Uncharted Waters

Cool morning air washes over me and passes through me. I miss the breeze of the bouncing picop rushed through my nostrils. Lidia’s letter is tucked in the book Sera set on the table. I cannot reach it to puncture, savor nor survey its contents. Sera’s letters all smelling of faded, faraway corn rest atop folded clothes.

I kick off the blanket wrapped around me. I hear drops. Drops of water. And crashes. Thunder. And lights. Not lights. Lightning. I forget how many days it rained before Rafa left and how many after. I hear a snapping sound. I growl.

“Ohh. What’s that? No es nada Solo. You don’t worry ‘bout it.”

Sera leaves me in the shelter and carries one bag full of my things out the door. She returns and ties me to her as always. We walk to the street. She carries the new chest. It is still empty. Sera loads everything into a smooth shiny car that rests waiting for us on the dark street. How they roll along as if on waves, but without water, remains a mystery to me. To imagine that yesterday at this time I was walking to the market and respectfully saluting my respected acquaintances, seems a faraway tale told long ago. And it’s not the only one. Sera looks at me relieved as we clear the Pedro’s corner, as if she finally reached the end of something. My stomach clenches around the question that perhaps I ceded something I shouldn’t have.

Sera lets me put my nose into the wind and she supports me for a great distance as I attempt to make sense of our route. It is however, in no direction that we had ever charted together before. It is a much greater distance, and I cannot hold my head up for the entire span of hours. My eyes are able to read one sign only as we climb the hill. TZOLOJYA’. And then just like that we’re through and the only town with a name I knew is gone. The shock of the events and the length of the journey cause me to tire and I crawl into a protected crevice by her feet. She leans her face against my face.

“Tell me a secret Solo. Do you have a secret? You could tell me.”

Secret? Why does she ask this of me? I feel sick as many feel at sea, but I know I am not at sea if in fact I ever was. Even so, it is especially easy to sleep as shadows fall across her face. Every so often she sighs. I hear her heart beat fast. If she is nervous, I must save my strength and steel myself for any danger on the horizon. I close my eyes, and while I am somewhat comforted by the smell of all my treasures nearby, I wish for their place, my place, on our bed. Movement whirrs beneath me. It rumbles and digs. My body groans against it. What lies in front of me is not a dreamless sleep, but visions to guide me.

I am walking through space. Open space. Quiche’ lands. Not empty space. I walk among people in the markets. I marvel at bits and pieces bought and sold. I want to travel with them. I am walking. I know I used to walk everywhere. No wheels. I travelled through many towns. I walk and walk and I want to be alone. Walking will save my life. Distance. All of a sudden I’m not. I had not heard the messenger’s words directly. I am walking. Sad. Someone’s dead. My mother’s dead like many. I don’t know what to name what took her. The messenger I encounter, this man under a tree does not give me his words directly. He mutters in his sleep through exhaled breaths of corn beer from his stomach. It was almost as if he was taking inventory instead of telling a story.

“Boat,” he mumbles.

Then a shape nears me on the bank and the great protection its canopy of leaves is like my own shadow.

“Men. Women. Children. Not unusual. Market. City. Ships. North. Fire.”

I recognize the weave of the shirt. I rub it on my cheek and I see Lidia in front of me. She unrolls her loom tied around the same tree.

“Knives. Bells. Roots. Grains. Chocolate,” she offers me. The messenger taps the dried ground in his sleep. She places chocolate in my hand. It melts. The drips clink on the ground like money in the tienda. “Tell me a secret Solo?” she asks.

I start awake shivering with urgency and memories in the low light of thrown candles’ wicks and mist. We exit the car at an unknown destination. It has none of the smells or sounds of the market. No one looks like anyone I know, but neither have I looked like anyone I know for some time. This city has a sharpness, a constant burning in the air that causes me to sneeze. Unlike the stop and go buzzings heard along our street, the surroundings shriek and hum constantly. Two men greet us.

“Maletas? Suitcases?” I hear. I note an uncountable number of bags when we enter, as if we are all assembling for a great voyage together. I look for Rafa in every face, but none are shaded. They look like Sera. And there is something about several of the men. I am anxious to explore the perimeter, but we are lead through rooms into a small area with grass, damp and soft to the touch. In a simple room, with a bed, Sera deposits my trunks and the chest. She closes the door. She expects me to sleep, but I keep a vigil.

