Low gold sun driving the load home, in first gear down the arc of the bow of the reservation.  Between the two gates, on the longest stretch of open flat land between the field and the feedlot, Flaco is driving too fast.  We always drive too fast when we can, especially between the two gates. And this late afternoon, my birthday, it is the last load of the week. Saturday night and Sunday and no hay to haul are ahead of us. I am sitting in the middle between Flaco and Acho.  Flaco’s hat is off and the wind from the open window is blowing his wet hair. Acho isn’t wearing his shirt and the sun is gold on his skin.  Flaco shifts from third gear to fourth gear, and when the gear shift goes into fourth, Flaco’s hand comes down.  I doubt if Flaco even knows he’s touched me.  The little square inch of skin on my right leg below the knee.  Everything gets slow and I feel the scared place inside me that I don’t know is scared until it stops feeling scared, and when the scared feeling stops I get a big full feeling in my chest and I love God so much right then.  Our smell, sweat and hay and dust and the smell of the cab, gasoline, oil, exhaust fumes, cigarettes, mossy canal water, roaring down the road in a beat up old truck. Me in the middle, Flaco and Acho and I, skin to skin to skin, my skin almost as dark as their skin. Just the three of us, close, riding in the truck, the wind blowing through.  The way we are smiling we all know.  This is a moment in our lives. Flaco takes a drag on the cigarette.  Acho closes his eyes, stretches his neck.  My exhale settles my body deep into the seat as if the seat is the only thing that holds me up. Each of us knows, and we know that we know and without a word we bless the moment.

            And now, a year later even more, that moment is still with me, riding on my breath, in the pulse of blood, the deepened life line in the palm of my hand.  What I have come to know as true. Moments of gesture.  To know what it is to love.