Rags For Company

     The elevator reached the street level and when the doors slid open the station manager stepped out into the shelter and walked over to the metal gate. He looked out into the street from the shelter which was always bright, even now with two of the long bulbs blown. It was a dire morning with a fierce wind; black but for the amber orb of the streetlight and the blurry cone beneath it, and the few glints of silver on the roofs of the parked cars. He dug his left hand deep into his coat pocket and pulled out a chain with a cluster of keys and started flicking to the end of it those that belonged to the security office, safe, bathroom, elevator, supply closet, control room. He flicked through the various gate keys until he came to the one which unlocked the gate to the West entrance. He pushed the key into the lock and turned it. It gave a sharp scrape as the bolt slid out of place, making him wince.
     Opening the gates was a ritual performed every morning at the same hour. He had already opened the East gates first and the entrance which was tucked beneath ground at the back of the mall second and the West gate last. He had done it so many times that he did it without thinking. It freed up his mind to think about other things. He was thinking about his daughter and that she would be asleep for another three hours. It made him smile.

    He pulled the key out of the lock and dropped the heavy bunch back into his pocket which sank with the weight. He grabbed the handle on the left side of the gate while stifling a yawn and walked it screeching to the wall and secured it in place with the steel bolt which dropped into the concrete hole with a clunk, then walked to the right side of the gate to do the same. And it was because he could do this without thought, and because he was humming to himself the song he had heard on the radio on the drive over on the dead roads in the small hours, that he didn’t hear the shuffling out in the street until it had almost reached him. It took a second to register and when it did he stopped and squinted out into the darkness with his right hand still fast on the handle of the gate. It grew louder quickly and with it he discerned a faint regular squeak like the sound of a loose metal signpost swinging in the wind. He leaned outside the shelter and looked along the street and saw a hooded figured whose shoulders and head were outlined in a sliver of moonlight. He waited as it tottered from side to side towards him and into the glow of the streetlamp by the entrance. Just a bum, he thought as she walked under the light. And a lady, no less. He let out a breath which he had unconsciously held.

     She stopped by the wall where the first gate was bolted to the ground and looked up at where he stood holding the gate handle. Her gaze never rested on him and he had the feeling that she did not see him. She started off towards the elevator and as she limped past him he had a good look at her. She was heavy set with a great bust, and was draped in what looked like a shoddy painter’s dust sheet with a limp hood which dangled behind her and was inside out. She wore baggy white linen pants that were stained dun at the back, and brown leather sandals that looked a few sizes too small. She pulled a small battered old trolley with a beige duffle bag stuffed inside and a lame wheel in the back left corner which faced sideways and dragged when it wanted to face forward and roll.  She swayed as she moved and he could tell she was old by her stoop, and that she was unwell by her tentative steps.

     Where are you going old lady? he thought. Have you been up all night waiting for me?

     Well wherever it is you are going you are intent on getting there, he thought.  She slouched on towards the elevator. He was surprised to see anyone so early; the first train was not due for another thirty minutes. He looked closely at her. Her hair was matted to her forehead and he realized that her face was covered with what looked like mud, and around her eyes were clean rings. He pictured her wearing flight goggles. Her eyes were bright and wide open with an expression that could easily be tiredness or mania depending on who saw her and in what light. The mask was cracked in the lines around her mouth. Her feet were cracked too and seemed to bulge over the side of her sandals.
     ‘Mornin’ mam,’ he said.
     She did not seem to hear him. As she passed him he noticed that her mouth was moving. He could not hear her from where he stood. He watched her walk over to the wall and push the button to call the elevator. He imagined her spending her days limping from train to train scraping through the turnstile with that trolley after the last stop, the station manager letting her through without fare because he wanted only to get home. Sleeping rough outside the station in her rags until morning. It would be a good story to tell his daughter. It would be something to talk about at least.

