“I forgive you, Chuck. I’m sorry for punching you in the stomach, I was just a little bit overwhelmed by the situation. I understand that you’re trying to look out for my best interest, but Jose is still my good friend.” Damen’s eyes were still watery, his undefined, unspecified, and variable tears, or water that surfaced from out of his eyes, revealed themselves again to Chuck’s sight.
“So, what is it that you have to retrieve for Jose?”
“A script.” Damen then looked at the bloodstain he had on his tuxedo once again, reminiscing that moment when Jose’s life was altered by a bullet, soaring from the heavens, dominating the air, and heading directly toward him.
“Oh, is that all?”
“Yes.” Damen stared at Jose’s Oscar trophy and began crying, with tears falling out of his eyes in slow motion, like they were apprehensive to plummet on his flesh, frightened to graze the air, this distant milieu.
Chuck watched Damen’s tears falling down his face, and smiled toward them. “Damen, you’re crying again.”
“No, it’s because I have something in my eye. It’s not real tears. Even when I was crying a little bit ago, those tears weren’t real, it was because I felt a pain in my eyes, or even if it was tears, they were only tears from all this fuckin’ stress.” Damen turned to Chuck, wanting him to take away his pain, yearning for him to answer all the questions that are confusing to his mind’s thoughts. “Chuck, how ... did I get here? How did I get in this position?”
“Well, it’s up to you to answer that.” Chuck got up to use the bathroom a third time, leaving Damen there alone to think about his words.
“You know, Chuck, we’re going to have to take a taxi or something, because there isn’t an airport by Ridge Crest,” he yelled so Chuck could hear him from the bathroom.
“No, there’s an airport, I asked the pilot a little bit ago, he said they just built one a year ago.” Chuck flushed the toilet and watched the blue water swirl around in a circle, and then he exited the bathroom.
“We’ll be landing in about two minutes,” the pilot announced over the intercom with Damen looking out the window of the plane. He looked at the photo of Jose, him, and Darell and began feeling a cold breeze rush against his spine. As he looked out the window, the bright blue clouds, reflecting the moon’s light, vanished from the darkened skies, and in his sight came Sugar Valley.
The moon lay its light on the Valley while Damen looked at “Sugar” and how its circular design formed a complete Valley. It was beautiful, intriguing; he gave a grin, and then touched the glass of the window with his hand. In two minutes, he would be at the place where everything started, became, was born from, where his roots befall and derived, and the place that he always craved to go back to. Yet, he wasn’t coming back for himself, but he was still a little happy to see the mirror, the image of serenity, looking down at it from this empty, flying contraption. He whispered, “I’m home.” Damen rubbed the window, as if he was touching the grass of the Valley, pretending that he was present in its peaceful body, surrounded by nothing but a feeling of safety, a feeling of love.
Once the plane landed, Damen’s fears took full control of his strength, causing him to become weak and fragile in the eyes of Chuck. They both took a taxi to Ridge Crest, Damen not even realizing that he was going there, but only wanting to get what he came here for. While they drove on a dirt, dark, vacant road, Damen tried to squeeze a tear out from his eyes while laying his head on Chuck’s shoulders.
To Damen, he wanted to squeeze a tear out that he knew was for Jose, not for himself, not for relieving stress, but for Jose’s position. Through it all, Damen also craved and dreamt to show a tear that meant pure and utter prosperity, a tear in which he has never shed in his lifetime, so far. Nevertheless, him not crying showed a sign of weakness to himself, but to Chuck, Damen’s non-tears showed strength within him. During the drive, the taxi’s front headlight flashed on the sign, reading Welcome to Ridge Crest, population 497. Damen remembered that day, when he scratched out the real number and placed 497 on it instead; this caused a smile to appear, wishing he could travel back to that moment and not change a thing on that sign.
