What I Mean to Say Is Gracias
The bus disappears in a haze of golden flecks. Then dust rejoins earth, and the sun’s rays are low, and there’s not so much as a signpost, and I have to decide. What now?
I’m in one of just three countries in the world that lie directly on the equator. (The other two, Kenya and Somalia, are on another continent.) I’m new here in Ecuador, and I’ve only just made my way to the sea after a few days in Quito, high in the Andean foothills. So, I don’t yet know what this proximity to center means for sunsets.
I do know the day’s end is soon. I know the town I want is roughly north. A slim dirt road, slightly more mustard than the yellow sand it cuts through, reaches in either direction, like time on a loop. I know this road will look different after nightfall. I pull my backpack tight around my hips, put the sun to my left, and walk.
Aways down the road, a man paces north. Did he get off the bus too? Must have. That or he was formed of the earth at his feet, I tease myself, widening my strides. I don’t want to catch up, per se, just don’t want to lose sight of him. We must be going roughly to the same place, and he must know how to get there.
To tell you this story, more than a decade on, I’ll scrounge through boxes for the notebook that rode in the top of my pack. I’ll recognize the cover, banana yellow with blue dots and thin black lines, and tear it open—only to find the notes spare, mostly in Spanish, entire pages dedicated solely to directions or in-country contacts. This is it? These are the notes of a travel writer? The anger in my response will be like a hidden rock on a sandy path. You may have given up on yourself, I’ll scold the younger woman, the old wound of self-disappointment smarting, unable to right myself, embarrassed at how easily it reopens. But at least you could have written about it privately so I could make something of it now.
What I’ll mean is, so I can make something of me.
A drop of sweat slides between my breasts. At the sound of an approaching vehicle, I step off the road, grateful when the truck slows, presumably to keep the dust cloud low as it passes. I wonder if I should have gone somewhere else. The man I call partner grew up here. When I boarded the plane, he was still weeks from his own flight to his home country. And he and I were where we often were—dead center between off and on. We were the line where land meets sky, a liminal space that grows fuzzy and indistinguishable each time the sun rises and falls. I thought that meant we were always supposed to return to each other. I thought he, the possibility of building a family, was the future I should be clinging to.
When the truck stops alongside the man ahead of me, I see that its bed is enclosed by wooden walls. The walls on the sides are high, so just the heads and shoulders of half a dozen men are visible above them. The wall in the back is shorter. The man hoists himself up and over it and drops into a seat alongside the others. The truck lurches forward.
Oh. This from my body, now rushing toward the truck. The pack thwack-thwack-thwacks against my back.
I almost changed my destination—a proverbial dart thrown at a map for a clean cut. I had steady enough freelance editing work to go from one place to the next, so long as I was frugal.
The truck stops. I want to cry with relief. A man standing near the back looks down with bemused eyes as I close the distance. Recalling the way the other man swung himself up and over the wooden frame, I bring my foot onto the bumper and grab hold of the wooden frame. If I didn’t have the pack, I may have succeeded.
Just as the truck hobbles forward once more, I feel myself being pulled earthward. Grip loosening, I consider letting go to focus on a better fall.
Before I can decide, it’s over. The man has leaned over and caught hold of my pack. Steadied, I pull myself over the side and settle onto a wooden bench. “Gracias,” I say, looking at my assistant, now seated across from me.
He nods, eyes smiling now.
“Canoa?” I ask to be sure, though, sí o no, I’m going where this truck goes for now.
He nods.
“The Coconut.” This time, it’s a statement. With the slant of the golden rays coming in like they’re sliding across the earth below us now, I need to find the hostel I booked online soon.
When he nods again, I sit back, content. I know I’m close. I know the future (just as all futures are made up of nows) is the moment. It’s the men bouncing gently alongside me. It’s the occasional chatter in a tongue I’m still learning. It’s the aroma of earth and sweat and, when a small breeze passes through us, salt from the nearby sea. It’s the coolness of my back and the loosening of strands of hair stuck to my neck now that my backpack’s on the floor between my legs. It’s the way this small country, straddling the center of the planet and split by the Andes Mountain Range, is all at once this flat sand and the jungle where I’ll eat fish and sleep in a hammock and the soaring cliffs where a condor will pass so close I’ll feel the whir of wings and beaches filled with plastic bottles and baby diapers and spent cans and the warm, silky ocean and a bay of mangroves. It’s the way, a few years later, that partner and I will realize we’re much better friends and recall, from time to time, exploring some ruins near the border of Peru and hearing a flute we’re almost certain no one was playing. It’s the way my stomach yearns for the next meal and trusts I’ll find it.
Oh, the older me will say to the woman on that truck—a woman who knew how to trust herself, how to move through the unknown, how to love wildly and imperfectly, how to find hands to steady her when she stumbled—I see.
What I’ll mean is, I thought I needed to forgive you. What I’ll mean is, I do. What I’ll mean is, You gave me the sun as a massive ball of fire and light sliding toward its glassy ocean twin, sliding past the center of the planet, for a moment, sliding open the curtain of landscape that tricks us into believing we’re standing still.
A man seated near the front of the truck stands and thumps the top of the cab. It putters to a stop. There is no town here, only a heavy, beige fence. Behind it, what looks like the top of a large bungalow peeks out. Maybe one of the men lives here?
It takes a moment to realize all eyes are on me.
“Coconut.” The man across from me points with his lips toward the gate.
Oh? my eyes ask.
Sí, his twinkle.
Back on the ground, I look up. With a thump atop the cab and a puff of dust, the truck continues on before I can say gracias.
On the beige gate, there’s a doorbell and, next to it, a speaker of the same color. I push it and identify myself.
“Bienvenido,” comes a voice and the sound of a lock clicking open.
I hug my arms as the sea breeze picks up. “Gracias.”
Questions for the comments
Do you have moments when you want to have words with some version of your past self? When you look around and feel like you haven’t yet “made something” (or the something you thought you should have made) of your life? What’s a gift a past self gave you? When has a ride or some other need shown up at just the right time?
This is so evocative, Holly. Mouth-watering. I only once travelled completely solo, in New Zealand, and it was exhilarating.
"But at least you could have written about it privately so I could make something of it now." Ha! This is my gripe with myself when I look back at diaries. Yes, angst, I KNOW! It's what they're for. But why didn't I just observe more, or note more of what I observed, or expand more on the note! Why didn't I think about what would interest me 40 years down the line?! Still, I learn something about myself seeing what I left out!
I recognize those lousy travel notes from the past! What a gorgeous memory. I especially love how and when you showed us the useless notebooks so the narrative itself went into free fall, or free flow, and you allowed us to know it. That some details might be remembered, some embellished for narrative’s sake. You once dared to travel, and now you were writing with as much daring, as much entry into the unknown. The notebook is an important part of the story, as you tell it, to bring back that feeling of magic and awe.