     Then his thought about her sleeping rough was interrupted by the thought that he had not locked the door to the office. And with this thought came instantly and naturally, like the light that follows the flick of a switch, a second thought, and he remembered the story a seasoned station manager once told him about a drunk who snuck into a first year manager’s office and locked the poor kid out. And how the kid hollered at him through the window and the drunk just laughed and turned on the intercom and asked the kid with a slurred voice to get to the well or a liquor store because he was dry. It took the police officer, who saw the funny side of the thing more than the kid, an hour to get in there and to get him out and when he did the chair was soaked in piss. The kid did not even get to file a report they fired him so fast. With this in mind the station manager turned sharply from the woman and dragged the gate screeching to the wall and secured it with the drop bolt which did not drop all the way but stopped halfway and made no clunk because something had been stuffed down there, and hurried to get into the elevator with her.
     He stepped inside and stood behind her. She had moved to within a few inches of the opposite doors and was staring into the gap between them. Neither of them moved to push the button and after a few seconds the doors behind them closed automatically and they descended.
      Standing so close to her he noticed that she was talking to herself in a low stream of sibilant nonsense with the odd curse word thrown in. He could not make much of it out. You are not all there, he thought. It is a luckless thing to be mad in a country so brutal and cold. He stared at her without shame. You must be about sixty. What brought you here? Not here; I mean what brought you to this?
     He regretted getting into the elevator. It was small and the woman was fetid. He cleared his throat to keep from coughing and as he did she turned her head slightly to the side.
     ‘Next train’s in thirty,’ he said.
     She turned her head back to face the doors. She was still muttering.
     When the elevator slumped to its familiar halt the doors opened and the woman walked out into the dim mezzanine pulling her trolley behind her, its lame wheel flicking side to side in spasms for a moment before fixing to one side and dragging. The station manager still breathed through his mouth. She stopped at the turnstile and he at the door to the station office. He pulled on the door. It did not open. I did lock you, he thought. He stuffed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the chain with the cluster of keys and again began the process of flicking to the end of it the keys he did not need. When he found the key he needed he opened the door to the octagonal office and slammed it shut behind him and sat heavily in the swivel chair. He glanced at the slanted monitors. There was never any movement on the platform at this hour.
     Through the brown plastic glass he could see the woman still standing at the turnstile, stooped over a tattered pouch held tightly in her left hand, counting out pennies with the stubby fingers of her right and closing them in her palm. She did this for about a minute, her mouth moving rhythmically as she did chewing on the musky air, then turned and limped over to the fare machine. Her trolley stood by the turnstile. The station manager leaned on the desk over his newspaper to get a better look at it. The beige duffel bag stuffed in there was fastened at the mouth by red cord. He thought that whatever she kept inside was heavy by the way the frame of the trolley sagged. He tried guessing what was inside but his mind struggled to associate the woman with anything other than rags.
     He turned his attention to the woman. He was wondering where she could be going.

     She slid her fare card into the machine and began placing coins into the plastic holder. He could hear them dropping into the machine from behind the plastic glass with a clink. He lost count after about twenty coins but there were many more. She poked the black button by the slot and her card was thrust half way out of a separate slot beneath the first. She pulled it out carefully, turned painfully, and shuffled back to her trolley and the turnstile. She barely lifted her feet as she moved and her body seemed to rock gently from side to side.

