Popcorn

Popcorn  By Luis Escámez

At the beginnin’, I thought that the worst thing was that I had to leave the school and all my pals at Weston Academy. Actually, I don’t know how I didn’t see it comin’, because half of my class was already missin’. I thought that dryin’ my tears in the top of that train looking how my mother dryed her’s was even hard to go through. I mean, I know that West Virginia is not the richest state but, what was in those streets... was just too much for me. People was sellin’ their cars for $100 and yesterday a man offered me fifty eggs for $2. Even my father, who had an important job in Chrysler, had to join those people. I thought that all those things were hard, but later I prayed for the day when another train passed and brought me back to my city. I begged that I could close my eyes and appear in a different place. I mean, that town was killin’ me. It was called Groton. I went there because my friend Chris, who I met on one of the trains, told me that they were lookin’ for ‘bout ten persons to work at Lowell. There was a new textile factory in there or somethin’ like that, it didn’t mater to me job it was as long as if I was makin’ money. I remember one night, oh my God, it was cold. It was freezin’! I mean, I couldn’t breathe because it burned my nose. It was unbelievable, the coldest night since I got there. But that one night was different, I didn’t have my shack anymore because of the ice storm. I was lookin’ for any place were I could get some heat. I spent one or two hours tramping through the little town. My eyes were cryin’, but the tears couldn’t reach the floor because they froze in my cut lips. Finally, I saw a light inside a house and I ran towards it. My socks were wet and my toes...well, I wasn’t sure if I had toes anymore. I knocked on the front door just twice, but my knuckles started bleedin’ like crazy. An old man opened the door. He looked at me but didn't say anything. I went in and he stared at me from my behind. I kept walkin’ and went straight to the room where the only light was. While I was walking, I noticed that the rest of the house didn’t have any furniture. There were no lights, the walls were all stained and covered with holes. I mean, I was expecting to feel warmer inside there, but somehow the temperature didn’t change. The cold tickled my eyes and tweaked my face. From the ceilin’, a spurt of water was fallin’ into a metal tub that someone put under it, and the water dipping froze right away. The man that opened the door poked me and showed me the way to the fireplace. I don’t know why,but I thought that house was weird. It wasn’t like my house, I miss it. Finally we arrived to the room were the fireplace was supposed to be. I stayed behind the door for a few minutes. That room was so tiny! I mean, it was ‘bout the size of a car. I smelled an estrange odor. It was like, popcorn. I saw a big lump in one corner covered with a dirty blanket. The man, who didn’t say a word yet, walked towards it and lifted the blanket above his head and covered his body. While he was lifting that blanket, I could distinguish nine or maybe ten pair of feet. I never imagined that that little piece of blanket could cover nine human bodies. No one talked. Then I saw a little fire in the middle of the room, and I almost dived into it. I got so close to the fire that I almost burned my scarf. I took my wet shoes of and lied down and I stared at the fire while I listened to the beat of the nine jaws shaking underneath the blanket. The smell of popcorn made me hungry and brought lots of memories into my mind. I slept ‘bout twenty or thirty minutes, but the fire went out and the cold woke me up. A woman appeared from underneath the blanket and grabbed a pack from the corner, which I thought contained coal or something. She opened it and poured it’s content where the fire was to make a new one. While she was doing it, I saw that the coal she was pourin’ was really estrange. It was like little brown and yellowish grains. I took one and looked at it with more detail. “Yes, it’s corn. What did you expect? Gold?”, she said while she lighted up again. I didn’t know what to answer. I mean, I was tired, hungry, freezing and wet. My sight became kind of cloudy, and a few seconds before going to sleep again, I saw her going underneath the blanket whispering “At least is cheaper than coal”. That night, I dreamt of a huge boll of popcorn.