I attempt not to wake Sera nor alarm her. I curl next to her. Here in this unfamiliar bed, I am easily reminded of our early nights together. Each night I made my own bed next to hers and settled into my watch. I have no bed to make here. Those first nights, Sera had draped her hand down to assure herself that I was near. The sweep of her fingers call to mind the action of someone accustomed to being left behind or forgotten. My body stiffens. My ears entrap shouts and a great rumbling above us. The bed rocks as if all hands rush onto a wooden deck in prelude to a great thunderstorm.

In the dark I see only the chest outlining something I know I knew. I attempt to answer the vision’s questions. Did I get what I want? No, but I can’t remember what happened, only that my first lie was like Rafa’s followed by an unannounced leaving and incorrectly sized bundle. Rafa’s had been a lumpy bag that smelled all wrong of fresh soap and sealed packages. These suitcases are flat and Sera’s is extremely well organized, but it holds nothing of her own. I allow my senses to drift away until sounds wrench me back. Perhaps like me, Sera plans to return. I hear many others in the rooms nearby, but mostly my senses are dulled by a constant grinding, shrieking and burning smell wafting around us. I bark.

Sera interrupts. More questions. “Solo. Hey you. Hey you. What doing?” Sometimes she omits words. Because she sees me as simple, as a child, or because she doesn’t think I’m listening at all?

I shove my nose deep into the blankets and snort. I am cursed with this now, in this body, the smell of myself and the intensity of the world’s scents around me. I yell throughout the night. I am constantly responding to possible intruders, and calling out for any answers there are to be given. I receive none.

“Solo. NO. Please stop.” Sera wants to hide our presence. Why? Are we fleeing? I scratch my nails along the surface and hide my eyes and listen again.

“Draw for me,” Itzamná’s eyes open my mother’s breathless face. “Draw the lightness of the hair, the coal like coldness of the eyes, the covered faces, the smell.”

“How can I illustrate smell? I will have to get closer to the men.

“Is that what you want?”

“I should keep going. North.” I hear myself say with ease in two sets of words. “Wind up through the canyon. Keep going across the narrow strips that allow a view as if one is flying. Villages and fields and mountains spread out to the rivers that lead to the ocean.” I had touched the sky atop mountains and now I will touch the sea. “They won’t hurt me. If I help.”

“Money is useful,” were the first words I understood from a bearded man.

Sera and I wake up early and leave alone. For a slender build, Sera’s footsteps crash hard. It’s the boots, their thin flat heel. I shudder and withdraw. We are carried to a strange, compound surrounded by massive, sleek and silver birds. The building is extensive with high, reinforced walls, a fort or temple of some kind. The birds are more hunter than rooster, a kind of warrior to monitor the skies. Guards stand on either side of the entrance. I shudder in an almost memory of how sailors treat those in cages and other types of chests.

In the village market, I had witnessed activity, the coming and going of the men, the loading and unloading of cargo just like the tiny mesh squares framed in my vision now. When? With four legs or two? Both. Both? We spent all day locked in what appeared to be a more makeshift brig than most. It consisted of only thin and wobbly cages piled amid sacks of grain left to dry. In the evening, we were stored as if to be forgotten in pitch black and still air. Only isolated wisps of light and sound hovered in the space. “We’re safe. We can be of use.” That was what I told the smaller dogs who nervously whimpered through the bars.

Bags tumble on moving ledges and wheels I see out the window. “Solo.” Sera’s voice appears with her face. “What happened? Why are you shaking? You tell me.”

My eye presses against the unearthly and rather sturdy mist the chest provides. Why do I smell food here? Eggs. Beans. Tortillas. Chocolate. Coffee. Market? How far is the nearest market from here?

“Here’s your bone. Maybe you can tell me just a little bit.” Sera’s voice warbles, but I am listening to Lidia.

“Calidad,” Lidia had said, “I like this one.” She raised me above her head. I prayed it would be high enough to find the sky. “Rafa nunca lo vendas.”

Rafa had not kept that promise. Rafa had never made that promise.

Sell. Sold. The other dogs were sold and I was alone.

We stand in wait with many passengers carrying chests. I am grateful we are not in the sun, but the air is thick nonetheless. Sera presents a ticket. She also presents the official looking document she paid for at the blue coat woman’s house. The price must have been very high. I am most definitely in her debt.

“Seño, I need to see the dog. That he matches the papers,” the man’s voice growls.

Of course. Tatz’u ri tz’i. Look at the dog.