     The way she moved reminded him of his grandmother. He remembered her restless shifting in the kitchen at night for the few months she lived with his father before she died.
     She reached the turnstile and pushed the fare card into the slot and the red light which glowed on the side turned green. The two bars slid into the machine and she passed through the turnstile scraping the trolley along the inside of it as she did. The squeaking of the lame wheel grew fainter as she reached the end of the upper level and disappeared down the escalator.
     He turned his attention to the monitor which was split into four squares. It displayed the platform from four different angles and showed every point with the exception of a blind spot on the wall beneath the speakers. The woman appeared on the top left screen at the bottom of the escalator. He watched her shuffle to the center of the platform leaving the first monitor and appearing on the second, moving along the platform and stopping near the edge and looking along the track.
     He unscrewed the cap from his flask and poured into it some of the coffee he had brewed the previous night and heated up in the microwave in the morning. It was heavily sugared and still it tasted bitter. He wondered what his daughter was doing. He liked to think of her when he was at work at certain points in the day, usually during a slump or after lunch. He liked to picture in his mind what she was doing at that moment. Of course right now she will be asleep, he thought. But that was enough for him and was as good as thinking of her at school, or making her way home on the train. He liked to think that he would surprise her on a train one day. He was sure that someday he would.
     He closed his eyes for a moment and let his mind drift. In five days it would be her twelfth birthday. He had already bought her a gift. It was a ragged red yarn dog with black button eyes. It had a black tongue and the pads of its feet were black too. It had a worn look that he liked. She loved dogs. They could never have one because she was allergic to them. He saw it at a flea market when he left the station for lunch one day and he rushed to find an ATM to withdraw some cash to buy it for her. It rested in a brown paper bag under his bed in his apartment. He was nervous to give it to her. She liked all things new and expensive and the dog was more charming than pricey. In truth the girl was spoilt and short-tempered with him. He bought her many things and most of it ended up in a thrift store after a year’s grace. He was desperate to please her and anxious that she might not be impressed with the gift. He was afraid of how devastating she could be.
     When he opened his eyes he realized he had slept. He sat up quickly jolting the swivel chair and checked the monitors displaying the exits. He could tell by the brighter contrast that the sun had started to rise. There was a man with a suitcase standing by the west gate entrance outside the elevator looking up at the camera. On the other monitor he saw that people were waiting on the platform for the train.
    The speakers inside the office came to life with a burst of static and after a few seconds a loud distorted voice filled the room.
     ‘Four-twenty-five downtown.’

     The static resumed and the station manager turned in the chair to face the microphone. He pushed down the button on its side cutting off the static and said ‘go ahead four-twenty-five.’ He did not point out that it was four-thirty-five.
     He watched the screen brighten with the lights of the train and the train rushed into the bottom left screen then the upper, then into the bottom right. From the office he heard it roar from the tunnel and clatter along the tracks and screech to a halt at the end of the platform, and its doors scrape open. On the screen he watched the passengers on the platform file into the train. He liked watching people get jammed in the doors. There was something satisfying in it to him. When the doors closed the train held for a few seconds. It crept along the tracks at first then picked up speed and noise, growing louder despite being farther from the platform then fading to a distant echo.
     He looked at his watch. The next train was due in ten minutes, and then every ten minutes until the peak ended. On the monitor men and women were standing by the elevators or walking along the mezzanine corridor from the elevators to catch the next train and he knew it would get busier for the next three hours before it slowed down. He drank some more of the coffee. It was still bad. He had forgotten to screw the cap back on and now it was cold as well as bitter.

     He glanced at the monitor showing the mezzanine and noticed something leaning to the side by the end of the platform. He looked closely at the screen. He could just make it out. It is the bum’s trolley, he thought. Perhaps she did make the train. Ah but at what cost.

     I hope she hasn’t stuffed anything dead in there, he thought. He left the office and took the escalator down to the platform and walked to the far end where the trolley still stood leaning off to one side. He took a tentative hold of the handle and walked it along the platform and back up the escalator and lifted and kicked it up the step into the office. He pulled the red cord opening the maw of the bag. He was about to thrust his arm down into it but he opened a drawer and pulled out a silver flashlight.

     Inside the duffel bag were rags; a bundle of rags that he pulled out and unraveled piece by piece expecting to find inside them some precious item that harked back to a happier life that the woman had guarded for years. And when the last furled and knotted ball came loose and there was nothing inside he was disappointed. He had hoped for something personal; a photograph, a letter, some old jewelry. Anything that assured him that the woman had not spent her life alone without the comfort of others in a world cold and indifferent to her, with nothing but her rags for company.

     The office floor was strewn with them and he was surprised to find that they were clean. He sat back in his chair and pinched hard the bridge of his nose and remembered his daughter and the dog. 

