Just after twilight, my father insisted on taking us for a walk. “I want to show you something. Where my father used to take us to this creek to fish.”
We walked behind Pop and could tell he was drunk by the wobbly way he walked and talked. Only my sister could hold his hand because in his other hand he had a drink.
It was scary out there in the dark. No streetlamps. No cars. The only light was a soft moonlight shining through the dense trees. Still, I was anxious to see the creek where my father used to play.
I expected a rio like the one Mami told us was a pool. Here instead was a trickle, a tiny stream of water with tiny fish in there. My fish in my fish tank at home were bigger.
My father seemed disappointed as well. He said it used to be a deep stream. Then he said, “Do you hear that?” All around us were weird sounds, something like a whistle, but almost like a word repeated again and again.
My brother said, “Those are crickets, right?”
“No,” Popi corrected him, “That’s the coqui. You hear, that’s what it’s singing. ‘Co-qui. Co-qui.’”
“What is it, an insect?” I asked.
“It’s a little brown frog.”
“Where is it?” we all asked.
“There’s millions of them, but they’re impossible to see.”
We stopped to look around. It was dark and we could barely see the farmhouse. But all around them the coquis kept singing.
“You know, nature is amazing,” my father said. “The coquis won’t sing anywhere else. They take them to Florida, to Mexico and they’ll live but they only sing in Puerto Rico.”
Pop walked around the side into a clearing. In the moonlight, the saw the cows, dumb and standing still.
“They’re just going to stay there all night?” my sister said.
The clearing was hilly and hard to walk on. My father slipped from my sister’s grip and stumbled and disappeared into the dark.
“Popi!” my sister screamed.
For a moment it was as if my father was suddenly dead, as if he had rolled off the edge of the world and no longer existed.
She told my brother to get help, but then Pop stood up, his drink now empty. “I’m all right. I’m all right,” he said, sounding angry and brushing himself off.