Max and Sam experience a sense of love they didn't know existed until now.
Chapter 11
Even Max had to smile at the earnestness and sincerity of this parentless family serving up their hospitality. No sooner had the car come to a halt, innocent smiles and welcoming attention filled the air. By the look on Sam’s face, four sisters, and an older brother were enough to compete with the best of receptions she had ever experienced. She was used to attention, but this, Max could see, was unexpected and special. Maybe it was the simple and honest way they ran up to the car, stared up at Sam with adoring eyes and stood in awe as she smiled down at them and stepped onto the parched surface called home to the four sisters and older brother.
“Are you our white angel?” came the soft voice of Juanita, the youngest.
Sam stood a moment, and then knelt down and looked into the little girl’s eyes. “Do I look like an angel?”
“Oh, yes,” whispered the little girl, “On your white cloud.”
Sam and Max exchanged a quick smile.
“Then I will be your angel.” Sam stood up, “And what are your names?”
The little girl was first to burst out with “Juanita!” “Francisca. I’m the oldest,” shyly muttered the older teenager. Julia, the middle girl continued announcing her name, and finally “Maria, like in ‘West Side Story’ was softly spoken by the tall thirteen-year-old holding a half-woven basket in her hands.
“Well,” said Sam, “This is my partner-angel, Max.”
“Max?” Juanita questioned. “That doesn’t sound like an angel name.”
Sam took Max’s hand and answered, “Oh, but it is. The best kind of angel name.”
“Hello, Angel Max,” said Juanita as she curtsied.
“Oh, boy,” muttered Max under his breath as Sam pulled on his hand to return the bow. “Hello Juanita…all of you.”
Guava juice might not be nectar of the Angels, but it was vintage quality refreshment as far as Max was concerned. He tipped his plastic tumbler for the last sip as Maria waved the pitcher of tropical juice at Max, asking if he would like more.
“That would be nice… very nice, Maria,” replied Max, still eyeing Sam sitting beside the other children threading shell beads. Max’s mind drifted off. If this wasn’t the most unusual image of Sam he had ever witnessed, it was way up there. The morning, for Max, that had started off with thinly veiled desires and questions about motherhood had turned into a surprise reality as well for Sam—a full-blown exercise in maternal sainthood.
For Sam, this day was becoming a major contribution in her collection of life experiences. As she slipped the beads onto the thread, one after another, she could not remember a time when she had been at such peace with children. She was, after all, the woman her least favorite New York columnist, Charles Ramsey, enjoyed calling “The Witch of Broadway.” He had even named his column after her, “Broadway’s Witches Brew.” Sam’s friends would chide him with letters and E-mail reminding the veteran critic of Broadway that without Samantha Turner, there would not be a Broadway as he remembered once existed thirty years before when he was a cub reporter for the Times. The “Brew” as he chose to call the many shows lighting up the sky each night, was seldom without a marquee bearing Samantha’s name. She had laughingly stated in an interview years before that “I will be climbing on my broomstick and returning to ‘that other place’ to do another movie next week.” It was a statement that Mr. Ramsey, realizing he could make what he wanted out of anything any star stated to hima privilege The Times had bestowed on few if any columnists beforeparaphrased, rendering the ‘other place’ statement as “…climbing on my broomstick and returning to ‘the cauldron of hell’ to do another movie next week.”
Ramsey, a once brilliant critic, but now a self-exiled bitter victim of change, meant to antagonize the community of Broadway ex-patriots; those brilliant and creative minds who had once written, directed and produced the birth and core of new thinking, new feeling, new mirrors of world experience who now had migrated to Hollywood and did little other than help peddle profit for themselves and the parasitic non thinking, non feeling, studio heads whose only allegiance was to their banks and shareholders... those who now only saw leisure time as “their” time to foist another ten or twenty new mindless pieces of “cock fight” level entertainment each weekend on tens of millions of hungry voyeurs listing from side to side in their own ethical and moral sea of starvation. Consciousness was known to the real caldron-recipe-makers as the most feared and lethal weapon their industry could ever anticipate experiencing.
