Other Wind
14 / January14 / January14 / January

Constellations (Excerpt)

Cam drove with the windows down when the sky was clear, even on cold days. He had ever since his year at Cobble Hill. Air felt too good to shut out—rolling over his skin, rushing through his eyebrows. He would have liked it in his hair as well, but had come to prefer the baldness the prison guards enforced on him.

Rain he didn’t like. Rain took him right back to that cell—to that smothered dank room at the center of the Hill where moisture slunk down the walls and up through the cracks in the stone floor like syrup. He could see the sweat around him only when they opened his door and let the hall light peak in, but he felt it on the walls, the floor, his bed and body, its slime a constant in the dark.

He craved dryness now and would move to one of the western deserts as soon as Julie decided to come with him. She sat over there in the passenger seat, fiddling with the rubber slit where the window went down. She fiddled a lot, but he loved her. He’d loved her ever since she said she didn’t mind the wind like all the others.

“There’s a stop sign up there.”

“I see it.”

She even fiddled with his driving.