"How long have you known that Rafael was married," Elena asked.
"I don't remember," I answered. "You know the dreams don't come in exact sequence. For all I know they were married only a short time anyway." A bold-faced lie, but if it smoothed over this unfortunate confession of mine, worth every word. "The important part is that I saw the carving. I touched it. It was as real as the tin can in your hand. That means so is Rafael. Elena, I'm not insane."
"I never thought you were," my dear friend replied, a smile in her voice.
"Thank you."
"What about the other guy? Mr. Detective."
"He's a very knowledgeable tour guide," I said.
"That's it?" Elena seemed disappointed.
"Well…he did kiss me."
"Did he now? And how was it?"
A sigh snuck ahead of my reply through the phone. "I closed my eyes and saw Rafael," I confessed.
"Given the circumstances, I suppose that's forgivable," Elena said. "You didn't call him that, did you?"
"Heavens, no!" I cringed at the thought of what that would have done to Valentín's boyish grin and his male ego.
"Any chance you will see him again?"
"Probably," I said. "He gave me his card with every phone number under which I can possibly reach him. I promised to call him in a day or two."
"Good," Elena said, satisfied. "Mel, I know you went to the island to find Rafael, but while you're looking…do allow yourself to enjoy time with this detective as well."
A polite way of saying, if you don't find Rafael, maybe it's time to let him go. I could barely process the thought before every fiber of my being decried the possibility of replacing him with Valentín. There was no room yet to let anyone else in. I knew I had to get closer to Rafael first, impossible as that sounded. But here…on the island where he lived…it appeared within my reach, within my abilities to make that happen. I couldn't say that to Elena. Despite all I had told her over the years, she was on the outside of this, only seeing whatever I allowed her to see.
"No worries," I said, exuding as much sunshine as I could muster. "Valentín's a nice guy, so I'm sure I'll enjoy spending time with him."
We said our good-byes and I promised Elena to check my watch next time before making any more phone calls, although I knew she'd pick up and talk to me or listen no matter when I needed her.
I slid down on the bed, staring at the faint illumination the patio lamp squeezed past the blinds. Even closing my eyes and picturing everything in darkest black didn't work. I couldn't sleep.
I stared into the grayish darkness. On one hand it would have been nice to see Rafael tonight, to look at him with different eyes, now that I had seen proof of his actual existence. On the other, I could feel suspiciously high levels of adrenaline flowing – no doubt the culprit that caused the insomnia. The chemical spread the more I found myself grappling with the change in my head that was taking place. A change that had begun when the primal noises shook loose inside of me. Then the change kept steadily growing while I was on the phone with Elena. Now that no conversation was distracting me anymore, I gave myself up completely to this new feeling, although I wasn't exactly sure yet if it really was a giant leap forward in my relationship with Rafael – such as it was – or the final step over the line into madness.
My feelings for Rafael had always been there, I began to analyze in earnest. From the first time I'd seen him. They were definitely driven by my heart and although they technically flowed through my head, they had never really been anything other than highly romantic emotions.
Today's discovery changed all of that. True, it was an old fossilized tree, more generations old than I cared to count. But it made Rafael tangible in a way he never had been before. And with that newfound tangibility, I was beginning to feel more like a private detective than just a romantic lunatic. No doubt the island held more clues. And I was going to find them. If ever there was a time in my life when I was supposed to know why the man of my dreams – literally – was in them so intensely that I knew with every molecule that made up who I was that he existed, then this had to be the time for me to figure it all out once and for all. This wasn't just his story or just mine, it was ours. And regardless if Luz was stuck somewhere in the middle of it, we had a beginning together and there had to be an end that was made up of us. Of that I was convinced now.
I laughed to myself. If ever there was a Mission: Impossible scenario out there, this had to be it. "But I'm willing to accept it," I said out loud. A verbal signature on the contract my suddenly very heavy and tired body parts made with my tangled nerves, raw emotions and overly active brain cells. Thankfully the latter were slowly running out of adrenaline. Perhaps because of knowing what lay ahead of us, they bade the dreams to stay at bay for one quiet night.
Chapter 8
When I finally woke up, it wasn't because of the bright morning sun, but my stomach hinting with a not so subtle grunt that I owed it a meal.
"It'll be my pleasure," I mumbled, hurrying through a shower and heading out into the city. To make sure I wouldn't accidentally run into Valentín, I bypassed the little eatery he'd introduced me to and went instead a few blocks over to a restaurant whose airy patio was pressed into the shadow of a two-story building.
"You should try some local food," the waiter said with a grin as he placed a Greek salad in front of me.
"I should," I agreed. "But mid-day seems just too hot for delicacies that all seem to require a cup of oil being poured into a frying pan."
He leaned down, winking at me conspiratorially. "Ah, but that's what makes them taste so good."
Couldn't argue there. Fat and sugar generally had that magic ability. While I chased the last olive and cucumber slice with another glass of ice water, I pondered what to do next in my quest to bridge the gap between Rafael and myself. San Juan Cathedral came to mind, and just as quickly as it did, I tried shoving it back into the dark abyss of my cranial folds.
