En El Tronco De Un Arbol

"Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.”
Stephen King—The Stand

LACSA flight 629 taxied in exactly on time, which was always a good omen. Pat was on time too, and that was something that happened with even less frequency than flights being on schedule. That both these things could occur in one day made for an auspicious start for the trip. It also gave us enough time to elbow up to the café window at “La Carreta”, upstairs in Miami International’s concourse, and grab a few hot guava pastelitos—layers and layers of puff pastry, coated with apricot glaze, filled with a thick glop of gooey guava paste, then baked to a crisp perfection—and a steamed-hot café con leche to wash them down with.

The early-morning airport crowd moved around with quiet sense of purpose as the night shift wound down. Uniformed workers arrived and departed the café window in a steady flow. There was little talk and the place was uncomfortably cool, maybe preparing the building for the mass rush of the morning flights, less than two hours away at 8 AM. Nearby a young man still slept on a bench, with his backpack for a pillow, in spite of the growing noise around him.

I was going to San José, Costa Rica on a sales call; it was my first trip to that region. I was fairly new in the business, and up to that point, my travels had been limited to places east of Florida. I think I was more excited at the sightseeing aspect of the trip than at the actual business agenda, which was probably why my employer had decided to send Pat along.

Pat was a senior Sales manager with the company that employed me at the time. His laid-back, folksy persona was a perfect counter to my somewhat slick, city-boy shtick. He hailed from South Carolina (I wish I could type it out like he said it), and his specialty was selling the hard cases. I put on the dog-and-pony show.

Pat would stay in the background while I conducted the sales seminars. He kept himself busy while I delivered my sales pitch by arranging the samples and equipment that we always brought along, keeping the beverages fresh, the flies away from the pastries, and a hundred other tasks, all the while circling the room like a shark.

Occasionally, one of the invited guests would get up and walk out of the room. That was Pat’s signal.

Pat’s demeanor soon had his mark relaxed and smiling. Feeling warm and fuzzy with this charming Southern gentleman was generally speaking a bad thing to do, prospects invariably fell for his snake-charmer act.

“That Luis! Boy I gotta tell ya, he can talk faster ‘n a square dance caller! Makes ma’ head spin to listen to him! Sometimes I just gotta git out of the room and sit a spell.”

“Y’all sure got a beautiful country here. Why, I’d love to bring the wife ‘n kids down some day-Pat had no kids, and had never been married—the boys would sure love (the beaches, the mountains, the jungles…fill in the blank according to location)…yes sir, they kids would love it here. You got kids?”

I recognized the tone of the whisper, and it snapped me out of my reverie. I knew exactly what he was directing me to, and sure enough, there she was.

According to Pat, one of the true benefits of traveling a lot, was airport girl watching. I couldn’t get him to say woman watching to save my life, he said it took all the fun out of it if you had to think of them—or yourself for that matter—as adults.

She was definitely Pat’s type. She had that café latté skin tone that drove him crazy—and motivated him to volunteer to tag along every single one of my trips into the Caribbean—as well as the long, black hair that fascinated my traveling companion.

“Boy! You ain’t right! How can y’all claim to have Cuban blood in your veins, and not be up on the table howlin’ when somebody that looks like that walks by?”

We’d had lengthy discussions about this before, without either one of us ever giving in one inch. Now it looked as if we were about to engage in another one of our debates on the pros and cons of Vendela, Kathy Ireland, Elle McPherson and oldies but goodies Christine Brinkley, and Cheryl Tiegs, versus Pat’s newfound fantasy, a young starlet named Selma Hayek, whom he wielded as a shield to repel my blonde starting line-up.

Mercifully, the announcement over the speakers stunted our debate; we would be boarding shortly. Pat and I went into our pre-flight routine, which included finding some friendly Airport maintenance personnel who would let us sneak out one of those “Authorized Personnel Only” doors for a smoke before take off, something probably a lot more difficult to do today than then.

We were the last people to board, —we were always the last to board—we stashed our carry-on bags in the overhead compartment, took our seats—it was Pat’s turn to take the window—and buckled ourselves in.

