Homecoming

What’s past is just that, thought Max. He was lying in a truck filled with cows, moving down the road beside the coast, contemplating the sky. What air! he thought. The smell of cow and of beach; this whipping and mixing around him, beach air – thick, mild, medicinal, odorous, always sweeter at the night.

Three hours before, he was sitting at a fish stand watching a small child play, as if it were his duty to watch quietly. He had the sense that he might go all week without speaking a word to anyone, and, what is more, that words could only confuse the purity of watching.

This was wrong, Max decided as he lay there on the netting affixed to the sides of the truck, above the cows. Beaches were not meant to be enjoyed alone; Max missed his companion already. Revile the past, and in that way, you worship it too. Sweet, encompassing memories, they leave an acid aftertaste.

Bands of dark chemical pinks and greens lined the upper sky. From where he was lying, the mountains of white sand and the stars were like spiritual bodies. Max shut his eyes, thinking about his trip and what to say about stars.

Chivay

He began to dream at once. The room was suffused with the golden light of a single electric bulb; through the windows truck headlamps occasionally shone. In this room, the candles looked like thin and anxious blinks, against the cement. Max was squinting to read the pages of his book, Herzog, while Conor danced with nobody in the far corner, occasionally grasping for the hands of a girl, who sat beneath rows of candy and bags of chewing cocoa. Truck drivers came to buy, and the girl shut the radio off.

Later that night they managed to hitch a ride to Chivay, on a vegetable truck, pushing, pushing in the dark.

- - -

October 20, 2007. The conversation is light because there is nothing much to say. In fact, it’s all been said before, and in my mind I have this overwhelming feeling I have heard it all before. There is light and the colors of twilight shift on the planes outside. I see a fat bird sitting on the wing of the plane. Why? I wonder. He’s not crying out, not even looking at anything in particular. The bird just sits on the wing, doing nothing, expecting maybe, but not knowing anything – anything except that he’s not supposed to be there. I feel just like that bird. I am very far from home.

- - -

He stepped into the plane and walked down the aisle to his seat. He noted the faces. He assumed that he would never see faces like that again (which of course was wrong). He felt dizzy, and he dozed even as the plane had not taken off. Those hours on the plane were spent dreaming; the dreams were whirling, sweet, skittish; they smelled of dust and of brine and he heard the sound of taxis and saw mountains. He was tired, dead tired, and he suspected during the occasional moment of consciousness, that there was a certain nobility to this fatigue, and a sadness too, as if while he dreamed he were watching the very passage of time.

What of these dreams that he had on the plane to Newark Airport? You can understand what a boy like this randomly constructs with his sleeper's mind. At first everything became very, very large. And then everything became very small. Then things slowed down, real slow, and then they sped up fast, fast, like a cinematic effect. Then they became quiet, and then very loud.

Then Max woke and realized he was home.