Chapter 5

The FUneral

            There was a box full of Abuelo’s things in Henry’s bedroom in Augusto’s house. Henry searched through it, finding a bag full of coins, some books, and a ring. The coins inside the bag were from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. “I didn’t know Abuelo was such and avid coin collector,” he thought. Henry skimmed through the several books on coin collecting his grandfather left him. He wanted to find out how much the coins he had in his new collection were worth. There was a good 500 dollars worth of collectable coins in that bag. He then picked up the ring that was lying in the bottom of the box. It was gold with a blue sapphire stone. He examined the intricate design on the face of the ring: a big G in the center between compass needles and what looked like a 90 degree angle ruler. He thought the ring was pretty, so he tried it on. It didn’t fit on his ring finger but it fit on his pinky, so he left it there.

When Augusto arrived from work, he noticed Henry’s mother’s Jeep was parked outside the house. “Henry!,” he thought. He hurried into the house to see his son.

“Hola, hijo,” he said.

“Hola, papá.”

“That’s a box of stuff your grandfather left in the house that I thought you’d find interesting.”

“Thanks. These things are pretty cool.”

“Enjoy ‘em, mi hijo. They’re your inheritance from him.”

“Okay, dad.”

Augusto looked at his watch.

“Shit, we gotta go. it’s already 5:45,” he said.

He looked at Henry and noticed he was still wearing his “street clothes,” open-toed shoes included.

“Hijo, you have to put on something nicer than that. Get dressed and be ready to leave in five. The service is at six,” he said, and left to start up the car. 

As they drove to the funeral house it seemed like the entire family was already there. The parking lot was full so they had to go search for a spot out in town. They ended up parking by the side of a road next to a cliff. Henry could see a panorama of the old hills, mountains, and forests he trekked through in his childhood. He remembered this view. Whenever he felt homesick, back in New York, he would daydream about these mountains and forests. But something felt off. Many of the mountains he knew when he was a child were no longer there; he couldn’t recognize the scene.

The city had sprawled into the bosom of the island. The fields of coffee, plantains, and tobacco had turned into a field of commuters lost in a jungle of concrete. The sounds of the rainforest of his childhood were being drowned by the primitive rhythms of the sex-music reggaetón, which blared from the trunk speakers of the cars that rolled through road-rivers of cement. He had only been gone for four years, but it seemed that the world had changed beyond his comprehension.

“I love funerals,” Augusto said as they walked back to the funeral house.

“Why? They’re a drag!”

“It’s the only time you really get to see the entire family.”

“Well, don’t you miss Abuelo? Isn’t that why everybody’s here?”

“Funerals are not for the dead. They’re for the living. They’re pretty expensive family reunions, but they manage to bring everybody together.”

Henry knew what was coming.

“I don’t want you to display me or do this “velatorio” your grandmother’s been doing for three days. I don’t need anybody to look over my body for a couple of days to make sure I’m dead. When I’m dead I’m dead, and that’s it. Don’t even think about spending thousands on a grave and a casket. What does spending that type of money on rotting flesh do? I want you to cremate me, and hold the largest family reunion you can think of.”

“Okay dad.” He guessed right.

When they arrived at the funeral house, the reception room was already packed full with family members. Henry and Augusto headed to the room where they were watching over Abuelo. Nobody in the family had seen Henry in four years so it took him a good 20 minutes to walk from the entrance of the house to Abuelo’s room.

“¡Henry! ¡Nene, tanto tiempo!” Henry’s aunts, cousins, and all the other females of his extended family greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and some exclamatory remark. He walk through the crows, lips puckered, ready to catch up on all the “¡nene, como has crecido!” and how’ve-you-beens he’s missed in the past four years. When he finally reached the velatorio, he could see his grandfather’s casket at the far end of the room. There were several rows of chairs at each side of the room facing the deceased. They were all empty save for one of the ones nearest to the body, where Henry’s grandmother sat silently watching her husband’s body, and another one on the row where a woman covered with a black veil cried and occasionally moaned with pain.

“Abuela, ¿cómo estás?” he said.

“Estoy velando a Abuelo por si se mueve,” she said as she kept watching her husband’s body without a pause.

The woman in black wailed and raised her hands in the air while calling out for God.

“Who is that woman, Abuela?” Henry asked.

“La llorona del barrio.”

