The Memory of Light

by Francisco X. Stork

  We’ve been working in silence for about twenty minutes when I say, “When Pepe said we had to dig twelve holes about three feet deep, I thought we’d be done in a couple of hours. Now I’m thinking a week may not be long enough.”

  “This here’s called caliche,” he says, hitting the ground a couple of times with the post digger. “It’s a sandy, rocky kind of clay. I think this is why people prefer to grow cows around here. The trick is to go slow and steady.”

  Slow and steady. That’s the way E.M. works. There’s a rhythm to the way he moves, and I have the feeling that he can go at that pace all day long before he tires. By the time we finish the first hole, I’m soaked in sweat and my arms feel like wet noodles.

  The hole is beautiful, though. At least it seems that way to me. It is perfectly cylindrical and smooth. E.M. marks three feet on the post with a tape measure, and when we lower it into the hole, the mark on the post is exactly even with the ground. I hold the post straight while E.M. kneels down and carefully places the rocks from his pile around the post. The look on his face is one of pure concentration.

  “Why are you being so careful with the rocks?” I ask almost in a whisper.

  “If you do it the right way, the rainwater will drain through them and the wood won’t rot,” he answers without looking at me.

  When we finish, we stand back for a few moments to admire our work. Then we walk over to the plastic jug of water that Pepe left us. I drink first and then E.M. takes a turn.

  On the way to the next hole, I ask him, “You work in construction, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “You do this kind of thing all day long. Don’t you get tired? Bored?”

  “You complaining?”

  “No. I’m just curious how you do this all day long, day after day.”

  He studies me for a few moments as if that’s the kind of question that only a rich, spoiled girl would ask. “I do it day after day because if I don’t do it, we don’t eat.” His tone is severe, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that he is not being mean. He is simply stating a fact. Then something softens, and he says, “But just because you have to do it, don’t mean you don’t get tired. Bored, too, sometimes. You learn some tricks for not getting bored.”

  “What kind of tricks?”

  “I pay attention to what I’m doing. I focus on doing it as good as I can. That usually keeps me from getting bored.”

  “I did that,” I say, remembering. “In the laundry room in Lakeview. I liked to concentrate real hard on folding sheets. But I only did it for three hours with breaks, not eight hours a day, five days a week like the rest of the girls. And even then, I could only concentrate for about an hour.”

  He takes the post digger, lifts it, and brings it down on the dirt. He scoops up a handful of sand and rock and strikes again and again, slowly, methodically, his eyes focused softly, without anger or impatience, on the hole he’s attempting to dig. I have the feeling that he’s showing me how to pay attention, rather than telling me how to do it.

  When it’s my turn, I try to work with concentration as well. I try not to hurry or think about getting the job over with. Instead of getting frustrated by the rocks, I dig gently around them. When I finish, I notice that my pile of dirt and rocks is bigger than it was when I was attacking the hole mindlessly.

  After we finish the fourth hole, E.M. grabs the water jug and points to a small tree a few yards away. We sit in a small patch of shade. I take off my gloves and begin to peel one of the blisters.

  “You like to work,” he says. There’s a hint of surprise and admiration in his words, or so I choose to hear.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I like this type of work.”

  “What type is that?”

  “Manual work.” I pause, and then add, “I’m not so good with work that requires me to think, like schoolwork. My mind goes kind of blank when I have to think under pressure.”

  He considers this for a few moments. “So you want to dig ditches when you grow up.” Then he adds with a knowing smile, “If you grow up.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “if.” Our eyes meet and I look quickly away. “Tell me more about Huichi,” I say to change the subject.

  He shrugs. “I only just started thinking about him.”

  “Why? I mean, how did you start thinking about him?”

  “One day I was carrying boxes of books people donated up to the third floor in Lakeview for that little library they got, and I saw this book about the Aztecs on top of one of the boxes. It was a kid’s book with lots of pictures. On the cover, it had an Aztec warrior with a jaguar head dancing. That night when I read the book … it just came to me that I wanted to be like Huitzilopochtli — even if he was someone I mostly made up.”

  “So you believe in Huichi?”

  “I told you, I don’t believe like the guy is real or out there someplace. I imagine what he’s like and try to be like him.”

  “He’s brave.”

  “Yeah. Huichi is about being brave. About not being defeated by anybody or anything. Rising up every day and doing what you gotta do. Shining your light so that people and things around you can live. The fight is hard, else you wouldn’t need to be brave. It’s all caliche, so what’s the use whining about it? The rocks are everywhere. You have to dig around them without getting pissed at them. I expect the rocks to be there. Sometimes I think they’re put there on purpose so I can learn not to be angry about them.” He stops. He seems embarrassed to be talking so much.

  “You’ve really thought about this a lot,” I say.

  “I never used to think about stuff like this. But … here and at the hospital, I think about things I never thought before. Besides, I got Gabriel for a roommate, remember?”

  “Yeah,” I agree, smiling. “That would do it.”

  He picks up a pebble, examines it, tosses it away. “Did Dr. Desai ever tell you the story about the elephant and the stick?”

