Desert Passage (5 page)

The phone rang and rang with no answer, then the message began: “This is Rodrigo, I can't take your call right now; please leave a message. I'll be on vacation for the next month, so I may not receive your message. Please call my office if this call is business-related.”

“There's no answer. It says to call his office,” Miguel repeated.

Miguel dialed the number to his father's office and a friendly voice answered.

“May I help you?”

“Hi, this is Miguel, Rodrigo's son, can I leave a message? It's important.”

“Sure, no problem. Can you hold?”

“Yeah.”

“What did they say?” asked Ramón impatiently.

“I'm on hold.”

“Okay, this message is for who?” the voice continued.

“My dad, Rodrigo.”

“You must be Miguel!” the voice said enthusiastically.

“Yeah, can I leave a message?”

“Go right ahead. Oh, wait a minute, I have to put you on hold again.”

Miguel stared at the ground and waited for the voice to come back.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Could you tell him, that my grandma's sick in the hospital and that me and Ramón are at the house alone?”

“Oh, how terrible, is your grandma okay?” the voice asked.

“I don't know. Would you give him that message right away?”

“Tell them to tell your dad to call home!” Ramón interjected.

“Oh, yeah, could you tell him to call home?” Miguel added quickly.

“Does he have the number—oh, of course he does,” the voice replied absent-mindedly. “I'll give him the message as soon as he calls in.”

“It's really important that he gets the message.”

“I'll make sure he does” the voice reassured. “I have to go, there's another call waiting.”

Miguel hung up the phone.

“What are we gonna to do?” asked Ramón.

“I don't know,” replied Miguel. “I guess we better head back and wait for Dad to call.”

The boys walked in the direction of their grandmother's house, occasionally stepping off the side of the road to kick a rock or pick up an interesting stick. There wasn't a rush to get home. There was nothing but chores waiting for them. The cars drove by anonymously.

 
Chapter 9
 

“T
here's nothing on TV,” complained Miguel.

The boys were back at their grandmother's house, sitting in front of the small screen, thinking about what to do for the rest of the day.

“Maybe we should call the hospital and see how Abuelita's doing.”

“Yeah, get the phone book.”

Ramón found the phone number for the local hospital and dialed the number.

“Are you over eighteen?” asked the patronizing voice on the other side of the phone line.

“No, I'm her grandson. My cousin and me were with her when she got sick.”

“Well, we can't give out any information about her condition unless you're an adult and her nearest relation. It's for her protection.”

“Can we see her?”

“Well, I don't know who ‘we' is, but if you're under eighteen years of age, you may not enter her hospital room without an adult.”

“How long is she going to be in the hospital?”

“At least the rest of the week, but I can't give you any more information than that.”

Ramón hung up the phone and sat quietly next to Miguel on the sofa. The television was blaring with images of a new super-speed household appliance that the salesperson was trying to sell, “And for a limited time …. ”

“Hey, man, what are we gonna do? We can't sit here for a month without money, no phone, nothing. And what if my dad never calls?” said Miguel facing the television.

“Let me think.” Ramón tuned out the noise in the room and put his mind to thinking up a solution to their problem.

Ramón first considered the possibility of the two of them surviving in the house by themselves. They had a little money to buy groceries and after four weeks their family would return. And maybe, he thought, their grandmother wasn't that sick, maybe she would be home in a day or two and everything would be okay. But then he considered the possibility of their grandmother not returning home. Four weeks was a long time to be alone in the remote house. His mind twisted and turned over their dilemma.

The television channel was tuned to a sitcom rerun and the canned audience laughter filled the room.

“Hey, turn that down, I've got it!” Ramón said suddenly, rising from the sofa with excitement.

“What's the plan?” Miguel asked eagerly.

Ever since they were small boys Ramón had always been the planner in their adventures and Miguel never ceased to be impressed with his cousin's ingenuity to solve a problem, no matter how difficult it was.

“Okay.” Ramón took a deep breath. “Listen to the whole thing before you say anything, all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, go on!”

“All right, this is the plan. We can't stay here, that's for sure. For one thing, Tío Rodrigo will be really mad if he finds out we were by ourselves without adult supervision, right?” Ramón asked, waiting for an affirmative nod from his cousin.