“Why is she crying so loudly?”

“Es lo que hace.”

“That’s what she does? Weird.”

Henry sat silently next to his grandmother and would constantly shift his gaze from his grandfather’s casket to his Abuela who kept her gaze locked on the frigid body. He tried to approach her and hug her, but she wouldn’t move, she wouldn’t shift her fixed look on Abuelo’s body.

“Okay Abuela, keep watching him.” He saw his father talking to his uncle in one of the corners of the room and decided to walk over to them.

“Henrycito, sobrino, cómo está todo en los Niuyores?” His uncle said.

“Things are good. Just studying and taking it easy.”

“I notice you’re wearing Abuelo’s ring. It’s pretty, huh?”

“Yeah, I thought it was cool-looking.”

“We need to discuss that ring. Come talk to me after the service.”

“Okay.” Henry felt slightly intimidated by his uncle’s words.

“Why do we have to talk about the ring?” he thought. “Am I doing something wrong by wearing it?” He began to worry about having upset the family by wearing the dead-man’s jewelry on his memorial service. “Am I dishonoring the dead?” He wanted to take off the ring, but it was stuck on his finger. He tried to pull it off harder, but it wouldn’t come off and would only hurt him.

 The ceremony carried on as expected. As each family member stood up to speak his or her peace on Abuelo, Henry couldn’t stop thinking about the ring. It started to weigh on him.

Too much.

After the ceremony was done, Henry walked outside for a breath of fresh air. It was past dusk, and the ground smelled of freshly fallen rain. It always rained in Aibonito. The town and all the mountains around it would constantly be covered in deep fog, usually around sun set. Henry’s uncle stepped outside and saw Henry standing by himself on a patch of grass facing the funeral house.

“You know what that ring is for, Henrycito?” his uncle said.

Henry looked down at the ring.

Turning it in circles, he said: “not really.”

“It was your grandfather’s way of telling the world of his commitment to the brotherhood and his status as a master mason.”

Henry started feeling guilty for taking away such an important family emblem. “I’m sorry. Is everybody mad at me?” he said.

            “No, Henry, absolutely not. Why would anybody be mad at you?”

            “I’m wearing Abuelo’s master ring.”

            “Mason ring,” his uncle corrected him, “and no, nobody’s mad at you for that.”

            “What’s a mason, tío?”

            “A Freemason is someone like me. We’re part of a worldwide brotherhood of forward thinking men.”

            Henry looked at his ring. He remembered hearing a little about Freemasons among his group of “hipster” friends. He remembered all the conspiracies: The new world order, the illuminati, reptilians, UFOs, etc. He decided to take off the ring . He didn’t want to make any commitments with anyone.

It still wouldn’t come off.

            “Is this ring yours then?” he said.

            “Well, technically, I’m supposed to inherit it from Abuelo. But I think you should keep it for a while.”

            “I’m not sure I can be a Freemason, tío.”

            “It’s in your blood, boy. You’re the only male of this new generation. You have to carry forth the family name and the tradition. I know you can.”

            “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.” Henry’s uncle felt like he was loosing the kid fast. He paused for a second.

            “Look… a lot of revolutionaries were Freemasons. You know about all the revolutions in the Americas right? The Freemasons were there. Our flag, Henry, our revolutionary flag has Freemason symbolism. Our family revolutionaries were all Freemasons…except for you father. But we both know he’s sort of a nut case anyway right? He, he. You know… some of them participated in el Grito de Lares, and the insurrection in Jayuya. Freemasonry has done a lot of good things for this country and has inspired revolutions all around the world.”

            Henry was not buying his uncle’s pitch.

“Yeah, but those were bourgeois revolutions. I’m not into that.”

“Well…” his uncle didn’t know what else to say, “…regardless of the revolution, are you not a revolutionary?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Henry said.

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

Chapter 4

The Little Girl

            “I’m scared.”

            “Mi amor, no te preocupes, soon enough we’ll find her.” He gently embraced her, trying to console her.

 “And then we’ll all go back to El Morro and fly kites together.”

“Who would take our baby away?” She cried.           

“No sé, mi amor, no sé.”

