Storm by Allen Noren

Author:Allen Noren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2010-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

Robin Williams waved as we rode from camp the next morning. He was sitting at a table inside his housetrailer eating a piece of toast, which he used to salute us with. He was wearing only a t-shirt and I was jealous. Suzanne and I had on every bit of clothing we’d brought with us, and we were still cold.

Sometime during the night the leaves on the birch trees beside us began to clatter, giving the wind a voice that alternately whispered and roared. The wind flowed like a current over the tent and carried with it any warmth collected in the surface of the earth. The cold skin of the tent pressed against my side and I marked time as the warmth of my body wicked away. Suzanne and I pressed against each other as the temperature dropped, and we remained huddled until it was too cold to sleep any longer. As we debated whether to get up, Suzanne blew geysers of steam from her mouth that rose to the ceiling and then disappeared.

We dressed quickly, and carried our stove and pots into a shed beside the lake where we made a breakfast of oatmeal and tea. We held our hands over the flame of the stove and vigorously rubbed our arms and chests. We did jumping jacks and ran in place until we were winded. Suzanne held our rain suits open over the stove until they filled with warm air, and then we slipped into them.

I improvised a table from a narrow shelf below the window and brushed the cobwebs from it with my hand. Suzanne slipped out the door for a blood-red Icelandic poppy and pressed the stem into a crack in the window sill. She folded some paper towels we’d taken from a gas station so they looked like stars and set our spoons on top of them. “There,” she said enthusiastically. “Better than a restaurant.”

I poured water for our tea, and she took the steaming cups by the rims with the tips of her fingers and quickly placed them on our table.

“If I could, I’d make us pancakes,” I said.

“Ummm. You read my mind,” she said dreamily as I scooped oatmeal from our pot. “With lots of butter and syrup. And fresh blueberries to mix with the batter. We’ll pretend.”

We stood before the window looking over the lake as we ate and watched the wind skate across the water, leaving the surface agitated.

“Think it will warm up?” I asked.

Suzanne leaned her head against my shoulder and didn’t say anything. The sound of her spoon scraping the bottom of her bowl was like a reminder not to say such things.

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