Dirt Slopes

I was ten years old and the bracing sun of Central American summer was at its highest point. I don't remember much of how that day started. I probably woke up to the loud beat of reggeaton at the far distance, or ambulant merchants selling whole foods, or perhaps at the screams of my aunts and uncles arguing over who was going to do what that day. Whatever the reason for me to be awake was, it was there.

Strange enough, too, I don't remember myself taking the trip from Villa Union to La Laguna, roughly fifteen to twenty minutes by foot walking up and down a series of stairs, a labyrinth of paths, and steep hills that are best represented as a mathematical parable. Yes, they were that horrible. My cousins and I walked those stairs, paths, and hills at least five thousand times. Some of those times running around playing tag, some going to school, some running for our lives, and some just for the heck of it.

We saw how the stairs evolved from ruins to cement masterpieces and how the paths were stoned into beauty. The dirt of those slopes, however, never ceased to be. Even when annual efforts to cover it with more compact dirt didn't make it go away. The rain would come and wash away weeks of hard labor all in one day. Don't get me wrong. It looked great when the heavy machinery was done with it. We would ride our bikes downhill without fear of breaking our rims in a pothole or flipping forward because of a rock. It was all a smooth ride as long as it lasted. Especially in summer. Oh, we had good times. Those days were like our little paradise in hell.

I carried the heavy bags of grocery that I can only connect were Tia Lola's bags. She had a stable government job so she always had a full fridge. She made several attempts to set up her own convenience store, but it was too inconvennient. I admit it, I did steal a couple of her goods. Nothing big. Just bread and maybe some chips and queso. Imma paraphrase Matthew McConaughey, you don't get punished for committing the crime, you get punished for getting caught. A little excerpt from Greenlights. You must check it out. I never got caught. Even when I did, I was confident enough to lie and get away with it.

They say that the amount of generosity correlates to the amount of guilt one feels. I don't know if it's true, but perhaps there's some truth to it. That hot summer day I was carrying Tia Lola's groceries. They were so heavy that they made my fingers turn white, then purple then I lost any sensation in them. I had one goal in mind and that goal was to make it home as soon as possible before my artistic fingers suffered the consequences. I've never been a masochist by nature, it's more by choice, so I did have my spots in which I could sit down and take a break.

From the bus station in La Laguna all the way to Villa Union, there were a total of twenty-one stops. They were more or less at an equal distance from each other. I remember stopping at stop eight. I bought my refresher. Gulp it down and made my way down the major hill to stop nine.

I reach my ninth stop. My hands are tingling. I pump them so they can get some blood back into them. After gaining sensation in them, I grab the bags, pick them up, and make my way down to my tenth stop. Halfway there, I spot him.

I was intrigued by the contraction he was riding. It was the product of a forbidden romance between a bicycle and a wheelchair. The thing had pedals and a comfortable chair. The only thing was that the pedals weren't for his feet, they were for his arms. Exactly. You have two types of people in that moment of space-time.

A perfectly healthy chubby guy carrying really heavy stuff and a guy who is carrying his own weight on his arms. One of them walking downhills while the other is trying to climb uphill as he zig-zags left and rigt because a straight attempt on that godforsaken slope would mean muscle tear.

All of you know this. You do it, I do it. Most of us do it because we're humans. When we see a homeless person on the street we do one of two things. We look into our cup holder to see if we find any spare change. If we do, we give them to them. If we look and we don't find spare change, we look straight forward and avoid eye contact. Why? because if you make eye contact now you feel guilty because you acknowledged the person, and chose to ignore him. That person knows you ignored him and now you've reinforced their feeling of worthlessness. Why am I saying this? because I made eye contact. Yes, I did. I took the first step in the transaction. I engaged and from there was a matter of wills. Who would win? My cynism or my guilt?

I remember looking around me. DAMN IT! there wasn't anybody else coming. It was just me and him awkwardly living the moment. He stopped to take a break. His face was red and he was sweating more than I was. How do I know? I walked past him. My gaze lowered as to make no eye contact anymore. The man doesn't ask for help. He doesn't say anything. A few steps past him I couldn't any longer. I stopped myself. I looked over my shoulder. He was getting ready to start his journey again. I took a deep breath.

"Here, hold this," I said as I put the grocery bags on his atrophied lap. We made eye contact for a split second. The amount of gratitude in that man's eyes wasn't measurable. I push him all the way to the top of the hill, pat him on the back, and grabbed Tia Lola's bag. I don't know what biochemical reaction took place at that moment, but the bags felt lighter.

In fact, they were so light I don't remember stopping more than two times until I reached Tia Lola's place. I still wonder who was more generous. Me who pushed him all the way to the top of the hill? or him, who gave me the opportunity to help him and feel so good that I didn't feel the pain in my fingers.