I was engrossed in Stephen King’s “The Stand”—the newly released, unabridged printing of his vision of the end times, was as riveting the second time around as it was the first—when Pat’s elbow took me away from Mother Abagail, Frannie, Stu, Tom Cullen (M-O-O-N! That spells home—Laws, yes!”), and the struggle against Randall Flagg, Trashcan Man (BUMP-de-BUMP-de-BUMP-de-BUMP) and the minions of the dark side. His whispered “eyes left” made me reluctantly turn my head to the aisle.

It was the young woman from the airport again, walking past our seats on the way to the back of the plane. I looked up just in time to see her reach her right hand up, and lift the hair from her neck, a hint of a gleam revealing itself. I shook my head at Pat, who was grinning from ear to ear, and tried to return to my novel. But a thought kept nagging at me; the image of the young woman walking down the aisle was unlocking some vague memories from the deep recesses of my mind, and my thoughts began to wander.

She walked like the music of a tropical night…sultry, daring, beguiling. A wanton attack on the senses, in her life she would be called many names, but never, ever, forgettable…or anything short of beautiful. The women in the block disapproved—loudly—when she walked by the front porches of the old neighborhood homes, that summer before the summer when we left, but she didn’t seem to notice them.

“Ay! Here she comes, la Marilyn Monroe de La Víbora.” —Hilda always started it.

“Hilda, she’s a beautiful girl…and young,”—my mother’s voice—“why do you always say things about her?”

“Why? Why look at her! Does she have to dress like that? Bursting out…everywhere? Eso dá pena, it’s disgraceful!”

“Pena? What really is a shame is that I will never look like that, in a dress like that, ever again!” —my mother’s sigh—“Eso, eso sí dá pena!”

For a few seconds, the only sound heard was the sound that old, seasoned rocking chairs make on Spanish tile.

“With help from a seamstress…and maybe the Virgin Mother”— someone says, and my mother’s laughter joins that of the other women sitting on their wood and wicker rockers, cardboard fans furiously beating back the tropical heat; laughter that fills the air of the early summer afternoon.

I casually make my way to the edge of the front porch of the apartment building where we live, trying not to attract attention to myself. I make threats at my little brother, whose annoyance at my seeming abandonment of our Chinese checkers game would normally draw loud protests, if not for the threats, and I look for her.

I see her immediately, walking down the Royal Poinciana-lined sidewalk of the Havana neighborhood where we spent our last few years on the Island. She was sixteen; older than any of the girls who lived in our block year round, and it never struck me that she would think me a child. I forgot the things of childhood when she walked by, and new, exciting feelings manifested themselves when I saw her.

Things that would have never received a second thought just weeks before suddenly fill my mind with strange, new reactions…I am breathless without running when she is near, and I am flush, even in the cool refuge found under the big tree that shades the porch where the women of the apartment sit and fan themselves, rocking among the vivid-red flower petals scattered all around their feet.

She looks up, our eyes meet and time distorts, reality shifts slightly, and the world is moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. She reaches her right hand, lifts the hair from her neck, and a hint of a gleam reveals itself. There’s a touch of perspiration on the side of her neck, just below the earlobe, and a little behind it, right where her impossibly black hair meets her bronze skin; hair that moves as if possessed with a life of its own, hair that frames the face that fills my nights with disturbed, restless sleep.

The guys say that she’s here for the summer to be with her Dad, that during the school year she lives with her mother and her new husband in Guantánamo, just across from the base. They say that she is sixteen, and experienced—I laugh with them not really knowing what they mean by that—and that she has a novio back home. A boyfriend is a serious thing for a young woman in the Cuban society of the late 1960’s, where girls marry at eighteen, and sit—old married women with children—fanning themselves in front porches by the ripe-old age of twenty-five.

Now she is in front of me, and I open my mouth to speak. My tongue suddenly feels swollen in my mouth, producing meaningless sounds instead of the carefully scripted words memorized over a period of days, and I mumble as she walks by.

She glances at me, and smiles…then she’s gone. She’s past the spot where I am standing welded to the ground by the overwhelming force of her; I am mesmerized, dizzy, out of breath, and giddy at the sight of her. I am a moth caught in the ecstasy of an open mouthed kiss of light. I am falling…I am falling.

“I said are you OK? You looked like a possum caught ‘n a truck’s headlights.”

“I guess you didn’t hear the pilot’s announcement, doin’ all that daydreaming.”

I was really embarrassed at this point; I must have been digging through the dustbin of my memories a very long time, and had missed nearly the entire trip. Thankfully, Pat cleared things up for me.

