The Constant Companion
We had begun what would be one of our longer trips during our new "regime" and we were hosting a group of volunteers, several of which were friends. Jim and Tobie had heard us talk of Costa Rica and they had finally joined us along with a handful of other volunteers, including a couple named Rick and Christy from another parish in Chattanooga. Tobie, Christy and I were the female contingent, and it felt strange but nice to have feminine company in the peculiar world that was made so much more surreal given the ease of life and technology to which we'd grown accustomed in our homes in the U.S. While the men worked on the jobsite the first day, Tobie, Christy and I went to the supermercado so we could cook an elaborate meal that night. After finding most of the ingredients, we returned to the center and padded gingerly into the hulking dining room on our way to the industrial-strength kitchen. Groceries deposited on the large, dented stainless steel island, we began opening cabinets and peeking into crevices.
Tobie was the first to scream. I turned to see her frozen, a large lizard staring back at her from inside the dark refrigerator, its tongue flickering like there was no tomorrow. She quietly and ever so slowly closed the door, turned and leaned against it, her face as white as her tee shirt. Just as the refrigerator door closed, Christy let out a yelp. When she'd removed the lid from the coffee pot on the stove, a swarm of roach bugs had streamed out and scurried beneath the stovetop. (So much for the Kahlúa and coffee we'd planed to have for nightcaps!) I raised a dirty rag that had formed a large dollop of dry cloth in the sink after being left there wet, tossing it across the room in a knee-jerk reaction when a centipede crawled onto my hand. The three of us stood in the center of that gigantic kitchen and gave in to our collective overwhelm, breaking into fits of laughter so long and raucous we were bent of the island hoping to give our sore stomachs some relief. There was no way the place would ever come clean enough for us to eat anything we'd prepare there. It was just as well because what we couldn't have guessed that day was that we'd come in from the jobsite so exhausted each night we wouldn't have had the energy to cook a meal from that point on anyway.
Our work began the next day when we were ordered to Zent to tie rebar for the project. When Jim jokingly promised us a makeshift shelter to shield us from the sun, we said it would be a must or the rod buster's union would shut the project down! Having friends along gave everything a new perspective for me. The jobsite seemed even more primitive as I saw things through their eyes—the uneven piles of ballast littering the muddy lot and fingers of rebar sprouting from rough grey cement columns that reached toward the sky as if trying to escape the crushing grip of the earthbound blocks. Looking almost glamorous and out of place, snap-ties, which we shuttled from the U.S. in our LL Bean duffle bags, ornamented the columns with their colorful flat heads. Rebar tied in windowpane patterns sagged between the columns over the dirty cement footings. Rocks of every color, shape and size composed the ballast that filled the insides of the spindly, weight-bearing appendages. This cacophony of gray and brown was surrounded by a riotous bounty of lush green: the contrast striking but somehow in sync.
As the guys drove cut and cleaned saplings into the ground to serve as the posts for our leaf-covered tent, I remembered how I'd heard that these stripped trunks would sprout green in no time because the soil was so fertile in Costa Rica. Evidence of this was everywhere, as the country's lines of fencerows that began as bare saplings now consisted of orderly rows of bushy trees. We felt lucky to have the covering above us as a gray sky deepened all afternoon, building layers of clouds that piled one upon the other while we twisted wire under our tent. The men worked on a concrete form, improvising their tools and materials as they went, and it was just as they finished when the moisture that refused to hold sent them skittering from their makeshift wooden scaffolding and the tops of rusty metal barrels on which they'd been teetering. As the rain intensified, I caught a whiff of smoke and a sensory memory floated across my mind. I lowered myself onto a piece of plywood near a palm tree and pulled my slicker over my head, remembering the feel of autumn in Tennessee. That scent reminded me of a day Jim and I had driven to a football game in Knoxville when a similar smoky smell filled the crisp air. We hadn't been dating long, and life seemed so grand and full of promise at the time. I let the memory hold for a moment, soothing ever so slightly the ache that had been my constant companion of late.
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