Chapter 11
Sun and the cold bite of the wind made Hector squint as he walked home from the market. It was late November, and he began to feel a longing for his native island. The days had grown shorter as the weeks passed; the rain had come, and the smell of decaying leaves mixed well with the cold, ghostly air. Hartford was preparing for a long winter now, and Hector felt sick from the cold. He walked quickly up the streets now void of the music and absent the mix of young and old—these streets where there was life were growing more and more empty. A death was coming; he could feel it whistle its warning through the front of his coat.
He walked in thoughts he recognized from his dreamy visions between sleep and awake; onward, onward he paced the beaches in his mind. He was warmer when he arrived. His feet were bare and his arms and chest wore the sweat of a long journey, defined by conquest and molded, shaped, by an urge to destroy. As he walked down streets of Hartford, his dream double walked on empty beaches—beaches peopled only with the dead. Bodies naked and dismembered, bleeding corpses crusted with dried blood from wounds now old to the killer, now forgotten, were walked past as if they were wild flowers too far from the path. Onward, the warrior paced, for he had crossed this ground before, and he had made those flowers, now forgotten, grow. Facing the sea, Hector watched for a boat, a sign of any kind, that someone was going to come and see what he had done and place the sacred laurels on his knotted neck. On he walked, slowly, slowly, watching for movement, waiting for an answer, or hoping the question would dry up and float away. But the questions were too many.
Hector walked on through the streets, and on the beach. He could not ask what was the dream; he had no answer, he knew this, so he walked with it. He saw the sky blowing late sun through the late clouds. He saw the sky darken with the shapes of birds; black and white, that turned the day sky night. He stopped his walk to watch. They floated and turned, dove and climbed. They cried and answered, and they peered through darkened eyes at the man on the beach looking up with his mouth open as if to say, "Land here, and I will eat you." But the birds were not scared of the victor. They howled and chanted as they flew; floating low, just out of reach, they formed a chorus that sang his name in a hideous dirge:
Hector, Hector,
Lie, lay-lee die;
Put on beach to wonder why.
Hector, Specter,
Fortune's spy;
Ancient soldier, dreamer, fly.
He heard the words sung in low voices and awful notes. He saw the birds now visible by the gaps of sun some let through their flying knit—they were geese. And he knew without asking that they were the geese from a field on an island somewhere in his future. He cried out in fear:
"Generals, men of Troy...women who sang at my feet now wait for me to be hung. Help me, save me from these of the armies of nature. What I have lost has cost me my soul. Now, do not let this scattered beast take what I have left." There was no answer. There were no generals to save him. Hector must be as Hector is, he thought as he walked in his dual roles. He crossed the street and opened his eyes to the life, or rather, to the fact that the life was absent on the street in front of his apartment.
Mrs. Lopez, his neighbor, called his name as he walked up the stairs. Yes, he thought, I almost forgot. I have her eggs.
He stopped at her door which she had left open hearing him coming her way and he walked in and handed her the eggs.
"How was your day?" she asked, as she always did, with a big smile and her hands pushed tight in her apron.
"Fine," Hector said.
"And your cold?"
"Better, thanks," he said.
"Good. Will you be coming for dinner tonight? We're having chicken."
Hector did not answer. He was staring out the window watching the branches of the trees sway in the cold wind.
"Well," she said, "I can bring some up to you later. You don't have to come, I understand. You go get some rest now; you've had enough to think about lately." She took the eggs, and Hector walked out without closing the door behind him.
He went up to the apartment and put the groceries in the cabinets. He sat on the couch looking out over the empty streets and the low, bare trees. There was only the noise of Noribel's tight, almost choked breathing. Hector took off his shoes and began to think about what had passed in the last few weeks.