            The man kept looking for his daughter tirelessly around the stadium. He stretched the entire arena and examined every single space in the seating area. He saw the military dragging out people from the arena into the hallways of the stadium. He tried to follow them in, but was aggressively pushed away. He had a feeling that she might be somewhere in that space behind the arena. He looked around for a way in, and all he could see were armed men standing guard. He paced around the arena in circles, looking for a way in.

There was an old rusted steel door in a corner of the arena.

Nobody was guarding it, so he walked up to it to inspect further. The handle was not locked. He looked around him to make sure no one was looking at him and quickly went inside. It was very dark, but he could tell he was at the top of a staircase. He looked down and could see a slight flicker of light coming out of a cracked-open door at the bottom of the stairs. He went down to investigate.

When he stepped out of the staircase, he found himself in a hallway. He was in the basement of the stadium. The long bending path was dimly light by flickering lights; there were doors on each side. As he walked down the hall he heard the sounds of machines beating and turning. They have to be the air-conditioning, he thought. He kept walking until the sounds of the machines disappeared.

Dead silence.

His heart started beating faster.

He hated silence.

Then, he heard footsteps. Two militiamen were walking up the hall, approaching him. He hid behind a cornered entrance to a room and waited—trembling. He could hear the men talking to each other:

“Why do we have to drag down all the fat ones?” one of the men said.

“I know. I tell you, if they weren’t paying this good I wouldn’t be here at all. They give us shit work, man.”

They stopped a few feet before the corner he was hiding in, and opened another door.

He heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

His skin fluttered as if trying to escape his body—he trembled intensely. The militiamen walked away.  He waited in his hiding place until the echoes of their footfalls faded out.

“¿Camila, mi amor, me escuchas? ¿Estás ahí?” he called out to his daughter in a hushed voice. He stepped out to investigate this room the militiamen had walked into. He saw the opened door, and could smell the rancid scent of rotting meat. His stomach turned over and he nearly vomited.

There, he found the bodies.

They belonged to the people who had been shot and killed since the confrontations with the military began. Their corpses were separated by body mass, sex, and skin color. They were piled on top of each other in a large grey-walled room—like mountains of flesh. Who could do this, he thought, as he scanned the putrid landscape. He feared the worst. Could she be here?

There she was.

Her father dragged her out of a pile of small bodies. Her skin was pale blue, and her brown eyes remained open as if staring into infinity. He held her in his arms and kissed her frigid face. “¿Porqué Dios, por qué nos torturas de esta manera?” he said.

She showed obvious signs of physical violence. Her little white dress was ripped open. Her legs were severely dislocated by the tugging force of the army men. She had bled to death from the injuries inflicted upon her little body by the strong army men.

His heart was palpitated faster.

Tears streamed down his darkened face and blurred out everything around him and his little girl.

He heard their steps again.

The militiamen marched down the hallway to inspect the strange sounds coming from the catacombs. He kissed his daughter goodbye and started running away.

They saw him.

“Hijo e' puta!” They started shooting at him. The man thinly escaped the fire as he sprinted out to the door leading up the staircase exit of the basement.

“Olvidalo. We’ll pick him up later,” one of the soldiers said.

“Dead meat,” said his partner.

Chapter 3

Henry’s Story

The cell phone rang, shaking Henry from a deep sleep. He couldn’t find it. He looked under his pillow, moving aside a book, a pair of mechanical pencils, and his 9mm Makarov pistol, he finally finds it hidden beneath the pillowcase. He liked big pillows.

“It’s three in the morning, what the hell do you want?” he answered.

“Soy yo, mijo,” the caller said.

“Perdóna papá. What happened?”

“Abuelo murió, you have to come back home right now”

“What?”

“Wake up, get dressed, and get to JFK. Your uncle bought you a ticket for the six AM flight to San Juan. Go to the American Airlines front desk.”

Henry got out of bed, still dazed from the sudden awakening. He zigzagged across his apartment-studio: grabbing the remote control and turning on the TV, stretching up to reach the cabinet with the grounded coffee and starting the coffeemaker. Once the coffee was brewed, he sipped it down quickly.

Now he could start his day.

He was packed in five minutes.

On the television there were visuals of the statue of liberty. On the top of the statue there was a man standing with his fist raised next to the Puerto Rican flag and the Vieques flag. The newsperson on the T.V. announced: “This attempt is considered one of many in a chain of civil disobedience acts intended to stop all military practices in the small island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Despite these continuous and ever-increasing acts of disobedience, the U.S. Congress’s position on the Navy’s presence remains the same.”