To the Ground

     They stayed in a large room with a window which overlooked the front of the building and the narrow street which was usually quiet in the morning. The curtains were papery and sheer and did little to keep out the sun. The boy woke early and lay quietly in the bed as sunlight crept over the sheets and warmed them and the corner of the room.
     He was the first to wake and when he did it was to the sound of whispers though the room was silent and still. He bit his tongue until there was a break and when it came he let the quiet take him. Then he pushed himself up and sidled off the end of the bed without disturbing the girl.
     He walked past his father, asleep on the couch with his thin arm wrapped tightly around the pillow. As he walked he dragged his feet. The floor tiles were white and had thin black veins and milky-spots printed on them to imitate marble. They were peppered with gritty black sand and dirt and dust carried in from the beach and the street. He grabbed the dosette box from the glass table and walked to the bathroom and gently closed the door behind him. He placed the box on the corner of the bath. He washed his face. He turned off the faucet and toweled his face dry, holding the towel to his mouth and looking at himself over it. The scar was fading every day. His hair was wet and hanged over his good eye. He swept it back. He picked up the dosette box and rattled the pills inside. He slid the second cover down and dropped the two green and yellow capsules into his palm. They sat there for a moment before he turned his hand and dropped them into the toilet. He put the box back on the corner of the bath and he urinated and watched the pills scoot around in the piss and the water. And when he finished he flushed them down. From the other room he heard movement.
     He stayed in the bathroom for a few more minutes. It was dimly lit by a bulb on the wall fixed above the mirror and had a dirty plastic conch for a cover. The shower curtain depicted a jazz scene and was bright blue with black cartoons playing instruments with long bending arms. The mirror was fastened to the wall with concrete screws which split the glass. He picked up the box and opened the door.
     The man was sitting, shirtless, on the couch. He was wearing pants.
     “Mornin’.”
     “Mornin’.”
     “How’d you sleep?”
     “Good.”
     There was a small chest of drawers by the bed. The man leaned down and opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a pair of grey tube socks. He pulled a sock onto his left foot. Holding the crease of his pants he hoisted his right leg up onto the bed and pulled the other sock onto his right foot. On top of the drawers lay room keys, credit cards, traveler’s checks, an itinerary, an inhaler, and two silver watches.
     The man picked up the larger watch and fastened it around his wrist. The boy looked at the other with the alabaster dial and the flat crystal face with the scratches.
     “Dream any?”
     “Huh?”
     “Did you dream any?”
     “No.”
     He stooped and opened the top drawer and pulled out a pale blue linen shirt. He pulled it on and pushed his arms through the sleeves and buttoned it down deftly with one hand, and tucked it into his pants with his thumbs, then rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. He scratched at his head and at the bristles on his jaw.
     “Well suppose you dreamed some but you don’t remember?”
     “Maybe.”
     There was sand and dirt under the boy’s feet and he reached down to brush it off with his hand.

     “You hungry?”
     The boy shook his head.
     “You’re bound to be hungry. I’ll start some eggs.”
     He shrugged and sat down on the bed.


                                                                   
                         ***


     The man limped into the bathroom whistling and left the door open. His leg was always worse in the morning. The boy listened to him urinate and clatter the seat on the pan and flush the toilet, then run the faucet. Not singing now but humming. He picked up the watch. The nimble black hands covered the date and the milky dial made him think of a pearl heated and flattened and left to cool. When altered it would fit him just fine. His mother had bought it for him and he had carried it with him everywhere and his father had not remembered to have it re-sized. He turned it in his hand to let the light from the window touch it and show up its marks. He heard the man gurgle and spit and slurp water to sooth the burn of the mouthwash and turn off the faucet. The boy put the watch into his pocket.
     The man smiled at him when he came out of the bathroom. He took a deep breath and narrowed his lips together and forced air out of them to play out the trumpet solo at the end of the song.
     “Startin’ breakfast. You take your meds?”
     The boy nodded.
     “Good man. Want to help?”
     “Sure.”
     “If you don’t want to you don’t have to.”
     “I’ll help.”
     He roughed the boy’s hair.
     “Think you can figure out the coffee machine for us? If you can’t, get your sister out of bed.”
     Intently the man watched the boy open the lid of the plastic coffee machine and drop the brown paper filter inside and fill it with coffee. 