The rain on that day was cold, he thought. I had gone to the market to get a few cans of tomatoes, and it was the first time I had left Noribel alone. She had told me that she was going to stay in, that she did not like the cold rain, and that she would probably sleep on the couch until I got back. I told her I would be back very soon, and, if she wanted, we could take the bus somewhere, or she could teach me more English. But I too was tired, so I thought that it might be a good idea to sleep myself when I got back. I looked at her lying on the couch before I left, and I thought then that she was the most beautiful of God's creations. And she was. She had her eyes closed when I looked at her, but when I told her I would be right back, she opened them and I saw that her eyes were looking at me. At me, and only at me for the rest of our lives. I knew that she would never leave me, and I felt good and confident about leaving her alone. Now I do it all the time.
Hector looked over at Noribel as she slept, and he thought about her the first time he had seen her on the beach. She looked back at me, he thought, and I fell in love with her on the spot. Jesus knew it too. He knew there was something between us, some magic maybe, but he only saw it and told me that there are even more beautiful women in the states. He was wrong. There are none better than my Noribel—none. But you could not expect him to see that. And you could not expect Papa to see it either. He never saw her. It would not have made a difference. He would not have liked her. I do not think he would have liked anything that he thought would take me from the fields. That is all that he wanted. He just wanted me for the fields like a burro, or like a hoe. But he found out. He saw me leave. I know he got up after I had walked away and he had looked out the window and watched me walk down the road for the last time. I wonder what that did to him. I wonder if he is thinking about me now, or if he went outside that night and lay in the tall grass and would not come back in the house like the time his brother had died. Hector stood and walked to the sink for a glass of water.
He looked out the window and saw that the sun was streaming through the clouds as the day grew old. He thought about the geese he would see in the fields when he worked with his father, and he thought about how they came late in the day, stopping there to visit the pond behind the trees. He would watch them as he sat in the shade, and the geese were not scared of him or his father. They floated down, some circling first, others coming in straight, and he could see them coming from a long way off. They flew in a triangle, but they broke apart before they landed. And there was never a dead one left behind. Hector remembered thinking that they must never die, or there would be a dead one found every once in a while like people are sometimes found dead in their house, or curled up dead in a ball out in a field. There were many ways that people died, but there were few, if any, ways that geese died. This is the time of year they come, he thought. Papa is probably with them now in the field. He took his glass of water back to the couch and sat down looking out at the sky and wondering why geese were not found dead.
Hector had fallen asleep on the couch in the light of the dying day, and when he awoke, he saw that Noribel had her eyes open. She was looking at him, but he could not tell if she was awake or not. She did not make a noise. He could smell that something had happened. Sure enough, she had made a mess.
Hector went into the kitchen and cursed himself for not having put the towels down on the bed before he had left for the market. He had remembered to check before he left for the market, but his mind was busy trying to think about what they needed, and he had forgotten at the last minute that she had not gone in some time, and there
was a good chance that Mrs. Lopez would, as she often did, also forget to check. He took a towel and held it under the faucet until it was soaked with warm water. He then took another dry towel from underneath the sink and brought it with him to the bed. She looked at him again. She did not move her head, only her eyes followed his movements.
What had happened on the day when Hector first left Noribel's side to go to the market in the rain was something that he did not like to think about. He had come home from the market, and when he saw that she was not there, he did not worry, and he did not wonder why she had left. He assumed that she had gone down to Mrs. Lopez1 apartment to get something, or to talk to her about something, and he smiled to think that they had made such a good friend. When she did not return for a long time though, he began to worry. He went down to Mrs. Lopez and asked her if she had seen Noribel or if she knew where she might be. She said no, and he did not have an idea of where else she could have gone. He went back up to the apartment and looked out the windows to see if he could spot her coming up one of the streets. When he looked out the window of the bedroom, he saw her.
He changed the towels underneath her and tried not to think about it. But he could not help it, and as she watched him, he remembered how he had seen her on the roof of the building next to theirs. She was face down, and the rain had made her clothes stick to her skin. She did not move, and he could not think of why she had gone onto the roof of that building, or why she was lying down. It made no sense to him. He watched her, but she did not move. Is she asleep on the roof in the rain, he asked himself. But he could not imagine why she would do such a thing. He heard Mrs. Lopez at the door, and he told her that he was in the bedroom and she should come in to see something. When she saw Noribel of the roof next door, she screamed and ran out of the room.