"No!" I huffed, angry at the persistent nagging that made it hard to think of other search options. Frustrated with my in-fighting self, I marched back to the hotel and readied myself for the pool as if it were the reason I had come. Yet even swimming until my arms hurt didn't make the cathedral's pulling go away. Why could I not just go? The mere thought pushed my lungs together until it was hard to breathe, and I threw myself soaking wet onto a sunbed. Maybe the sun could just bake my head until I could think of a different tack to take…
Everything was unusually still and oppressive. Not a leaf was moving. Nervous mooing could be heard a few houses over, and the chickens were too twitchy to concentrate on laying eggs, instead dashing back and forth, staring suspiciously into the distant flickering air.
Rafael spread some hay out for his and Manuel's cow. Despite their disinterest, he also flung a handful of feed in a semi-circle toward the chickens.
"It's hot," I said. "Let's go back inside."
We headed back into the shade of the house where Manuel was working on a pair of Spanish-style hoop earrings.
"They're beautiful." I leaned over Rafael, who had pulled up a chair.
His hand ever so steady, Manuel dropped small golden beads into the still warm framework of the earring. He inserted a fan of delicate gold posts along the upswung inner edge of the hoop, as though it were sitting on a swing. A small emerald was then inserted to crown the fan.
"Where did you get the emeralds?" Rafael asked.
"The General had them brought on last month's ship," his father replied. "He ordered the earrings as a gift for his wife's birthday."
"She'll love them," Rafael stated, his conviction eliciting a smile from his father.
"So far they've been very happy with my work. Speaking of which, how is the bracelet coming along that I asked you to work on?"
Rafael rose and drew a cloth from a wooden box. With great care, he unfolded it.
"Oh, Rafael, this is amazing." I leaned down to get a closer look. The bracelet was made of indivi
dual links, flat on the bottom with a rounded top, each piece hollow on the inside and closed off with flat, polished silver on the sides. Two designs alternated, one a carefully hammered X , the other two individually engraved squares. The spaces in and around the X and squares were filled with miniscule drizzles of string-thin silver. The closure was a pin on a separate chain that was inserted into a silver shaft. Manuel turned the piece over carefully in his hand, inspecting it from every angle.
"Very nice work," he finally said. "Very nice indeed."
An unexpected gust of wind slammed the open door against the building, and we all jerked around as two of the chickens scurried inside, wings flapping as they cackled. Rafael got up to shoo them back out, but then he just stood in the open door, staring intently toward the horizon.
"Papá, hura." Since Guey's death, Rafael didn't speak much Taíno anymore, but some of the native words had made it even into the Spaniards' vocabulary. Hura meant wind. On very bad days, it was the kind of wind that carried a deceptively quiet center – ca'n – before unleashing its even more furious back end. Huraca'n.
Manuel and I both joined Rafael by the door to scan the horizon with him, and we weren't alone. The Baluarte home was on the outskirts of the future San Juan, but still close enough to the others that we now became aware of the activity taking place around us. Men were latching heavy wooden shutters down in front of their window openings. Some hurried their small amount of livestock into inside patios.
"Huraca'n?" Rafael looked at his father, who nodded grimly.
"Let's bundle up the tools and jewelry," Manuel told his son. "Then get the chickens."
"And the cow?"
Manuel shook his head. "Just untie her. If she gets tossed about in here, she can crush us."
Torn between staying close to Rafael and being more useful than just gawking at him, I ran outside and began shooing the spooked chickens into the house. When I glanced over my shoulder, menacing clouds already hung low over the side where the main island came closest to the smaller one that Puerto Rico, the humble beginnings of San Juan, occupied. Trees were leaning awkwardly as bands of hura whipped over them. I had to sprint to make it back inside the house before Rafael shut the door, securing it with a wooden board placed across two cast-iron brackets.
"The storm is coming fast," I said to Rafael who was busy gathering their most precious belongings together. "You need to hide."
Manuel lit an oil lamp so they could continue to gather their belongings in two large blankets, which they threw into the corner by the stone stove.
Rafael slipped the rewrapped bracelet into his shirt, just as he watched his father do the same with the pouch that held the General's wife's earrings.
A gust of wind flung a forgotten stoneware pot against the front of the house, sending me a foot into the air. The roof creaked, and standing in the middle of the room no longer seemed like a good idea.
"Get into the corner," Manuel ordered. "Behind the blankets." I followed suit as Rafael and his father pressed themselves into the corner between wall and stove, piling their gathered belongings in front of them. Two of the chickens hopped on top of the blankets, looking confused. One of them lost its footing and slipped between Rafael and Manuel's feet. Perhaps it realized that this was the safest place to be as it didn't flap its wings, but remained there.
That was the last thing I saw before Manuel blew out the lamp and we were engulfed in darkness. Angry noises tugged and ripped at the roof beams. With a snapping cry, a window shutter ceded to the relentless wind. If daylight tried to slip past the snarling storm, it failed miserably.
"What the…!" Rafael stared up, wiping away the first hard drops of rain that exchanged places with the weakened roof beams.
"It's not going to hold much longer," Manuel said, wrapping his arm around his son's shoulders. True to his prediction, it wasn't long before the rain no longer came into the house in single, fat drops, but instead in steady streams as the hurricane swept in violent waves across town.