That known fact, however, was not the focus of Sam or Max’s concern right now. Both were, in their separate ways, experiencing consciousness that neither fully understood, but both new would not soon to be forgotten.
Splat! Sam looked up from reverie-induced threading and gazed on the biggest Parrotfish she had ever seen. Standing proudly beside his catch was Antonio.
“Whoa,” said Max.
Sam remained in awe. She looked up at Antonio as he smiled. “I fish too. Good, huh?”
Max turned his head to the side to view the girth. “Very hungry, this fish.”
“Very hungry this tourist? Maybe?”
Sam and Max smiled.
“I cook too,” shouted Antonio. “I cook like no other beach peddler.” He excitedly turned to his sisters. “Maria, Francisca, the special drift wood, the cedar pieces… Salvador and me will build the fire.” He ran off toward the boulder-strewn beach, dragging his big brother behind him, “You stay for lunch. You stay for dinner… ”
Heard only by the Raven soaring above, the quiet smooth click... click… click, click, click of the Nikon’s electronic shutter continued. Somewhere in the echo of mild ocean breezes and the gentle lapping of waves was the consciousness of one other.
***
The sun was slow in dropping beyond the horizon that day. Perhaps it was at its usual pace, but for Sam and Max and the parents-for-a-day role they mutually shared, the ocean, the sky, the sun—all seemed in limbo. They sat in the sand, their necks adorned with layer upon layer of shell necklaces, their arms and legs loosely mixed with the sprawling limbs of tired and happy children, their emotions lost in the unknown, their hearts convinced this was paradise. Before them were sandcastles the eight of them had made together from distant dreams. Draped over rocks were dresses and shirts freshly scrubbed, the result of Sam’s roughened knuckles and her most unlikely experience to date. Sam gently brushed the silken hair of Maria as the embers of a nightlong fire struggled to hold its orange and red light.
Night continued to darken. The moon and stars shown down on the reflective shoreline. Eyes of children glowed like additional warm, dark embers of the fire. The tourists who just ten hours earlier had descended upon them as the family’s chosen angels, enjoying together the pleasures of quiet love, security of experience and the warm paternal smiles that were about to leave them.
“You will stay for breakfast, yes?” Whispered the tired Antonio. “I cook you quail eggs and fresh tortilla. Best on coast. Yes?” Antonio knew the answer but didn’t want to leave room for the reply. “Sleeping on the beach is special. Good for honeymoon memories.” He jumped up suddenly, running inside the house as he continued his pitch. “You see, grass mats, warm fire…” He returned with large mats taken from his own sleeping area.” The other children joined in. ‘Please.”
“Antonio is the best cook.”
“Perfect night for beach, please.”
“Please.”
“Yes, please.”
Antonio laid the mats down, brushed off the sand, stoked the fire, and then sat directly in front of Sam and Max. “Yes?”
Fifty yards away, tucked in the rocks, the hidden light of another warm glow reflected in the eyes of the painter with the electronic paintbrush. On the iPad’s screen was a collage of love enhanced images surrounded by clouds and sea and sands. “Yes,” said Ari to himself. “Yes.”
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Love ya!
Jane
You made me remember the times I dropped in on strangers in foreign lands and they took me into their houses and lavished me with their food and hospitality. I can see what you wrote was mutually beneficial and I can assure the reader that it really happens. When we encountered fishermen at a remote lake in Pakistan who came to sell us their long strings of fish freshly caught, they all seemed to want to be close to me… The visitor from the magical place, America. Later, when we returned to Karachi and our evening meal, I was able to sample for different kinds of fish, superbly prepared, that I had never tasted before.
Parrot fish eat and poop coral. They are responsible for the beautiful white sand (coral poop) beaches found often in the tropics.
Ron