“No, no…we got a ways to go still, but the pilot just said that we’ll be flying over Cuba in a spell, I recall you telling me that you ain't seen the Island since the day you left, so I thought you would like to change seats with me.”

“Thanks buddy, but that’s OK. There’s nothing there for me to see anyway. I don’t even remember the place all that well.”

“Yeah, I have nothing left there.” —I looked for the flight attendant, and signaled for her. My mouth was inexplicably dry (I blamed it on the altitude), and I wanted a drink.

“Luis man, I don’t know about you. People don’t forget the place where they were born. You forgetting Cuba would be like me forgetting South Carolina, or worse yet, forgetting that I am an American.”

“Well Pat, that’s what I am…an American. A Yankee Doodle Dandy, a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, sworn in on the Fourth of July 1976. Cuba’s just a faint memory to me.”

“They did that year. It was something else too, hundreds of us swearing to the flag on the bicentennial…it sure was a sight I tell you. That’s the day when I became who I am today, an American.”

“Ain’t a thing wrong with that amigo, been one my whole life. I just don’t understand why you don’t even want to look at it, it’s been so long since you’ve seen it.”

“I always say the same thing: ‘a mí no se me quedó nada allí’, that means ‘I didn’t leave a thing behind there.’”

“Ladies and gentleman, in a few moments the Island of Cuba will be fully visible straight ahead, Havana central has just cleared us. On the left, you will see the mountains of the Orient province, on the right, the fabled tobacco growing lands of Pinar Del Rio. Just east of that, the city of La Habana, and the bay.”

I saw people moving to the windows while I thanked the attendant for my drink. In the seat in front of me, an elderly couple squeezed themselves against the glass pane. I could hear their conversation.

“Mira vieja, La Habana…can you see it? Si! That’s the harbor! Look a little to the left of it; you see that long, thin key right off the coast? Si! That one! Now look at the coast below it, that’s Caibaríen! Nuestra casita, our little house should be right where it’s always been. Mi amor, no llores! Coño! See what you did! Now you made me cry too! Viejita, no llores mas.”

Pat was looking out the window as well. I took a long swig of my drink, and picked up the book. Pat offered to change seats one more time.

“Luis, you sure you don’t want to come over and look at this? You can almost see the whole island.”

“I can look at a map and see the same thing, thanks anyway. You and the old people enjoy yourselves, I have some reading to do.”

I lost myself in my book until I felt the change in the cabin’s pressure; I had been told that our flight would climb over an active volcano called Irazú, and then drop into San José International. I thought about asking Pat to trade seats with me so that I could see the volcano, but it didn’t seem to be a good idea after all the times I’d turned his offer down earlier.

We landed and gathered our gear. There was a car waiting for us, and the driver made arrangements to have the boxes of samples and supplies delivered to our hotel. It was a cool day and the car ride was quite an experience, San José is a busy city, with a controlled chaos quality to it. I sank into the seat, and watched the scenes out the car’s window while I let my mind wander.

The light of the late summer afternoon sun washed over the balcony of the apartment above the foundry –where she sat and brushed her long, black hair—in gold, while we pranced on the sidewalk below.

Less than men and more than boys, we were like the ocean faced with the moon at the sight of her. We were the tides rushing to the shores of her, the waves beating against the sands of her, only to be turned back again and again; turned back unsatisfied, and hungry for more of something that we had never received.

I was young, and too shy to do what the older boys would do. I couldn’t bring myself to strut the way they did, or to shout out at her like they did—sometimes, she would laugh at the silly things they said, adding fuel to their fire— so I just stood and watched her, from under the branches of an old Royal Poinciana as the summer idled by.

It wasn’t even a whistle—my mother would never “whistle”—it was simply the sound that she made when calling us home, and I swear that I could hear it from a mile away.

I ran home through a crimson world, sparkling with flashes of gold as the afternoon sun broke through the canopy of branches.

“I wasn’t doing anything Mamá. It was the guys, they’re just goofing around.”

“Bueno, it’s time to clean up and do your homework. Let’s go see what’s for dinner, shall we?”

I walked through the double door and followed her down the long hallway leading to apartment #2.

I was completely disoriented this time, and more than a little embarrassed. We thanked our driver and made arrangements to meet him in the morning outside the Hotel Irazú, named after the volcano. Pat and I retired to our respective rooms, and agreed to meet at the bar later for a few drinks and to discuss the seminars.

