Further Adventures (25 page)

He was a different man in word & Deed in the beginning. He wrote to Amelia full of Compassion & understanding he showed how much he could sympathize with her. Newberry told her it was greatly unfair she should suffer & be poor her whole Life because of where she was born. And by the way how she is a Beautiful Woman with brains to match—

QUOTE NUMBER 1

“You are a
beautiful
woman. Why don’t you put those
beautiful
brains of yours to good use? I know I can help you somehow.”

QUOTE NUMBER 2

“The rewards we can squeeze out of the system aren’t
half
the score, baby. They pay me for punching in every day, that’s all. As long as I don’t rock anybody’s boat they don’t notice. I watched and waited. It’s been long enough. I know how to squeeze out the really ace rewards now. The ones you ask for at the back door.”

He wrote of his wife & Family for instance when his baby girl was born—

QUOTE NUMBER 3

“I held my daughter in my arms for the first time today. She makes everything make sense. I’m a father! Wow! I’m a family man! When her tiny pink fingers grabbed my thumb I knew I had to be
extra-
responsible and
extra
-careful.”

Also at the bottom of this letter he does not hold back his further Feelings—

QUOTE NUMBER 4

“At the hospital I sat next to Chantal’s bed. My one and only thought should have been about my wife and baby girl. I love them both to death. I can’t imagine living without them. But another thought came out of nowhere. How different my life could have been if I’d met
you first. Amelia. Amelia. Amelia. I’m sure I’d be thinking at a time like this how beautiful life is with you. It is beautiful. I promise, baby, it’s only going to get better for us both.”

Now he will deny his words but these flattering remarks & kind offers he made to Amelia came direct from his Heart I believe. Newberry did not start out with sneaky motives toward Amelia he only had wholesome intentions at first. In my opinion Curiosity + Sympathy led him on to Romance the romance led him on to Desire then desire led him to Greed. This is my personal Theory. If you measure them for 1,000 years you will not find 2 human beings with identical size arms to each other i.e. individuals do not carry around a Equal amount of this world. A person is going to find out his Personal Limit on the day he asks for too much.

Newberry had his arms full already with his regular job & his regular family. He should have stuck to this but he desired Amelia too. And more & more etc. I ask you is a man like a starfish? Can a human being grow his arms longer? Can he fight Nature? No! A man will bow to Nature. Leave it to the world to teach him a Lesson! It always takes the extra away. For instance some other man could desire a Family of his own nothing fancy only the Benefits of the basic model i.e. someplace he knows he Belongs nor I do not mean a apartment or just a particular area of household geography I mean a place with intimate Voices in residence & familiar faces who miss him when he is apart or Welcome him when he steps in the family door—persons who recognize him from a distance down the street you might say so he is not just somebody in the Crowd. So then he finds out his arms are too short to carry this size of Happiness and the world has to obey the Laws of Nature & knocks it out of his hands. The world tells him, “Desire is not enough! Your arms have to be the right size!”

I will make another statement about Desire it is not the same as Hope. Hope means you wait & see. Desire is a bug that makes you force
Events. Therefore a person can desire a wholesome thing that turns inside out & upside-down the minute he pulls it close to him.

This is the idea I contemplated after I stuffed Newberry’s tender letters under the towel of my pillow to sleep on them. Step by step that way I traced Newberry’s inner thoughts from the very Beginning. How he used to feel for Amelia & Dolores etc. I found out some facts. But the only surefire manner I knew about to tune in to his particular M.O. let me call it this: Step In Where He Stepped Out. My contemplation drifted to the outside of Amelia’s bedroom wall. They murmured Mother to Child & vice versa in each other’s arms in their family home. Which planted this Hope in me Amelia should tell Dolores I am not the Cleaning Man per say I am the man who answered her prayers & reunited them tonight. And was I finished with his beneficial deeds yet? No Dolores! Rest in peace!

The Green Ray never sleeps!

I tell you this. Until Dolores I never was very much around children of any description so I was a ignorant Amateur at comprehending childish behavior. I
do not
claim I am a Expert at it today after my experience from last week! I regret I never got around to the works of Dr. Benjamin Spock in my Readings since I would like to compare my Findings.