     After a while the girl got out of bed and dressed while the man cooked, and they breakfasted on eggs and bacon and toast, which he cooked on the bent coiled hob in the kitchen area which was rudely lathed and varnished with cheap timber. There was only one frying pan and it was small so he cooked and plated the food for them individually. When the coffee had brewed they had that too. The man gave the girl her breakfast first then the boy and dismissed him so he could eat. He held the small sharp knife he was using to cut up the bacon in his hand as he handed over the plate.
     The boy ate a little and moved the bacon around the plate, then got up abruptly from the glass table where they were sitting and went to the bathroom. He closed the door and locked it and sat on the end of the bath and spat between his feet and rubbed it into the carpet with his foot, then stood up and leaned on the sink and vomited. There was a caustic voice and it grew louder until it shouted with hate. He waited it out, leaning on the sink with his tongue in his teeth and keeping his good eye from the mirror. It lasted five minutes and he was relieved when it gave way to the scraping of the frying pan from the other room. He could taste blood.




                         ***                                                                   




     It was their second day there and they were heading into the mountains. They were being picked up at a nearby hotel at eleven. They were showered and had left the room by half past ten and they waited outside by the fountain of the big hotel nearby in the heat. The girl wanted to sit in the lobby. The man would not let them stand inside because they were not guests there. The bus arrived early and a young man in a cap hopped out to greet them. He pulled open the sliding door and they climbed in, the man with difficulty, and settled in the leather seats. It was cool inside and the driver was polite and shy with them. He told them that he lived in the mainland which was much higher than the land at the coast, and he said that from his house he could just see the big hotel’s fountains and the palms, and that if he had binoculars he might even see them checking in and out. The father explained that they stayed in a little place nearby and that they were only there to be picked up. The driver smiled at him and did not talk any more about the hotel.
     They met traffic when they left the hotel. Despite the coffee his sister fell asleep quickly and after swaying against the window a few times his father slept too. They soon broke from the traffic and turned onto the highway. It was a long drive to the coast and the boy was worried about it being a quiet drive. He stared out the window. He had taken no interest in the granite-faced condominiums and the chain-restaurants and the souvenir shops. The imported palms. The hidden speakers in the gardens of hotels imitating wildlife. But when they passed the airport the country opened and moved quickly near the road and slowly in the distance as they drove.
     He liked driving because there was much to distract himself with outside. The road was poor and the driver steered to miss pot holes. They passed the cockfighting arena. He was fascinated by it but his father thought it was brutal so his going there was out of the question. It wouldn’t be good for him. The land was dusty and spattered with dry bushes and make-shift fences separating small wooden huts. No houses at first but many huts. A land flat and coarse and hard, and when it was lowest and where the bush was not so tall he could see the water wide and blue beyond it, darker than the sky. There were plots of land cordoned and raised for drainage, and thick green shoots stuck up out of the soil in places. And in the sky turbid clouds like clods of cotton torn and scattered moved quick and close to the ground, and the sun glowed brightly in their diaphanous edges. He imagined them falling to the ground. Touching and scorching the earth. He’d never seen them so low.
     They passed villages of squat concrete houses with flat roofs, mostly painted white and peeling with the heat. They were doing seventy, seventy-five, maybe. He wandered briefly if anyone would survive if the bus veered off the road into the ditch. He pictured his father dead. His head crushed. The window on the other side faced towards the mainland. He saw his grandfather receiving the news back home. He felt bad but somehow it was natural for him to think that way.
     On the other side of the road the land was bucolic and green and in the distance bottle-green mountains rose and fell like swelling water and faded into the distance. A few long flat clouds hanged high in the sky. The mountains closest to him were dark in the long shadow made by the clouds and brilliant where the sun broke through the gaps. There was little mist in the mainland and it was not difficult to see. He guessed that the mountains in the distance were probably taller because they were broader where they met with the clouds.
     They left the highway. They drove towards the mountains and through a small town with rude houses, and they passed a row of shacks and a bar and turned right off the main road. They faced a steep hill. The bus climbed the hill and the boy thought it might be too wide to take the corners which were jutted with rocks and branches which reached down like claws into the road from above.
     They pulled up by the visitor’s center and stepped out of the bus. His sister was groggy. The driver was their guide too and he stood in front of the map which was fixed to the wall of the center. He was shy again now that they were not in the bus.
     He spoke to them. The boy did not meet his eyes.
     “We make three stops today friends; the falls, the tower, the trails. But first you watch the movie. It is a half hour. Then I take you up the mountain. The movie starts in ten minutes, so feel free to walk around and I come find you when it starts.”
     They had ten minutes, so they walked back into the car park and around the rockery. The rocks were arranged in rows and were broken up with bromeliads and turned soil, and tiny green lizards darted across them. A wild flower leaned from the rockery into the path. When the man passed it he stooped and picked a leaf from it, put it under his nose to smell it then bit a piece off and chewed it. It was sapid but he did not know what it was. He smiled and passed a piece to the boy and the girl and the boy tried it. They passed what looked like a long, brown, flat leaf which turned out to be an iguana, and headed into the visitor’s center to the theatre.
     They watched the movie. It was beautifully shot and put together, the boy thought. It was narrated by an actor whose name none of them could recall. When they left the theatre they got back into the bus and it wound up and around the path, slowing to pass other buses making their way back down. Some of the drivers blared their horns as they passed them.
     The boy was rocking back and forth in his seat. The girl had moved to the other side of the bus.
     Tall knuckled trees vied for light in the land beneath the road. They were shielded from the road by rows of bamboo. Through them the boy could see the green tree tops spanning for what seemed like miles.
     “I didn’t expect to see bamboo,” said the man.
     “The rangers, they bring the bamboo for the tabanoco. If a car falls off the road, it gets stuck in the bamboo.” The man did not reply. The guide looked up into his rear view mirror to smile at his joke and he met the boy’s eye. The boy saw two scowling pits. He looked out the window and his thoughts of the wrecked car and of his mother were lurid, and should have been limited by drugs.
     “Has that ever happened?” asked the girl.
     “Not when I’m driver,” he said. He winked into the mirror.
     “Are they for the wind?” the man said. He was curt.
     “In part. They give the bigger trees something to lean on.” He raised his hand and pointed his thumb back the way indicating the road behind. “That is as high as you’ll see them.”
     They pulled over into a shoulder where another bus was parked. They picked up their things and left the bus and crossed the road to where a crowd was gathered and where people climbed the rocks to the falls and took pictures of themselves and of each other. The river above them cascaded down into a tributary shaded by the canopy of nearby trees, and by the great arms of a twisted black tree which leaned over the water; and the surface of the water was lambent with light as the odd clear ray broke through the gaps in the canopy.
     The man stood next to the guide and slung the backpack over his shoulder.
     “Is it safe to climb up?”
     “It is safe. I will hold anything you don’t want to take up with you. One thing that is good to know; the tree that is in the falls is an old Ausobo. Often when there is a storm it gets struck with the lightning, and every time it is charred or made ugly. It never seems to die though”
     “It looks dead,” said the man. He turned to the boy and the girl. “Fancy it?”
     The girl shook her head.
     “Son?”
      “Sure.”
      “Alright if he goes up alone?” he asked the guide. He motioned to his leg.
     The guide did not expect this. He said okay.