  “No. She told me a story about monkeys once.”

  “This old man in India owned this elephant …”

  “Lady Chatterley,” I say, remembering.

  “Yeah. That was the name. Anyway, this old man, Mr. Mariachi …”

  “Mr. Karamachi,” I correct him.

  “Thought you said you didn’t know this story.”

  “He’s the same old man in my story … with the monkeys. Your story is different.”

  “So, anyway, this Mr. Mariachi used to rent Lady Charlie out for weddings and things. But it was a problem, because when the elephant walked through the streets, she would steal stuff from the stalls, like bananas and coconuts. She’d swing her trunk out there and grab stuff and the owners would get mad and Mr. Mariachi had to pay for the fruit … What? Why are you laughing? I’m talking to you serious.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, erasing my smile as best I can. I tell myself not to think of Mr. Karamachi dressed in a charro outfit.

  “So Mr. Mariachi came up with this idea of giving Lady Charlie a bamboo stick to hold in her trunk, and to raise it up in the air when she walked like it was something special. So that solved the problem.”

  I wait a few moments. He’s trying to tell me something that is important to him, but I don’t know exactly what. “So …”

  “So I didn’t know why Dr. Desai told me that story. She just said to think about it. So first I thought she was trying to tell me that I needed to have a stick, something to think about when I started to get angry, something different from whatever was making me angry, so I wouldn’t lose my temper. But then I found that book about the Aztecs, and it came to me that the bamboo stick was more than just a way to keep me from getting angry. The stick is like a picture of who I want to be. Huichi is my bamboo stick. We all need one like that to hold on to.”

  A ladybug is crawling on his pants. He watches it for a few seconds and then puts his finger in front of it. The ladybug climbs on his finger and then takes flight. “You got an image of who you want to be?” he asks.

/>   “No,” I say. I feel a sad kind of emptiness at that answer. Then the image of my mother comes to me. When my mother was ill, I watched her fight for life until the very end — or almost the very end. The last month, her life was filled more with acceptance and peace than with fight. I believed she was right to fight and I believed she was right to accept the inevitable. Can I be like her in her fight and her acceptance?

  E.M. leaves me alone with my thoughts for a few minutes and then he stands. It’s time to go back to work. As we are walking to the next post, he says, “Lots of people spend their lives digging holes, or mowing lawns, or folding sheets.”

  “Yeah.”

  He goes on, “Maybe there are jobs out there where people enjoy what they’re doing, but those jobs have their boring moments as well. Do you know people who love their jobs every single minute of the day all their lives?”

  “My father,” I say, without thinking.

  “That a fact?”

  “I’ve never heard him complain about his work. He loves wheeling and dealing and making money. My stepmother is that way too. They like what they do. Or at least they need to keep busy. They would end up on the fifth floor of Lakeview if they didn’t have work.”

  He laughs. I don’t know why I feel something like pride in myself whenever I get E.M. to laugh. I wonder if I can put that in a college application. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess I’d go crazy too if I didn’t work.”

  “You dropped out of school to work?”

  “Made it all the way to the eighth grade. Then I had to work. I wasn’t much for school anyway. But …”

  “But …”

  “I like carpentry, and for some carpentry jobs, you need a high school diploma.”

  “Maybe in the future you can find a way to go back to school,” I say.

  He stops and looks at me and there’s a flash of anger in his eyes. “You shouldn’t talk to people about the future if you don’t believe in one for yourself.”

  Then he speeds up and grabs the post digger, leaving me behind.

  When Pepe comes to get us two hours later, the twelve holes have been dug and the posts are solidly in the ground. Tomorrow E.M. and Pepe will string the posts with new barbed wire and remove the old section of the fence. I look at our work with pride one last time as we drive back to the house.

  During lunch, Gabriel suggests a trip to the river, but the blue skies turn suddenly dark, and then the rain comes. The river trip is postponed until tomorrow and we spend the rest of the afternoon reading. Mona sits with a romance novel, the cell phone by her side. Every few minutes she checks to see if a text has come in or if she has missed a call, even though the polka ringtone she chose can probably be heard by the horses grazing in the north pasture. Other times she stands up, looks at the deluge outside, and sighs. Whenever I ask if something is wrong, she says she’s fine and then changes the subject.

  Seeing her like this, so restless, so unable to be in her skin, makes me think about the conversation I had with E.M. earlier. There is something about the future and hope that is a mystery to me. People say you need hope to live, but hope also makes things worse. Lucy is Mona’s hope. The loss of that hope made her try to take her life. Ever since Rudy told her he could help her find Lucy, here is Mona, miserable, no longer satisfied with her present circumstances, anxious about not getting what she hopes for.

  I can’t think of anything to hope for. When I try to think about the future, I run into a dark, thick, impenetrable wall. Am I better off than Mona? I don’t know. What’s better? To hurt from your wants or to be so dead inside that you don’t want anything? I don’t want anything. I don’t even want to die, I suddenly realize — so maybe that’s something.

