The Seas by Samantha Hunt

Author:Samantha Hunt [Hunt, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-59692-887-9
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2004-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

THE KNIGHT

Jude has a headache so I tell him to lie down. I tell him I’ll rub his head. We are at his house. I rub the crown of his head and his temples for him. I am nervous and so I fear I am doing a bad job, that he won’t like it but after a few moments I feel him relax his neck and jaw and I am glad.

Sitting this way his neck is very close to me and his blood is only millimeters away from that. Having Jude’s blood this close makes me think of wrought iron in taste and texture, like the bumpy veins of a man or a horse, and it’s so rare that anything on land will make a warm bit of difference to me, sunk as I am. I’d take Jude’s neck down under the water and for few minutes it would still be red and hot as a horseshoe in heat.

He closes his eyes and I’d like to wrap my arms around him. I’d like to push the hair from his face and trace the lines of his nose. I’d like to hold my finger below his nostrils for a long time until it is damp from his exhalations. Then I’d put the finger in my mouth and drink Jude’s breath. It probably would taste like alcohol but I forgive him for that. There is little else to do here besides get drunk and it seems to make what is small, us, part of something that is drowned and large, something like the bottom of the sea, something like outer space. Drinking helps us continue living in remote places because, thankfully, here there is no one to tell us just how swallowed we are.

“I like you,” Jude says. He opens his eyes. He has small drops of sweat bulbing on his brow.

“I like you,” I say and more than anything I do. Jude would never make me think of a timetable or a bank account or a good job, whatever the fuck that means. He’d never make me think of any of the ugly things on dry land. Despite all that is not right with Jude, nothing I do with him is ever held up to the light for judgment. He never thinks I am odd or weird or poor or perverted or wrong. He’d never say, “You’re a real nut job.” I’d sit in his dirty laundry for days and he would understand. He would even bring me a cup of soup while I sat.

I want to tell Jude what it was like when he went to the war, what it was like to be waiting at home for him and wondering whether or not he would be killed. But I never do. I don’t want it to be a competition about which of us suffered more, so I never tell him that when he was in the war I tried to wrap my arms around the dresser in my bedroom.

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