Hoping for the best

The first thing I wonder, when I see his gangly, dark brown legs sticking out from under the car is that I killed him.

I’d rolled over him and dragged him and parked and didn’t know it.

I stand for a moment behind the gate, puzzled, not sure what to make of this 2:45 a.m. strangeness—a man under my rental car using a cell phone as a light.

“Wha he doin’?” I ask, my right hand clanking against the gate.

He takes off like a shot, his hands curled into little balls, a red bandana tied around his head. He glances back only to see if we’ve given chase; his face is a mystery.

I circle around the back of the car. The rear bumper hangs from either side, held to the frame by three screws in the middle. The rest he clutches tightly as he pumps his way through Diamond Vale.

“He was trying to steal your bumper,” my friend says.

Trying to steal my bumper. Trying to steal my bumper?

The guys ransack the house for makeshift screws and tack the bumper back onto the car. I see tomorrow’s plans for a final bake and shark and sun at Maracas disappear. I see my drive to the east subbed for a quick drive to my father’s in Cascade. I’ve already began composing my explanation to the man who rented me this unreliable foreign used car, this jinx.

“What are the chances?” my father asks later, “that you were here for seven days. And in that seven days you have experienced what we are all living and have come to fear in this country. What are the chances?”

One in seven? Yes, I say, invincibility gone. The What Ifs have already been considered.

By the time I pull into the driveway in St. Joseph the following afternoon, one screw has worked its way out. I twist garbage ties between the two holes and head to the airport.

It is exactly how I feel about Trinidad now: just hoping for the best.