     The boy worked his way along the wooden fence which spanned the base of the falls and served as an entry. He looked up. The water fell like sheeted glass for twenty feet, slickening the jutting rocks and moiling the brown water as it crashed into the tributary. There were wide, dark, flat stones at the edge of the tributary and there were fading dark marks where the water had bled into the rocks when the water was turgid. On the left, people were climbing the rocks to a cantilevered stone platform which was held fast on one side by a second flat stone, and seemed spliced into the bark of the colossal broken tree. Blackened by the lightning, the boy thought the tree looked like wrought iron or a charred corpse, and it reached up to the ridge with limbs rigid and cracked and shaded the trail and the water below. As he climbed he passed people coming down, and a woman slipped and put her hand into the wet mud on the mountainside to keep her balance. The boy was a good climber. His thighs burned when he reached the great rock and he rested against the twisted, deformed old tree.
     Below, the man and the girl and the guide were watching the boy up on the rocks.
     “It’s like something out of the Last of the Mohicans,” the man said.
     “Your boy is brave! And a good climber,” he added. He almost said "considering".
     They watched.
     “You do not like to climb?”
     The man motioned to his leg again. “Hurt it in a crash. Lucky to be walking I guess.”
     At the mention of the word the girl looked up at the man and stared.
     “Oh my. I’m sorry.”
     The man smiled. “It’s okay.”
     The guide smiled awkwardly.
     The girl took out her camera and pointed it up at the scene. From the base of the falls by the fence the boy heard his name being called.
     “Smile!”
     The boy was facing them but he quickly turned his back on them. The girl took the shot and put the camera into its sheath.
     “Great pictures here,” said the guide.
     Water from the falls sprayed the boy gently. He was still leaning on the cold black trunk looking through the film of falling water. He noticed that a few yards above him the water thinned and spread like a fan as it ran against a salient rock. He leaned forward to look into the distorted water and, staring, he fancied that some awful thing squatted behind it and beckoned him.
     Below, for the first time in a long time, the man’s guts turned cold as he watched the boy leaning into the falls.
     The boy turned and looked down at them, down at his father. The girl and the guide waved at him and he did not wave back.
     He seemed to have read his father's thoughts.
     He heard the voice and he began muttering back at it. He knew it was best to keep moving and not to stare into the pit he believed was behind the falls. Using the tree for balance he worked his way down the rocks being careful not to catch on the charred roots which were strewn across them. Half way down it was shouting and he bit and he dug his knuckles hard into the stone as he lowered himself. When he reached the bottom he leaned against the wooden fence up at the falling water and the rocks and the great deformed tree which leaned into the falls. It seemed to him as though the tree was in limbo between life and death and he wandered how a thing so horrid and disfigured could stand so stolid and assured in the living falls and not look out of place.
     They turned and headed back to the bus where the guide and the others were waiting. The man noticed the scrapes on the boy’s knuckles.


