Into Thick Air by Jim Malusa

Author:Jim Malusa
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Perseus
Published: 2010-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

SOUTH AMERICA

Light your pipe and be silent.

There’s only wind and smoke

in the world.

—Irish proverb

CHAPTER 7

Tucson to Puerto Montt

It All Comes on Ships

SHUT YOUR WINDOW SHADE, the passengers grumbled on the flight home from Russia. They were glued to the video; I was frozen to Greenland and a flotilla of icebergs sailing off its shattered coast. Trying for a compromise, I covered my head and window with a blanket. Like a child, my wife would say when she was wishing I wasn’t.

Then I was home, relishing the glow of reentry into the familiar. On the first Monday morning after my return, I trotted outside to the curb with my toddler in my arms, taking care not to catch my bathrobe on the prickly pear cactus. Rudy had wakened only moments before to his favorite alarm, the diesel growl of the garbage truck. Now he stared in astonishment as the hydraulic claw snatched our trash can. He gave the driver an apple, and we scurried back inside for the thrilling ritual of the hissing espresso machine. Then I set him free to wobble and drool where he pleased while I sat on the couch, the late October sun warming my shoulders, and fished for compliments in my e-mails from the Caspian ride.

Some were sweet.

Dear Jim, Thanks for the ride from a Grandmother in southeastern Ohio. Come and sit a spell. Sincerely, Wanda

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