Chapter 9
The boat reached Fort Lauderdale at night. Hector and Noribel stood on the deck when they were told that they would be docking in less than an hour, and they stood, like many of the other people on board, watching as the lights of the city grew closer. Each of these people have their own place to go when they arrive, Noribel thought, and each have their own story to tell about where they have been. She watched the coast in the night and thought about what people might say about Puerto Rico and the things that they saw there. She wondered how many had taken trips to the country to see people like Hector working in the field with his pava tilted back, or resting under a tree to eat lunch. I hope they did not see him while he was resting, she thought. If that is the image they have to bring back, or if that and the image of the thugs in the city are their examples of our island, then we are never going to be respected here. But she did not want to think about how people in the states saw Puerto Ricans; no, she would rather her mother had lied to her and told her that Puerto Ricans are admired and trusted by the people in the states. Hector did not think about that as he watched the shore, though. He thought about how they were going to live together and how it might be in the city where his brother went to school. Noribel had told him the name of the city, but he could not remember it.
The boat reached the dock and they took their bags and went ashore. Hector saw tourists everywhere; he did not know much about the states, nor did he know that the people he saw drive by his farm were not tourists here as they were in Puerto Rico.
He looked around at the people who were getting off the boat. Noribel caught him by the arm and told him that he looked like he was from another planet the way he looked at the people with his mouth open and his eyes wide. She hoped that he was not going to have another episode like the one he had had when they were on the bus in San Juan. But she did not have to worry about that: Hector had come a long way, and he simply wanted to take in as much of this new place as he could. No longer did he see Puerto Ricans in the streets as he had in the cities back on the island. This was a new land for him, as it was for Noribel, and he had to gather as much of it in his mind as he could. They walked to where they saw other people catching cabs, and they stood by the curb as Noribel tried to call for one. A cab pulled up next to them and took them to the bus station. It was the first time Hector had been in a car, and he found it more exciting than riding in a bus. He asked Noribel if they could have the car take them to the city where Jesus went to school, but she told him that distances here are not like they were at home. He did not understand how that could make a difference, but he decided not to argue with her. I'll let her lead the way, he thought. She has done well so far.
They could not get a bus to Hartford until morning. Noribel did not know how to find a good hotel, so they decided to sleep in the bus station as they saw that there were other people sleeping on the benches. Hector, because he could sleep anywhere, did not see this as a discomfort. But Noribel had always slept on a bed, and she regretted that neither she nor her mother had thought to pack a pillow in her bag in case she found herself in such a position. She had read the board on the wall by the ticket counter and noticed that there was only one bus the next day bound for Hartford. It must not be that big of a city, she thought. She began to wonder if it was such a good idea to look for work and a place to live in a smaller city, and she wondered if there were other Puerto Ricans there who they could look to for help getting settled. If not, she thought, then we will go to either New York or Boston. Buses leave for those cities all the time. She leaned back against Hector and tried to get comfortable. He was already asleep, so she leaned lightly.
They slept until one of the attendants of the station woke them and told them that it was against the law to sleep in the station. Noribel asked him where they could sleep, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, "not here." So now they had to stay awake until they could get on the bus. It was only three in the morning when they had been wakened, and the thought of staying awake until eight did not sound like a good idea to either of them. But Noribel knew that it was useless to argue or plead with people who enforce such rules, so she decided to make the best of the situation and simply sit on the bench or walk around the station until it was time to leave. She told Hector what the man had said. He did not understand how there could be a rule against sleeping anywhere, and he thought about the problem for a long time before giving up. He could not think of what harm could be done by a sleeping person, but he did not want to ask Noribel the answer. It is probably the simplest thing, he thought, and I am too tired to think about it. So they sat and walked around and talked about trivial things until the sun came up. It was the first time either of them had stayed awake through a night without having been ill, and the sensation of having had no sleep after a long boat ride made Noribel feel like she had drank too much wine too early in the day.
By eight they were on the bus headed north. They had eaten what amounted to a big breakfast from the vending machines in the station, and they felt full and very tired as they settled into their seats for the long journey. Neither of them knew what Hartford was going to look like; they had thought about where they were going to end their journey, and they each had a different idea of what the end of the road would look like. It did not matter to them though. Hector had a feeling that the places he would see and live in in his future would be much different than he could imagine. These places would be pleasant, but they would not be like Tablones. Noribel thought too of what she was going to see on their journey, but her vision was more informed, more detailed, and she did not bother to think that her mother's memory of the states could be limited or over simplified. Either way, they had given themselves over to chance when they had decided to leave the comfort of their homes, and now, on the bus headed North, they could not afford to think that where they were going may be far from where they thought they were going.
The bus moaned down the highway like a great bull. Hector saw the signs along the road that made no sense to him, and would not have made more sense had they been written in his native tongue. He had never learned to read a single word. Jose had told the local authority on education that his boy would be taught at home where he should be taught. Jose knew the man he told this to, and the man knew that Jose could not, and would not if he could, teach anything other than how to grow and harvest crops and how to raise and foster a meager amount of livestock. Seeing the look on Jose's face when he talked about Jesus, and knowing that a good, hardworking son could mean the difference between hunger and plenty for the people in the country, the man had to, as he had done so many times, look the other way and write in his report that the son of Jose Perez was to be taught at home by two able and qualified parents. Hector knew no better than this: he knew how to work the farm, he knew how to listen to his parents, and he knew that as long as he stayed in his parents’ home he would have food and shelter by the solemn and unspoken devotion of his father. This was the education Jose would give to his son. He would learn the link between blood and life, and he would learn that not all things had to be written, let alone read, and that these things, the devotion of father to son, of sun to crops, of God to sun, were more than he would need to live a long, honest and healthy life. What Jose had forgot to tell his son was that he could one day see a light shining brighter than the sun, a bounty offered for an appetite more powerful than food, a breeze more delicate and cooling than one from the mountains. He forgot to tell him that there might be a Noribel somewhere in this world. And she might rise from the dew like a slow forming, yet secret-thin tempest. And she might have eyes that shine green in the slanted sun. And she might have a form that holds the eye in splendor—for a moment, for a moment, then a shadow in the mind's eye, held what little light there is; seen, then gone. No, Jose had not thought to tell his second son what he had not remembered to tell the first son. He had not taught Hector to read, and that was not a sufficie
nt precaution. Hector left, was on a bus now going through strange states, and there was no getting him back. He looked out the window of the bus and watched the cars pass.
