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Rafe. His name became everything—my religion, my mantra, my destination.
I walked down to First Avenue and stuck out my thumb. When a VW bus covered in flower decals pulled over, the driver asked me where I was going.
Salinas, I said. It was all I could think of. The last place I’d seen him.
Get in.
I did. I climbed aboard and stared out the window and listened to the music coming from his scratchy radio: “Blowin’ in the Wind. ”
You get high? he asked me, and I thought: Why not?
* * *
They say pot isn’t addictive. It was for me. Once I smoked my first joint, I couldn’t stop. I needed the calm it gave me. That was when I started to live like a vampire, up all night, high all the time. I slept with men I can’t remember on dirty mattresses. But everywhere I went, I asked about Rafe. In every town in California, I hitchhiked out to the local farms and asked for him in my broken Spanish, showing the only photograph I had to workers who eyed me warily.
I drifted that way for months, until I made it to Los Angeles. Alone, I hitchhiked out to Rancho Flamingo and saw the house I’d grown up in. Then I made my way to Rafe’s old house. I’d never been there before, so it took me a long time to find it. I didn’t expect to find him there, and I wasn’t wrong. Still, someone answered the door.
His uncle. I knew the moment I saw him. He had Rafe’s dark eyes—your eyes, Tully—and the same wavy hair. He looked incredibly old to me, lined and wrinkled and faded by a lifetime of hard work under a hot sun.
I’m Dorothy Hart, I said, wiping my sweaty brow.
He pushed the battered straw cowboy hat back on his head. I know who you are. You got him put in jail. He said it like: Ju got heem.
What could I say to that? Would you tell me where he is?
He looked at me for so long I started to feel sick. Then he made a little follow-me motion with his gnarled hand.
I let hope bloom just a little and lurched forward, up the uneven porch steps. I followed him into the clean, shadow-filled house, which smelled of lemons and something else, cigars, maybe, and roasting meat.
At a small, soot-stained fireplace, the old man stopped. His shoulders sagged and he turned to me. He loved you.
I saw Rafe in that man’s black, sad eyes, and love tightened like a clamp around my heart. How could I tell this man my shame—that I’d been chained like an animal for years? That I would have cut off my arm to get free? I love him, too. I do. I know he thinks I ran away, but—
Then it sank in.
Loved you. Loved.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear what he would say next.
He looked for you. Very long.
I blinked back tears.
Vietnam, he said at last.
That’s when I noticed the flag folded into a small triangle and framed in wood sitting on the mantel.
We couldn’t even bury him in land that he loved. There wasn’t enough of him left.
Vietnam. I couldn’t imagine him going there, my Rafe, with his long hair and flashing smile and tender hands.
He knew you would come looking for him, he tell me give you this.
The old man reached behind the flag and pulled out a piece of ordinary notebook paper—the kind you use in high school. It had been folded into a small square. Time and dust had turned it the color of tobacco.
My hands were shaking as I opened it.
Querida, he’d written, and my heart stopped at that. I swore I heard his voice and smelled the scent of oranges. I love you and will always love you. When I come back, I will find you and Tallulah and we will begin again. Wait for me, querida, as I wait for you.
