Mira [On-Going]

CHAPTER ONE: PART TWO

I glanced at my watch to check the time and saw that it was already seven fifty-six, four minutes before the scheduled arrival of my transport. I looked at my mother and told her that it was almost time for me to leave. I then gave her one final embrace before I went on out. I felt her arms tightly wrap around me as she cried on my shoulder, wiping her tears on the shabby beige jacket that I had on. The pressure of her hands that pressed against my back was immense, and as I tried to loosen up the embrace, she kept pulling me back in. After a few more minutes of hugging and crying, my transport had arrived. It was a wagon pulled by a horse owned by one of the town's local hostlers, and a friend of mine, Roman.

"Kid!" he shouted. "You ready to go?"

"A few more minutes, sir!" I yelled back. "I'll be right there if only you will just wait."

"Sure, kid. But only a few more minutes. We don't want you to miss the bus--especially when the next one won't be arriving at the stop until around noon."

"I understand, sir. You can dry yourself and find comfort over here; and let your horse rest under there," I said pointing at the apple tree.

"Alright!"

Roman parked the wagon by the tree. He tied the horse's leash around the tree's trunk and, before leaving it, he said something to his horse which I did not quite hear but only assumed he said the words: stay and fine. He ran towards me and my mother on the porch and when he had set foot under the house's roof, he greeted us.

"By the way, good morning, kid--good morning Mrs. Razdelennikov," he said while nodding his head. "A not so lovely day today, ain't it?"

My mother and I looked at him with a slightly disappointed look; especially my mother with her eyebrows arched down and joined together.

"Well, maybe I shouldn't have said that," Roman said with an embarrassed look on his face. "My apologies, Ma'am."

"It's fine, Roma," Mother said giggling. "What you said was not wrong, unfortunately. This day is not quite as pleasant as the other days of this month. It's unusually rainy, don't you think?"

"Yes, Ma'am. March is an unusual month for rain. But at least we won't have to water the plants and crops, and troughs. The rain does it for us."

"Of course a young man like you would say that. Young men really do like getting things done for them."

Roman laughed and said, "I'm sure little Mira here would say the same thing."

"Hey!" I said. "I get things done around here, you know."

"Yes, but only after I had told you several times to do so," said Mother.

"Well, I guess you're not wrong," I said, softly laughing. "Maybe I would have said the same thing."

While the rain kept pouring, Roman suggested to wait for a while until the rain had ended. He explained that it would have been bad to travel by wagon while it was raining. I agreed with his suggestion, for the reason that I did not want to get my luggage wet, but it turn gave my own. I proposed that we wait but only until eight fifteen for I did not want to miss the bus that usually passed the stop at around eight forty-five. Roman understood right away why I had given my suggestion and instantly agreed.

Mother went inside to take care of things inside the house and left the two of us on the porch. Roman and I stood by the wooden railings hoping for the rain to stop or at least die down; we had not spoken to each other for the span of time spent waiting. I paid a lot of attention to the time and made sure that I had counted every minute that had passed. I constantly looked down and glanced at my watch. I observed the race between the hands of my watch with the second hand obviously winning first place; it repeatedly caught up with and outdistanced the other two as they tediously tried to finish their first lap. Eight o-four, eight o-five, eight o-six, eight o-seven, eight o-eight, and so on. The second hand undisputedly won each lap. But with every lap that it had passed, the rain did not show any sign of dying out; and the race leader was almost at its final lap.