Here I will say further what I learned via Dolores. It is the real Wonder of Life how a certain pair can meet & they can recognize lifelong understanding is before their eyes. In a flash this occurs it is Mutual in a blink. This is my belief. If somebody will let it appear this is where a person’s Soul floats up. There must be a Scientific explanation of this effect maybe beams of Electricity in motion when a Soul recognizes another or is it Gravity i.e. the attraction of Personal Atoms. The Atoms of Dolores & mine. For the Record I never saw Amelia’s Soul float up to me in her eyes instead it was always a shadow in there.

By my Calculations we could count on staying safe in Tres Osos for 24 Hours further. The temporary vacation from our dark world of
worry was a boon also to Amelia’s front yard landscape. Gardening is not a favorite hobby of mine by any extension of the facts but as of now I can see the appeal. In the morning my hands got busy pushing back in the plants that Nilo’s car wheels dug up. I looked over my repair job & got a kick of Satisfaction because I did my Part and left it to Nature.

Listen to this:

I push down a flap of wet iceplants & the next time I look up I see Dolores in front of me with a bottle of Beer. Her eyes glued on me like she caught me in the act of stealing her iceplants instead of fixing them. She takes some from the bottle & fills her mouth until her cheeks puff out before she drinks it down.

“Does your mama allow you beer?”

Dolores wipes her mouth on her wrist & looks behind her. Then she holds the bottle out to me. “She said give this to you.”

“If you’re finished with it.”

“My arm’s tired.” Dolores is still holding the Beer in front of her with the idea any second this offer is going to expire.

“Gracias.” I wipe the rim before I drink out of it which is a
natural reflex
all over the animal kingdom but she takes it personal & puckers her mouth to show me.

“I don’t have germs,” she says.

“Everybody has germs.”

“I don’t.”

“Movie stars have germs. Even the ones who sell toothpaste. Same germs in the mouth as you.”

Then she gets interested in gardening. “What are you doing that for?”

I tuck in the roots of another succulent plant. “See there? Those are still good. So they’ll grow back.”

Dolores wants me to think she can take or leave a conversation with me no sweat & very nonchalant she digs into the front pocket of her
blue jeans. Out she comes with a walnut. This she pushes all the WAY inside her mouth & closes her lips on it & chomps. The CRACK I hear is not her molars or her jaw bone—Dolores spits out the sharp chunks of brown shell & the rest of that walnut into her hand. “Want some?”

I shake my head. “Doesn’t it hurt your teeth doing that?”

“Nuh-uh.” She chews it in quick bites like a squirrel on a safe branch.

I go back to planting. And what is underneath this patch of mud I dig up like the Free Prize in a box of Crackerjack? “Look what I found.” I rub the dirt off with my thumbs.

“Let me see.” Dolores pulls my arm over to view the tiny Treasure.

“A fossil. Look at that. Of a fern plant.”

“What is?”

I pour some beer on it & clean off the final grains of dirt & show it to her in the Light. “It’s a fish. A fossil fish.”

She touches it. “It’s a rock.”

“Sure it’s a rock. It’s a fossil fish.” I handed it over for a close examination.

“It looks like a fish.”

“Exactly what it is.”

This idea snookers her & she gives it back to me with her firm Opinion. “It’s a rock.”

“You never saw a fossil before?” Dolores gives me some silence also her serious attention i.e. she is going to listen to me as long as I am not teasing her with this. And so for the first time in her life she hears The Story Of Fossils. “Tell me how old you are.”

“I’m 8.”

“Now I’m 9 times as old as you. Plus a few months. I’m 73 years old. You think it was a long time ago when I was your age?”

“Yes.”

“You bet. Compared to you it’s a long time ago. The world was a different kind of place then. Before they invented T.V. or air conditioning. Compared to this fossil 73 years is nothing. Add up your age plus my age then multiply it by a million and that’s how long ago for this fossil. You wouldn’t even recognize this place if you saw it then. All over here was covered by water. Where the hills are? You know what?” Dolores squints the Sun out of her eyes & looks over at the dry brown hills behind her house. “Underwater,” I tell her. “And palm trees growing in the sand. And fern plants soaking up the humidity. Sure. All around here it was quicksand & dragonflies. A regular garden of Eden.”

“Where did they go?”

“Everything died.”

“Why did it?”