            “They just don’t get it do they? Those stupid gringos…” A voice came from the other side of the living room where Henry’s friend, Jamal, was seemingly sleeping on their couch near their entry door.

            “I thought you were asleep, sorry if I woke you up with the T.V.” said Henry.

            “Nah, man, I’ve been up all night trying to figure stuff out.”

            “So… you mean you’re planning the revolution again, huh? Where are your maps and little black notebooks?”

            “Shut up, man, this is a serious issue that requires some serious reflection.”

            “Yeah, and here I was thinking we left the island to escape all this type of useless thinking. You’re way too idealistic, you know that?”

            “I’m not idealistic. I’m just stubborn, and that’s a good thing! I’ve been reading other authors now and have come to the conclusion that Che’s guerrilla-focus strategy is faulty and requires a very different approach.”

            “You’re reading other authors? How many Marxist authors are there? Or are you reading the memoirs of Lenin’s wife’s dog?”

“Believe or not, there’s enough literature about revolution and Marxism out there that a single person couldn’t possibly read it in a lifetime.”

“So you’re questioning Guevara’s thought now huh? Sounds dangerous.”

            “I’m no blind follower of anyone. You know this. At least I’m doing something; I’m being a critical thinker. What are you doing?”

            “I gotta go home today. Abuelo died and my parents want me to be back in the island right away.”

            “Shit man, I’m sorry. How long you gonna be gone?”

            “I should be back within the week. I gotta go right away though. Take care, my little Fidel.”

            “Very funny, my little Trotsky. Take care of yourself, and don’t even think about blowing up any buildings without me.”

            Henry put on his jacket, grabbed some more coffee to go, a notebook, and his old Nikon camera and left for the airport.

            The same day Henry left, eleven protesters occupied the statue of Liberty. This was part of the first mass movement in Puerto Rico since the protests against the privatization of the telephone company. Back then, Henry and Jamal stood in the front lines, facing the beatings of the riot police, tasting the stingy taste of pepper spray and fighting them back with stones, fists, and protest chants. They skipped a good portion of high school fighting for worker’s rights. They didn’t care about missing classes and would still somehow manage to pull straight A’s throughout their entire academic career. They were too mature for high school culture and would only share true friendships among themselves and the older college students they met in the protests.

They became well known among the activists of the University of Puerto Rico and were promptly considered by many to be a part of “El Movimiento”: the not-yet-effective, but glorious, student movement for university autonomy and Puerto Rican independence, as Henry would call it. El Movimiento was the vanguard of the university’s left and would take on all the imaginable issues that were of concern to the students. Henry wasn’t that good of a public speaker, it was hard for him to describe what they were against and in favor of whenever journalists of the conservative press asked him what they were doing in the protests. He would struggle with terms such as the bourgeoisie, socialism, capitalism, and class struggle. Having come from a family of leftist intellectuals really didn’t help him express himself in a clear manner to the “uneducated masses.” For Jamal, however, the idea of the movement was clear: he would always say, “we are anti-capitalists! We stand against the injustices and repression of the system and advocate a different and more humane system of social welfare institutions. We stand against all profit-seeking institutions of man.”

It came as a surprise to many when Henry and Jamal decided to leave the island and go study in New York. Many complained about Jamal’s “abandonment” of the movement and others tried their best to convince Henry not to leave. The leader of the socialist organization to which Henry’s father belonged to argued with Henry on several occasions.

“You know you could do a lot more by studying in the university here. You could be close to your family and help the movement,” the leader said.

“I just don’t see myself truly contributing to anything,” Henry said.

“We need more young and thoughtful people like yourself, Henry. Losing you will be a great step back for the movement.”

“Well, that’s exactly one of the things that makes me think I would have no more to contribute if I stayed. We depend too much on individual leaders and we put too much hope in the coming of the next Che Guevara.”

“Oh, please. You know we have more than that going for us. We’ve organized the workers. We have their support.”

“So what? I’m sure any Puerto Rican, even those who want statehood, would rather live in an independent republic than be like Hawaii. The problem is not in how much they support us, it’s in how lazy they are,” Henry said.

