Under the Sun

by Emily Jenninges

“How much for the hard rolls?” I asked her. She was round like all bakery women and wearing a clean pink dress with a crisp white apron that stood out against her dark skin. A small boy was clutching her leg; she mumbled something in Spanish and shook him off. 

“One dolla.” she told me. 

“How about a couple of these?” I said pointing through the glass case at some cakes buried in thick frosting and sprinkles of every color.  

“One dolla.” I grabbed two warm caramel rolls and set them on the counter along with the rest. 

“That’s all,” I said. 

“One dolla,” she replied. I handed her a buck and she neatly packaged the breakfast into a paper bag. 

“Gracias,” I told her with a quick grin and started out the door. No matter what you bought at that bakery it always cost exactly one American dollar.

I stepped out into the street bathed in the blinding sunshine. It wouldn’t feel like morning for long soon it would be hot again. I walked past the pharmacy and the tiny junk shops with the breakfast clutched in my arm. “The doctors probably wouldn’t let him eat this,” I thought, “they’d probably make him eat broccoli for breakfast.” Manuel was hanging his hammocks. “Elena!” he shouted with a smile and an exaggerated wave. 

“Morning Manny!” I hollered across the street and added an enthusiastic step to my pace. No time to chat this morning, there were fish to be caught. I hurried down the street to the fish market. The air became thick with the scent of the sea. Victor and the boys from the Reina Maria (one of the most successful shrimp boats in the harbor) were cleaning the night’s catch. 

“Hey Elena! Headed for the flats?” Victor called to me. 

“You got it!” I said flashing a large smile but not breaking stride. I heard him wish me luck and I waved back, then began to jog quickly down the hill to the marina. Down the weathered dock I went to the skiff and my eagerly awaiting father.

I plopped myself in the seat, he fired the motor and we were off. “Find anything good for breakfast Ellie?” he asked. I reached in the bag and pulled out a sticky caramel roll. It was a splendid morning and a long ride to the flats. The longer the better I thought. 

At last we approached the gallon jug used for a buoy floating in the vast scape of blue. It always amazed us.  Fishermen could leave the marina and with absolutely no electronics motor directly to the jug about 27 miles into the sea. We weren’t quite that local and had a GPS to help us navigate. The sunlight was dancing on the blue water producing a glare with almost enough brilliance to dry your eyes. I could feel each ray shooting down through the atmosphere gathering speed with each twinkle and then landing on my back drilling itself
through my T-shirt and crawling into my skin. 

Dad moved to the front of the boat, whistling Cat Steven’s version of “Morning has Broken.” We were adrift. I put of piece of the fresh squid on the hook and dropped it out the back. We fished for the sea bass and triggers with light tackle; it was fun with the light stuff. In a short time, Dad and I both had on a nice trigger. The drags screamed, the fish went from one side of the boat to the other, then to the back then the front. It was sudden chaos. Once in the boat, fins were flapping, hooks were flying, the two bouncing fish had the little skiff practically upside down. When they were both in a cooler we caught our breath and remembered the first time we landed one. We were with Ramon, a guide from Pompano’s fairly reliable guiding service we always laughed at that. When we asked Ramon what it was that we had caught he said, “To Americans es trigger fish, to Mexicans es gatillo, on the fish market es flounder.” It felt so good to laugh with him. We recalled memories, the funny things that happened on previous trips, back when they seemed like
vacations, now they were much more like trips home. 

Then it was quiet again. There was something about drifting or maybe it was the old skiff or maybe the taste of salt on the air. Whatever it was, it could convince us for a time that things were simple again. 

Dad sat in the front of the boat turned away from me, the wind tossed his dark hair about. I heard him say something, but didn’t understand it. I never did when he mumbled like that. Then he turned to me and smiled waiting for a response. 

“Huh?” I asked. 
 
“I said, I suppose the dorado will be up here feeding tonight.” 

“Probably” I said. 

“Maybe we should hang around and see.”  Noon came and went and we washed lunch down with a few cold Pacificos. “This always tasted so much better south of the border,” he said.

I agreed and it always tasted so much better when I was drinking it with him. Then the thoughts came. The heart sinking thoughts like what if this is the last Pacifico I ever get to drink with him. I froze. Sometimes I would just sit and stare at him. Trying to capture in my mind some kind of inerasable picture. Something so vivid and true that I would be unable to forget. He just sat leaned back in his chair with his feet over the edge of the boat like he didn’t have a care. His eyes reflected the glimmering sunlight off the water. How I wanted to sit there enthralled by this forever. I wanted to soak up every bit of his presence for as long as I could.

I wondered if he was scared. I knew he had to be, but wouldn’t let me know it. I thought if it were me, I would never go home. That’s when the tests would start again, and the treatments, the agony. Why couldn’t some time under the Mexican sun and some nice dorado be the cure? 

He started whistling the Ian Tyson song about the Navajo rug. “Ie yi yi, Katie, shades of red and blue,” I sang softly into the wind. Maybe he really wasn’t scared or maybe he just wasn’t thinking about it. I was and rarely stopped. 

The afternoon went like that, talking, not talking, laughing, recalling, and whistling. He reached into the cooler and pulled out two more beers. “Gonna be a pretty sunset,” he said. 

“Sure is,” I replied. The clouds were high in the sky and the sun was starting to think about her descent. It then struck me how sad sunsets are. Something so beautiful that lasts such a short time that sinks lower and lower and finally falls off the edge off nothingness only leaving behind stains on the clouds and the sky. Fading more each second until darkness takes it all away.

We sat in the silence and a few tears made there way down my cheek. I did my best to hide this from him.  The sun floated below the horizon and a rush of some kind of energy poured through my entire body. I wanted to stand up and shake him, scream out and make him know how much I loved him. I felt that if I sat there one more second wondering, assuming and chasing thoughts out of my mind I’d crumble to a million pieces. I set down the rod and wiped the corners of my eyes. My body was numb; I turned in the chair and looked at him. 

“Dad?” the word struggled out of my throat. 

“Yeah?” 

“Do you know how much I love you?” 

“Sure Ellen . . . of course I do.”

“No, I mean, do you really know? Do you know that I would rather be with you than anywhere else, than doing any other thing imaginable? That I adore everything you do and every sound that comes out of your mouth . . . and every smile? The thought of spending even a moment without you, just . . .” 

My eyes boiled with tears and my voice trembled. I looked up at him and he was staring at me with large watery eyes.

“Don’t think like that Ellie, you can’t. Everything will turn out, you’ll see.” But his words shook and he couldn’t hide the fear that accompanied them. I wanted to believe them, but there was something too fake, too simple, too dreamlike about them. Those were the same words you’d say to a child worried about getting a tooth pulled. I wasn’t convinced, but at the same time I thought that if he could be that strong, I should at least pretend to be.

We sat there finishing our beers and listening to the water lap at the side of the boat. He rose and started digging out the heavy tackle for the dorado. I brought in the lines, sat and stretched my arms far behind my head and let out a sigh. He came back and sat beside me and started the motor. Then he paused and gazed at the horizon. He turned to me and said, “Doesn’t get much prettier than that, Ellen.” 

I smiled, looked as deep as I could into his eyes and shook my head. “Nope it sure doesn’t.”

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