Hector

by Richard DeCrescenzo, Jr

  Chapter 3

  Golden and wonder dream vision awaited sleeping hero onshore offshore mosquito beach plaything ramba. Billy-king fo fo motion sleepers and waiting princes a hard lest and hard lester watching mortify lully bye bye shhh, ssshhh, ssshhh. Let the wind take him to sleep. Let the waves lull him, baby. Lean over, Noribel, and kiss sleeping hero streamed on his blanket by the coral waves of green and warm magical peace. Beautiful Noribel, let fall your tender hand on his waves of black hair and his brown stone carved features. He does not know his beauty and you do not know yours. Let the waves of your shhh shy hands wash his youth from the cool crystal shore. Back, back to the time when you saw him looking at you; back, back until you remember when he first spoke to the air that circled and swept your long brown hair and made close your green eyes and made shake your delicate legs, bare—bare to the world and the waves of green until it was just you and he. Let the water sooth*"your face with the specks of sunshine from his golden words. Hero! Hero, awake. You have a visitor who will not wait. Wake! Wake and hear her songs and open her eyes. Open! Let her see you see her see the waves of pure bolts of crystal light and powerful sight. Wake, Hector. Go fine too. Wake!

  The sun was already going down when Hector finally walked away from his father's home and his father's life. He took the same road that he and his brother had taken to Playa de Naguabo one year before. The letters had come, as Jesus promised, and they told of how wonderful the U.S. was. Jesus wrote that he hoped Hector would wise up and come to see for himself, but it was not an easy thing to do. Hector would first have to come up with the money for travel, then he would have to defy his father's wishes. The second task had been the harder to do; in fact, it turned out to be impossible. He would have to leave the same way that Jesus had: if he returned, he would not be received with love. Jose had told Hector that if he was ever foolish enough to follow his brother's footsteps, he would be even less welcome home because his betrayal would cost so much more. And Hector had listened to this warning for more than a year, but there was another lure to leave that no sense of loyalty to the family could withstand—Noribel.

  Hector had met Noribel the first time he had gone to the shore with his brother. After he had seen her, he knew that she was not like the other girls he had met from his own village. She was a star, a sharp knife straight to Hector's heart, and he did not know it then, but the knife would give a wound of painful joy. He fell in love with her as soon as he had looked into her eyes full on the first day that he had laid eyes on her. He felt that she loved him too; when he looked, she looked, and they both saw the same thing. They were in love the way two young people fall in love when they do not know each other. They were in love the way two people are in love when they feel a new heat in their hearts and they see with new eyes how beautiful life can be. To them, on that first meeting, there was nothing else to look at except each other. There were no sounds of other people to listen to and no thoughts in the head to distract. It was them and them alone on that first day, and it was them and them alone for every day that followed. Hector could not resist the will of Noribel and all that she was to him. When she said that they should go to the U.S., the scale was tipped. Jose could not say no to this because he did not know what he was saying no to. Noribel became for Hector a star to follow that would not be denied. Death would result from denial: death in the heart that Hector had not known that he had until she showed it to him. When she blinked or smiled, it was all he had to see. When she laughed or hummed a song, it was all that he had to hear. When she kissed him for the first time, she was all that he had to know. And when she said that they should go to the U.S. together, his mind was made up.

  Hector picked up the water jug that he used to carry to the fields. He turned from his father's house and did not look back—his thoughts were already on Noribel.

  Song of the silent men, men who follow the light, come, join me tonight. Hector thought, wished for a bright future. Now, now big soilders on the shore and sailors long dead and in deep sea cavern, join my song of hope and love: come with me in spirit and do my dance with me. Walk this rose road with me and...Noribel! Walk lonely men of lonely fields. My past was your past, come now shed the head of the sun, put down your sweating pava and dance. We are all there is, all there should be. Let us bring our beauty to other worlds and other men and women and boys and girls and sea and wind will sing our glad song as we travel in the perfect shadow of Noribel. Allow me to tell.

  Shaky side dance and waving of the hair, she moves with friendly wind steps above the ground that cannot hold her. She sees the dawn from a light shining behind and within the curious i past and the tormented future. She, she has the power of flight, though, gentlemen and ladies, she does not have to use it. She is the circus and the cool water. She is the happy clown and the perfect spin in the silent air. She is the angel sparrow on the angels flight. With her there is no night, no wrong, and no right. All is there on the tip of her small nose and she dances through tender fields in the morning light and her dance makes me cry for its beauty. She is all and all that will ever be. And she is all for me.

  Hector walked toward Noribel. She was waiting for him, but he was not expected for another day, and since the walk to her house would only take two hours he had a day to kill. Instead of heading straight for her village, he followed the same road to the shore where he had met her. He thought that a visit there would do his heart good after having left his father and mother and home for what would probably be the rest of his life. Jose had put it that way. He had said that if he should lose his second and only good son to the malicious call of the wind, then neither would ever be welcome home again. But Hector could not let that bother him; he had had a year to prepare to leave as he knew he would leave once he had met Noribel. More than a year had passed, but he had thought enough about it, maybe too much, and he had often thought himself a coward for not leaving earlier. The days had passed slowly during his time of indecision.

