Free Mile Zero by Thomas Sanchez Page B

stuff. He should have tried another tack. What happened on Voltaire’s boat? St. Cloud was too far into the story to stop and ask. He was drunk and his words slurred. What the hell was he doing here anyway? How did Justo get him into this? He could make all the money he wanted just interpreting for the legions of Latin American drug smugglers and TV-watching, lite beer-drinking wife beaters. He didn’t need this, but he had it. The one thing consoling him was the thought that whenever he was all the way up shit creek without a paddle he could always get out and walk to shore. He walked to shore.
    St. Cloud continued the story. Their story. The history of the world in a simple children’s book. As he read he sensed he was growing dumber by the moment. His clumsy syllables tumbled over each other into the room:
    Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life
.
     
    With belabored breath fueled by fumes of rum St. Cloud staggered on into chapter six. It was now or never. Just a half page to go. If the magic didn’t work it was a trip up the Everglades, where the alligators would be the least of Voltaire’s problems:
    “I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at sunsets now.” “But we must wait,” I said. “Wait? For what?” “For the sunset. We must wait until it is time.” “I am always thinking that I am at home!”
     
    There it was, a gasp. St. Cloud looked up from the battered book into Voltaire’s brown eyes filled with longing and pain, quick breathsheaving his thin shoulders back. Yes, my friend, St. Cloud wanted to say, you may feel for our little Prince here in the book, for he is you, and you are him. So far from home, so far from sunsets, always thinking the nightmare will end and you will awake at home. But your home
is
the nightmare, a planet split by baobab Presidents for Life, or worse:
    Just so. Everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States the sun is setting over France. If you could fly to France in one minute, you could go straight into the sunset, right from noon. Unfortunately, France is too far away for that. But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like …
     
    Tears flowed in a silent stream from Voltaire. His lips, scabbed from his ordeal on the boat, quivered. He blinked, trying to dam the tears. He looked at St. Cloud for the answer to stop his quiet sobbing. St, Cloud continued reading, rum ringing in his head, forcing croaking words through a knot in his throat:
    “One day,” you said to me, “I saw the sunset forty-four times!” And a little later you added: “You know—one loves the sunset, when one is so sad …”
“Were you so sad, then?” I asked, “on the day of the forty-four sunsets?” But the little prince made no reply
.
     
    It is all magic in the jungle. St. Cloud pulled a kerchief from his seersucker coat and passed it across to Voltaire.
    “Merci.”
The boy wiped roughly at his face, irritating the crisscross of sun-blistered scabs.
“Merci beaucoup.”
    St. Cloud wanted to trade places with Voltaire. He clenched his teeth to suppress the emotion welling up through the rum-slowed throbbing in his veins. How much he desired to get this boy off the shark hook. He pushed the egg carton across the table and smiled, continuing to use his college-learned Creole. “Open it.”
    Voltaire fingered the carton with trembling hands. He pulled at the twine and stopped, looking to St. Cloud for encouragement. St. Cloud smiled. “Go on, don’t fear.” Voltaire broke the twine bindings, slowly raised the carton lid, tilting his head cautiously to one side togain an advance glance at unknown contents, which could spring out with the force of a lion onto a lamb’s back. He bent the lid all the way over. Eleven of the twelve hollowed indentations intended for eggs were empty. Nestled in one hollow