The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,76
of modern America by AM radio and VHF television signals broadcast from zinc towers, back into history, to a rural age, a time of angels and miracles.
“Buenas tardes,” a woman’s voice called, startling him. “¿Le puedo ayudar en algo?”
Scott looked to his right and saw a woman of about fifty in sweatpants: she held a broom, and judging from her otherworldly smile she believed he was in need of spiritual direction.
“No, nothing, nada,” he sputtered. “I used to live in the house next door. I came to see, sorry …”
“Isn’t she beautiful?” the woman said in accented English, and Scott sensed a religious speech about to begin and backed away. “No tengas miedo,” the woman said, trancelike, as Scott scurried away. He was afraid: of her statue, her Spanish, her weird religiosity, and the power of all those things to chase away his old neighbors. What had they done to the Newberrys? The Newberrys weren’t rich. They were from Little Rock. “She wants to help you,” the woman continued in English, and Scott wondered how many years ago the Newberrys had left and if they knew there was a Mexican lady praying to a statue in their old backyard.
The Laguna Niguel train station was a typical example of the soulless functionality of late twentieth century American public architecture, and as such it deeply disappointed Brandon, who expected the “station” to be an actual building, with schedules posted on the wall and long wooden benches inside a high-walled waiting room. When Araceli had told them they would take a train, it had conjured images in Brandon’s head of locomotives spitting steam, and passengers and baggage handlers scrambling on covered platforms underneath vaulted glass ceilings. Instead the station consisted of two bare concrete runways, a short metal awning where six or seven people might squeeze together to find shelter from the rain, and four refrigerator-sized ticket machines. Brandon thought of train stations as theatrical stages where people acted out momentous shifts in their lives, an idea shaped by a trilogy of novels he had read in the fifth grade, a series in which each book’s final scene unfolded inside the Gare du Nord in Paris. His only previous train ride had come some years back on the Travel Town kiddie train at Griffith Park, and there too the station consisted of a kid-sized replica of an actual building, complete with a ticket booth and a swinging Los ANGELES sign. The small steel rectangle that announced LAGUNA NIGUEL in the spare, sans-serif font of the Metrolink commuter rail network didn’t rise to the occasion, and Brandon frowned at the recognition that actual life did not always match the drama and sweep of literature or film. Nor were there the large crowds of people one associated with trains in the movies. In fact, Brandon, his brother, and Araceli were the only people on either side of the platform.
As the boys projected hopeful eyes at the rusty sinews of the tracks that stretched away from the station, Araceli scanned the space that immediately surrounded them. Until she got them to their grandfather, these were her boys. It was one thing to be in charge of children inside the shelter of a home, protected by locked doors, or in the fenced boundaries of a park—it was quite another to be herding them about a city. She wanted to cover them with sheets of protective steel. The thought that an accident of man or machine might hurt them filtered into her consciousness and caused brief and irrational pangs of loss, followed by the manic darting of her eyes at each of their stops on the journey from the gate of the Laguna Rancho Estates to the empty platform and the stairways leading to the street and the bus stop and parking structures beyond.
“Hey, here it comes.”
A double-decked white commuter train with periwinkle stripes moved toward them as a snake would, the locomotive yawing back and forth on uneven tracks.
“Atrás,” Araceli commanded. “Back until the train stops.”
The boys opened their mouths as the cars rolled slowly before them, their massive weight causing the ground beneath them to shift and rise. “Tight!”
“Awesome!”
“¡Cuidado!”
The train stopped and two sliding doors opened before them, the boys entering ahead of Araceli, rolling their suitcases straight into the car, whose floor was conveniently level with the platform. With a quick turn of their heads the boys found the stairway leading to the upper deck and began to climb, Araceli scrambling after them, muttering “¡Esperen!“