  Paco was heard wheezing outside Hector's window, and the sound made him sick. The sun was barely up, the air had moisture, and Hector thought he was getting a cold. September had come to Tablones; it had started as August had, hot and dry. But now it was damp in the morning, and Hector knew that the rainy season was about to begin. He lay in bed thinking about Noribel. He thought about the first day that they had spent together, and he thought about all the other Sundays in between. He made the trip to her house on foot many times, and he was glad that she did not mind that he came with bare feet and no gifts; no, she did not care about anything the other girls were said to care about. His visits lasted all day and sometimes into the night. Noribel would wait on the small porch of her small house, and her parents were liberal enough not to demand that an adult be present with the couple the entire time that they were together. Hector appreciated this, but their presence would not have made a difference. All he wanted was to talk with her, to hold her small hand, and to look at her beautiful face. Sometimes it made him too nervous to look in her eyes, so he would look to other parts of her. She did not mind that he stared, and she often blushed when he would catch her staring at his sharp shoulders or his lean legs. As Paco wheezed, Hector held his stomach. Many mornings were like this for him: he knew he had to help his father in the fields, he knew that he wanted to be with Noribel, and the conflict was beginning to wear on his nerves. He slid out of bed naked and cold and stood for a minute naked on the orange rug of his room and listened to Paco choking. Poor dog, he thought. He must have had a lover when he was younger too. I hope that he was able to live with her for a while before she died or left. I hope she did not leave. Not even a dog deserves that. But that thought made him think of his thoughts of leaving his father, and it made him feel guilty. I have not done anything wrong, he thought. He pulled on his long pants and a shirt that his mother had made for him and went out into the kitchen. There were many more mornings like
this in the time that Hector could not decide how to leave. He knew he would leave though, and the mornings would have to be overcome.

  It was quiet on the road to Playa de Naguabo. Hector walked slowly and listened for the sound of the ocean. He was in no hurry. He passed a place that he had seen from the road many times and decided that he would go there and spend some time with the silence. There was a brook a short distance down the hill that the road skirted and there seemed to be a path, though it was overgrown. Hector walked down through the heavy, damp underbrush. He saw that there was a clear spot where he could sit and put his feet in the water, or lay in the water if he wanted to. He put down his brown sack full of his belongings next to a fallen tree that had its limbs in the water. I will lie in this brook, he thought, and he took off his clothes and lay in the shallow water. It felt cool on his skin as it washed over him. He lay for a long time staring up at the lush green trees and the clear sky now turning gold and red with the coming of dusk. His head was back in the water too, and he felt himself float slightly with the smooth running water. This is what heaven must be like, he thought. This and Noribel with me floating on cool water on a hot day with nothing between us and God except the thick trees and the cool breeze of late afternoon. He lay like this for a little longer before he climbed out of the water and went to sleep on a bed of leaves.

