The Winter Sun

The winter sun was a brilliant white dividing the sky into a periwinkle-blue with purplish, shadowed clouds above, and an orange and golden horizon below with red-rimmed clouds and the silhouettes of the distant hills rolling underneath. The two of them sat on a worn, once-green wooden park bench together, comfortably separated, one absorbing what was before them, half of a lit cigarette with a glowing end matching the color of the lower sky in his right hand, and the other one peering into the sunset, bundled up in a heavy jacket, a tight, knit scarf wrapped around his neck, arms folded across his chest, shivering.

"It’s beautiful,” the first said after taking a puff of his cigarette.

“But cold,” the other said after a slight pause, his response falling with a dull thud like a heavy weight.

The first man’s cigarette grew brighter as he breathed in. “You always did look on the darker side of things.”

The other man didn’t turn to look at his friend who was squinting at him. The icy air burned his nose and lungs. “I never said it wasn’t beautiful. But it ain’t warming anything up, so it doesn’t do a damn thing for me.”

The first man sighed a mouthful of smoke. He continued to gaze at the silent, bright globe slowly descending into the earth.

“You forget that I used to make things beautiful.”

“I don’t forget it. I just wonder why you stopped.” His friend had stopped shivering and sat back limp on the bench. A piercing breeze dragged some wrinkled, curled-up, lingering fall leaves, crinkling as they disintegrated, through the stiff, frozen grass. “I haven’t stopped. I won’t stop.”

The other man returned his statement with a lofty grin. “Well, Hill, you have always been a better man than me.”

“Not better just—” But the other man cast Hill a look telling him not to continue the sentence he had heard him say many times before.

He then took his look and cast it down onto the ground. He gave a short sigh of a laugh. “Supposedly, I was once being redeemed, too.”

The bench creaked as Hill shifted his weight. He inspected his cigarette, which was almost through, and threw it to the ground. The cigarette rolled across the asphalt sidewalk in front of them until it stopped a few feet away, burning fiercely red against the black.

Hill got up off the bench and stretched. “Well, I think if you once were, you still are.”

His friend grunted as he rose from the bench. Before they walked away, his friend ground the cigarette into the asphalt with the toe of his shoe until it was out. “You’re going to start a forest fire that way,” he muttered flatly.

Hill only laughed and slapped him on the back, and they began walking to his house. The sun had finally crawled behind the frozen earth, leaving behind only a faint yellow-hued stain, with the blue-grey night speedily filling the empty space left by the giant orb.

(C) Copyright 2006 by K. M. Camper