“Yeah, but this is an emergency!”
“Remember what he said about emergencies?”
“Yeah, I remember.” Miguel slouched in the kitchen chair and thought about the hunger pangs in his stomach. “I’m going to make a burrito, you want one?”
“Yeah, make me one without chorizo.”
Miguel walked to the refrigerator and pulled out the containers filled with beans, rice, and chorizo. He placed the cast-iron grill pan on the stove and warmed up the flour tortillas. The smells of the warming food made him think of his grandmother and tears began to fill his eyes.
“What if she dies?” his voice cracked as he spoke.
“Don’t say that!” Ramón yelled out. “Don’t be negative!”
“Yeah, but what if she’s really sick?”
“We have to be positive.” Ramón thought for a moment, then added, “We have to call Tío Rodrigo, he doesn’t know what happened.”
Miguel hadn’t considered the possibility that his father wouldn’t know about their grandmother’s sudden illness. “Doesn’t the hospital have phone numbers to call when someone gets sick?”
“I think so, but we should call anyway. We can use the phone at the gas station. Let’s go after we eat.”
The boys ate their burritos quickly and didn’t say another word. Although each one was thinking of their grandmother and the grim possibility of her death, neither boy wanted to face losing her.
The distance from the house to the nearest gas station was a mile. The boys walked at a fast pace and within minutes arrived at the dusty and vacant establishment.
“Is anyone here?” Miguel asked, looking around at the empty spaces between the gas pumps.
“Probably inside the store. I’ll go look.” Ramón walked around the side of a small building and entered through an open door. The attendant was sitting behind a crowded counter filled with beef jerky, candy, and assorted key fobs.
“Hey, do you have a pay phone around here?” Ramón asked.
The attendant was slightly older than Ramón and barely noticed anyone walking in.
“No, the phone was taken out a long time ago.” He continued to read his magazine and never looked up again.
“Where can we find a pay phone? We really need to call someone.”
“I don’t know. I think there’s one outside the market about a mile or so down the road,” replied the disinterested clerk.
Ramón told Miguel the bad news. “Can you believe this, another mile!”
“Well, let’s go,” Miguel replied.
The boys walked down the road at a slower pace and eventually found a pay phone
“Okay, you call your dad and tell him.” Ramón took the quarters from his pocket and gave them to Miguel.
“Why can’t you call him?”
“He’s your dad. If I call him, he’ll get mad,” Ramón answered.
“He’ll get mad if I call him!”
The boys looked at each other, wondering what to do next. Then Ramón came up with a brilliant idea: “Let’s flip for it. Heads, you call; tails, I call.”
The quarter flipped in the air and landed on the dusty ground below. Miguel had to make the fateful call. He put the coins in the slot and dialed his dad’s cell-phone number.
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
“There’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.
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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
The 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.
Both boys had brought backpacks with them. Miguel took his and emptied out all the stuff inside to make room for the necessities of the trip. The video games were worthless without the machine to play them on, and his soccer shoes came out too. Only the essentials remained.
Ramón had been walking slower than he had earlier in the day. The scooter was much heavier than a bicycle to push and the deflated tires caused it to drag as he steered it along his right side. He had stuffed a screwdriver and a wrench into his jean pockets. He hoped he could fix the Vespa with the limited tools he had. “I’ll be glad when I can ride it home,” he thought with optimism.
He rolled the scooter up to the air hose and put a quarter in the canister.
Chapter 11
When Ramón attached the air compressor nozzle to the rubber inner tubes of the tires nothing happened. The air compressor made a lot of noise and the tires did nothing but make a hissing sound. He stood back in disappointment and wondered what to do next. Then he got the idea of cleaning the small engine with baking soda. He had seen his uncle Rodrigo clean an old lawn mower last summer using the strange homemade cleaner. He went inside the convenience store to buy the items needed.
“Hey, do you have baking soda and a bowl or something I could use?” he asked the attendant.
The nineteen-year-old glared at the younger boy and was visibly irritated at having to reply to his request.
“Check on the last aisle on the bottom shelf,” he said without enthusiasm.
Ramón found the small box he was looking for and grabbed a shallow paper bowl from the food counter. The bowl was intended for a serving of nachos, but he thought it would work for the job he had in mind. He then picked up a toothbrush and took his purchase to the counter.
“There’s water by the air compressor,” the clerk said, taking the money from the young boy.
Ramón was surprised at this. He didn’t think the clerk had noticed what he had been doing. He paid for the items and went outside to start his project. He took out the rusted spark plug from the small engine, using his wrench, and began cleaning it with the baking soda solution. After reinstalling the old spark plug he attempted to start the engine again and to his dread, nothing happened.
“You probably need new spark plug wire,” said a voice from around the gas pump.
Ramón looked up with a discouraged look on his face and saw an older man holding a large paper cup of coffee and a doughnut wrapped in wax pa
per. The old man took a big bite of the sugary treat and stared directly at the blue scooter with interest.
“Looks like it’s been out of commission for a few years,” he said in a good-natured tone.
“Yeah, me and my cousin found it at my grandma’s house,” Ramón said flatly. “We were going to drive it to Sante Fe but I can’t get it started.”
“Is that right?” the old man said, surprised upon hearing the bold plans. “That’s quite a distance, but I guess if you drive straight through on the interstate you could probably make good time,” he said, scratching his head. “I’ve made the trip plenty of times myself. I guess a bike like that could work. ‘Sometimes you got to grab the bull by the horns,’ that’s what my old friend Esteban used to say,” he added. “Aren’t you Esteban’s kid? He used to take you and another kid on camping trips then come back full of stories to tell!” the gray-haired man said, happy to think of his old friend again.
“Well, actually, he’s our grandfather. I’m Ramón and Miguel is my cousin,” he answered, surprised that the stranger knew his family.
The old man gazed off into the distance and took a long sip of his coffee. He reveled in the memories of his bygone youth and of the friends that had meant so much to him. Road trips through the desert and beyond had been a favorite pastime. He stood for a moment and recollected his first adventure driving through Arizona en route to Santa Fe.
When he looked again at Ramón’s face, the disappointment was noticeable in the young boy’s eyes. It was clear to the man that the boys wouldn’t have their chance of taking an exciting trip without the motor scooter and he remembered Esteban always talking about how he wanted his grandsons to see the world and not be afraid of life. This persuaded the older man to help.
“Why don’t you bring that bike over to my shop, and I’ll see what I can do to get it running again.”
“Really?” Ramón exclaimed.
“Yeah, I’ll get you going on your trip. Your grandpa would have wanted me to!”
The old man finished his doughnut and coffee as he walked along the dusty road with the young boy past the gas station toward an auto-parts yard. The shop front was partially hidden behind mountains of discarded old vehicles. A wire cyclone fence surrounded the property and a large metal sign hung over the doorway of the large building. The once-bright paint had faded in the desert sun but the words were still visible, “Frank’s Auto Parts and Sales.”
Desert Passage Page 3
