Just Another Wild Night

6 June 2015

This is one of the better photos I took while covering the Youth Trek activity.  It's not two escaped, French resistance fighters, but it fits the mood I'm in.

I sit here in one of our huge leather chairs, swaddled with a quilt and heated on one side by Charlie, Lauren’s small dog.  We’ve just finished watching a French film (dubbed in English) about a prisoner during WWII:  a French resistance fighter caught by the Germans while as he blew up a bridge.  It was a sad, inspiring movie: sacrifice, unjustifiable trust, slow planning, encouragement, a package from home, vermin and gruel.  It was in black and white—and very quiet.

There was a curious absence of sound:  no loud laughter, vulgar swearing, caustic threats, or self-aggrandizing yelling—no cars blown up, no wild gun fights with countless guns shooting off dozen times more ammunition than any person could possible carry.  

This intense, curious quiet drew my attention to small bits that I would usually overlook.  The silent backdrop highlighted the whispered encouragement; magnified the slight rustling of paper as notes were passed from one man to another; and made the the bird-like squeak of the German officer’s bicycle echo carefully as the men made their way across the last space on their way to freedom.

The final image is of the two escaped prisoners, the older man with his arm around the shoulders of the 16 year old boy who had joined him at the last moments of the movie.  They walk quietly, with determination, away from the audience, into the night fog.

Charlie:  reflective and relaxed.

Their tense apprehensive steps come as a sharp contrast to Charlie—asleep like a limp carrot someone left out on the counter overnight.  

My head feels like a spacious—no, cavernous—void where my brain used to be.  My lungs, in contrast, have ooze filling up the alveoli, one by one . . . and I am beginning to cough it back up by the throat-full.    

The “thuck-thuck, thuck-thuck” rhythm of the baby swing in the corner reassures me that the baby sleeping there is fed, burped, and comfortably resting . . . and not likely to cry out any time soon.

Charlie has abandoned me for the cool of the tile floor.  

There is another old movie on the television.  Back and white but a comedy about a NY reporter who uncovers a plot that will influence the start of WWII—but no one believes him.  This one has car chases and gun shots and not-so-subtile misunderstandings and Latvians.  

Another wild Saturday night at the Hendry’s.