“The experts don’t agree on the reasons but…” So I tell her all the main Points which I remember from a article I read in
Scientific American
fairly recent about the Prehistoric Climate but this does not satisfy her. “You’ve got a genuine piece of the history of the Earth right there. It’s a marvelous thing. Proof of what lived here before us.”

She shakes the hair out of her eyes & quizzes me. “A fish can’t be a rock.”

“Used to be a fish. Pressed in the mud. It’s a fishprint.” And I describe how the Ancient fish died & sank down also I demonstrate by way of a couple of mud pies. “A new layer of mud lands on top so heavy it turns the mud into this sandstone with the fish in the middle. A little thing alive so long ago left its mark & today we find it.” She hands the fish fossil back to me but I close her fingers over it. “For you Cookie.”

Dolores gets very grabbed by this fossil. She stuffs it in her pocket then all of a sudden a Lizard perched by my feet grabs her more. “I can tame it.” Dolores moves so slow & delicate she does not scare him off not even from the shadow of her arm. “Come on. Jump up. Jump up boy…” And like a trained dog it jumps up for Dolores to pet him on his head!

“Can I pet him?”

“He won’t let you.”

“You know this reptile from before?” I reach my fingertips over at the same time she lets him drop out of her hand. He hits the ground & springs into the Wilds.

Deaf by amazement I did not hear Amelia’s footsteps stop behind me I saw Dolores jerk her head up & stop chewing her walnut. If the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in the sky & bestowed a Halo on Dolores’s head & named her Child Of The Year it would not stop Amelia slapping the pieces of walnut out of her daughter’s hands. Then she says to me, “It make her sick.”

Wet crumbs of walnut sprayed out of Dolores’s mouth & she bent over sucking back the Air—her raspy rough wheezing so terrible!—in a second she went gulping for Breath & in another second her face goes puffy the color of red cabbage.

“Jesus! Does this happen a lot?”

Amelia helped Dolores on her feet but she turned around to scold me. “She’s no allow walnuts!” On a dirty look also flared up with Panic.

Did I know this? It was the Panic talking & indoors there was Dolores doubled over on her knees in front of the sofa and I did not hear her exhaling only inhaling hard breaths. By the Sound it could not be harder for her if she was trying to inhale a brick. Her pink pillbox handbag laid open & all her choice belongings she spilled out of it very Desperate she was scrabbling in them but Amelia just stood still by the door WATCHING DOLORES SUFFER!

“Help her—” I said very Astonished nor I did not move in either. Such a sight is beyond Belief & it paralyzed me where I stood also I do not butt in where a Mother is Best. “Can’t you do something?”

“Let her do it,” Amelia told me off & mind my own business.

By no Stretch will I let anybody tell me a suffering child deserves a punishment! This is opposite to my Creed. And before you open your mouth I state this issue goes beyond walnuts. “What’s wrong with you?”
I cursed Amelia & I kneeled on the floor next to Dolores. “O.K. dear…O.K. dear…” some help I was with this feeble expression meanwhile she is stretched out on her stomach clawing at the pile of her Valuables. And kicking my arms away when I try to hold her & comfort.

Amelia went quiet & weak she almost cried to herself, “She can do it Ray…When she is alone anytimes…”

Dolores clutched the plastic tube of her Asthma Medicine nor she did not need my help to use it she gave herself a good hard spritz. Then a Breath squeezed out as rough as sandpaper & the next one came out smoother then she was breathing regular but this wore her out. You could see more energy in a limp lettuce leaf. I lifted her very gentle on my lap. Dolores came around & broke the ice of the Silence she woke up talking Mexican.

“What did she say?”

Amelia ignored me she gathered Dolores’s items & put them all back together then a few quiet words of Mexican rolled past me tender between Mother & Child. I ask Amelia is the little one all right & what do I see? I sold Amelia short. She tries to prevent Dolores from depending is a wise move I believe. To keep her from the harm of expecting anybody to help her in a Emergency.

“She say about you Ray.”

“What’s that?”

Amelia translated:
I like him. He no shouts at you.

“Why should I shout?” I heard my Voice go shaky. “What’s going on I should shout about it?”

I opened the lid of her pillbox purse & Delores put the Medicine in & when I tried to close it secure she kept it open. “I want to show you.”