In one fell swoop, Sera’s hand cups me from underneath and the sky is filtered in a type of fog. No. It isn’t fog. Once Lidia carried me inside a bag slowly being rolled in the thickness of too old bananas, sharp onion and tomato skin that made me look like I was bleeding. My nose had expelled the corn dust that puffed when the bag was heaved upwards. Here I only smell jabón and soap’s many relatives.

The guard inspects the document, removes his copy and then bends to meet me. Of course, I pass this inspection with my head up, a tail that waves as if my colors raised like the roosters crowing outside our window, no like a man, not an animal. Even after this inspection, Sera is questioned. The confidence and quickness in her tone gives me some comfort.

I’m in the chest again. Fake light flashes through the strange weave. Sera is careful. I feel her hand underneath the bottom keeping it stable. Sera isn’t moving. Where are we going? I see pathways through high walls and nothing else.

“Bienvenido a La Aurora. Welcome to La Aurora Airport.” An echo like the one that thanked God spreads over the mass of people. A weight on my chest closes in. I pant. Sera tries to ease my nerves with my once favorite biscuits I had inspected only the day before from a tender child’s hand waiting for me in her mother’s store. I refuse the biscuits Sera offers. The man behind the counter doesn’t smile at me, but I see a fleck of gold in his tooth. I don’t want to be sold for passage, but I’m not sure I want passage either.

Sera is required to carry the chest a long way and her shift of my weight from shoulder to shoulder indicates her strain but only to me. Small beads of sweat form on her brow as she removes me from the chest to pass through an arched doorway. For some this gate rings as if in warning. We walk through in silence. I can at least be glad that I am not cast into blackness with only produce and swine as company. Before I see her feet, I glimpse of an expanse of wing through a clear but covered circular opening. It rests between the dock and the ship. The air rushes thick as water when we depart. Wind rumbles around us. The great ship moves. It screams louder than I ever heard sails flex and fill before. The wind rumbles around us and I sense it surge through my body and the chest that holds me.

I hear a whisper, “Say goodbye, Solo,” and then as if only for herself, another, “Goodbye.” I curl inward and I am comforted by the constant touch of her hand on my back. Words spill from the faraway place again. “Damas y caballeros soy su piloto, Capitán-”. I catch one word, it’s his name. Her fingers strain briefly when they feel my body vibrate.

“No Solo. Not a seizure now,” Sera commands, but I’m not listening.

“I should have known better than to trust you. You’re no better than a street dog.” I hear the words in Sera’s voice. She takes books from a shelf that rests upon the bow of the ship. Each book is placed into her backpack. I can’t tell how they can all fit. “You can’t have these.”

I want to say they’re mine, they’re my family’s, they’re my language, they’re who I am and who I’m supposed to be. All that comes out is “Matyox qawey. Thank you for our food.”

Someone comes up behind me. He ties my paws together. The books spill over the top of me like water thrust over the side of the ship. He gags my mouth. Someone kicks me. My neck curls under as my head turns into my back. I feel the bag’s tension but not the ground. I smell sugars and humid cloth. Fish and tomatoes. Letters ooze down my back. I see they are not mine. I run towards books, their knowledge floating to the surface. I know I can’t read. I know I can’t swim. I am wrapped by the sharp blackness of filled sails.

The floor bumps up against me. “No,” my last heart beat answered. “Not if they were locked in a chest.” A chest. My chest? Sera’s hand is on my head through the mesh opening.

“Don’t whine. Solo, what happened, Solo?” comes Sera’s question again. “Are you back with me? Don’t leave me? Where did you go? You tell me. You can tell me. I love you. You’re a good boy.”

For the want of a few moments how different I could have been. The vibration underneath the floor locks against me and something in my memory snaps. I close my eyes and watch feathers fall like rain from the sky upon the ground. Good boy? Pages, stolen every last one. Plucked and tossed into the sky. I lick my leg. The slightly wet hair curls tight. The pages must have floated atop the water marking my grave for a time. No planks. No sails. But the rest is the same. I roll in darkness and remind myself to breathe.

I am sure my eyes are open. Gray is a smooth silence for my eyes, but my ears clang with the vision’s message. The musk of animal languages overpowers my senses. I must go back. I must go back to go forward. I sense Sera’s movement and respectfully kiss her cheek.

**An Excerpt from Tzi' in honor of Solo's ten year anniversary in Wisconsin.