Staying in Touch

I wasn’t close to anybody in our family except my cousin Ana, who tolerated my ambitious striving in the way I tolerated her lack of responsiveness to my rationalizing.

Whenever I visited Ana to talk to her about one of my schemes, I could tell she wasn’t taking in my words even though she was staring intently in my direction.

“I don’t need to hear you,” she told me.  “What you mean’s written all over your face.”

A few years ago, right after I’d been arrested and prosecuted for stock manipulation and right before I was scheduled to spend two years in minimum security, while I was pleading my case to Ana on a spur-of-the-moment visit, the sense that Ana was ignoring me overcame my natural resistance to violence. To get her attention, I impulsively slapped her on the cheek.  Not hard.  Just enough.

“Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?” Ana asked without blinking an eye.

She stood out of her chair under the fruitless mulberry tree and strolled over to the century plant. She paused, surveyed the lot, and then bent and snatched up a rock she threw in my direction with all her might.

To avoid being pelted by the stone, I hit the dirt.

“You could’ve killed me with that!” I admonished her angrily.

“I didn’t,” Ana murmured in her blithe tone as she ambled thoughtfully toward the mulberry tree.

“I just thought we should head out if we expect to make it up there before dark!” I screamed frantically, gathering myself, leaping up, and beating the dirt off the knees of my navy blue chinos.

“I agree,” Ana said.  “That’s why I told you I was ready.”

I hesitated, but only for an instant.

“Don’t make me tell you again,” Ana muttered derisively, staring at the ground as if searching for another rock to grab.

Ana loved to hold objects in her hands.

When she was a little girl, Ana had a baseball bat she used to tote around with her. She gripped the handle and swung the Louisville Slugger now and then, occasionally, imagining, I sensed, that she was Joan of Arc.  She collected knives, and a half dozen machetes hung in her garage.

Without saying another word that afternoon, when I contemplated my—not escape—but respite before confinement, I quickly followed Ana to her truck, a Dodge Ram that she had already driven a hundred thousand miles.

“Why don’t you have the brakes fixed on this thing?” I nervously inquired after we’d driven a half mile and made two turns that caused me to feel the presence of death in the seat between me and my . . . cousin.  Was she crazy, as some suggested?

Ana glared at me as if my voice was a noise she’d heard springing out of the forest we were speeding through.

“There’s no need to brake if you can feel your speed in the air,” Ana said triumphantly. Then she hung her arm out the window, hand open, palm turned toward the front of the truck, fingers kneading the force of the wind.

“Don’t give me that shit, Ana!” I barked.  “Get your fucking brakes fixed before you kill yourself.”

Ana’s cold green eyes darted in my direction. Ana once told me that she didn’t hear what people said as much as she knew what they meant by the vibrations they were giving off.

“Have you been in touch with my mom lately?”

“No. No!” I said wearily.  “Don’t start on me, Ana.  Just get your brakes worked on.”

In the cab of the Ram on that miserable afternoon, the last I spent as a free man for a while, Ana smirked my way, gave me the finger, and downshifted to a lower gear to slow the truck.

“Danger’s good for you,” she said.  “It’s a sign you’ve connected with the real world. Wasn’t it dangerous for you to run?”

“I’m not running!” I shouted.  “I told you that!  The court order wasn’t straightforward. I just wanted to get away for a while . . ..”

“Aren’t you taking a chance?” Ana asked, then shrugged her shoulders as if she didn’t care.

I could feel my eyes growing warm and moist.  I tried to control myself.

“Movies still make you cry?” Ana asked mockingly.

I cried during a horror movie that Ana and I watched together as kids. Ana has never let me forget it. She claims that the fear I felt that night is why I’m the person I am: a control freak in Ana’s eyes, a stock manipulator in the eyes of the SEC, and, in my own eyes, someone risk-averse and conscious first of his security.

“Fuck you,” I mumbled and slumped down in my seat.  I felt as if my life had become a nightmare. Then suddenly, as we slid around a corner near Folsom Lake, my blood curdled, and my heart began to beat painfully in my chest. “Pull over,” I said.

Ana gave me a dirty look.

“That’s a siren,” I muttered excitedly, then spotted the flashing red and blue lights.

Ana coasted to a stop on the side of the road, immediately rolling down her window and fishing her driver’s license out of her pocket and her registration out of her glove box.

“You were speeding around that corner,” the highway patrol officer, a sullen little man with a mole on his lower lip, asserted as he accepted Ana’s documents, bending down to gaze in the window.

“I was going thirty-three miles an hour,” Ana pointed out brashly.

“Why are you shaking?” the officer asked, then glanced at me.  “Why’s he so pale?”

“I’m shaking because I’m excited,” Ana said.  “He’s pale because he’s terrified. Can’t you smell it on him?  Fear stinks.”

The surly little man paused, took Ana’s measure, and then carried her license and registration back to his patrol car.

“You told him I stink?”

“When did you shower last?”

“Shower?” I asked angrily.  “I haven’t been thinking about my body’s odor.”

When the meddlesome officer returned, he insisted I step out of the truck with my hands in the air.

“You have any weapons on you?”

“I don’t carry fingernail clippers!” I swore hotly.  “I’m wanted for stock manipulation, not for kidnapping or . . .. I’m not a serial killer. I bought some stock when it was cheap, then sold it when it was dear. I thought that was what all investors did.”

The officer motioned me to step back to his patrol car; then, he handed Ana her license and registration.

“Your brake lights aren’t working,” he said, touching the brim of his cap as he backed away from the truck.

Three years elapsed before I caught up with Ana again.  I’d lost a lot of weight and was living on welfare checks.

I’d heard about the accident that nearly killed her.

“I was lucky. I felt it coming, so I ducked,” she said coldly, sitting in her living room with two chairs, one table, and a pole lamp.

She had scars on her forehead and one cheek. She walked with a limp and carried a cane like a sword.

But she’d bought a bigger truck and was making a living as a Rolfer.

Learn more about Michael by clicking on his bio: https://thievingmagpie.org/michael-new-bio/