Wings of Bent Light
by Becky Taylor

EXCERPT

It was 1982. His name was Ramin, but the students of the activist group he led called him River. She was studying agriculture and he was studying engineering at Oregon State University. She noticed him right away in her Hydrology class. There was no one like him. His skin was darker and his hair was longer than any of their classmates, but what gripped her most was his grace: how fluidly he walked and talked, how his soft voice could command so much attention. He was energetic and outspoken, unrelenting about where to go and what to do, as load as roaring rapids.

She got carried away by his momentum and joined him and four other students on a short trip in an orange Volkswagen bus from Corvallis to Springfield to protest the Springfield Utility Board (SUB) proposal to construct hydroelectric dams on the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. Catherine held a sign: SAVE SALMON, SINK SUB. River led the chants, screaming at the top of his lungs, until his voice gave out.

“In Iran, pronounced EE-Ron, not I ran, I ran so far away,” he said in a hoarse whisper, enunciating with the help of his forefinger and thumb forming an O. “There are many protests about Afghanistan limiting the flow of dammed waters of the Helmand River to Iran.” He told her that water was always worth fighting for. He predicted the world would battle for water quality and quantity, above and beyond oil.

Saturated with the success of being droplets in a sea of protestors, doted with boats of reporters flashing cameras, and receiving news of upcoming promotional concerts, they expanded the pleasure of their road trip by camping along the river’s headwater, the pristine mountain-fed Waldo Lake. It wasn’t uncommon to wear the same set of clothes for a week during protesting, so their impromptu excursion presented few challenges.

Catherine carefully waded knee-deep into the crystalline lake to wash her face of sweat and dust from setting up camp. Precipitously, River dove into the water. She squealed from the cool spray of his entry. Upon his ascent, he blew water from his lips and hollered from the shock of the frigid water. He quickly tried to disguise his discomfort with laughter, to convince her to join him. However, she was wise to his charm, as her toes were already numb.

“You’re crazy!” she shouted, kicking water in his direction.

“That’s why you love me!” he announced confidently and dove back under.

Her face turned shades of fuchsia as she inched backward within her veins to determine where she had shown her heart. She pretended not to hear his comment and continued her intent. She bent over, cupped the clear blue water in her hands, and splashed her face. She repeated the refreshing pleasure, holding her breath each time her hands met her face.

When she opened her eyes, his head was submerged before her, his hair swaying on the surface of the water like seaweed. In the shallowness, he was able to crawl to the pebble shore on his hands. She laughed, anxious for him to come up for air. As he lifted his head slowly out of the water, a curtain of hair enclosed his face. He sat up to his chest in water and flipped his hair onto his back. She, too, felt like sitting in the water, but decided not to get her shorts wet.

The wetness of his hair made it even darker -- nearly black, slicked back. He had a naturally stern face: thick eyebrows, like one continuous forested mountain range, deep-set eyes and broad nose. He looked at her without expression, facial muscles relaxed, just an eye-to-eye communion of beings.

In response to her nervousness, she giggled and treaded toward the shore, taking big splashing leaps through the water, drenching her clothes. Upon reaching the shore and hearing him splashing to catch up with her, she continued to run through the forest.

She felt a surge of adrenaline as she darted between narrow stands of Lodgepole Pine and Mountain Hemlock, concentrating on the echo of his rhythmic stride. If she didn’t need her breath to run, she would have used it to laugh; she smiled the whole time.

She reached camp, puffing and dripping. He arrived soon afterward, sat on a stump and hung his head between his knees. Their friends soon circled to joke about his stamina. When she felt her face pale to pastels, she retreated to her tent to change into dry clothing. He was leaning against a tree waiting for her with his slanted smile.

“Let’s go collect firewood for tonight,” he suggested to her easily.

She followed him through the sub-alpine forest. He surveyed the terrain as he walked, swishing his head back and forth with each step like a broom. She wished to be the skirt of his long hair brushing his well-defined shoulders.

There were no branches to be found; the forest floor was only covered in pine needles. He succumbed to jumping and swatting at tree branches to break limbs, but only landed with a few twigs and scratched palms.

She smiled tenderly and inspected his hands. An electric current pulsed through her body as she felt the weight of his hands in hers. That’s when she dared. She kissed the palm of his hands, but he snatched his hands away and shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” she pleaded, “I didn’t mean any offense.”

“No, no, I am not mad at you. You should not be kissing my hands. You are so much better. I should be the one to kiss your hands.”

Catherine was painfully aware of the fact he didn’t kiss her hands to implement his words.

They ended up wandering for hours in search of wood. He hauled a large branch to cut up at the campsite and she carried a small bundle of twigs. She was grateful to have anything to occupy her thirsty-for-a-kiss hands.

Back at the campsite, she watched him chop wood. She tried to think of ways to help, but she couldn’t move. She could only watch him. Her eyes attempted to mend the holes she had burnt in his shoulders earlier from staring at him so intently in the woods.

His oblivious shoulders confidently swung the ax. Every blow sent splinters of ruby arrows to her heart. She clutched her chest to keep her heart from cracking. Crack. Crack. Crack. Her insides she could conceal, but she feared his disgust at the rupture. He broke her fixation by turning to smile at her. Her heart stopped. Her lips split into a smile.

That’s when he said, “You have the most beautiful smile.”

She didn’t have to hide her blushing because he had turned to blow embers to ignite the branches. How she pitied herself for envying those broken tree limbs.

Afterward, he scanned the area and instructed Catherine to sit on a ledge, beyond which the sun was beginning to wane and would become a magnificent sunset. His sunlit smile was all the courage she needed to overcome her fear of heights and scale a rock outcropping to pose for a photograph. He was too animated at the moment to think about positioning his camera, to have the sun at his back rather than shining into the lens. Click: the result was an overexposed photograph of Catherine’s heart conducting the last heat of the sun.

Catherine feels like crying, so she presses the photo back to her chest to quiet her quivering heart the way a jockey blankets a horse’s head. She takes a breath and returns to her book, a collection of poetry by Pablo Neruda, which she pulls out from under the chair when she hears Henry snoring at a pace to cut down a forest.

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