As the winds reloaded, Rafael tied his wet hair back with his shirt string. "The walls are stone," he said. "They'll hold."
"They've been pounded by a lot of water," Manuel replied. "No telling when things will turn muddy and give."
"But it's quieting down."
"It's the eye," Manual said. "Ca'n. Just pull our things closer and sit tight."
I too wanted to believe that the worst had past, but no matter how much both Rafael and I wished it, we were wrong. The storm's tail end brought with it visions of a severely ticked off dragon lashing out with all of its angry force as it tossed its spiny backside around, mowing down whatever stood in its way.
There was nothing left in the Baluarte home that wasn't soaked completely through. Worse still was that with the roof completely gone, the winds began to spin in circles through the interior, licking at everything that wasn't secured. Manuel's work bench screeched toward the wall, the wind reaching under its belly.
"Duck," I cried, the three of us just below the spot where the bench converted into useless splintered wood bits.
Manuel's hands were slick from the rain, straining against the hungry hurricane reaching for the bundled blanket. Rafael tried safeguarding the other, but with the chicken at his feet no longer calm, but desperately fluttering, it was impossible to fight the dragon tail.
"Let it go," Manuel yelled. "I need you to help me hang on to this bundle. We can't save them both."
The chicken spotted its chance for a misguided escape, digging its claws into Manuel's stomach and ripping his shirt open. He cried out, instinctively swatting the fowl out of the way. The wind seemed to have anticipated his move, pulling so hard at the blanket that both Manuel and Rafael had to dig their feet in to keep the last of their belongings from being sucked into oblivion.
Another gust sucked the frightened chicken through the few remaining roof beams. The door brackets groaned and strained, surrendering to the hurricane's next furious wave. With the rain pounding the house from all sides, pieces of the wall began to crumble. An especially strong gust fought hard against Manuel's grip on the blanket. Rafael's bundle had become instant fodder for the wind, shattering their belongings against the remains of the wall. Manuel twisted to renew his hold on the few things they had left, but the move sent the pouch with the earrings from the security of his torn shirt.
"No!" Rafael released his hold on the blanket, throwing himself forward and grasping the pouch before another burst of wind would sweep it away forever.
It was as if the storm had heard his cry, coming toward the crumbling homestead with another furious growl.
"Get back here!" Manuel reached for his son's shirt, but I feared it wouldn't be enough without someone blocking the wind.
"The earrings aren't worth your life," I screamed at him. I threw myself into the path of the wind, allowing Manuel the split second he needed to pull his son against him into the stove corner.
I scrambled back and all three of us sat pressed up against the small protective pocket. In the faint sunlight that now and then started to peek around the dragon tail I saw Rafael clutching the pouch in his hand. Manuel wrapped his son against his chest with every ounce of strength that remained in his body, and although Rafael was no longer a small child, but a fully grown teenager, he wrapped his arm tightly around his father as well.
It was disheartening watching the hurricane take inventory, even as the bands of wind started swinging by in weaker and weaker circles. When there was nothing left for the winds to feed on but regurgitated bits and pieces, it had enough of the settlement, continuing its path across the Atlantic in search of more fuel.
Manuel groaned as he loosened his grip on his son, trying to stretch muscles that had been squished into a tight corner for the past few hours. "You okay, son?"
Rafael nodded, getting up onto his feet. I rose and surveyed the damage along with the two men.
The thick brick stove and back wall had made it almost unscathed through
the storm, but that was about it, except for one chicken which had fluttered into the stove's opening, pressing its trembling body against the back where Rafael was now peeling it off against its will. Even with soot and ashes on it, it looked better than the others that lay battered and bloody wherever the wind had smashed them. They were only the beginning of an afternoon full of tears and pained sobs from those who survived for those who hadn't. And the number was considerable, among humans as well as livestock.
"These will bring in some money so we can start over," Rafael said as he uncurled his fingers and revealed the saved pouch.
Manuel smiled weakly as he took it, pulling his son close and planting a kiss on his head. "It'll help. Let's split up and see if the others are alright."
I went with Rafael as he explored the length of the settlement. It was hard to know where to look first or assist as every building that was left standing was severely damaged and many had been destroyed completely.
"Here Father, let me help you with that."
I turned to see who Rafael was talking to, having to pick up the pace as he rushed over to a priest. The man, bent by a lifetime of service, stood by what had been a small thatched roof church with wooden walls. He struggled to lift a carved door. Pressing the bottom edge of the piece against the priest's feet, Rafael pushed the upper part until they got it to lean against a pile of what used to be pews.
"Thank you, Rafael." The priest wiped his forehead without realizing that a bloody scratch ran sideways across it. "If there is anything left to rescue here, it will just be things. Go on and find people who need help. I will be along shortly to tend to them. I think I saw my scriptures tumble to the ground underneath this door, so I just want to take a look." He examined his knotted hands. "Praised be God that the church was empty."
"Let me," Rafael said, dropping to his knees where the door had been lifted away. He crawled among the heap of roof thatching and pew and wall splinters.
Marion E Currier Page 6