Tessellate

We hauled adobe bricks in the hot morning sun. I drifted into far away places and childhood memories as I picked each brick off the damp green grass. I thought of the time I stood on an old weathered wooden dock fishing for sunfish and bass with my friend Justin. We were about ten years old. I was tying a knot on the end of my fishing line, and took out my friend Glen’s knife to cut the excess line. The knife had a smooth handle that looked and felt like bone. The blade was sharp. I cut the end of the line and held the knife in my hand, the blade glistening in the afternoon sun. The lake water rippled in a calm summer breeze, and the leaves of the oaks twisted in apprehension of the rise of an afternoon storm. “Throw it in the water”. The words cut the silence and peace of an afternoon intended to be about fishing.

I stood there holding the knife, pondering Justin’s request. He giggled in delight at the thought of the knife drifting through the cool black waters and resting on the bottom in a shallow muddy grave. My head was steady and the knife lay gently in my palm. I asked him if he thought I should really do it. His response was wild and inviting, invoked by thoughts of the laughter we would achieve by hurling the knife into the watery abyss. I stood there stoically, a statue of stone, resilient in his long years of staring into the eternal space of time. I could feel the sun pressed against my darkened skin, the wind blowing my hair across the sweat of my brow.

My fist clenched the knife, the grit of my palm pressed into the bone white handle. In one swift motion my hand dropped back, my body turned and hurled forward, the point of the knife whistling through the air, a warrior with no cause. My hand released. The knife twisted into outer space and an irreconcilable moment of youth. The point pierced the black surface and in an instant began its descent into the shadowy depths. An echo of thunder pierced the air, and rain clouds were fast approaching. I stared into the depths contemplating my illicit deed of deceit. Justin’s laughter filled the air with a hollow dissatisfaction. There was no laughter that echoed from my belly, just an empty box, once filled with the trust of childhood friends.

I turned around and took a step toward the lakeshore. The clap of thunder reverberated in the distance, and the smile of the afternoon sun melted in the rain and the rise of the wind. The pedals on my bike were covered with a thin layer of rust. I held my fishing pole in my right hand and began to the journey home. We took the short cut through the tunnel, the mellow yellow lights casting shadows on the silver metal tube. The rain dripped from the leaves and bright white bolts of lightning illuminated the dark sky. I rounded the last curve in the road and rolled down the last steep hill where my house sat at the bottom.

The smell of fresh cut grass filled the air. I leaned my blue bike against the red garage door. I pulled open the screen door and walked inside. I looked at my mother, her bright smile stretched across her face, and my lip began to quiver. The tears rolled down my face, and I paid the price of my actions with biting guilt.

I woke up this morning thinking about my life back home, friends, and family. As far as childhood friends go, we made up through a short game of basketball, and remain good friends today. Still, the memory sticks with me, and every so often I think back to that afternoon on the lake, the colors and smells still as strong as they were when I was ten.

Every brick cut a little deeper and wore into my forearms leaving the imprint of a new memory. Three of us stood atop the walls of the structure, filling buckets of mud, and spackling the cracks between layers. The rest of us passed the large mud bricks in a line, slowly building a stockpile of bricks that will eventually be used to begin the cafeteria.

That afternoon I took a walk with Connor. We hiked about a thousand vertical feet and a mile or two into a valley previously unseen from our vantage point of the school. We talked about our families, life back home, and where we thought our lives might be heading. We wandered into the unknown valley and stopped short, knowing this time, we eventually had to return back to meet the group. All of us are looking for something. All of us came to Peru for different reasons. I believe all people ultimately spend most of their lives looking for some sense of home, a sense of place, and of purpose. Perhaps our time here may shed some light on what haunts us most.

All of us are faced with choices in life, and our actions at many times have unforeseen consequences, perhaps some that we may not see or understand until many years later. As we stand together and lift mud bricks from fields of grass, beneath mountain gods and the hot Andean sun, I can only hope that whatever these eleven individuals think of this experience now, it will impact them in invaluable ways in years to come.