Then suddenly, David was being antisemitic.
You looked at Juliet. Her eyebrows lifted, as yours had in a similar expression of shock. Her mouth, though, became an awkward, drunken giggle. You were drunk too. David was as well.
responsible for wars…control of financial…hoarding wealth…
David said these things as the three of you had walked heavily up the steep road that led to their place. You were winded, muscles tired from work, and now slackened by alcohol. Your legs burned as badly as your throat did after an evening of drinking and smoking cigarettes. Everyone smoked cigarettes at the bars then. Although, the newer places made you use the patio. You smoked those clove cigars then like a beatnik; Juliet and David hand-rolled their own. They were awesome in that way.
Until that point, not a single racist or otherwise prejudiced or derogatory word had been spoken. You didn’t talk like that. You were three young, pseudo-intellectuals, basking in the revelatory freedom of travel. One of you was interracial, the others were progressive by nature, possessed of that eager calm a young person grows when they’ve done some moving around.
He used no slurs, he advocated no violence, only repeated that same tired refrain.
yeah, okay, honey… Juliet said at some point, threading her arm through his, looking over at you with that restrained but brilliant smile of hers, and rolling her eyes. David quieted.
Around you, the summer night was hanging in that surreal interzone of about 2:00 to 4:00 a.m.; that distinct, witching-hour-vibe of transition. Dew was gathering, making little puddles of light beneath the few lampposts and the yellow windows of their rental house ahead of us on the hill. There was no traffic. The town itself seemed abed and lay in a comfortable silence which your east coast-bred sensibilities found as wonderous as it was terrifying. There was nothing but your feet dragging on pavement and prairie insects, a constant and overwhelming chorus in mid-August.
And the breeze. That glorious, delicious Black Hills breeze like the ever-sweeping serpent of loving cold. So unlike the warm, sodden breath of southern night you knew so well.
It came in the quiet, after David had stopped speaking. It spurred the chokecherry bushes into harsh little whispers, it passed over your face in a caress, and became a tumble of chestnut as it moved through Juliet’s hair which flared out as the brief motion of a wing when again she turned to smile at you.
You would carry that moment with you, that silence, that breeze, and that smile, like a totem of memory, gathered in your pocket with all the rest. As well as the memory of her arm draped over you, her body a bundle of warmth against yours.
There is no guilt in this story. This is not about an affair. Nor is it about antisemitism; none of you ever mentioned the things he’d said, and he never said anything like it again.
It’s about love, I guess, and how, like life and its many shapes, it grows wherever it can, however it can, no matter how fleeting or inconsequential it may be.
This one had started a few months earlier, at a picnic table, where you had sat alone nursing a ghastly beer, and a beautiful woman sat next to you and said hello.
