Of Mountains

Rook's tie slung around his neck flimsily. Blue and white stripes on a near triangular piece of cloth that had started to come up too short on his belly, the elastic too tight around his neck. He wouldn't have to learn how to tie a knot until middle school but he didn't know that yet. 

"And out here," the agent spoke pleasantly, while deftly sliding the balcony door wide open, "you can see Rainier"

"Wow, that's amazing"

School football was tough on Rook's black Bata shoes. Bata was a Portuguese brand, Rook had recently learned. His mind was blown because as far as his existence was concerned heretofore, being bengali and wearing Bata chappals were unquestionably entwined.

"I love driving down this stretch of the highway," she said, wind ruffling in the wind rushing through partially rolled down windows.

"Why so?"

"Can you see Rainier looming in the distance?"

"Almost magical"

The field roller was a cylindrical behemoth. It was a two man job to roll it over the cricket pitch, an arduous and thankless task but it did keep the grass smooth and gave the ball a crisp bounce in cricket season.

"What's the most interesting thing you've done?"

"Ooh I climbed Rainier a couple of years ago!"

"That must have been challenging"

The metro was a cacophony of voices, a rata-tat-tat of mechanical wheels on steel tracks and a heaving smelly mess of sweaty bodies merged into one corpulent abomination that didn't want to get off at the station Rook had to. Yet the stations were few and the journey short. Where do trams go, Rook wondered. Magically waning into the murky mists in the north, where the city had aged a few decades sooner than the rest of it. Rook secretly yearned to board a tram with a ticket bound for nowhere, see where it takes him. 

"I'm gonna get a sparkling water, you want one?"

"Yes please, grab me a Rainier"

Rook bawled his eyes out amidst the scattered autumn leaves at the shelter by the school gate because he missed an essay on an English test. Rook wanted his tram to take him to the mountains where he could live as a hermit. He could almost hear the chugging wheels, and feel himself meld into the surrounding scenery of the sweeping range of alpine undulations, growing tall and then small into the distance, fading into the clouds adorning the gargantuan feet of a nameless white demon, proud and ubiquitous, tearing the sky simply because it could.