                         ***                                                                 


     The bus climbed the road and the trees grew denser. The guide pointed out to them the Sierra Palms and other trees, but they could not tell the difference. It grew quiet in the bus. The boy was staring out the window. They soon arrived at a stone observation tower with banana trees standing outside and impatients scattered on the ground. They followed the guide up the stone staircase stopping to look through the slit-windows to glimpse the massive deep green sprawl of the treetops on one side and the sparkling sea on the other.
     The man and the guide reached the top. The guide walked to the end of the deck and turned to smile at him.
     “Holy hell,” said the man.
     “Yeah. Is something, no?”
     “Yeah.”
     He leaned over the side. The canopy reached for miles and rose and fell with the mountains.
     Trailing them, the boy and the girl made it to the deck.
     “Kids you’ve got to see this.”
     They joined him and they looked out over the canopy together and down to the sea which was calm, and they could see faintly the islands which stuck out of the water. The guide stood by them and pointed to them and gave them their names in Spanish then their translations in English.
     The boy walked to the other side of the deck of the battlement which faced the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. The mountains rose into the clouds in three bottle green peaks hiding elfin trees which he knew, from the video, were thick and squat and mysterious in the mist. It was very hot on top of the tower but the tops of the mountains looked cold, and he thought the mist looked like a veil of dry ice hiding the secret forest. He wanted to be up there. He saw in his mind the leaves on the trees there frozen and crisp and cool, and covered with small icy beads. He imagined it a silent place.
     The man walked over to the boy.
     “Some view.”
     “Yeah.”
     “Imagine those tiny trees.”
     The guide joined them and stood between them looking up at the mist.
     “Do you ever tire of coming up here?” said the man.
     The guide thought about it.
     “Sometimes I do. I tire more of the visitors, not the mountain.” He smiled quickly to show he did not mean them. “I do not tire of the view. It is a very good view.”
     The boy walked to the opposite side of the deck. He hated the guide.
     “How’d you mean the visitors?”
     He was reluctant but he felt obliged to explain.

