Chirashanthi. So what’s the plan for today?
Giunior. We’re going to the beach.
Chirashanthi. Crabbing?
Giunior. The chicken legs are packed in ice and the string is in my bag.
Chirashanthi. Not going to do the crab traps this time?
Giunior. Never again.
Chirashanthi. It’s a good idea if you do it right. I mean, all the crabs do is walk into the trap to get the bait and we pull them up. We just didn’t know about the rocks last time.
Giunior. Yeah, the last time we lost both traps in the rock. We came home with just the rope.
Chirashanthi. What happened to that rope?
Giunior. I brought it with me when I went to Nepal.
Chirashanthi. Not for climbing, I hope.
Giunior. No, not for climbing, but I did actually use it.
Chirashanthi. When?
Giunior. We used it to pull out a boy’s body that was caught deep in the rocks of a river.
Chirashanthi. Was the boy okay?
Giunior. He fell off a cliff into the water. We finally found his body after three days.
Chirashanthi. Did you know him?
Giunior. No, I was around when they found the body, and I offered the rope to get him out of the rocks. A couple days later, the family found the room I was staying to thank me. They also returned the rope to me, but I didn’t want it, and the family didn’t want it, so I gave it away.
Chirashanthi. To who?
Giunior. Some trekker in a café. I overheard a conversation between him and his friend about getting some rope but not wanting to pay foreigner prices for it.
Chirashanthi. I’m surprised that you gave the rope away.
Giunior. I’m surprised too. That was a memento from our trip to the shore, but that rope also became the rope that pulled that boy’s body out of the water. It changed. I couldn’t keep it, but I did tell the trekkers the history behind the rope so they didn’t simply consider it a length of ordinary rope.
Chirashanthi. Remember how hard you pulled trying to get those cages out of the rocks?
Giunior. People around us thought we caught something enormous. I was embarrassed and proud at the same time. I really let the fact that the rope was used to pull out a dead body affect me. Because of the rope, I had some sort of far connection to his death.
Chirashanthi. I had a far connection to death once.
Giunior. Really? What was it?
Chirashanthi. I was on a train that hit a car at a crossing. Both the driver and passenger died. When it happened, I remember being half asleep since it was so late, but I barely realized that the train felt as if it was sliding across the tracks rather than rolling along them. Two hours later did the engineer announce why we stopped. After a couple more hours, we continued to the next station. I looked in newspapers at the library to see if there was an article written about it, but there was nothing. Two people died, and I was in the train that killed them. That’s my far connection to death.
Giunior. I sometimes imagine our crab traps still out there in the water with crabs living out the rest of their lives in them with the occasional attempt of cutting through the cage with their claws.
Chirashanthi. Do you sometimes think of the boy in the river?
Giunior. Sometimes. Do you think of those two people who died in the car?
Chirashanthi. Sometimes.
End. Far Connections