12
This time it happens early in the morning. Don Fidencio sees himself pushing the walker down a long street. And here he thought he would never get away from that place where they kept him locked up. Only now he wonders where he might be headed. He has on only the bottom half of his old work uniform with his red suspenders holding up his pants. No shirt, no undershirt. What has his life come to for him to be walking around in public without a shirt? Was this the only way to escape without anyone noticing? I might as well be a homeless one, un trampa. Later his mailbag falls somewhere along the way but when he looks over his shoulder and then back he is pushing a wheelbarrow and not the walker. He arrives at the first house and knocks. A beautiful dark-haired woman opens the door wearing only a towel. Have you seen my mailbag? The woman says she has something for him. He thinks it might be the mailbag and if not the mailbag then maybe something having to do with her towel, but then she shows him a large manila envelope. He tells her she needs the correct postage before he can take that from her. But instead of taking it back she rips open the end of the envelope and pours some dirt into his wheelbarrow. Then she closes the door. The same thing with the next house, only this time the man is wearing overalls, the same kind that old man Lucas used to wear on the farm so many years ago. No one has any idea where his mailbag could be, no one has the correct postage. Dirt is all they have for him. House after house. Most times they hand him a manila envelope. But some people also have the standard-size envelopes or airmail envelopes. One has a postcard with a little mound of dirt balanced on it. He can never guess what kind of letter the next house will have or what the dirt will look like. It goes from black dirt to reddish dirt to yellowish dirt and once even comes out as mud but all of it turns into plain brown dirt once it gets mixed in with the rest of the pile. When he asks the people what the dirt is for they tell him to keep walking. But where to? How far? By now the pile of dirt is several feet high and so tall that he has to look to one side just to see where he is going. At the end of the long block he turns to the left and now he pushes the wheelbarrow through an open field. At one point he reaches up to wipe his brow and realizes the wheelbarrow is moving without his actually pushing it. He holds on to the handles only to keep from losing his balance on the uneven ground. When he reaches the shade of a large mesquite the wheelbarrow stops altogether. Next to the tree is a deep hole, long enough and wide enough for a man to lie down in, but inside it he sees his canes. Tangled roots bulge from the sides like varicose veins. All that time searching in closets and under beds and behind furniture, and this is where they came to hide them. There’s the aluminum one with the four prongs at the base. He used to take it with him when he walked in his neighborhood just in case he needed to defend himself against one of the stray dogs. The wooden one with the knots along the shaft is lying on its side and he can see where he had his initials burned onto the pommel. The black aluminum cane with the foam-cushioned handle is in there but he can barely see it because it is leaning against one corner of the hole. He holds on to the tree and guides himself down onto one knee. Then he lies on his stomach to see if he can stretch his arm down into the hole. He is less than an inch from touching the handle of the black cane when the wheelbarrow tips forward and the dirt pours out.