Send Down the Rain(15)

“What?” The space between her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

I hadn’t practiced conversation much in the last few years, so I was rusty. “Riding that bus is not a good idea.” I opened my hand. Palm up.

This woman hadn’t let her guard down in a long time. I’d been there. You can kill my body and you’d be doing me a favor, but kill my soul and there’s no remedy for the pain. And when you’re in that place, and the pain is real bad, and you’ve been leaning into the thing causing it so long that you don’t know how to do anything other than lean, hope and hopelessness blur and you lose sight of who’s trying to hurt you and who’s trying to help. Sometimes you need somebody to stand between you and the sharp thing that hurts. To lean for you. I touched her hand. “It’ll be okay.”

Slowly she laid the tickets flat in my hand.

When we reached the Jeep, Rosco was spinning in circles in the back seat, whining excitedly. His tail was creating its own wind cycle. Catalina reached into her jeans and handed the money to me.

“Keep it.”

Her hand was shaking. She was struggling. Hope has a funny way of cracking people down the middle. Cutting through the tough places. Half of her wanted to trust me. Half of her wanted to run. She offered it again.

Rosco sat in the middle, between the two seats. He fluctuated between trying to lick our faces and watching the world pass by through the windshield. I spoke as I shifted. “I will take that back, but I would be grateful if you would let me give it to you.”

She held it out.

“I don’t have kids. No wife. No mortgage. I’ve owned and sold several businesses, and at one time in my life I made some money. I’m not stupid rich, but . . . I don’t need it.”

I have seen dogs, beaten by the people who owned them, unable and unwilling to let anyone pet them. They approach, then stand at arm’s length, never closing the gap. Their experience teaches that all hands are the same, and while some might scratch between the ears, in the end all bring pain. Catalina had known a lot of hands.

“Why are you doing this?”

An honest question. “If I don’t, who will?”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Every man wants something.”

When people become afraid on a soul level, when the terror of their lives has taken up residence in their belly, it becomes the wall behind which they sequester themselves. The only way through is to tunnel under. Meet them inside their perimeter. Problem is, the depth of their pain determines the thickness of the wall. “I don’t want you to be afraid.”

“That’s all you want?”

“I think so.”

“You’ve got to do better than ‘I think so.’”

I wanted to. “I don’t know how.”

She glanced at the money, then at me, and raised one eyebrow. She whispered in a tone of voice the kids would not understand. “I can pay . . . just . . . not where they can see.”

“Ma’am—”

She straightened. “Catalina.”

“Catalina, save Rosco, I live alone. Have for a long time. I’m not around people very much, so I don’t always understand what they mean when they say things. Maybe I wasn’t in class the day God taught us how to read between the lines. I’ve known some hardship. Maybe a lot. There was a time in my life when you would not have wanted to know me. When every bad thing you could say would have been true. I don’t know how to navigate all this. It’s tough to get a compass reading. But—” I waved my hand back toward the bus station. “I’ve known some bad men. Know how they think. Maybe I even thought like them at one time. I’m not saying I’m proud of that. I don’t blame you for not wanting to trust me. If I were you, I’m not sure I’d trust me either, but . . . I have this thing that happens with the hair on my neck, and I’d feel a lot better if you’d let me drive you.”

Catalina pulled her knees into her chest, bit her bottom lip, and wrapped her arms around herself. Holding herself. As if she were afraid the pieces would fly out the window if she failed to hold them all together. As the station disappeared behind us, the tears that she’d been holding for a few years broke loose.





9

When we reached Micaville, Catalina tapped me on the shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“May I please spend some of your money?”

I’d been on my own a long time. Never had any kids and never had to think like a parent. “Sure.”

We stopped at a Walmart, and the three of them ran in while Rosco and I waited in the truck. I figured maybe they needed some privacy. Twenty minutes later, they exited the store, each carrying a shopping bag and wearing new clothes. When they climbed in, a new-clothes smell plus the pleasant aroma of perfume filled the truck. Took me a minute to realize it was the smell of deodorant.

When I turned into the parking lot of a storage unit, they looked at me with curious eyes but said nothing. Evidence that Juan-idiot-Pedro had sunk his claws in deep. I rolled up the storage unit door to reveal a late-model Crew Cab Ford F-150. They eyed it as if it were the president’s limousine.

I swapped out the vehicles, and while the kids stretched out across the back seat, fighting Rosco for sleeping room, Catalina sat with her arms wrapped around her. She looked cold. I pushed a button on the dash. Two minutes later she started fidgeting and finally unbuckled, sat up off the seat, and began brushing off her back and legs. “Something’s wrong.”