     “When I start doing this job a few years ago, I have this family for the day. It is silly really.” He looked up at the man. “Well they stay at the big hotel, the other big hotel, I mean. Our tour, you see, is not very expensive. Other tours are much more expensive. But we are a small company. Well not a thing on the tour was good enough for them.” He shrugged. “The bus is dirty and cheap, the guide is just a boy, the roads are bad, the country is run down and poor. And so on. They did not think much of my English too and I hear them say the people here are lazy.”
     “They sound awful.”
     “They were. And they had a boy too, and the boy he spit into the ground when we walk by the impatients and I say to him not to because it looks disrespectful. Well his mother she raise her voice and tell me how I dare to talk to her boy and so on. The whole day was bad with them, you know.”
     “I can imagine. Did they tip you?”
     “They give me three dollars, for all three of them. And you know what, I hear them talking in the bus on the way home about how they could even manage to spend money in such a place.’”
     “That’s awful cheap of them.”
     The guide smiled.
     “The tips are nice but it not important. I get paid fair. I would rather be happy when I work than get a tip.”
     “That’s good that you think so. Because we’re not tipping you.”
     The guide was puzzled but when the man started to laugh he laughed with him.
     They were silent for a minute or so.
     The guide was watching the boy leaning over an embrasure between two merlons. “Your son, he will be okay on his own over there?”
     The man turned and looked at the boy from across the deck. He swallowed and looked back up into the clouded trees.
     “He is fine.” He said.


                                                                       
                         ***


     The guide drove them up to the mountain trail and told them they could only go in one direction and he’d meet them at the other side lower down the mountain in an hour. On the drive up to the trail the boy was bombarded with hissing and screaming and it was all he could do to keep from screaming himself. He was a beast and a murderer and he should kill himself. He could not distract himself when they set off along the decking and stepped off of it onto the trodden down dirt path which wound through the forest. The father led the way and pointed out to them the birds high up on the branches and the huge grey mushrooms which grew at base of the trees. There was much to see and to hear and he wanted none of it.
     They passed a brook which roared and crashed through rocks making its way down the mountain. The water was clear. A couple ahead of them stopped the man and asked him to take their picture, and when he did the couple offered to take a picture of all of them to return the favor. He said it would not be necessary.
     They walked for another twenty minutes or so, passing birds and lizards and frogs, and the tall Sierra Palms which competed for the sun and kept the forest ground gloomy and damp and gave it its musky smell. They came to a second fall where the brook emptied into a basin that was wide and open. There were people swimming in the water. They walked by them and across the damp wooden bridge and leaned over the side where the water rushed further downstream. It was murky and brown as the water disturbed the dirt on the bed, and they watched the water drop from the brook in an constant rush. An older man was swimming by the falls, only his head above the water. They followed the trail around and stopped on the long wooden bridge which passed over the river where the water ran from the falls.
     “Anyone getting in?” said the man.
     “It looks cold,” said the girl
     They decided not to go into the water but they stopped for a while to watch the people swimming.
     There were a few children in the water and they competed to see who could stay under for longer. Each time they broke the water they gasped and looked up for approval from their mother who stood taking pictures of them from the rocks. There was a young couple too, the woman holding onto the man with her legs wrapped around him trying to kiss him romantically, but he was aware of the kids and kept giving side looks to their mother, who didn’t really care. And there was another family on the bridge too who had stopped to look but who did not want to get into the water.
     The boy took it all in like a sketch. He watched the old man wade in the deep water near the waterfall and watched him disappear behind it and appear in the middle of it hunched over like a sloth as the water raked on his back. His wife was watching him and laughing from where she sat on the flat rock by the water’s edge.
     The old man dove and waded then entered the shallow water, and crawled along in it so only his head was showing. And when he stood up in the shallow water his wife reached down and handed him a towel, and as he clambered up next to her on the rock the boy noticed that where his left arm should have been there was a dent covered taught with a flap of skin. The old man noticed the boy and the crowd looking down from the bridge and he smiled and waved up at them.




                         ***                                                                        


     When they met with the guide at the end of the trails they were tired and ready to get back to the condominium. The boy slept on the drive back through the mountain and across the country as the sun lowered behind them. The man sat in the back with his children on either side of him. The windows of the squat concrete houses were bright orange squares against the darkening sky and the black sea which he glimpsed through the trees.
     The man was tired. He had been acting for the sake of his children and it was enervating. The boy was muttering in his sleep and his voice was growing louder. The man knew that he was not taking his medication. He was languid and slow and numb when he took it. He was none of those things right now. He was afraid for him because he was young and he carried so much pain and he did not bare it well. He knew that the boy missed his mother. He was worried and his leg was starting to hurt. He hated whatever it was that spoke hatred to the boy in the day and through the night. He hated his wife for being at the wheel. His arm was around the boy and he held him tightly. Above them the stars were bright in the sky and clouds gathered over the sea.