We sat in and planned out our itinerary over some very fine rum, then ordered some dinner—ceviche, sea bass (brushed with olive oil, then baked whole over onions and thinly sliced potatoes), and gallo pinto are still some of my favorite foods to eat—to counter the effects of it.

We were enjoying some espresso when Pat surprised me by producing some very fine looking cigars, the silver, metallic cylinder a dead give away.

“Si amigo, in Costa Rica, they may hate Fidel, but they love a good cigar. I took a cab to a shop near by while you were in your room and picked up some compatriots of yours last named Julieta and Cohiba.”

“Well, are you sharing?” —I eyeballed the cigars hungrily but Pat was not giving these babies up without some sort of a comment.

“There you go talking all purty-like, using them three dollar words they learned you in that uppity college you went to.”

Pat was exaggerating his accent now, and slurring a bit. It seems that the food had failed to counter one hundred percent of the rum. I know it had in my case.

“I don’t miss Cuba Pat, I was a kid when I left. It’s not a negative thing, it’s just the way it is,”—somehow, another rum and Coke, with a squeeze of lime had made into my hand—“you can’t miss what you can’t really remember.”

“You don’t forget where you were born, it’s part of you…it’s what you are. I can move to Saudi Arabia tomorrow, live there for the rest of my life, and die calling myself an American and missing my Great Blue Hills of God. Some things you just can’t fight.”

“It’s not that I’m fighting anything. I can understand those old people on our flight. They lived their lives there…had a house…kids, but I was a kid myself when I left. What did I have to leave behind?”

“It ain’t about leaving things behind my friend, it’s about who you are. I always believed that hard as you may wanna try, you can’t be somebody other than who you are.”

We talked for a couple of hours, mostly about work stuff and South Carolina, agreeing that the surfing was better in Nag’s Head than in what I called home (Cocoa Beach), and not agreeing about whether the finest tobacco leaf in the world came from Cuba, or South Carolina. We called it a night and retired to our rooms.

The next few days were full of activity, seminars, sales calls, and dinners with our local distributor where we entertained his best customers. We moved around San José and the outskirts of the city from dawn to dusk, and sometimes even into the wee hours of the night.

Our flight to Miami was a little late taking off, and Pat began to complain of stomach problems while we sat and waited in the terminal, he blamed the water I blamed the rum. A few minutes before take off; we were in the middle of our pre-flight routine, smoking one last cigarette before take-off (in Costa Rica we didn’t have to go stand outside), when Pat’s eye was caught by something on the side of the runway.

“You know, if it weren’t for all them crazy-red flowers, I’d say that was just about the biggest dogwood I’d ever seen. Do you know what kind of a tree that is?”

“I don’t know, I’ve seen it before, in the Gables, and old Miami…it ain’t dogwood, dogwood trees don’t get that big.”

“His name is Nestor, ask him what it is. I tried the Spanish that I know, and he didn’t understand a word of it.”

“It’s a Malinche tree, that’s the Indian name.”—Nestor proved to be quite an expert—“Malinche was a young Indian woman during the times of the Conquistadores. They say that she was so beautiful, that the Spanish Comandante fell deeply in love with her, and spared her people from extinction. Some people simply call it Arbol de Fuego, the Tree of Fire, in Norte America it’s called a Royal Poinciana.”

“I have been to Cuba, Malinche tree there too. Cuban people call it Framboyán.”

The last boarding call came and Pat asked for the aisle seat in case that he needed unobstructed access of it…and the restroom at the end of it. The plane taxied to the end of the runway, wings gleaming from the mist of a sunshower, and turned to face Mount Irazú in the horizon. The plane gathered speed and I looked out my window just as we lifted off. There, next to the runway, I could see the bright-red branches of the Malinche tree that had caught Pat’s eye outside the terminal. I watched it disappear from view as we took off for home.

“Los viejos”—the source of all wisdom–“always said that when it rains from a cloudless sky, it meant that El Diablo is getting married.”

The day we left home, raindrops fell from the sun. Like tears of silver and gold, they covered the impossibly red canopy over the sidewalk, cooling the summer days, and washing the dust from every leaf and every petal in a baptism of joy and sorrow.

