A Moment on the Camino

“Hay alguien sentado aqui?” A man asked. “Is someone sitting here?” He asked again with crisp and perfect English. The boy looked up and shook his head, and moved his dusty bag for the stranger. The old man eased on the wooden stool with a groan. He had approached the table from out of nowhere. The boy did not know this man. He wore faded shorts, a dirty shirt, a brim sun hat lined with dried sweat - the look of a traveler without the traces of wear on his face. He placed his hat and a black book wrapped with a felt leather strap near his tall glass of dark beer and looked up at the boy with ease only familiarity or confidence could provide. The boy did not know this man. He did not tell him to leave.

“You’re walking the Camino?” The man’s voice reminded the boy of the smell of smoke: wavering and light. The smell and taste were fresh in his mind from the past weeks.

“Yes,” the boy said. He took a sip of the water without being thirsty and scratched his head without satisfying any itch. The man leaned back on the wooden backing. He had a slight smile on his mouth around his bristles. His face was soft and open. It had been a long journey, and the boy felt inclined to divulge himself to the kind face across from him. “Are you?”

“I am. It is my second time walking it.”

“The second time?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” he said, wearing a distant smile. “The first time I was with my wife. She could not make it today.” He scratched his chin while the waiter brought two menus and placed them between the two strangers. The man spoke in Spanish and held the number two with his fingers, and the waiter departed.

“She is sick?”

The man looked up. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry for that,” the boy replied. He scratched his head. “I recognize the feeling. I’ve seen that face; it has a specific shape with that kind of pain.”

The waiter brought two beers. “You must know this pain well then,” said the man once the waiter left.

The boy began drinking the cold beer in front of him. “You could say so. My mother has had a similar expression.”

“Who is sick, then?”

The boy paused. “Well, she is. But she mourns my brother.”

“He is sick too?”

“He is no longer here.” The boy motioned toward a vase by his side the man hadn’t noticed. It sat quietly with embroidered golden roses that spiraled upward to a silver, dusty lid. “Daniel. Died by suicide.” He released a dry scoff. He looked at the man, his open face. “Didn’t even say goodbye, you know?”

“Dios mio,” the man sighed. He nodded. “You are finishing it for him now,” he said conclusively.

The boy gulped his beer down. He scratched his head, looked for the waiter, muttering, “I could go for another…” and held up his finger. The glass appeared quickly, and the boy drank half of it methodically as if it would disappear in front of him. The man observed him quietly.

“I-I haven’t had much to drink lately,” the boy muttered. “Other than water.”

“Not much else you need, though,” said the man.

“Food would be nice. And a bed. I’m taking a break tonight in a hostel nearby. The dust clogs me up. The trail makes me sneeze.” He wiped his nose.

“You don’t like it?” The man asked, leaning in closer.

“The trail? I like the trail. The trail is fine.” The boy scratched his head while observing a piece of chipped wood on the table. It was a deep cut on the edge of the table, which bore into the wood’s underlying layers. It was a clean chip with no other marks. It reminded the boy of the day they found him. He drank more. “Daniel would have loved it. He wanted to walk it since highschool. Everyone knew it was his dream from the way he spoke about it. Our mom especially knew of it. She wanted to walk it with him, but I guess it never happened. I never knew why. I didn’t care enough back then to try to know. But now… well, she is demanding I finish it for him. She refuses to see me until I do. You would think a tumor would nullify that demand. If I had a tumor, I’d want to be with my friends and family. Wouldn’t you? But if anything, it has only made her more adamant, like-like it’s already changing the way she thinks.” He shook his head left to right like a lopsided pendulum. “She can’t pay for the surgery, but she can scrape enough for a one-way plane ticket? It doesn’t make sense. Everything is nonsense.”

The man witnessed the boy finish his beer violently. He watched as the boy leaned back and observed his suggested future in the rafters of the cafe. The man in response quietly poured the boy water, removed the empty glass, and jotted something within his black notebook.

The boy looked at the book, then at the man, squinting like the man was the sun. “What was that?”

The man glanced at the boy. “I noticed something about you. I wrote it down.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to forget it. I write to adhere to the moment.”

The boy leaned toward the man to see the book pages. He thought the man spoke odd but glimpsed pages full of black ink before closing it to his chest. “What did you write about me?”