***

He boarded the plane. Still tired and slightly dazed, he found his seat. He attempted to catch some missed sleep while everybody else streamed onto the plane. A thin, curly-haired, brown-skinned man who wore a shirt that read, “I’m Puerto Rican: 100% Boricua de pura cepa pa' que tú lo sepas” sat on the seat next to him. The thin man looked around the cabin as if he were inspecting for all available exits, he then looked into the seat pocket in front of him and started reading the handout out loud with a strong Puerto Rican accent. “Pleese fa-low all instructions geeben bai dí air-plain estaff.” He looked at the pictures in the handout and exclaimed, “Ave María, más vale que este avión no se caiga.” He turned his head to Henry, “I hope this airplane don’t fall, you know?” Henry glanced at him, nodded, and turned his head back toward the window.

“Tú eres Boricua, verdad?” the thin man asked.

Henry turned his head toward him and nodded. “Yes, I’m from Old San Juan”

“Un muchacho de La Loza ah? I’m from La Isla—Cayey, para ser específico,” the thin man responded. He kept on talking mostly in Spanish. He knew Henry understood.

“Well I’m not exactly from the city. I just lived there for a couple of years. My family is really from Aibonito,” Henry said.

“¡Ah! Entonces somos vecinos. Me llamo José Carlos, a su servicio.”

Henry hesitated mostly because he was tired and the man didn’t seem to be that interesting. “I guess we are neighbors… in a sense.” He paused for a second and thought about whether it was worth it to keep talking. “My name is Henry,” he finally said.

“Oye, brother, if you don’t mind me asking… Este… ¿Por qué tu solo hablas English?”

“I don’t see any reason in speaking Spanish.” Henry said, turning away. But José Carlos was undeterred.

“Why not? It’s our native tongue, bro, and we must give it some cariño and respect.”

“There’s nothing native that is Spanish in Puerto Rico.”

“Nuestra herencia es Española”

“The Spaniards were colonizers, not natives. Don’t tell me I have to respect the tongue of an invader.” Henry was getting annoyed. He took out one of the in-flight magazines and pretended to read it.

“Oh… you’re one of those, ah? Ay mi-hijo, don’t give me that kind of crap. You’re whiter than me. You’re probably more Spanish than I am.”

“My grandfather was black. Half of my family is black. I just got the shit end of the French in my family to dominate my genes, but I’m really mostly Arab –from northern Africa.”

“Why don’t you speak Arabic then?” José Carlos laughed.

“Kuss mm-ak ya'arku shar mouteh” Henry responded in Arabic. Carlos, stopped cold and stuttered.

“Bueno, erm…” José Carlos stuttered, “parece que va a ser un viaje largo pa’ los dos”

The flight attendants did their typical ceremonial dance of safety and prepared for liftoff. Eventually, the plane’s wheels started rolling. Henry felt the pressure against his body as it picked up speed. The plane ascended into the sky. He felt the floor tremble as the wheels retreated into the plane’s belly. Invariably, he imagined what would happen if something went wrong: If the wheels were tucked away too soon, or, if on landing, they weren’t lowered at all.

Despite his worst fears, the trip wasn’t too long. José Carlos allowed Henry to sleep for the rest of the flight and minded his own business. Henry slept fitfully and had a couple of nightmares in the three-hour flight. He dreamed about his father dying, and him being forced to cut a deal with the devil to save his father’s soul. He also dreamed about a circus full of people, where his closest friends were being displayed and paraded around like animals for the entertainment of the crowd. Finally, he dreamt about his greatest fear: Jamal was dying in his hands and Henry wasn’t capable of letting go of him to get help. He had dreamt about Jamal’s death many times. In the dream, nobody’s around. They were alone in the middle of a great white windowless room, light by an ardent white-fluorescent light. When he awoke from the nightmare, he couldn’t go back to sleep. So be it. José Carlos was asleep. The sun was rising ahead of them, as the island slowly came into view in between the clouds.

As the plane descended, Henry started seeing the rolling beaches, the karstic hills, and gentle green mountains of the west side of the island appear through the cloud-filled skies of the Caribbean. Though they were traveling in opposite direction from Henry, many of these clouds had traveled a long way, just as Henry was doing, from the tropical waters of western Africa.   Henry connected with these clouds. For him, they were brought by the same winds that bring the Sahara desert sands that help make the island’s soil fertile and provided him and his family with just enough food to eat when he was a child.

