OCR Text |
Show Go Love/216 Renee sits just beside me,. She's run a tubful of cold water, bathed, and I can smell the sweetness on her skin. "Story?" Nights are cool in the Uintas-down in the fifties now. Pine scents the air, the wind has turned the smoke away from us. It's pleasant and the fire holds our gaze. < "What landed you here?" "Long or short?" Down in the parking lot, hundreds stand still as stone, staring east, the makeshift soup kitchen going full-throttle, and every now and then another truckful of hotshots shows up in yellow helmets. Eleven o'clock, maybe, surely it's before midnight. Red lights glow on the sides of RVs, their generators humming. Somebody's found a bagful of balloons and a full fledge water balloon fight has broken out. One of the Dutch John women has stuck two real full ones inside her blouse and dances on the lawn to a car radio that plays, "Honkytonk Blues " A fat balloon splats on the porch beside me-Lara'd like this, balloons. "My mother died two weeks ago," I hear myself say. "Tm sorry" . "Me, too," says the other. Vodka has a blue sheen that goes lucent as slag glass in firelight. I say, "It's okay. No, it's fine." It's a little embarrassing, I've learned, having someone die. On the other hand, it gets you attention, makes people seem to care about who your are, what you're about. "We came here for peace." "Peace," one says. "I know what you're saying," says the other |