  He dreamt that there was music everywhere as he walked with Noribel on a cushion of moist air. They strode naked through villages and cities, through bazaars and carnivals, through parks and gatherings of smiling people. Everywhere they went people sang to them in languages that were foreign before, but now made perfect sense. All the songs were alike: all were of their union and their love and how it made the world better and more perfect. They looked around at all the people who sang and laughed. They were funny, happy people who wished only to please the two perfect, naked, floating people. It was like heaven, only it was real and on earth. The float picked up speed and wound them in circles. It lifted them and dropped them suddenly making Noribel's hair flop up and down over her face. She became frightened and turned her face toward Hector. He looked in the blur of her face and saw that she had become Jose and the sight of his father made him angry and fearful. "No, father," he said in his dream, "you cannot take her. She will not die for you." And as he said this his father took his machete and swung it at Hector fast and hard. He jumped from his father and awoke. It had become night, and he was not sure at first whether or not he had left the dream. He was still naked, but the songs of the dream had turned to the light rushing of the brook. Silence, the absence of human sound other than his own breathing, made him scared and he anticipated the dangers he had heard of when the older people told stories of things that can happen to young people out on the island at night. But most of all he feared the image of his father's angry face as he took Noribel's body and used her arm to swing his machete to kill his son. All the music and the soft wind and the floating of the dream had gone with his father's one swing: all the magic of the naked couple and the smiling faces had been turned ugly and fierce by Jose. Hector closed his eyes for a moment and fought the urge to cry. I must not, he thought. I must not allow my father to take away what is beautiful and new to me. He can do as he pleases, and now I can too. His thoughts of his father became more grim and more resentful the more he thought about the guilt he felt for leaving him to work alone in the field and face alone the questions of the other older people in the village who would want to know what had happened to Jose's good son who had helped him so much with the work that had to be done in the fields if the family was to live the life that all knew was the only life to live if only young boys and girls could resist the fire in their stomachs and in their blood long enough to see that the way of the village was and is the only way to live for good people who enjoy the good, simple things in life that are given to them for free by God who does not ask only that each person does his or her share of the work that must be done for the survival of the village which is the only place to live in peace and happiness. Hector too had believed in the village. He too had gone about his business and grown older in a slow, calm, comfortable way—the way his father had. But his father did not have a brother named Jesus who tempted from afar the will of a young man. And his father did not have an angel called Noribel who swept her fluid beauty in front of him in waves of hot passion and young nakedness. His father also did not have a place next to a brook where he could go and spend the night if he cared to before he made the short walk to Quebrada Seca where the angel would be waiting to start a long journey to wherever their hearts decided they should go. His father was never free—never free enough to go or not go, sleep or not sleep, spend time here or there and make with life whatever could be made with the things that would come on a journey that was headed anywhere but here. The guilt was starting to leave Hector as he thought about how free he was, and he decided to try and fall back asleep. He rolled up his shorts for a pillow and drank a handful of water from the brook as if he were the first and last man on earth. This is my brook, he thought. Tomorrow I will leave it to whoever comes after me. There is always going to be new water coming, so let who will drink, drink. And if they want to lay in the water to cool off, let them do that too. I will not own this place tomorrow, but I own it tonight. He lay back down and thought about Noribel and how she would look as she ran toward him with her bag like his bag full of all the things that they had called their own before when they were trapped in old villages with old people and old ways. He thought about how they would run as far as they wished and then they would walk as far as they wished. Eventually, they would come to the ocean at a place where they could get on a boat and go to other place in the world and run or walk when they pleased or sit down in the sun and eat fruit or lay naked in a cool brook that someone else had owned the night before, but was theirs when they wanted it to be theirs. Eventually they would come to many beautiful places and be as perfect as a dream in them. At least there would be no angry fathers in their new places—there would be nothing but them and their love.

  In the morning Hector woke with a chill. He was not used to sleeping outside, and the dew had risen and covered his bare skin. He sat up and saw that he was naked by the naked brook and the naked plants. The sun had just risen fully in the sky; subtly, the light stretched through the trees overhead and sparkled in spots on the water. He dipped his jug in the cool water and filled it for the walk to Quebrada Seca and Noribel. He tried to remember whether or not he had had dreams in the night, but he could not remember. Standing, he pulled on his shorts and put on his pava and started for the road. Today I really start, he thought, and he was on the road to what he felt was the beginning of his new life.

  He only had a few miles to go, and he had told Noribel that he would be at her house sometime before noon. He had anticipated a big fight with his father before he left, but since that had not happened, he was ahead of schedule. In the time that he had been with Noribel he had become familiar with the roads between Tablones and Quebrada Seca, so he decided to kill some time by walking along the shore. He knew that he could reach a point along the shore that is directly in line with the back of her house where he had told her he would be. He had imagined the scene a thousand times: she would be sitting on the back porch railing with her feet hanging and swinging, and he would emerge through the underbrush by the well and the empty chicken coop. She would smile when she saw him, then she would pick up her bag and run toward him. That is how he wanted it to go—that is how he had dreamed it would go. But he knew that Noribel's father would not be in favor of her leaving, and he worried that there might be more of a problem for her to leave than there had been for him. Noribel was also needed around the house. Her father was very old and she had been in charge of taking care of him when the mother went off to work. It was not the kind of life she had hoped for when she thought about what she would be doing when she came to the age o
f a young woman, but it was the life that she had been forced to accept. She told Hector that she had to leave, they had to leave, or she would rot away like an orange in the sun. But they had hoped together, and they had come up with their plan to simply leave the lives that they knew and create better ones as they journeyed to wherever their feet would take them.

  Hector walked along the empty beach. He began to feel sorry for Noribel's mother and father, but he could not let himself think about them. They will find a way to live, he thought. They will find a way just like they would have to if she died or became crippled. No, do not even think of that. "Fool," he said to himself out loud. He reached the point along the beach where he knew he was in line to Noribel's house. There was a rock that they had sat on many times when he had gone to visit her, and he sat on it to wait for the sun to reach a point in the sky that he knew to be just before noon. He opened his bag and took out a piece of bread that he had brought along for the trip. She will bring food, he thought, she will bring money and food and we will live like a king and a queen. He sat on the rock eating his bread dreaming of the wonderful foods that they would eat for the first time. Facing the ocean, he watched a fishing boat round the point of Punta Puerca and thought how it would be if they had such a boat to live on and travel the seas. But these thoughts died quickly because he knew nothing of the sea or what was beyond them. He tore off a piece of bread and threw it into the waves. The water caught it, but it was back at his feet. You do not want my bread, he thought, and he looked to the sun and saw that it was time to go.