Later, when Noribel was back in the apartment with Hector, Mrs. Lopez told him what Noribel had said once about going on the roof. She had said that there were geese and other birds up there sometimes when it rained, and that she would like to go up there to see if she could feed one bread, or make one come to her and be her pet. She had gone on and on about how they were the best birds because they always stuck together, and because they mated for life. Mrs. Lopez told this to Hector, but she had not told it to the doctors or anyone else. What had happened once she got on the roof, she said she could not tell. Maybe she had chased one to the side and then slipped, or maybe she had walked to one and it had bit her and made her jump back and that is when she fell. It made no difference, she said, because now what was done was done, and there was no way to undo what had happened. She will be like this for the rest of her life, Mrs. Lopez said, and when she cried, Hector thought the world had dropped out from under him and he was going to fall and keep falling until he hit the same place where Noribel had landed and he was in the same place where she rested now. "That is all right," he said to her after he had cleaned the soiled towel and put it into the bucket he used to bleach it out, "I'll get someone to fix you. It can be done." But he did not know then how, or to whom he should look for help. He sat and looked at her eyes looking at him and wondered who to ask for help.
Mrs. Lopez told Hector that there were doctors who could restore Noribel to her former condition, but she did not know who they were, or where they could be found. There was also the problem of money: she told him that such doctors do not work for free, and that the operations would cost a great deal of money if they could be performed at all. Hector asked her how he could go about finding one of these doctors, and how he could get the money to pay them. "Well," she said, "if you had insurance, you would be able to have the operation done for free. They would pay. The problem now is, you have no way of getting insurance for her. She would have to have a physical, and she would not pass, as you can see."
"What do you mean by pass,” Hector said.
"Well, they will not give you insurance unless you are in good shape."
"Then why would you need insurance if you were in good shape?"
"Hector, insurance is there in case something bad should happen to you."
"Something has happened."
"Yes, but you should have had insurance before anything happened. See? You pay them each month, and when something happens, they pay for it."
"What if I get insurance for her now, and I do not tell them that the accident has already happened?"
"You can try. I don't know. I don't know much about it."
Hector thought about what Mrs. Lopez had said, and he decided that he would have to find a way to get Noribel insurance so she could get the operation that would restore her to her former self.
When he walked out of the kitchen and saw Noribel on the bed in the middle of the living room, he thought his heart was going to fall out of his chest. Her mouth was open, and she was crying, though she did not make a sound. The doctors had told him that she was aware, that there was no damage to her mind or her hearing or her sight, but when she had hit the roof below, she had done so much damage to her spine, that she had lost her ability to move any of her limbs. She could do nothing. All she could do to make a noise to get Hector's attention was moan, or sigh loudly. Aside from that, the only other movement she controlled was her eyes. And now, as he walked in the room to tell her that he was going to get insurance so that they could get a doctor to operate on her, she lay with her mouth open and her eyes full of tears.
"I know, my flower," he said, "please do not cry. I'am going to get a doctor to fix you. Then, we can be like we used to be. We can do anything you want."
She looked at him through the glaze of the tears, and he wiped the water from her cheeks and her mouth. He heard the geese honk on the roof, and he knew why she was upset. He went into the closet where he kept the things he had brought with him from Puerto Rico and he put on his pava. He took off his shoes and put on a pair of his old shorts with the holes in the pockets. He straightened her head on the pillow so she could see him better, and he tried as hard as he could to smile.
"Remember how I was before?” he asked."I am still your little jibaro, Noribel. I am still him." He took off his hat and tipped it over his head as if it were full of water and he was cooling himself by a brook on the side of a hot road outside Fajardo. "See? I am still the same. And I will always be the same. I love you, my little flower. If it takes me the rest of my life, I will make you better. I promised you I would stay with you no matter what, and I will. I love you."
Hector kissed her and he could taste her tears. I will make you better, he thought, or I will die trying. He swept her long black hair away from her face and told her he would be back in a short while. He walked out of the building and began to look for a place where he could get insurance. It was snowing.