"I wonder how many inches of dust I've wiped off this bookshelf over the years?" Valerie Benchkoff wondered aloud, singing hymns to herself as she robotically lifted item after item up to clean underneath. Nearly 32 years worth of marriage, motherhood and memories resided on the oak shelves in front of Valerie as she went about her weekly routine.
Those 32 years of marriage to her Husband, Nolan, hadn't been easy. Wedded at the age of 17, more to get away from her own folks than any real comprehension of love, Valerie had certainly grown to treasure and adore the man she married and wouldn't have traded her life for anyone's. Pregnant by the age of 19 and then again when she was 22, the latter half of Valerie's life had whizzed by in a blinding rush. One morning shortly after her son and daughter had moved out for good and proceeded with their own lives away from the family farm, Valerie had woke up one morning and suddenly wondered where her life had went.
The weekly routine of dusting the years' worth of accumulated photos was one way she had to keep reminding herself of how great her life had been and what joys she had to be thankful for. Yet, after having two kids running around the house, discovering life at every turn for nearly three decades, to have that simple joy missing from her life, with each passing day, Valerie felt increasingly empty.
The rigors of running a small and struggling family farm on the outskirts of Davenport, Iowa however kept Valerie from dwelling on the negatives for too long. There were still chores to do, bills to pay, trips into town to make and a Husband to take care of. And Nolan, eight years her senior, had gradually had his health decline over the past decade. A mild heart attack two years earlier had gone a long way towards helping with his eating habits, but the fear of another one combined with a litany of back and shoulder problems has slowed his work around the homestead.
Still, it was a good life they had made together and when the work for the day was done and the sun had set for the evening, Valerie could rest her head on her pillow most nights thankful for all her blessings.
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1500 miles to the East, in the Bronx, a 17 year old boy was resting his head on a tattered and worn pillow as well. The same age Valerie Benchkoff was when she got married back in Iowa long ago, Rodrego Munoz's prospects for the future weren't nearly as promising as Valerie's had been.
Burdened from day one, born to a Mother of only 15, and conceived by a Father he never knew, Rodrego had dodged more bullets, literal and figurative, than 90% of the soldiers do during a war.
Even though his Mother cared enough to keep Rodrego's attention turned towards school and a decent life while he was younger, the same lure of the street that had felled many of his fellow generation constantly nipped at Rodrego's heels.
In the ultimate of ironies however, it was failing to dodge one of those bullets that might have saved his life. An innocent bystander on the opposite side of the street from a drug deal gone bad, a shell had ricocheted into his shoulder, landing Rodrego in the Emergency Room.
A fact of life living in that neighborhood Rodrego readily accepted, but one of the doctors treating him saw more in the young Puerto Rican boy than mere cannon fodder.
Hugo Moralis had once been a Puerto Rican street punk as well, and even when his parents up and left San Juan when he was 12 for the US to work the fields and orchards wherever they could find employment, he remained a punk until someone saw potential in him. So in many ways Hugo saw himself in the injured teenager in front of him.
Having finally settled in West Texas with his family, Hugo had quickly picked up English and made progress in school. So much in fact, he had earned a scholarship to college through the Hispanic College Fund and six years after escaping the war zone of poverty he was born into, Hugo enrolled as a Freshman at Texas Tech. After getting his undergraduate degree there and working three jobs to save up, Hugo moved to New York where he completed Medical School, spending the previous 15 years working as a trauma specialist at hospitals in some of the city's poorest and roughest neighborhoods. So when Hugo approached Rodrego, a fuse was hesitantly lit.
Rolling his eyes initially from Hugo's description of moving from farm to farm, picking everything from cotton to corn as a youth, Rodrego might as well have been listening to the Man in the Moon for all the sense it made.
"What does any of this have to do with me?" the 17 year old bluntly spat, flinching in pain from the tightness of the bullet wound in his shoulder.
"It has to do with the next time you come through those Emergency Room doors...three inches to the right and we wouldn't be having this conversation, Rodrego," Hugo soberly replied. "Three inches..that's all..and there'd be a tag on your toe going out the backdoor of the hospital right now!"
Still, Hugo understood completely the angst and sense of resignation a kid like Rodrego was feeling. Never one to forget the valuable, and often times hard, lessons he learned during his trek across America's fruited plain as a child, Hugo had searched endlessly for ways to give back to the community and help kids that had been in his position. One such outlet he and his wife had found was supporting a program called "The Fresh Air Fund" that took at risk, inner city teenagers and placed them with a farm family for a few months during the Summer, in hopes that the time away would help the kids develop some life skills and an individual sense of self worth, away from the inherent and ever-present dangers of home.
When Hugo first broached the idea to Rodrego of enrolling in the program, the 17 year old laughed incredulously in the older man's face. But after discussing the idea with Rodrego's Mother, whether it was having to see her Son laying in a hospital room with a gunshot wound, or knowing the streets would be waiting for him as soon as he checked out, Desiree Munoz was slightly more open to Hugo's idea, and in the end convinced her Son to take the four month sabbatical with the program.
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Sitting in a coach window seat on a half full plane trip from New York City to Iowa City where his host family would be waiting at the airport, all Rodrego could do was stare aimlessly out the window.
"Iowa...where the fuck is Iowa?" Rodrego's stomach churned, feeling as if he were being shipped off to a place as remote as Central Antarctica rather than some place in the heart of the United States.
"And to a fucking farm on top of it..what the fuck is that about...They want me to learn to drive a tractor ....FUCK," he mumbled on and on, at one point causing a concerned flight attendant to come over to check to see if he was OK.
"Damn..she's pretty hot," Rodgero thought to himself as the buxom, sandy blonde stewardess leaned in closer, her perfume causing his angst to stir even more, reminding him that he'd be away from all the girls in the neighborhood all Summer. "I turn 18 in a couple of months and I probably wont even get to get laid."
"I'm..I'm..OK," he told the flight attendant. "Just my first time flying..that's all."
"You'll do fine," she smilingly reassured before turning to continue with her rounds, leaving Rodrego with a brief but lasting glimpse of her tight behind.
