Smelled

Not older than seven and accompanied by her two sisters a little girl knelt down in the sidewalk to be smelled by my dog. He is so big that her, kneeling on the ground, would not be taller than his head when he is sitting.

I was talking to Ed about winters in the southern hemisphere as I borrowed his battery charger and there they came. Three girls in blue uniforms coming from school had stopped in front of us scared of the big dog, afraid to pass by. I announced his good nature and they approached. Then they wanted to pet him as he smelled the mosquito bites on their legs. The older sister went past us annoyed at the delay and the younger one just stood there mesmerized by the dog. But her, she liked how it felt to have your bare legs smelled by a dog. A dog's nose is cold and Ike, my dog, also likes to lick a little bit some of the things he smells. So she knelt down on the sidewalk and got her face close to my dog's to let him smell behind her ears where it tickles. It must have been pleasurable. For a while she was away on the tickles and chills, eyes closed, enjoying the deep sensations: a cold wet nose that pries and pushes, that that inspects the neck with such unpredictable moves. A delight. Then, she got up, smiled good by, took her sister and left.

Frozen Flies

Father Antonio Segura on his pious wisdom froze twenty flies. On his youth he had been a magician's apprentice for a couple of years. Seeing his inability to instill the power of prayer on his pupils he had decided to use an old trick he learned back then. The next day after the morning snack twenty children who would soon make their first communion sat on their desks each looking at a dead fly. Father Antonio instructed them to pray; to ask god to restore life to the fly in front of them; but to pray hard as it would be the only way God would grant their desires.

One by one the flies started waking up as they thawed, the ones closed to the window first. Children whose flies were still dead prayed harder. Soon the room was embellished with the buzz and pirouettes of nineteen flying flies. Only one lied dead. Father Antonio had inadvertently broken some tiny vital part on the freezing process. Alicia was praying hard but was starting to falter. That God had not yet listened to her prayers despite her fervent attempts made her nervous and her nervousness was starting to distract her away from praying. Father Antonio stood there not knowing what to do.

On the fast lane with Mrs. Roe

Mrs Roe leaves every morning at 7:20 to get to her job at the greenhouse. She always looks a bit rushed, almost late. With her goes a black and silver coffee mug and a black lunch box whose carefully packed contents are unknown to me except for a banana strapped on the top. She gets into her white never washed rusty 1984 Ford pick up truck, backs out into the alley, waves goodby and darts away.

I rode with her today.

I was amazed at the amount of preparation that have gone into the trip. She had taken cigarrettes with her, and a lighter; a newspaper to read at work, a change purse to buy a soda can. She had her sunglasses on. Everything went acording to plan. She knew when to switch lanes, knew which streetlights were slow, what were the turns and where to speed.

The rest was concentration and zeal. We left 10 minutes late which ment, as she anounced, that we had to run. "It is green folks!" to the lane of morning commutters packed in front of her. Tension in the air and her, ready to swerve around, to go, to make the engine reve and the back wheels of the pick up skid on desperation to grab onto the ground. But it didn't happen, there was just the tension, the readines and the zeal.

Half an hour on the highway with this lady at seventy miles an hour with the tension and the zeal of her morning commute as she drinks her coffee smokes her cigarrettes and listens to scratchy blues on the makeshift speakers I put in for her is like a dream. The sun marks her face with shadows under her shades, the windows are open and the smoke desapears into the slower lanes. All that and the enjoyment of everything going so perfectly, of knowing that the old tires on the old rusty truck will not blow up at seventy miles an hour today in the middle of a sticky Missouri summer and that soon she will be sitting on a step ladder flipping through the paper and eating her banana.

She will be done at 4 pm sharp. In the meanwhile she'll be sweating, laughing laudly, cursing and getting bored surrounded by geraniums, bags of fertilizer, bottles of sodium sulfide, windvanes and a dog. I go back to St. Louis making 55 on the highway and thinking of writing this impression of when I drove Mrs Roe into her job and peeked into her queerky dangerous ways.