Henry’s father, Augusto, was raised as a farmer in the mountain town of Aibonito before the family was forced to move to New York to work in the factories. Augusto learned everything he needed to know about farming from his grandfather, who would often entrust him with the care of his entire “diez cuerdas” (about 9.7 acres) farm. By the time Henry was born, this farm had been lost and sold to a man who turned it into a Walgreens. Henry’s father’s love for farming compelled him to buy another “diez cuerdas” of land in the higher mountains of Aibonito where he raised Henry and taught him all that he had learned from his grandfather.

Augusto loved stories, especially those that were centered on him. He would tell these stories to Henry at night until the boy fell asleep, and he would continue telling stories in the morning over breakfast.  Many of them were melodramatic and very real for Henry, who would often tell them to his friends.

As the plane flew over the island, the mountains rolled by--scarred by hundreds of rivers and ravines flowing through them. Henry remembered one of his father’s stories. In it, he had single-handedly saved Henry’s aunt Gloria from drowning in a rapidly flowing river. Henry memorized the story as a child and had even drawn a cartoon book depicting it. He attempted to sell it to all his friends but stopped because drawing all the scenes over and over again was very tiring for him. In his head, he could still hear his father’s voice telling the story.

“I used to love body surfing on this brook near my childhood home whenever it turned into a heavy-flowing river after a good rain.” Augusto would always tell his stories to Henry in a very distant and melancholic past tense.

“I never do things like that anymore, and there’s a good reason for it.” Henry never fully understood why his father both romanticized and tried to forget his past. Whatever the reason, Henry’s love of these stories made them true and powerful.

“The water flowed rapidly and dragged you down to a small set of falls that rapidly dropped in levels and were full of rocks and boulders. I always had fun throwing myself into the river and letting the water take me down, but would always remember to grab on to a tree’s branch that extended out to the river just before the small falls started and much before all the boulders and dangerous rocks hit me.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun, papá,” Henry said as he attentively heard his father’s story and visualized the entire situation.

“It was fun, but it was very dangerous. It was okay for me to do it because I was always in control. But your auntie, Gloria, was a little child back then. You know what little sisters do when they see their big brothers do really dangerous and exciting things? They try to imitate them! So she saw me one day jumping into the river and decided she wanted to jump too. When I got out of the water, I noticed she was flowing down stream to the area were the falls and rocks and boulders were. I screamed out to her and tried to tell her to grab on to any branch she could reach. But the current was too strong, and her arms were too short, so she passed the branch that I grabbed on to and continued on downstream. I ran as fast as I could down to the area were the falls were and tried to position myself near them so I could grab a hold of her when she fell down. I saw her little head trying to stay afloat on top of the streaming water and heading toward me faster and faster. Her body jumped out and started falling down the waterfall as I extended my arms and was able to narrowly snatch her by her dress. I threw her on the riverbed next to me and made sure she was still alive. She was okay and didn’t have a single scratch on her. But she could have died, had she continued down.”

“Then what happened?”

“She told me she wanted to do it again!”

Henry laughed and drifted away in thought—imagining the story—they remained silent for several minutes.

“Papá, why don’t I have a sister or a brother like you did?”

Augusto tensed up and rolled his eyes. This was not the first time Henry had asked him this. He didn’t want to deal with his son’s incessant questioning of his parent’s relationship.

“Ask your mother.”

Henry hadn’t seen his father in the several years he’d been away studying in New York. Neither of them ever went to visit the other. Henry made it very clear to his father that he was leaving Puerto Rico to gain perspective on life and his own goals. He didn’t want to live the life his father had planned for him. His father, on the other side, was upset with Henry because he symbolized his failure as a father and revolutionary. What did it look like to his comrades that he wasn’t able to convince his own blood of staying in the movement? He would often struggle with this question.

They were finally going to see each other.

Henry was unsure of what to expect once he arrived at the airport. After all, his father didn’t tell him much over the phone. When he walked outside, he saw his mother waiting for him in her Jeep.

“¡Ay Dios santo, mi nene a vuelto!” She jumped out of the car and ran toward him to hug him and kiss him. Henry pushed her back a little.

“Mom, I’m happy to see you too. Please, let’s go to the car, I’ve had a long trip.”

They drove off and headed to Henry’s father’s place in Aibonito, where the funeral procession was going to happen the next day.