marble journey part V

JAKE

As Jake drove the truck up Highway 10, he thought about faith.

Faith.

At Jake’s suggestion, Annie had contacted Margarita and was already learning Spanish. She told Jake that when she confessed to Margarita that she was afraid she might be too old to learn anything new, Margarita had said no one was too old to learn. She had said, Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

Only she had said it in Spanish.

La fe es el pájaro que siente la luz cuando el amanecer todavía está oscuro.

Fe.

Faith.

Fe.

Jake couldn’t get the word out of his head.

It sounded like a musical note.

Sometimes a word could ring in the air like a bell.

Like a warning.

Like a celebration.

Like the marking of time.

The minutes ticked by as they drove up the highway. Henry sat by the window, his forehead pressed against the glass. Zavion sat next to Jake, asleep on his shoulder. Ben lay in the bed in the back of the cab.

The smell of cinnamon, peanut butter, and chocolate wafted through the cab of the truck, four slices of Cora’s cake carefully wrapped for their journey. Jake couldn’t believe their luck, not that he believed in luck.

Meeting all these people.

Making all these friends.

Henry finding the marble.

Maybe it wasn’t luck.

Maybe it was faith.

A word like that reverberated. It didn’t care if there was a fence or a wall or sixteen hundred miles of sadness between one pair of ears and another, it slipped inside any old way it could.

And so the word became a bridge.

A place to meet.

A place to connect.

Kind of like passing a marble back and forth, Jake thought.

He patted his shirt pocket, where the marble sat just outside his heart.