Miguel nodded and listened for the rest of the solution.

“Remember that scooter we found in the shed? Well, we're gonna drive it to Santa Fe!”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“No, man, listen, that scooter probably goes around 40 to 50 miles per hour. If we can drive six hours a day we'll get there in three or four days. We might even catch up with them along the road, wouldn't that be awesome?”

“I don't know, Ramón. Does that scooter even run?”

“Well, we'll have to work on that. I'm going outside to start. Meanwhile gather up all the money you can find; the gas won't be free.”

“What about food? Where will we sleep?”

“We probably won't be on the road more than three days. We have our sleeping bags and we can pack some food too. We'll make it work!”

“You sound like my dad!”

“Well, it's the only idea I can think of!” answered Ramón. “I know it sounds impossible, but if we believe we can do it, we can!” he added.

“I don't know, Ramón. What about Abuelita? We can't just leave her.”

“We're gonna go to the hospital to see her first and tell her where we're going,” Ramón replied.

“But they won't let us in!”

“Leave that to me,” Ramón said with confidence. “You start thinking about what we need to take and I'll go check on our ride!”

Miguel stood in the middle of the living room and considered the crazy plan he had just heard. They would have to travel hundreds of miles and camp out alone in the wilderness with little money and hardly any food. The task seemed insurmountable. They had never been on such a crazy adventure before, but maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it was time.

 
Chapter 10
 

T
he scooter leaned on the grass among the discarded Christmas decorations and old sports equipment. Ramón moved the shed's former contents to one side of the yard and rolled the scooter away from the pile.

He decided he would fill the gas tank and try to start the scooter first before checking the other parts. Along the side of the carport, his uncle always kept a container of gasoline for emergencies. He filled the tank with the gas and sealed it. “Well,” he thought, “here goes nothing.” He pressed the button for the electronic ignition and nothing happened. Disappointed but not discouraged, he ran back into the house to tell his cousin that he was leaving.

“Miguel, I have to take the Vespa to the gas station and see if I can work on it there,” he said with confidence.

“Okay,” said Miguel, momentarily distracted by his task. Seconds later he added, “I'll start getting our stuff ready while you're gone. Where are the sleeping bags?”

Ramón was already walking toward the road with the scooter when he turned around and shouted back to his cousin. “Look in the closet in the bedroom we were sleeping in! Make sure they're rolled up real tight to save space. Remember how Grandpa showed us?”

Miguel ran to the closet, making a mental list of what they should take on the trip. He grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from a kitchen drawer and started to murmur to himself as he wrote. “Okay, sleeping bags, backpacks … ” He stopped for a second and remembered that they didn't have their iPods. “Well, no music for now. We need food, water, matches, a
flashlight, a knife, and a few T-shirts. We'll only be on the road for three days. We should be all right.”

He carried his list through the house and began to gather the items. The matches, flashlight, and knife were no problem to find, but he wasn't sure what type of food they should take with them. He remembered his grandfather packing for their camping trips. He always told them not to eat food that had spoiled.

Miguel opened the refrigerator and looked at the contents. All the good food was in containers and would probably spoil within a few hours in the heat. He looked longingly at the containers of
chorizo
and
mole
, there was no way they could take that. “We'll just have to eat a lot before we go,” he thought. He took out the rice and beans and tortillas and within a few minutes he had rolled six burritos in tinfoil. Next he looked in the pantry for canned goods to take. He grabbed a few granola bars, a pack of peanuts, and two chocolate bars.

Bottled water was heavy to carry so he decided to take only eight small bottles, four in each backpack. Miguel wrapped the food items in plastic bags and stored them in the refrigerator.

The sleeping bags were larger than what he had remembered. “Oh, no, how will these fit on the back of that scooter?” he asked himself, remembering the small luggage rack on the back of the seat. He took one sleeping bag and laid it out flat on the floor, then with all his skill he rolled it up to one-half the size that it had been before.

“We can only take one sleeping bag, so I guess we'll have to take turns sleeping in it,” he resolved. The solution of trading off nights seemed reasonable to Miguel, especially if they were planning only two nights outside.