Chapter 6
Hector was a new man. There was no gradual building up of resentment toward his father, no trial and error to his rebellion, no accumulation of injustices once lived with and now confronted; no, there was just a young man from the country having a secret victory over something he did not have to think about fighting. He won, and he knew straight off that he had won. And it may not have been just the shoes or just the trip or even the happiness after having won or even the sum of all things that lead up to him winning. He beat a thing that fought him though he did not know it; a thing that had hung like a cloud over his young head while he toiled away unsuspecting and without a care. Maybe that is why he smiled on the bus—maybe he smiled because he found everything all at once. And maybe it could have been true too that there was never anything to beat or to lose to that made a difference to him. So when it came, it came like a delicious treat from heaven. It rained and rained down on him like the rain that washed the dirty commuter bus that they now rode in to Arecibo, like the driving rain that fell on the hotel they had rustled through back in San Juan, like the rain that poured over Jose's head back in the fields of Tablones.
The bus kept on going. Noribel saw the change come over Hector and she eyed him suspiciously.
She turned to him and said, "Are you all right?" But she said it in a way that is not a question but is more like a criticism.
"Sure," he said. "Why, can't I be in a good mood? I told you I felt better. You should be glad." Hector's confidence grew out of his reservation like a flower out of dung. Where before he would have shrugged, now he felt he could and should say whatever came into his head to say. It was like the exposure to people and modern society had given him a whole new set of ideas as well as a whole new way of presenting them. He took Noribel in his arm quickly and asked her if she was too cold. He asked softly and pushed his nose into her hair to smell her perfume. Ahhh, that's good, he thought. I wish we had the whole bus to ourselves. But Noribel did not like the idea of his passions rising on a crowded bus headed for Arecibo in a down pour. Now it was she who blushed at her mate's advances.
"No. Hector," she whispered with the emphasis falling on the "tor" part of his name, "people will see."
Noribel was, by this time, completely without an idea as to why he was behaving as though he had always been from the city. She could not explain why he wore a look of utter confidence when the day before he behaved as though he were ready to run back to Tablones wringing his pava with fear. He settled back in his seat, smiled, closed his eyes, and laughed lightly.
The old bus splashed on and the rain poured on and the wipers in front of the driver hished and pooed as he made his way toward Arecibo. Not a passenger, not a one had pulled the rusty cable that would have made a buzzing that would have made the driver stop that would have let one of them or more than one of them out into the rain and into the street. To Hector this ride seemed the exact opposite of the ride from Fajardo to San Juan; he did not feel scared and there was no air-conditioning breathing cold air on the back of his neck. Why did it have to be there, he asked himself thinking about how he had not thought to get up and move to another seat. We'll see if that happens again. Next time I will switch with one of the other riders, and we will sit where I am more comfortable. She won't mind, she is with me—I am not with her. I should make that better known. But I think she knows. I think she always knew. He pulled the front of his shirt out of his pants to see if he liked how that looked better. But to Noribel, he was acting like a crazy person. She watched him change expression as he thought of different things, and she noticed that he did not care to look back to her as she stared.
They had already been on the bus for an hour or so when Noribel began to wonder if her man had eaten something that had poisoned him. But we ate the same things, she thought. How come I have not been changed into a crazy person? In her bag there was a box of chocolate her mother had given her. She took the box out and asked if he wanted any. She thought that maybe some sugar would make him feel more like himself.
"Hector," she said aloud, louder than a whisper, "would you like some chocolate?'
"Why are you talking to me like I am a child?" he asked. "If I want chocolate, I'll ask for some. But don't treat me like I am your child."
Hector did not look at Noribel when he spoke. Instead, he looked straight ahead and unconsciously watched the wipers go back and forth. He was not angry, but he had settled it in his head some miles back that he would not be treated as though he were a child. He wanted to get that straight right away. But Noribel did not know this and she took this new tone and manner of his as a sign that there was indeed something bad happening to him. The rain continued to fall in enormous drops that pounded the roof of the bus and made visibility difficult to the point of nearly impossible. The driver kept his eyes firmly on the road in case a farm animal or a person wandered in his path. This had happened before on this road. The man that was killed was drunk.
But Hector was not drunk and he was not in the road where he might get killed by a bus and he was not at all crazy. He was young, and all that that meant at the time they rode the bus to Arecibo was that he had found a new way of looking at the world through new eyes lodged in a newly freed head and he was on an adventure that he did not know until recently was the highlight of his life. And Noribel had to ride out the rest of the way unsure and wavering through her worries and her theories and feeling her heart beat to the beat of the timeless wipers.