  The next morning, Gabriel and I set about creating a rose garden. The soil in the front of Dr. Desai’s house, where the garden is to go, is not quite as rocky as it was in the north pasture. Gabriel and I work mostly in silence. At one point, as I’m patiently digging around a rock with a hand trowel, I notice him looking at me and smiling.

  “What?” I say. “Never seen someone work?”

  “You learned a few things from working with E.M. yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “I learned not to ask silly questions,” I say, trying not to smile.

  That afternoon we finally are able to walk to the river. It’s just Gabriel and me. E.M. decides to go target shooting with Pepe. Mona says she has cramps and wants to lie down, but I think it’s the fear of a lack of a cell phone signal by the river that keeps her from coming with us.

  Gabriel is waiting for me on the front porch of his house. He comes down the wooden steps with the dogs beside him, clamoring for his attention.

  “You made some new friends,” I say.

  “I love dogs,” he says. “I’ve tried to get my grandpa to get us one ever since my mother died, but he’s always said that he can only take care of one wild creature at a time.” He laughs. “Do you have a dog?”

  “A cat. His name is Galileo.” I instinctively raise my hand to my chest. Galileo’s scratches are still there.

  “Wow! Look at that.” Gabriel stops in front of the corral where the brown horse is penned. When I look at it more carefully, I realize the horse is actually a mixture of red, gold, and brown.

  “What color would you say he is?” I ask.

  “She,” Gabriel corrects me. “That there is a bay horse.” He climbs the lower rung of the fence and motions for me to climb up next to him, then begins to make a clicking sound with his tongue. The horse twists her head as if she were somewhat interested and then slowly and cautiously begins to approach, shaking her head as if to convince herself that it’s a bad idea. When she’s just within reach, she lowers her head in front of me. “She wants you to touch her,” Gabriel says.

  “Me?”

  “She’s shy. She’d prefer it if a girl touched her. Go ahead. Rub her right between the eyes. They like it when your touch is firm.”

  I hesitate for a second, and then I touch the horse with the tips of my fingers. As soon as I do that, the horse neighs and trots away.

  “How did it feel?” Gabriel’s eyes are filled with curiosity.

  “It was soft but strong. I’ve never touched a horse before.” A memory comes to me.

  “What did you just think of?” Gabriel asks.

  “Why?”

  “A shadow came over your face.”

  “I thought about the time I quit debate. When I told my father, I expected him to be angry at me, but all he said was ‘You can’t ask a mule to be a racehorse.’”

  Gabriel’s face turns serious, as if he’s weighing the import of what I just said. He stoops to pet Cleo. Julius has gone off someplace.

  We walk in silence. Ahead to our left we see a large fenced-in area with only a few trees. Four horses and two cows munch grass in the shade. To our right we can see a dirt path that leads to a formation of rocks in the distance. We take the path, and for a moment I’m reminded of the walk up the mountain that Jaime and I took, only I don’t feel any of the apprehension I felt then. Gabriel picks up a broken branch and throws it for Cleo to fetch. After a while I say, “Last night, after everyone went to their cabins, I went to the main house to get Mona a glass of warm milk. There you were in the den, writing away in the notebook that Dr. Desai gave us.”

  “Why didn’t you come up and say something?”

  “You looked like you were so into what you were writing. I was afraid to disturb you.”

  “Seeing you write in your journal inspired me.”

  “You’ve been writing for a lot longer than you’ve known me,” I say. “I saw the notebooks in your room. Remember?”

  “Oh, those. I probably should have gotten rid of those when I got rid of my books. But the voice wasn’t specific about that. He said books. So I kept the notebooks…. What? You just shook your head disapprovingly.”

  “I’m sorry, it just doesn’t make sense to me why your voice, or anyone for that matter, would want you to get rid
of your books.”

  “I liked them too much. That’s all I can think of. I was spending all my money on books. One time, Margarita — you met her. She wanted to borrow a book she saw when she was cleaning my room. It was one of my favorites, Saint Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton. And when she asked me about it, I had these really selfish thoughts that she was not smart enough or educated enough to understand the book. And then I felt possessive, greedy, like a two-year-old who doesn’t want to share a toy — a toy he’s not even playing with at the time. It was ugly.”

  “And you say I’m hard on myself!”

  “Really, you think I’m hard on myself?” He sounds surprised.

  “Duh, as Mona would say. Those kinds of thoughts come to all of us.”

  Cleo finally brings Gabriel the stick. He wiggles it out of the dog’s mouth and tosses it. Cleo goes after it.

  “So what did you do?” I ask.

  “Mmm?”

  “Did you lend Margarita the book?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then, that’s all that matters, that you didn’t let the selfish thoughts stop you. Who cares what happens inside your head? It’s what you do that counts, as E.M. says.”

  Gabriel looks up. “A storm is coming.” I follow his gaze and see several black clouds coming together to form one dark mass.

  “Maybe we should head back,” I say.

  He studies the clouds. “We have time. Let’s take a look at the river. It has to be over by those rocks and trees. Come on!” He starts to run.

  “I’m wearing flip-flops!” I yell at him.