Right of Thirst by Frank Huyler

Author:Frank Huyler
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Elise turned on her headlamp.

“Do you mind if I write in my journal?” she said. “I can’t sleep.”

“I don’t mind.”

I closed my eyes. I heard her fiddling with her bag, the rustle of pages, and then a ticking sound, like sleet against a window. I snuck a glance at her: it was a ballpoint pen, and she was writing intently in her small bound book, a faint frown on her face, in profile, the pages lit up by her headlamp.

She worked away, diligently, in a tiny, paper-saving hand. She wrote in German, and though I glanced over from time to time, and could see the sentences clearly enough, I understood nothing, not even a single word. I nearly asked her. But she was serious; I could see it in her face. I wondered who she was writing her story for, or whether she even thought of that at all.

As I listened to the pen, I realized that it was an important thing for her. I suspect it was not so much the act itself. I think for her it was more the formal collection of experience, and the dream of understanding it. I’m not sure how I knew this. Perhaps it was her discipline; she continued, without pause, for a long time. I wondered how honest she was being, and what she was saying. I wondered what she’d written about me, because surely I must appear there from time to time. Finally, she closed the book. Then, to my surprise, she leaned over, and kissed me tenderly on the cheek. Before I could respond she switched off the light, plunging the tent into darkness.

“I am sorry,” she said, her voice catching, and after a moment, in the dark, I realized she was crying. But she composed herself quickly, and after a few more minutes she fell asleep, leaving me alone with my thoughts again.

I was so acutely and tenderly aware of her; the way she shifted, her breath, the smell of shampoo that came to me, her patch of warmth against the side of my sleeping bag. It felt strangely familiar, and I realized it was Eric, my son, as a very young child, that I was thinking of. Rachel and I had taken turns putting him to bed. He would shift and murmur beside me for a while—it was before he could speak—and then it would fall over him, his body would relax, his breathing would slow, and I would watch him sleep for a while before easing myself out of the room. It was the same feeling of tenderness, of intimacy and poignancy, and as I lay there beside her it came back to me. I could still feel him as the smallest of children beside me.

The sound grew when the wind blew toward us, and faded when it blew away. At times it was just at the threshold of hearing, and at other times as fully present as the river below us, the sounds merging together—the river and the falling shells—all night.

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