A cold brush of wind surfaced Damen’s face once he got out of the taxicab, and saw the forests that buried a Valley within it. He told Chuck to wait by the cab; that he would just be a moment. Damen then turned back to the forests, and started to stroll toward them, remembering them, remembering their fence-like qualities and arrogant attractiveness. Walking past the first line of trees, Damen allowed his night vision to guide his way, with his memory acting like a compass, trying to remember which way Sugar was. He stopped for a moment, and saw trees on top of trees, foliage tied in with them, so he started running toward them, remembering that beyond these trees, and entangled foliage, just a little ways, was the Valley that he discovered when he was a child, the Valley that changed his life, Sugar Valley that he learned to love so deeply. He then paused again, recollecting the Valley’s power-like quality, remembering that he thought the Valley was alive, had a soul of its own, and some mature form of fear entered into his mind. It was like when he was innocent, before he left it, the fear was never there, but now since his mind saw so many immoral things, the fright now showed his mind its heavy power, and caused Damen’s own imagination to ponder on the issue of it being haunted with demons of peculiar incentives. But he knew he had to go, even if the Valley was alive, haunted, or whether he was just insane, he still had to do this, conclude this journey, by retrieving something for a friend that was hidden away within Sugar’s secrets. Damen took his hands, when he came up to bushes that were as thick as hay, and lingered his grip onto them, hesitating on splitting these great plants. Yet, he did, he split the bushes, to where his body could fit through it, and beheld the Valley, large in mass, thick in flavor, and luxuriously breathtaking to his sight. The moon shined, scintillated on every end of it, reflecting the daisies, the grass, the blue lake in the middle, and the trees that were small to his angle, but really large up close. He grinned, a small grin, but it was still a smile, and felt a chill of memories rushing toward his pain-stricken flesh.
As Damen walked into the Valley, he saw himself with Darell and Jose as little kids again. The flashbacks kept on coming into Damen’s mind as each attempt of squeezing a tear out came, still walking down in the Valley’s stomach, and still remembering on how he should be crying, instead of smiling toward this sight of beauty. He was guilty, feeling it coming to his eyes, knowing that he shouldn’t be enjoying this moment, only crying toward it, because his friend was sick, and near death. The moon shone through the darkness of the Valley and guided Damen’s confused and guilty self to the cave; the cave that held the box of memories. While Damen opened the box, he remembered the day before he left to go to California.
“When we all become famous, we have to come back here and open the time capsule,” Damen’s memory echoed.
He grabbed the script and ran through the Valley, not wanting to stay another moment, knowing that his friend was in need of time. Suddenly, before he entered onto the side of Sugar that would lead him back to the forest, he heard a voice, faint, and small, like it was riding the wind’s wave, whispering to him, “Hello, Damen.” He turned around, not knowing that voice, but somehow remembering its subliminal sounds in the wind when he was a child. As he turned to see where the voice was coming from, he saw Jose, Darell, and himself playing their first game of pretend, actually witnessing a memory taking place right before his very, present-filled eyes. He saw them running around, with their fingers molded into the shape of an L, and screaming out with felicity to their young harmony-captured voices. Damen didn’t show any smiles toward this moment, and yelled out, “No, don’t play that, please don’t!” Damen knew that this game began it all, started their ambition, and developed all of their dreams of becoming famous.
The memory vanished abruptly, and turned into nothing but darkness, that’s when Damen wondered where that voice was of perishin
g quality, came from. As he held his script tightly in his hands, he turned to the Valley’s middle, where the lake formed, and whispered, “Sugar, if you’re really alive, which I know you’re not, but if you are, then please, don’t let Jose die. Please, Sugar, if there’s really a soul in your belly, and if you really love me, and us, then please, please don’t take my friend away from me.”
While Damen paused after his words to the Valley’s body, which echoed through the wind of its breath, Chuck came up to the top of Sugar’s hill, and heard Damen’s last words of pleading. He shouted down to him, “Who are you talking to?”
Mr. Schultz became embarrassed, and afraid, not wanting Chuck or anyone to know of his talk with a Valley, knowing that it would sound beyond crazy to comprehend that an indentation in the earth is alive. So, Damen ran up the hill, pretending like he didn’t see any memories, acting as if he didn’t hear any voice in the wind, and came up to Chuck. “No one, let’s go.”
