Chapter 17
Like a hurricane, it was all over in one fast, confusing night. I woke up from tropical exuberance on a freezing cold flight about to touch down in Savannah.
Saying goodbye had been difficult for lots of reasons, and more so since I still understood only parts of the conversations. With Wilfredo, things had been different. He spoke slowly, gestured, and used words, tense, and hints he knew I knew. Like Julio Iglesias's songs, I could follow the emotions. But Andreas and family threw an outdoor party that included every single aunt, cousin, and teacher I’d ever met, and there was no way he forgot to include the storekeepers who'd been so kind to me, the skinny man and his lovely, tremendous wife he'd named the store for- Mi Bella Gorda. In that situation, I felt like I was trying to follow a chaotic Ricky Martin song.
Even Rubio and his driver stopped by at my request. The crowd loved that and treated him like a pop star. We had our quiet reconciliation dinner. He accepted that I didn’t plan to move down, open a garden business, or be his lover, but we both wanted to keep in touch. Rubio was one of the few folks who could actually come and visit.
I packed rolls and rolls of 35 mm slides, some children's gardening books I thought might be useful for learning more words, a few gifts, and even a sugar cane machete I’d bought out in the country. But I left most of my clothes, shoes, and all of my traveler's checks for Andreas to distribute.
On a hot and dry morning, he and the family crowded into the Scout and took me to the airport.
Chapter 18
Parked under the live oak, with the Bronco windows down, a hot breeze brought in the smell of gardenias, cows, and someone burning pine straw. Kenny had insisted on picking me up and taking us on a trip to our hometown straight from the airport. We pulled up at his Dad's farm but sat on the front bench seat; neither of us really wanted to get out. The truck sat on gray sand tracks inside a cave of low-hanging oak limbs. The oak sat at the edge of a little yard, a green-stained picket fence, a house, a few barns, and fields all around. It was a snow globe scene of a place in a world that hardly ever saw the white stuff.
He twisted his body toward me, angling one hairy leg up on the seat. He adjusted his shorts and said, “We gotta do this." He meant to go see his Dad, but I knew his body language intended to remind me of something more.
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