Pacito stepped off the yellow rust stained bus, the driver using a strange long metal rod with a tiny talon shaped hook at the end pulled the suitcase from the roof sending it crashing to the ground where it landed with an unceremonious thud. Pacito stood there and watched as the wind kept whipping itself up into a frenzy sending the dust swirling up into the air in small coils, before it deposited the tiny grain like pebbles into the well of his eyes. Rubbing the grit from his eyes to stop the stinging Pacito looked around at an endless dusty red vista that stretched out and out until finally his eyes rested on a range of cold looking grey mountains, what a forsaken land he thought.
It had been since months since he had felt the shock of receiving the letter informing him of his father’s death, the shock all the more as he had not known there had been a father coupled with the fact that even though he was just hearing of the death it had actually happened 30 years earlier.
His mother had always told him his conception had been the result of one heady night’s passion with a travelling avocado salesman from the mountains. The man had passed through their village one summers day when she was still just a young and naïve girl. Pacito remembered how she would tell him the story as a young boy, she had been tending to the crops in the field that morning when the strange man carrying his large hessian bag full of avocados had stopped removed his hat and wished her a pleasant morning. Her face had gone red with shyness when he offered for her to join him for lunch on the large granite rock by the path. She had accepted the half an avocado he held out in his hand and cautiously sat down beside him, the rest of the afternoon had passed in a blur as she had listened to his fantastical tales of the magical mountain lands he came from by the end she was utterly seduced. He had not been a handsome man but had an air of another world about him, a world she had yearned for in her nightly dreams far away from the tall fields of maize and back breaking labour that filled her days. That night in the tropical rains that had swept across the country that summer she had given herself to him completely, exhausted they had slumped into a deep sleep together behind that same granite rock and she had dreamt that night clearer than ever before of the pink and white blossoms that she imagined fell from those mountain trees into the clear waters of the Rio Grandé. The next morning she had awoken to find herself alone, all that was left of the man was the impression his sleeping body had left in the thick grass beside her, nine months later to that very day Pacito had been born, the boy with the deep blue eyes the colour of the magical mountain lakes her lover had told tale of.
Pacito’s mother had never taken another lover, the shame of the fatherless child forcing her and the baby out of the village to a tiny abandoned Pueblito. There Pacito grew up with only his mother broken hearted and full of shame for company. Everyday under the harsh glare of the sun, Pacito would run around kicking the old leather football he had found in a dark corner of the Pueblito. All the air had long been sucked out of it, many years before he had been born making it as heavy and hard as a rock so it bruised his young soft feet every time he kicked it. But apart from his mother and the cicadas the old leather football would be his only childhood companion.
As Pacito grew older, so his feet grew stronger, the old leather ball no longer caused his feet to bruise but became an extension of them, his mother used to sit on the broken down wooden porch washing the rice with the dirty water from the nearby stream and watch her son with a mixture of wonder and pride as performed acrobatics with the hard and tattered leather ball. By the time Pacito was 15 he had grown tall and strong nourished by his mother’s rustic rice dishes and the days spent chasing the old ball under the hot equatorial sun. Sadness gripped his mother she knew she could no longer keep the boy there, he needed to discover the world, the tiny Pueblito, the old leather ball and the life of solitude would soon not be enough for him, Pacito was becoming a young man.
The following morning before the sun had fully risen, they packed up the few belongings, shut the flimsy door to the Pueblito and set out across the vast plain that surrounded their home. Pacito carried the old leather football under his arm but after a few hundred metres seeing his mother struggling under the weight of the bag of rice and water she was carrying, he set down his own bag, held the ball between his two hands and with all his strength kicked the old leather ball high into the air. He and his mother watched as it rose and rose, it soared above them like the condors he imagined circled the far away mountain tops of faraway lands, it kept rising until finally the ball appeared to reach the sun itself. There it burst into a ball of flames and disappeared. He picked up his mother’s bag, placed an arm around her and on they went.
They had walked for two whole days, when they arrived at the crumbling whitewashed stone structure of the convent Santa Augusta. A jacaranda tree had somehow broken its way through the buildings outer wall, its leaves and branches sprawling over their heads like a cottony umbrella. He sat his mother down under the shade of the tree and opened the flask of water, Pacito had watched as his mother’s hands shaking tried to hold the flask, the water spilling down her chin as she tried to take short, sharp sips, her health was failing fast. He took the flask from her hands and held it to her lips; she drank the water all the time looking into the deep blue eyes of her son. She touched his arm but spoke not a word. He smiled at her kissed her cheek, then helping her up led her by the hand through the gates into the courtyard of the convent. In the far corner of the courtyard a nun was knelt down, tending to an overflowing vegetable patch with an ancient wooden tool, the end of which was bent and buckled by earth and time. The nun seeing the tall young man and the woman got up from her knees and walked across the cobbled stones of the courtyard. She smiled at the young man, a smile that felt so full of love and kindness, it made Pacito’s stomach feel a strange glow of warmth spread it way across it. The woman took his mother’s hands in hers and Pacito watched as his mother fell into the sister’s arms weeping. The nun held her close, looking over the woman’s matted hair into Pacito’s eyes and simply nodded. Wiping the wet from his face, he turned and walked away out of the gates whispering to himself “goodbye mama”.
It had taken Pacito seven more days of walking, first through long dry arid plains that rose up into cold unforgiving mountains; from their peaks he could see a huge brilliant blue expanse far in the distance, in it millions of diamonds glittered back at him. Then he found himself cutting his way through dark, wet and humid rainforests until finally he had arrived at the small sea side port of Labarabcantaro. There he spent his first night in a small tavern full of drunken men, who it turned out were avocado smugglers, whose small vessels filled the harbour. The tavern was a rowdy place, full of these men singing lamentations for forgotten heroes and lost lovers. Women with long flowing multi coloured dresses span like dervishes across the floor, the beads and sequins on the dresses flashing in the candlelight, they stamped their feet and stared at the men with wild eyes. Pacito sat there transfixed.
Early the next morning he walked along the harbour, staring out into the endless blue water, he saw the same faces from the previous night who had been laughing, singing, shouting and weeping but in the daylight they seemed different. Across the faces of them men was a look of melancholy as they loaded the bursting crates of avocados onto their tiny wooden vessels. The same women who had looked so wild and free the night before, stood by the quay watching the men load the boats; they were dressed in sombre black clothes, their long flowing black hair carefully and primly tied up into buns and they wiped away silent tears with small white handkerchiefs. Pacito left the departing men too their grieving women and walked over the bridge that led from the harbour towards wide open green fields. About 500 metres up the road stood a strange structure all alone, it had no roof on it and on the side were the untidily painted words Labarabcantaro football club. Pacito walked inside and onto the lush green pitch, it was a long wide field carefully marked out with white paint, he had never seen such a sight before the whole place felt full of magic. He knelt down and stroked the grass it was soft and damp, he lay down on it pressing his cheek against the soft carpet and heard the sounds of cheers echo inside his ear, this would be his new home.
A grey haired man walked out onto the pitch, carrying a sack full of shiny footballs full of life and air. He saw the sight of the young dark haired man lying on the ground his face pressed against the grassy surface. Pacito looked up to see the man standing over him; he brushed the grass of his cheek and got up looking into the man’s eyes he said “Signor, my name is Pacito, I have no mother, no father, I know nothing of the world except for how to kick a ball, can I stay?”
The man tossed him a football, smiled and said “yes” and there Pacito stayed plying his trade as a footballer for the rest of his career.
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