Chapter-6: Midnight Rum
Luz continued to caress Nanda’s lower back with light fingertips. His touch sent more goose bumps up her spine. She tried not to respond; but she giggled and crunched uncontrollably and struggled to serve herself a hot bowl of steaming beans.
Nanda placed the skillet of boiling beans off to the side of the fire and turned to face Luz. She moved in closer to his waist, balancing her hot dinner, and making herself more comfortable. She gazed at Luz as he stared up into the night.
Caught up in the moment, she drifted into a sweet daydream, moving her hands without much thought. She lifted a spoon full of beans and closed her mouth around it. Reality shoved her daydream away, burning her tongue and hard palate and inner lips. In painful reflex, she spat the beans out toward the fire.
Nanda blushed and coughed and tried to cover up her carelessness. She side glanced at Luz as she stirred her bowl of beans. Maybe he didn’t see, she thought, lifting and dropping hot spoons of steaming beans, cooling them in her bowl. Another side glance and she tongued over her burnt inner mouth and winced at each tender spot.
Luz’s hand startled her. This time he rubbed her knee and meaty thigh.
“When you finish,” he said, “I’ll heal that burn for you.”
Nanda blushed bright red, feeling silly like a little schoolgirl on the first day of primary school. She cleared her throat, and thought, he noticed my childish mistake … how embarrassing.
“Th-thank you, señor,” said Nanda with an awkward gaze. “Ahem, entonces … where does your meeting of Cana begin?”
Luz yawned and stretched his right leg out and smiled.
“It starts on a night filled with much tension. I was walking from the north, through Boston, Massachusetts. I was….” Luz stopped mid-thought and peered back into the fire. He listened to his memories play out several times. Nanda continued cooling her dinner, waiting patiently for Luz to tell his story of Cana.
“That year …,” said Luz as he searched the details of his memories some more, “it was the first year that, the man … he said I needed to walk through Boston as part of my requirements to fight him that year. What a tricky son of …. He must have known. Still, why did he ask that of me?”
Nanda lifted another spoonful of sweet beans. She blew on them a few times and managed to eat without burning her mouth any further. “Did he force you to do it? Walk or stop by any place in particular?”
Luz sat up next to Nanda and stared up at another group of fluttering butterflies: “No. He’s not that type of man. It’s always up to me, he says—it’s my choice to accept or reject his offer. That man … I can’t figure out his game.”
“Maybe it’s not a game,” said Nanda. She fed Luz a spoonful of warm beans.
“Yeah, maybe.” Luz chewed on his sweet smoked beans and nodded with approval at Nanda. He looked up into the night sky again. The twinkling stars loosened his past some more, and he flashed back in his memories and continued, saying, “Whatever his plan may be … it happened in a flash, back in April of 1775….”
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I appreciate your time in reading this blog post. Next Saturday I will upload the next part of Chapter Six: Midnight Rum, from my novel, Luz Upon The World.
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