“Truthfully, you reminded me of myself when I was on the trail for the first time.” He smiled and patted the boy on the shoulder with a sad look in his eyes. “You have the disposition of someone stuck between two points. I was the same the first time. I had quit at Leon. I wanted nothing to do but go back to work. I was preoccupied over what was waiting for me and questioned what had prompted me to go in the first place. I was angry at the sun. I was mad at the way the dirt filled my socks. I hated the valley smell and my sore legs. I wanted none of it. I only wanted to go back.”

“But my wife...Isabella loved it all. From the smell to the thorns in her shoes, it was all paradise to her when we stepped foot on the dirt. It could do no harm to her. Even when I was at my worst, it seemed the trail invigorated her. When I quit, she continued. You could say I deserved the title ‘variable’ in her experience. It never stopped her. She returned lighter than the breeze. Even when her memory began to leave, her heart remained buoyant.” He held the book up. “These pages were her companion. What she saw and felt were whispered into the ears of these pages. The valleys, the creeks, the fields, the trees, the most violet sunset and mundane pebble were there in words and pictures. She lived in the pages composed of what was in front of her. I didn’t understand it. Now I too am trying to live as she did.”

The man leaned to the frozen boy, smiling. “The trail could teach you many things. It forces your body and mind to be here with the valles y arboles. You may look back , and you could consider what’s around the next turn, but your best course is to be with what’s around you. In a way, the Camino de Santiago is life itself. To live life without being present is breathing through a straw: you deny yourself all the air offered. You will feel as you live: segmented and never whole. It could break the strongest man. I don’t think that’s what Daniel would have wanted. I know my wife wouldn’t. I feel I learned that too late. But you won’t.”

“So let’s try to be here tonight! My name is Liam,” said the man holding out his hand. He thought the man spoke in spells and wondered if he was really just a traveler. He was subtly enamored of Liam.

“My name is Peter,” he said, grasping the hand. The waiter approached with more beer, but Liam spoke quickly in Spanish. Soon the table was lined with delicacies: hot stuffed peppers, grilled fish with lemon and white wine glaze, hot and cold bocadillos, and cold beer paired with carafes of dark red wine. Peter shared stories of Daniel at Liam’s request over the meal.

Liam told Peter he would pay and Peter, leaning over, shaking the man’s hands, thanked him profusely. Liam nodded politely but had made a decision long ago; it was when Peter came inside the cafe, holding his old dusty bag and a thousand pounds in the vase, looking old and tired for his age like a calaca. He recognized the look of quiet resignation suffering brings, a look he too was familiar with.

When they stood, Peter wobbled from the food and liquor; they walked out into the night while Liam held the boy’s shoulders tightly to offer stability but also the little comfort he could give. The boy muttered where the hostel he was staying at. “It’s nearby. Nearby. Thank you for the food. I-I’ll pay you back. I promise, once I get the money…” he leaned heavily on Liam, and Liam smiled and said, “No, it’s ok. It’s ok. I want to help you. I want to do this.”

Peter fumbled his feet left before righting himself with Liam’s shoulder, and Liam continued. “I think you need a push, a push that will help you. But you need to start now. Otherwise, you will never be whole.” He said aloud to Peter, to the night; to no one and everything. When they arrived in the small hostel, Peter fumbled with his door and flopped onto a small bed. Liam grabbed the vase from Peter’s arm and placed it on the table nearby. He wrote something down on a slip of paper and set it within the black notebook. He gently offered the black notebook to the vase and left into the black night.

Peter awoke late the following day. He found the small black book holding a slip of paper. A note was on top:

For your mother. Mend what was by appreciating what is for me. Carry on our voices and contribute your own. I ask you to finish the trail, here.

-Liam

In the book was a check for $20,000. Peter felt odd holding the check. It didn’t feel like a check to him; instead, he thought it was instructions disguised in the form of money from the man who appeared out of nowhere in that cafe. In his heart, Peter knew the letter was parting guidance from a man who had lived in his own twisted trails of unobtainable longing for the past and future. The numbers were the polite command to hold to the only certainty life can grant as the present second.

He left that same day back onto the trail. At night, he would look up at the sky and witness the freckles of the universe he had never noticed before. He would unwrap the bound leather and record himself over the fire, living in the soupy heat with the present moment. He watched Liam and Isabella’s journey in the form of long sketches and stark revelations. He began walking with a lightness and took nothing for granted. The book became a totem honoring the moment, and it filled quickly. He did not see Liam on the trail, but at the end of his journey, releasing Daniel’s ashes upon the open mouth of the valley, Peter knew he would see him again as the edges of every moment and every word written for all of time.