They passed through Georgia before either of them felt like sleeping. As it had been through most of the trip, Hector fell asleep easily and unannounced, and Noribel watched. She could not imagine what it must be like for him to see the many places he had already seen after not having been outside his village for his whole life. She wondered about the change that had taken him from a scared farm boy to a man scared of nothing and more than willing to assert his ideas when the situation called for it. He changed, she thought, right after he had put on new clothes for the first time in his life. Maybe it happened because his mind could not take the stress of being scared all the time, and so, in order to save itself from insanity, gave over to that which frightened him, accepted it, and then embraced it. All in a matter of minutes. Incredible. She stared at him as he slept and thought about his change and where he had to come from and how far in order to be the person that now sat in the seat of a bus in a foreign country more comfortable than one who has been drilled on the ways and language of these people, and one who has been taught in formal schools that there is a logical order to all things, and, barring the unexpected catastrophe, that this logic predicts that all usually follows a form and plan so long as that form or that plan is logical. The entire line of thought became more and more complicated the more she thought about how he might fit into the largest scheme of things imaginable. But she too was tired, so she let her mind wander and stop, wander and fade, until she only had to blink and blink again to be fast asleep, her head leaning against the shoulder of her man.
When she woke, it was dark. Signs passed on the highway in the night; places like Dunn, Smithfield, and Selma were just names on those signs, they were not where she wanted to go. Places passed: Raleigh to the West lie out of sight and out of mind. Up, up to the North they went. Passing signs and places as if they were not there, as if the people there were not the people they wanted to see or meet. Kenly passed, as did the exit that would take them to the small town of Lucama, or the backroads to Patetown, Snow Hill, Hookerton, Falkland, Crisp, or Old Sparta. All these places had people. In every home where there was a light on there might have been two or a few people talking and living the way they did every night before and every night after. Time passed on the bus as these signs passed out the window and out of memory for Noribel. She would never see Hobgood or its fine people, Speed and the racetrack some boys had made there in one of the fields, Palmyra's small package store, or Connarista's oldest citizen. She had no need for these places. She did not have to think about them, as she did not have to think about the thousands of other places she would never go. And some of them were so far from the highway; she would not even see a sign that marked the way. But she may have thought about them; just a little, she might have given the signs a little acknowledgement as she read the names. Just a thought would have done it, just a nod of hello to the forgotten places off the road, would have placed them more securely in her mind. She read the names.
On North the bus travelled with a hum and the wind pushed and surged and fought but lost as the vehicle made shorter the time and the distance. All was time and distance on the highway, and all was a matter of a little less or a little more speed. The driver too thought not of the land travelled through, or the people passed along the way. But Noribel was new to the roads here, new to the ways of these highways, and she might have thought to wonder what went on a mile off the road. The people there, in that mile or so and beyond, could hear the busses and the cars passing with a hum. They thought about Noribel and Hector, maybe. And they knew without thinking about it that there was no sense in standing on the side of the highway and waving to everything that went by and wondering who was inside and what they were talking about if they were talking and where they were going if they were going or where they came from if they were coming from somewhere. No sense in that at all. They heard the hum of the road, that was enough. We hear you pass, they might have said collectively. We heard you hum until you were gone. Three seats behind, a man cleared his throat and that was that. Hector looked out the window now too.
He wondered how long it was going to take to get to Hartford, and he worried that they might have missed the sign by being unaware, predisposed to a degree, too busy to pull the cord that makes a buzz that tells the driver it is time to stop. The man behind them cleared his throat and Noribel stopped; so, Hector thought, maybe that is a sign that we have passed our stop. He asked Noribel if she was sure they had not gone too far and she said that they had a long way to go.
The lights in the night passed, as did the towns where the people tried to sleep, and Hector and Noribel sat back too and closed their eyes. They did not have to talk; not here, not until they were in Hartford. They slept until the sun came up again and they were outside New York.
Hector watched as New York City presented itself in the gleam of the sun. This was not a place they were going to see pass without a thought; no, they would have to think about this town as they passed through. The traffic was already choking the road, and Hector thought about how this city makes all the others he has seen look like Tablones in comparison. Building after building, street after street, he thought that it would be impossible for him to learn his way around in something so enormous. Noribel too was struck by the size of the city. She had been told by her mother that they would probably have to go through this city, but she had not stressed enough what it would look like or how small it would make her feel. Never, she thought, could I have imagined that mankind could make a city this big. It must have taken forever to lay these stones one on top of the other. Millions upon millions must live here. She, like Hector, sat forward in her seat and gathered as much of the city in her mind as she could. No, she thought, if Hartford does not work out for us, then I will not try to live here. They watched the city pass. Hartford grew closer and closer, but all they could think about was that they hoped it was not like this. Now they were both scared.