The Parapet

The question had long been settled.

We sat atop the parapet of a large green electrical box and took in the flavours carried by the wandering winds. The scents and tastes were ever changing, insinuating everything but themselves. Guileless, guiltless scents - poppy-rose and sweet steamed corn, ethanol or seasoned meats; for longtemps we would sit, sweating in the weighted heat of that hour, taking to taste all that was brought in by the winds. Nature's caprice wove for us a limpid dream - the world seemed to contain every scented flavour that it could bear to shrug off from those who tasted it first. Lovely, sifting red-rich skies often doted over us.

But some days the matter was complicated by the presence of a smaller band of children. Their noses ran with smuck, pale faces made grubby in the mud. They were covered, really, in so much dirt that one couldn't imagine that they had not been playing together and laughing - some time during noon it must have been. Their grub was not one caused by fighting or being rough with one another, for it was always very evenly applied, with no appearance of a sudden fall, escape, or laceration.

But, I can never know for sure about these noon kids (as we soon began to call them) - I only know when they appeared before us, and that they did not smile. They looked unabashedly at us, shuffling, turning in circles, kicking slightly this small pebble or leaf, side-glancing us with languishing eyes, sometimes, speaking softly to themselves, too softly for us to hear. With no apprehension they stared straight into our eyes with their mucked blonde or brown hair disheveled across their small heads.

None of us were decisive, none were aggressors. It seems odd to me now that we did not even once attempt to speak to them. Nothing had definitively showed us that they would not respond, but neither did they look eager - we did not sense from them any requests, there was not the smallest hint of entreaty in their eyes, yet there was neither any scorn, nor fear. We, being the elder group --- you might have expected one of us to say something. Expectations rarely rise from within such moments, one is simply engaged, or disengaged, or static. And as I've said, we had long settled our question. The answer did not figure anyone but ourselves - what could be expected of our interactions with the noon kids? They had come after the communion. The spirit rests - the body ages and the scents drift to us indefinitely, but our place is well settled.

Of course, even besides, I may have, at that time, let myself wonder about their thoughts. Did they seek the parapet? Where was their vista? Were such heights tempting to them on account of their smallness? We saw, over a wall, the crest of a small hill behind which the sun, daily, descended. I imagined it was upon this hill that they played and collected their mud, but I never saw them, nor did I see a single cloud of dust rise up from behind that hill. I wondered; perhaps my companions, also, wondered.

We had settled ourselves, neatly and well, on the parapet. I sat on the very right, the fourth of four. The days passed in supple languor - no troubles stirred us, and we chatted in friendly, if subdued, tones. We each to our own houses left before nightfall. The night of that place, a desert town, unlike the day, was cold and sharp and scentless. It passed its frost chill over the yard as we ate among our families and prepared for sleep, never taking heed that the night outside was manifestly different than those afternoons of our most endowed temps.

And yet it was then, in that stillest hour of midnight, as I lay in bed, that I looked to my window. Something in the star strewn sky's ponderous glow gave me the thought that those noon kids were still outside. Something in this thought, that unadorned, unsubstantiated, mild fantasy would bring me up from my sheets, kneeling just high enough to open the window and let the chill in. What I wanted, I cannot say - perhaps I wanted to share the night with them. I would lie back down upon my bed, feel the dew settle around me and feel the ice wind touch my skin, and there, glaze-faced and still, I stirred off to blank sleep.

I never told this to my companions, because, for them (I see it now), their question had been long well settled.