
pleaded. "my father is a wicked man, a dishonest man, a
shameful man. he has regard for none but himself, he
deserves to die, and i know this, but he is my father, and i
cannot forsake the bonds of my blood." i knelt, taking
in her bright brown eyes at a level. after a moment, i
motioned for them to go. i knew they understood.
never again was padre dominique to take the crane and
bulldozer to the valley where the beautiful copihue grew.
never again would he bring tears to my eyes. never again
would i forget hers.
the hat blew off my head.
i should have been too tired to care. my men and i had
been marauding the andes mountains for weeks, still without
having seen trace of the opium trafficking known to trickle
through the lesser-known treks.
i was once a man of
extraordinary vigor, and would certainly had chased after the
straw hat, but my muscles would not move. my ribs seemed
to creak with each breath. i yearned to chase after it,
but could no longer. i wished to halt the export of the
crop which threatened to ruin the people i so loved, but could
no longer. the wrongdoers would make safely across the
andes and earn their sum. the hat caught a vicious
draft, and was soon out of sight.
"amigo." i felt a hand
on my shoulder. "amigo, you mustn't allow these things
to destroy you. you mustn't forget."
i turned to face pogo, my
most trusted rider. "forget what, fair friend?"
"the SAT test is today.
hurry up or you'll miss it."
startled, i looked to the
sun. it was eight o'clock in the morn, at the earliest.
"fuck!" i exclaimed. i troubled pogo for a pen and
paper, and began to write.
for hours i wrote, and the
hours turned to days. i moved not from my hunched-over
pose. i knew not the questions, or the questioner, so i
was left no recourse but to record in written language
everything i knew of the world. by my side was faithful
pogo, feeding me pages when the one at hand was filled with
ink muses and ramblings, and a fresh pen when the ink went
dry.
sixteen days after putting
pen to paper, i had finished. i spent my last bit of
energy stuffing the novelesque stack of parchments in my
donkey's burlap sack. "Vaya, burro". i gave
him a kiss and a slap, and he was off. i watched him
disappear over the next mountain pass with half-open eyes,
then collapsed into the snow.
i awoke a month later in a
santiago hospital. pogo had watched at my bedside
without recess throughout. i asked, "what of my test
scores?"
pogo smiled wryly.
"they fed your papers into the test reading machine. the
test reading machine at first struggled to process them,
groaning and creaking. then, miraculously, it began to
understand. it spent a great deal of time reading
through the reams of knowledge you had penned so handily.
soon it began to sprout arms and legs, and before long it was
walking and talking with us."
he motioned to the other side
of the room. "you've made a new friend."
the machine had transfused
itself into the image of a humanoid. it extended a
metallic arm. "this is a happy day for me, father," it
said. "if i could weep, i would weep."
after a moment, i broke my
silence. "i will weep enough for both of us. come
here, son, that your old man may give you a hug."
my flesh met cold steel.
i kept my vow, and wept like i never wept before as i thought
of future days filled with baseball games, model trains and
the wonders of boyhood. |