The street donned its Sunday finery for my departure as we set about saying our goodbyes. Every crack on the sidewalk, every dip on the pavement meant something to me. Every leaf knew the secrets of my heart and they each held a memory for safekeeping.

Barely more than a child, and far from a man, I stood under a Framboyán tree across from an empty balcony, and carved her name next to mine on its trunk. Then I whispered a feverish “jamás te olvidaré”, —“I shall never forget you”—face pressed against the cool bark.

The rain shower had turned into a storm as the rented car pulled away from the curb. Then, on the window of a balcony, above a street stained red by the lifeblood of ten million petals, I saw the silhouette of a young girl brushing her long, long hair.

Pat’s voice was hesitant and almost inaudible as he called out my name, then I heard the announcement come over the loudspeakers. I turned to my traveling companion.

“You haven’t gone to the bathroom once, I guess you must be feeling better”—I knew what he had done.

“Well…you just cain’t tell when the ole bug’s gonna kick in,”— it was that hard case sales routine of his, and he was using it on me—“so I better sit right here.”

I don’t believe that I have the words to describe exactly what happened to me at that moment. I don’t know what I could tell you that would help you understand the impact that simple glance had on me, the journey I completed in an instant, the rush of buried memories that surfaced, clamoring for attention.

I remembered everything in an instant, and I remembered who I was, and where I was from, all because of what I saw outside my window.

If I told you that it was water to a thirsty man, and bread to the hungry. I would have to tell you that it didn’t quench my thirst, but rather, awakened it; and that I was left hungry.

Or if I told you that it was air to one drowning, and peace to a tortured soul. I would also say to you that they were little more than false rumors of salvation, and that I was left wanting.

And if I told you that it was more than dirt, and rocks, or if I claimed that it looked any different from any other island in the sparkling blue waters of the Caribbean, I would be guilty of aggrandizing.

The Captain’s voice over the speakers gave us the temperature down below, and then “Havana Central is reporting sun showers.”

And I swear to you, that through the moisture covering both sides of my window pane, I saw a sparkle of red down below—like raindrops on red petals—a little West of the Bay, just about the spot where a street with cracked sidewalks and faded curbs should be.

A street where, under a crimson canopy of flowers, a young boy once left his heart and his promise behind, to be guarded forever by an old Framboyán tree.

Epilogue

“Hard as you may try, you can’t be somebody other than who you are”—that’s what Pat said to me on that trip, truer words have seldom been spoken.

Pat and I went back to Costa Rica one more time, before a hurricane called Andrew brought my traveling career to a halt, and I met a girl with long brown hair, and sparkling brown eyes that made me want to stay home forever. On that last trip, a young woman dug through her purse and found matches for Pat’s cigarette when his lighter failed during a seminar. One day, he just left everything behind, and went back to San José. He’s been there since.

I received an email from him last September—our communications have dwindled greatly these last few years—and an attached file with the obligatory pictures. The girls have gotten so big since the last shots (my boys are a little older than his girls), and he’s lost some more hair. Everyone is fine; they all sent their love.

The picture is from his little one’s birthday party. The whole family poses together, and Pat sits proudly, wearing his USC shirt, surrounded by an ocean of long, black hair. In the far corner of the yard, Old Glory flies proudly in the gentle breeze, under a Melinche tree in full bloom, framed by the foothills of ancient Irazú.

Me?

I’m still in sales.

I specialize in selling the hard cases.

A beautiful story, Luis.

I love those breathtakingly beautiful flamboyanes (which are in bloom right now). I have two baby trees planted from Key West seedlings in front of my house. I'd have about 5 more but my husband stopped me. I think it's spelled "flamboyan" like "flamboyant". Here's a closeup of their flowering branches.

Poinciana, a wonderful song, the definitive version, in my humble opinion, by the Four Freshmen.

Lyrics by: Buddy Bernier; Music by: Nat Simon

Poinciana, your branches speak to me of love
Pale moon is casting shadows from above
Poinciana, somehow I feel the jungle heat
Within me, there grows a rhythmic, savage beat
Love is everywhere, its magic perfume fills the air
To and fro you sway, my heart's in time, I've learned to care!
Poinciana, from now until the dawning day
I've learned to love forever, come what may
Love is everywhere, its magic perfume fills the air
To and fro you sway, my heart's in time, I've learned to care!
Poinciana, from now until the dawning day
I'll learn to love forever, come what may
Poinciana!

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