XXXVIII. CAR
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Geryon sat in the back seat watching the edge of Herakles’ face.
He had dreamed of thorns. A forest of huge blackish-brown thorn trees
where creatures that looked
like young dinosaurs (yet they were strangely lovely) went crashing
through underbrush and tore
their hides which fell behind them in long red strips. He would call
the photograph “Human Valentines.”
Herakles in the front seat rolled down his window to buy a tamale.
They were driving
through downtown Lima. At each traffic light the car was surrounded
by a swarm of children
selling food, cassettes, crucifixes, American dollar bills, and Inca Kola.
Vamos! shouted Herakles
pushing the arms of several children out of the car as Ancash’s mother
shifted gears and shot the car ahead.
Bright smells of tamale filled the car. Ancash sank back to sleep
with his head against
a thick knot of greasy cloth plugging one of the holes in the side of the car.
Got an air-conditioned one!
Herakles had announced with a grin when he returned from the rental place.
Ancash’s mother said nothing,
as was her custom, but motioned him out of the driver’s seat. Then she
took the wheel and off they went.
They drove for hours through the filthy white sludge of Lima suburbs
where houses were bags of cement
piled up to a cardboard roof or automobile tires in a circle with one tire
burning in the middle.
Geryon watched children in spotless uniforms with pointy white collars
emerge from the cardboard houses
and make their way along the edge of the highway laughing jumping holding
their bookbags high. Then Lima ended.
The car was enclosed in a dense fist of fog. They drove on blindly. No sign
of road or sea. The sky got dark.
Just as suddenly fog ended and they came out on an empty plateau where
sheer green walls of sugarcane
rose straight up on both sides of the car. Sugarcane ended. They drove up
and up and up and up
around switchbacks carved out of bare rock higher and higher all afternoon.
Passed one or two other cars
then they were entirely alone as the sky lifted them towards itself.
Ancash was asleep.
His mother did not speak. Herakles was strangely silent. What is he thinking?
Geryon wondered.
Geryon watched prehistoric rocks move past the car and thought about thoughts.
Even when they were lovers
he had never known what Herakles was thinking. Once in a while he would say,
Penny for your thoughts!
and it always turned out to be some odd thing like a bumper sticker or a dish
he’d eaten in a Chinese restaurant years ago.
What Geryon was thinking Herakles never asked. In the space between them
developed a dangerous cloud.
Geryon knew he must not go back into the cloud. Desire is no light thing.
He could see the thorns gleam
with their black stains. Herakles had once told him he had a fantasy
of being made love to in a car
by a man who tied his hands to the door. Perhaps he is thinking of that now,
thought Geryon as he watched
the side of Herakles’ face. The car all of a sudden flew up in the air and crashed
down again onto the road.
Madonna! spat out Ancash’s mother. She shifted gears as they lurched forward.
The road had been getting steadily
rockier during their ascent and now was little more than a dirt path strewn
with boulders. It seemed
that darkness had descended but then the car rounded a curve and the sky
rushed open before them—
bowl of gold where the last moments of sunset were exploding—then another curve
and blackness snuffed out all.
I really could go for a hamburger right now, Herakles announced.
Ancash moaned in his sleep.
Ancash’s mother said nothing. The car passed a small cement house with no roof.
Then another. Then a huddle
of women squatting on the ground smoking cigarettes in the glare of the moon.
Huaraz, said Geryon.