Damen went past Chuck, like he wanted to get away from this place as fast as he can, and entered through the bushes to get to the forest of enigma. Before Chuck followed, he heard the wind blowing through the Valley, and making a howling noise, that sounded like a woman crying, pleading out her tears for a loved one’s presence. Chuck didn’t pay any attention to this supposed, subliminal wind, and followed Damen through the forest, with a flashlight to guide his way. “You got the script, Damen?”
Damen exited the thicket forest and entered the taxi, while turning around and seeing Chuck’s silhouette in the darkness coming toward him. By the time Chuck came up close to his sight, Damen muttered, “Yes, yes, I have it.”
Chapter Eighty-Four
Agony struck this night, stabbing her mind with painful images of her boy, being shot and having his life tampered with; she is what misery is called. The beautiful boy she held in her womb, loved since the moment of his conception and even as she dreamt of her future children. Yet, when a mother loses their child, or sees him or her in a position where death will come in a blink of an eye, this moment, this devastating moment, is the worst thing possible that a nurturing mother could feel. Melancholy, drenched with massive desperation and fear, webbed together with emptiness, void, and the only thing that could bring hope to this mind of Jose’s mother, is her own divinity, her belief that God will be good to her, and take her instead of Jose’s life.
Jose’s mother cried next to him, holding his hand by the hospital bed, and shedding tears, and verbalizing her love for him, she hated to see him in this room that symbolizes sickness, not wellness. She held his hand so tightly, and whimpered her own misery, yearning to not have Jose stay with God yet, praying with her rosary that God will grant him another chance. Damen’s and Darell’s parents sat in this room of despondent sadness as well, just sitting there, and watching Jose’s father and mother peering over Jose’s face and looking upon his image with sorrow. Yet, his father didn’t show too much pain for Jose’s position, he was a strong man, a tough man, who wouldn’t allow his shield to be broken for anyone. Yet, in his face of toughness could be shown a man who longs for his son, a man who wants to cry for his boy’s pain, a man who craves to express his love for his son out loud, but some reason couldn’t. Instead, his mother was doing the crying for him, and she gave Jose’s pale face a hug, wrapping her arms around his head and craving to hear his heartbeat. It was like she wanted to hear it, and she did, but what frightened her, what became her worst fear, was that moment when his heart would stop its cycle and withdraw its beat. This little woman, with such a strong love for her son, could only weep her penitence, her anguish, remorse, her sorrow for him, and allow God to do the rest.
Jose’s mother was very strong inside, so strong, that once they all reached the hospital, she actually fought her way through the media, fans, and press, punching them, trying to get to the entrance of the hospital, and once she did, fought her way past the nurses, and came to Jose’s room. The rest of the parents, including his father, just followed her, walked in her footsteps; and she was so small, with strength of a thousand horses.
All she could do was hug him, cry out for him, and sit and watch him, while each breath lessened to his exhaling rhythm. There was a cool breeze that spun around this room, like angels, hovering over them all, waiting for the right moment to capture Jose’s soul and bring him home to the place that he left before birth. His mother kissed him on the forehead, crying, “My baby, my poor baby.”
Jose knew this was it, it was his time. If not now, in a matter of hours, it would be his time to go, and leave this life behind. Comprehending this, Jose wanted to get everything out toward his parents, craving to tell them how he feels toward them. He looked at his mother, who suddenly became so beautiful to his deceasing eyes, and whispered, “I love you so much, Mom.” Mr. Rodrigo noticed Jose didn’t say anything to him, but he didn’t ponder on it, he knew his boy loved him dearly. The father stood behind and leaned over his mother’s body to give a gentle kiss on his forehead, beginning to break down his shield of toughness, and show Jose the man he really was. Suddenly, Jose smiled to his father’s gentle kiss, and whispered, “Paps, I want you to know, that I forgive you ... for ever hurting me in the past. I forgive you for the abuse.” Jose muted his tired voice, watched as tears developed slowly in his father’s right eye, and understood that this is the time he should finally say something, that he’s never told his father before. “Father, I love you too.”
