Beneath Wandering Stars (27 page)

The stranger shrugs. “Not really.
Santiago Matamoros
does not offend me, for he tells a story we would do well to remember. Besides, many of the people I've met along the Way practice what Muslims must also accomplish: welcoming the stranger, giving alms to the poor, and sharing with others everything one has.”

The man studies the busted hiking boots dangling from the cross. “Perhaps now is the time for me to lighten my own load.”

He doesn't even have a hiking pack, just his prayer mat and the clothes on his back. The man digs through his pockets until he finds a small item, holding it out for me to take. When I open my hand, another hand stares back at me. It's a red
hamsa
pendant with a turquoise stone in the center of the open palm—the same symbol worn by the Jewish woman in the family portrait I found inside that abandoned house.

The charm leaves me speechless. I'm probably overthinking it, but the tingling in my toes makes me wonder if this man and I were destined to meet from the moment I stepped on the road.

“This is my gift to you, fellow pilgrim,” the stranger announces, his face aglow. “May your brother be healed,
Insha'Allah
, and visited only by good, not evil.”

• • •

We reach Arca, the last overnight stop before Santiago. The weather is warm and the road is crowded. So are the pilgrim hostels, but there's an electricity of anticipation in the air that makes it impossible to be
too
cranky about the increased lack of personal space. We're almost there. We've almost made it.

Now I'm the one who waves the flashlight in Seth's face. “Rise and shine, gorgeous.”

Seth groans, rolling over to face the wall. “This little light of mine is busted.”

Most of the days in the wheelchair he's been fine, upbeat even, but this is our last morning on the
camino
and I can tell Seth is disappointed that he won't be able to walk it. Honestly, he isn't missing much. We pass through a forest of amazing eucalyptus trees, but it's hard to appreciate their gigantic, peeling trunks when you're crammed onto the footpath with a hundred other pilgrims who are all ready to be
done
.

The forest is the last scrap of nature before we reach the urban outskirts of Santiago de Compostela. The sound of traffic grates on my nerves after weeks of listening to grass grow, and nearly getting hit by a deranged scooter as I push Seth across the street isn't exactly the warm welcome I anticipated.

Seth is as underwhelmed by this pilgrimage finale as I am. I can literally see the tension traveling up the back of his neck. It doesn't help that one of his chair's wheels has gone berserk, like a sticky grocery cart wheel that makes you run into all the stacked cereal displays.

“Stop. I can't do it anymore,” Seth says when the wheel keeps squeaking. “I'm walking.”

“Do you really want to backtrack on all the progress you've made?” The swelling in Seth's ankle has gone down a lot, and the nurse who examined it last night said it should heal soon, as long as he stays off it. Which means he needs to
stay off
it
.

Seth hits the breaks by planting his good leg on the ground. “I tried, Gabi, I really did. I tried to think about Lucas lying in that bed so I'd be grateful for the mobility I do have. I tried to suck it up and deal with feeling weak and helpless. But this is the last day of the
camino
, and I want to walk it. I don't care how much it hurts.”

Before I can protest, Seth stands and starts pushing his chair towards a highway overpass, where a small crowd has gathered. Three nuns in full-on habits stand behind a picnic table, handing out cold drinks to the pilgrims arriving to Santiago. The small, smiley ladies wear white saris with blue trim, which means they're members of Mother Teresa's order.

Vulgar swear words decorate the concrete walls behind them and litter covers the ground, making this spot a shoo-in for Ugliest Place on the
camino
, but the simple beauty of kindness in action overshadows all of it. One of the pilgrims waiting for a drink is the Muslim man I met yesterday. He bows in gratitude as he accepts his lemonade.

“Would one of you sisters like to rest?” Seth asks, wheeling over the chair he no longer thinks he needs.

“Thank you, young man,” the most elderly of the nuns replies. She trades Seth's chair for a paper cup. He gulps down its contents in seconds. The sight of Seth's chugging skills reminds me that he hasn't been drinking much lately. Maybe he knows he shouldn't mix alcohol with pain medication, or maybe he's found other ways to deal with his inner ache.

“Have you been healed?” the Indian sister asks, lowering her old bones into the seat.

“Not quite. But I'm working on it,” Seth replies.

The sister smiles, her brown face wrinkling like a peach left out in the summer sun. “Be faithful in the small things first.”

Seth doesn't respond. Telling a competitive soldier to start small is like telling a bird not to fly. A quiet calm as light and fluffy as the clouds above us fills the Indian woman's eyes, but it's propped up by beams of steel. Just like my
abuela
, this is one little old lady I wouldn't mess with. It's like she's strong precisely because she knows where she is weak.

“Do you believe your friend will be healed? That all will be well?”

I turn to respond to this gentle inquiry and find myself facing the youngest sister in the group—a Filipino girl in her early twenties. At first I think she's talking about Lucas, but then I realize she's a nun, not a psychic, so that's impossible. She must be asking about Seth.

Or maybe, somehow, she's asking about both.

“I sure hope so.”

The sister smiles, like she knows a secret I don't. She nods in Seth's direction. “I can see the pain you feel for him. Mother Teresa spoke of this pain, the knife of compassion, as one of life's greatest paradoxes. After working with the poor her entire life, she learned that if you love until it really hurts, eventually there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

“Well, the hurt isn't going anywhere fast, so I hope she's right.”

“Me, too. In fact, I've bet my entire life on it.” The young woman's face radiates pure joy. “Life is a gift, but most of its pleasures are fleeting and grow stale as soon as the novelty wears off. Yet I've found that serving those in need never gets old. Only the deep well of love lasts forever, long after everything else goes cold.”

How can person so young already be so wise?

