Desert Passage by P. S. Carillo Page A

there,” he cautioned mildly.
    Ramón turned to look back and nodded his head, “We’ll be all right.”
    Miguel and Ramón acted like they knew exactly what they were doing. They filled the tank and boarded Natalie.

  Chapter 17  
    R amón soon found out that Natalie was quick on the road despite her age. He navigated onto the highway and with a slight turn of his wrist on the hand clutch they were traveling at a good pace. He estimated the motor scooter’s speed to be at least forty miles per hour. Most of the cars on the road were careful not to pass the Vespa too close. The drivers would veer to the left and a few would cross over to the other lane completely. So far, Miguel and Ramón didn’t feel afraid of sharing the road with the larger vehicles.
    The boys had fond memories of driving through the desert with their grandfather. His old truck had a manual transmission that only worked up to third gear, but their grandfather could get it going sixty miles per hour on the country roads. The boys would laugh as their small bodies bounced on the torn, vinyl bench seat when the old truck would hit a pothole or when their grandfather jammed the clutch. Ramón remembered the old truck as he navigated the scooter along the highway and wished his grandpa were still alive.
    The interstate highway wasn’t far from their grandmother’s house. Within less than an hour they were on the busy four-lane highway, traveling toward their destination. Miguel was trying to keep his balance in the back of the small seat. He hadn’t let go of the luggage rack since they left the gas station. The fall the day before on the driveway had scared him. He only moved his hand away from the rack to adjust his baseball cap closer to his head when the wind threatened to blow it away.
    Ramón quickly learned to operate the hand gears of the scooter. He had been driving since he was twelve years old, and understood the mechanics of various vehicles.
    Rodrigo had begun to teach the boys how to drive on one of his company trucks two years before. He wanted them to be independent and he thought that learning to drive a truck would help them become real men. He would take the boys to an empty shopping-center parking lot and let them take turns driving the large truck. Miguel always pushed on the accelerator too hard and could never move his foot fast enough to find the brake. Rodrigo would get mad and yell at him to stop the truck and let Ramón drive.
    â€œDriving in the empty parking lot was an accomplishment,” Ramón thought to himself while driving the Vespa. But he knew this was different. The road wasn’t vacant.
    Ramón pulled over to the side, took his sunglasses from his T-shirt pocket and put them on. The sun was getting brighter and he was tired of squinting his eyes. They were heading east on the freeway and the morning sun was directly in front of them.
    â€œWe should be able to make it to Flagstaff today, pretty cool, huh?” Ramón looked at Miguel who had been gazing at the side of the road into the distance and thinking of their last trip to Flagstaff. They had passed through the town a long time ago on their way to a fishing lodge with their grandfather before he died. Grandpa Esteban loved to go camping and fishing and began to take his grandsons with him when they were barely old enough to walk. He felt that the experience of being in nature was important for young men. They would sit around the campfire and their grandfather would tell stories of when he was a boy, about all the adventures he’d had growing up in the desert.
    â€œThat’ll be cool,” he answered Ramón as they started to drive off. “Maybe we can camp there.”
    Ramón also remembered their last trip with Grandpa Esteban. One night, when they were safe in their sleeping bags by the campfire, their grandfather had told them a story about Enrique, Ramón’s father.