As Jose’s and the rest of the boys’ parents sat in the room crying, Damen arrived with the script. He ran in the room, without even acknowledging his own parents, and sat down next to Jose, wanting to be by his side every second, to show Jose that he was here only for him.
He opened up the script for Jose to see, when suddenly Damen showed a bit of confusion to his whimpering mind. Damen was on a mission, he didn’t have time to talk to Jose anymore, he realized that Jose’s last wish, was to finish the script with him and Darell, and that’s the only thing that Damen wanted to do for now. This was like a job for him, a mission, and he wanted it to be perfect for Jose. So, Damen frantically turned toward Darell’s crying parents, and questioned, “Wait a second, before we begin, where’s Darell?”
Jose tapped Damen on the face, and he turned to him. Jose spoke with seriousness, “He’s gone.”
“Why did he go back to Ridge Crest already?” Damen was angry, upset toward Darell’s leaving, when suddenly his anger vanished by seeing Darell’s parents leaving the room quickly. He wondered why they left, what he said to make them leave.
Jose tapped him on the face again, and he switched his eyesight to him once more. Jose gave out a small, delicate grin, and muttered, “He’s not in Ridge Crest, Damen. He’s in Heaven.”
Damen fell to the ground, dismayed and shocked by the abrupt, sad, disoriented, confusing, depressing, mysterious news of Darell’s life. He could not believe it, but for some reason, as he lay on the floor with shock, he didn’t think too much about it. It was like Damen didn’t pay any attention to Jose’s news, didn’t register in his own mind completely that Darell was gone. The cold breeze that rushed around the room trapped there for some reason, hit Damen’s face, lifting his light-brown hair a bit, drying off the sweat that he created. Damen was out of the present, out of the future, and even out of the past, his mind was rotating on rusty wheels that were about to fall off and collapse into a deep abyss of nothingness. Yet, the script, and his reason for being present in this room, allowed his mind to still go on, making him attempt to get up from the cold floor. His own father came to help him by grabbing his hand, pulling him up, and asking, “Are you alright, son?”
His father helped him back into his seat, and Damen didn’t answer his words, it was like his father’s words didn’t register in his mind, just the unbelievable news about Darell. His mind still didn’t believe that Darell was in heaven, because if he was, that would mean he had to have died to get there, and if he died, how did he pass on and when, and why wasn’t he inform
ed. So his mind didn’t believe in Darell’s death, only because it sounded too unbelievable, and Damen didn’t acknowledge his father’s voice, only because he was in a state of confusion by still contemplating the words about Darell’s life, that Jose spoke. Nevertheless, his mission, and why he came here, overpowered every thought that he absorbed, every human that was present, and allowed him to want to complete Jose’s last wish.
Damen looked at Jose, and tried to cry, but still couldn’t. He then heard Jose’s faintly voice whispering, “Damen, let’s finish the script on our own. Please, I’m getting weaker.”
This totally allowed Damen’s thoughts to go back on track, travel in and to a certain destination, and craved to complete it. The sadness of this main moment created Damen’s voice to go lower, saying with a lot of a shake to his vocal cords, “Alright, the show must go on.”
Darell’s parents cried for a bit in the hallway, and then entered into the room again, right as Damen and Jose began the last take to the last page of the unfinished script that was about to be finished and completed, just as Jose’s life was.
While they finished the script, the parents acted as if they were the audience, tuning into their acting, watching this entertainment as little Maria once did in the Valley of dreams. For the first time, Jose and Damen’s parents saw their true craving in life, and were pretty impressed on the gifts that God gave them. At the end of the script, the parents gave a round of applause; this was one dream that Jose had deep, deep in his soul. It was a dream of seeing his father watch one of his live performances and applaud at the end of it, this created complete closure for Jose’s mind, and satisfaction to his heart.
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