The sister's words feel like an invitation to a vow. The promise is one I automatically accept, even though the words never leave my mouth. If my brother wakes up, forget college. I will spend an entire year giving back. I'm not trying to strike a bargain with heaven or anything; I just want whatever it is that makes this young woman glow.

But what if Lucas
doesn't
wake up? Then there will be no light left in me to give.

“Here, have some wisdom for the road.” The sister hands me a little saint card with a charcoal sketch of Mother Teresa on one side, and a quotation on the other. “After all, this is only the beginning of your pilgrimage, not the end.”

Fight for it.
That's it. That's why I'm walking the
Camino de Santiago
. My pilgrimage is my own small protest against meaninglessness and annihilation and despair. It's my war on nothingness, my own small way of fighting for light and for love.

For Lucas's life. For Seth's life. For all our lives.

I thank the sister for her gift. On the other side of the underpass, Seth is having an intense conversation of his own.

With the Muslim man.

Panic shoots down my spine as the man shakes his fist, then grabs Seth's arm.

No, Seth. Please
.

We are steps away from being done with this pilgrimage. Please don't get into another ugly confrontation now.

As I get closer, I see the tears in the older man's eyes. He's clutching Seth's shoulder, but his face twists in pain, not anger. I can't see Seth's reaction because his back is to me, but as I approach, the weeping man turns and walks away.

“What was that about?”

Seth swallows hard. “He was telling me to call my father. He said not all children, his own son being one of them, make it home from war.”

Seth has mentioned that he and his dad aren't as close as they used to be, especially after he snubbed the colonel's offer to get him into West Point. That's the main reason Seth isn't in a hurry to return to the States, though he of all people should know that holding grudges is a luxury soldiers can't afford.

“He's right, Seth. Call your dad. Tell him you're on your way home.”

Santiago. We're here. The cathedral's baroque bell towers beckon us closer, standing tall and proud like a pair of watchmen guarding their post. Seth hones in on them like they're brothers in arms. With every step, the thin red line of his grimaced mouth tightens.

“Do you know how the
Iliad
ends?” Seth asks out of the blue.

He must be striking up a conversation to distract himself from the pain. “Tragically, if I remember right. The most honorable warrior in the entire poem gets cut down.”

“And the only way his father, the king of Troy, can get his son's body back is by paying a visit to his mortal enemy, Achilles, and groveling at his feet.”

“Does he do it?” I ask, wondering if my dad would ever swallow his massive ego for Lucas. For Matteo. For me.

“He does,” Seth says.

Yeah, my dad would, too.

“It wasn't the way I expected the war epic to end,” he adds.

I look around and realize this isn't how I expected my senior year to end either. We've fallen behind the rest of the group that departed our hostel early this morning. Seth leans on a wooden Gandalf staff, while I push his backpack in the wheelchair. Our pace is super slow, but step by painful step, he'll reach the cathedral on foot.

I offer my shoulder as additional support. “You gonna make it?”

Grimacing, Seth nods.

His visible pain makes my stomach ache. I don't know what I expected our arrival in Santiago to be like, but so far I don't feel any sense of accomplishment. We fulfilled Lucas's wish, but so what? Was it even worth the time it cost me by his bedside?

I press my phone to my ear and replay the voicemail Mom left earlier today when we passed through a dead zone with no coverage. Her voice is dead, too.

Crazy?
What does that even mean? Why is it so hard to answer the stupid phone?

“Stop obsessing, Gabi,” Seth says as I put the useless device away. “They're there and we're here. There's nothing we can do.”

“Since when are you one to give in to Fate?” I snap back.

Seth's grip on his staff tightens as he studies his ankle. “Since I got a taste of what it's like to not be in control of it.”

Checkmate.

We fall silent as we follow a trail of pilgrims in brightly colored windbreakers through the winding streets of Santiago's old town. The buildings are the color of old coffee stains and the wet cobblestones gleam beneath our feet. After a lot of twists and turns, we reach a staircase that leads us to the Praza do Obradoiro
,
the main cathedral square. As we pass through the arched doorway, we're greeted by two bearded musicians wailing on a ukulele and a bongo. Inside the plaza, statues of St. James and his cockleshell stare down on us from every building.

Holy humanity—there are people everywhere. Some are tourists, but most are pilgrims, and highly emotional pilgrims at that. A few race towards each other, embracing like long-separated lovers, while others sit on the ground weeping tears of elation mixed with tears of exhaustion.

What's wrong with me? I should be overcome by
something
, but I'm not. After dozens of days and hundreds of miles, the pain has faded and I finally feel numb. And I don't like it.

A man with two blue icepacks taped to his knees limps in our direction. He's a living reminder that the strain of this journey can break a person down in more than one way. Our bodies seemed invincible on Day One, but none of us were built to last forever.

Walking, like life, takes its toll. And the fare is usually steep.

Seth's eyes flit from the people standing in clusters, to the garbage cans on the perimeter of the square. He hasn't been in a public space this crowded since he got back from Afghanistan, and I can tell it's making him a little anxious.

“Relax. I doubt anyone here is an enemy.” I could be wrong about that, but if the goal of terrorism is to cripple us with fear, the most defiant weapon we have is refusing to bow the knee. Seth's face softens when I grab his hand. A slow and steady warmth spreads through me. His touch makes me feel less anesthetized.

We stand in silence, staring at the detailed carvings of the cathedral façade, at the trail of white algae that twists and turns across stone faces that have endured centuries of harsh weather. Seth's hand is like a jumper cable to my battery. All of a sudden, so many emotions are racing through me that no single feeling stands out. The volume of the square is turned all the way up, like we're at a massive reunion of old friends, even though I haven't seen a single person I recognize yet.