Jacobo's Rainbow by David Hirshberg

Author:David Hirshberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Fig Tree Books LLC
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Quite a time you had

with your eesh

I must admit that in my walk down the basement, through the tunnel, and along the creek, notebook in hand, I had no guilt with regard to my infidelity to Myles. My admiration for his passion was unchanged, and my alignment with his goals was unshaken. But at the same time, I’d been warned by two people I greatly admired—Ben Veniste and Herzl—that Myles may not be the person he presented himself to be, and I’d seen an ugly side of him that gave credence to their concerns. Thinking back on it now, this might’ve been the first time I’d experienced a situation in which I had to evaluate someone’s motives as opposed to simply accepting their actions at face value. I was on that cusp between childhood and adulthood. I had to begin to think more deftly about people and events, otherwise I’d fall to the pediatric side of the ledge. Emotional maturity isn’t something that automatically accrues to each child as a matter of course as he or she ages.

I had a snack at the café, told Mir what the plan was, and waited for Herzl. As soon as he came through the back door he asked, “Did you bring the notebook?” I filched it out from its place hidden underneath my shirt secured by my belt, and held it up triumphantly. Mir and Ben Veniste applauded.

I didn’t ask Herzl if he’d had any trouble ape-swinging to his freedom from the window of Kettys-Burg.

“I thought I’d hide it here,” I said to Ben Veniste, “in the back of the kitchen, on a high shelf, behind some cans.”

“I have a better idea,” he responded. “Why don’t you take it to the man you call Navajo Joe? That way it’ll be out of Taos Heights and in safe hands.”

“How do I get it to him?” I couldn’t imagine how this could be done.

“The two of you have to leave now,” Ben Veniste said, nodding to Herzl and me, “and you have to take the notebook for safekeeping.”

He filled me in on his plan. The two of us would ride the café’s old bikes to a spot close to the boathouse, where they could be retrieved by his Mexican kitchen helpers in the morning, take a never-used old wooden two-seat shell that wouldn’t be missed, row down the river at night, portage the boat up on the bank during the day and wend our way downriver to the Navajo village where no one would ever suspect to find us or the notebook.

“Not in a million years,” was how he phrased it.

He reminded us to get rid of any clothing that had the UT name on it and suggested that I speak only in Spanish if approached by anyone, let alone the police. “Wait a minute, I’ll be right back.” We watched him place his cane on a nearby hook, navigate up the steps that led to his apartment above the café, right hand gripping

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