The morning was mildly windy yet very sunny and bright. A young man in his late teens had just rode up quite a steep incline to the park. His face was tensed as he finished those last rotations of the pedals. He didn't bother stopping at the intersection and continued to ride directly across the road to the park. To his delight the twelve foot high loquat tree had ripe fruit(nespera in Brazil). His face went from a burdened tenseness to beaming with hope, he leaned his bike on one side of the tree, and walked around to the other.
He reached up and grabbed the branch with bracts of yellow fat loquat plums. He had to stretch his whole body upward as far as it would go from tip toes to extended shoulder joints. Now he would get his reward. He had made the timely and lucky discovery of the tree before anyone else.
Something stung the ball of his foot. The open flip flop sandle was of course exposed. Perhaps an ant, not the small harmless ones, no, the tropical ones closer to the size of a spider with jaws the size of their own body. Maybe it was a scorpion!
The branch he was holding down with his left hand shot out, flicking upward at an accelerating speed.
The side of the branch was moving faster than his instinct to avoid it.
It came up hitting him with an abrupt yet subtle bash, then badly scratched the side of his face as it slid back to it's original upward position.
He momentarily held his stinging face. He cursed out loud, then stopped suddenly putting his hand down from his cheek. Then as if a wasp had stung him on his behind, rose stiftly and turned in panic, surveying the park around him, checking to see if there were any witnesses to what he possibly deemed a rather shameful little attempt to get fruit that turned into a spectacled faux pas.
There was an older man and his daughter walking their dog, infact too close to have missed the unfortunate occurrence. He felt his face redden despite his brain's consent. The daughter hid her smirk and pretended to be talking to her dog. Her father looked directly at the young man, not with derision but with an acknowledgement that he had seen it. They neutrality of the father's face was unnerving. was this a man who could be laughing on the inside?
The older man and his daughter walked out of sight. The young man swung his arm angrily toward the tree like an mma fighter several times. Purposely not hitting it. As if to affirm he could control something even if it wasn't the tree branch. But his face didn't lose that look of complaint. Like he had been wronged by something ill-intentioned. His theatrics were more to relieve the anguish of looking like a clown infront of strangers. People he hadn't met and perhaps would never see again in his life. He walked his bike to a little alley next to the construction site. That day as he hauled sand, stones and cement he wondered if the daughter of the man had infact been smirking.
That the look of acknowledgement on the father's face wasn't simply that it had taken place, but as an admission that his daughter had found it excrutiatingly hilarious and that they would probably keep it in the laughing bank for weeks to come. loquats never seemed to taste the same after that.
