Time To Go II ( 2? )
Disclaimer: I know they're not mine. I'm old and tired so, PTB, please don't slap me around for playing with your toys.
I walked in darkness, no moon to light the way, along the deserted beach as long as possible before finally turning inland when the way became impassable.
There was something about the water, the smell of the ocean everywhere,
the night wind stinging the skin on my face, allowing me to feel closer to the ones I'd left behind, those that were more difficult to leave behind than I'd ever imagined.
It took everything I had in me to leave that beach, continue heading south, to turn my back on the Pacific shoreline that would have lead me back to them.
In the beginning I stopped often.
I'd stop where I stood, just stand there, no matter how far I'd come, and look back to the place, the people I'd left behind, digging deep to find the strength to either go back and face what might come, or move forward without ever looking back.
While it became easier knowing they'd left California, were safely back home, I often found myself stopped, pulled in both directions as I moved down and across the Baja Peninsula.
While I never saw it coming as the days flowed into weeks, I eventually found myself letting go of the past. I worked slowly and begrudgingly at letting go of the ones I'd loved most until acceptance hit me like a bolt of lightening on the same day I crossed the Gulf and began making my way down the coast of Mexico.
The past was gone and I had to accept that fact.
Making a life for myself was what they'd hoped for when they sent me out, away to safety that night. I know how difficult it was for him, how it was likely his choice that Sara tell me because after all we'd done to be a family again, being ripping apart for good was more than he could stand to do face to face.
Slowly over time I began to see the least that I could do is make their sacrifices count by carving out a life for myself just as they'd hoped.
I spent three weeks right after I crossed the border in a cozy little village about twenty miles north of Mazatlan.
Money no object, American dollars at a premium, I found a comfortable place to rent just outside of town in no time at all.
Days quiet...Nights quieter still... I'd begun to believe I found an end to the running only to find that, in the end, when its comes to living with a stranger in your midst, curiosity inevitably trumps good manners and even the kindest people I'd met would eventually make it impossible for me to stay.
Passing glances turned to stares overnight.
While my meager Spanish kept most people at bay, that small bit of protection faded quickly as their apprehension drifted away leaving me a curiosity to the point that I was unable to sit alone for a beer or meal.
Eyes watching me from all directions, muttering questions I knew, even if half understood by me at best, meant settling anywhere without a story was not meant to be and I had to be moving on.
Late one night, one far chillier than normal with storms rumbling far in the distance over the ocean, I packed up my modest possessions and began to move south.
My mind raced through many scenarios, playing each out carefully in my head, as I went looking for any story, an imagined history, that would keep everyone I met at a distance.
Try as I might, nothing came to mind until the day I happened across a silver picture frame at an open air market in a tourist section of Mazatlan.
Passing over the ten and a few singles I had stuffed in my pant pockets, I brushed the woman's hand gently away as she made a move to remove the picture.
Watching me carefully, nodding slowly as she tapped the photo behind the glass, I nod my agreement, my desire to have the picture, likely stolen from someone's home or desk, left inside the frame.
A plan set in motion, the photo tucked under my arm as I make my way up the street, I begin to memorize the faces from the picture.
The woman and child, while both Hispanic, had the fair skin and striking features I needed for the lie to be believable.
Pressing on, my feet moving faster and with more purpose than they'd had in weeks, I turned the corner into a shop at the end of the street and purchase a thick gold band. Paying for it quickly, slipping it onto my left hand unceremoniously as the woman behind the counter struggles to help me learn a word, one I'll need more than any other, for a crisp new American twenty
" Viudo."
My home is now, has been for the last six months, in Salagua, Mexico.
Salagua is a beautiful, sleepy little village to the north of Manzanillo.
Treacherous beaches, sporting high waves and a vicious undertow making it vastly unpopular as a tourist destination, is all that I'd hoped for in a place to hide away and live out my life alone in peace.
I have a small home a short walk from the river where men and boys use large nets to catch fish driven in by the fierce currents in the early evenings.
Several nights a week I walk down, sit on a hillside, and enjoy the simple pleasure of watching what they do in the fading light of another blazing Mexican sunset.
It is as simple and peaceful an existence as I can hope for.
People pay me no mind here.
My story is common knowledge now and the locals have little more to say other than... " Viudo. Tragico para un hombre tan joven aflojar todo que el adora. Facil de ver por que el correria, se esconderia lejos. Permitiria que el ser. " when someone dares to ask about the mysterious stranger.
' Widower. Tragic for a man so young to lose all that he loves. Easy to see why he'd run, hide himself away. Let him be.' Spoken in Spanish, translated into English inside my head, like everything seems to be no matter how fluent I become in the language, those are the words I hear whispered cautiously, sympathetically as I pass people on the street.
This imagined past serves me well as a means to gain the privacy I needed, making it easy for me to see that a lie is best hidden in the truth.
Here, now, if someone should wander through my home, into my life, they pass by, pass through with ease because I can tell them a version of the truth.
I can tell them I ran from California because I lost the people I love, my family, in a tragedy, and Salagua offered the peace and solitude I needed to heal.
The pain of losing them is eased immeasurably, I'm able to miss, mourn them openly and never ever forget because anyone who knows me believe the names of the woman and child in the photo to be Sara and Lincoln.