He sits on a rock overlooking a river. He flicks the ashes off the end of his cigarette; the breeze kicks up and blows them back toward him, and he starts. He was here as a boy, with his family, before everything changed, and this morning, the sun just coming high, the rapids silver, he remembered swimming below them, where the banks spread apart and the water goes flat. The river is a border—was a border then too—so he couldn’t have done that. He laughs. He has blond hair, curly if it weren’t so short, and he’s tall, and tan from the sun in a place too hot for him ever to get used to. He’s been here four hours, mostly standing but sometimes, as now, sitting, smoking while he sits. His thoughts repeat, and he notices this, the effect of boredom or fear or both. To his left, ten miles off, are mountains, also marking the border, tall, fog toward their bottoms, where the border runs, and high up, despite the sun and summer heat, patches of snow and among these a glacier that runs down to melt that flows into the river, the last bit in a waterfall. He doesn’t see the mountains. He didn’t see them this morning when he came. He waits for his radio to buzz, and then the voice saying he’s done his watch and can come back. By the time on his phone, he knows when he’ll be done, but the call is the thing. His replacement won’t come all the way up here—they can’t both be exposed. He takes off his canvas hat and wipes the sweat up off his brow, through his curly, dark hair. He’s too old to be here, doing this. If things had gone differently – if he hadn’t fucked around so much, as a kid and after – he’d be somewhere else, living a real life. As he comes down to meet his replacement, out of sight of the other side of the border, for a few minutes no one will be on watch. He’s sure they know this, will use the chance to move closer to the border, or across it. The water was cold, and moved too fast – he was scared he’d be washed away. His father laughed. He’s sure of this. He tried to come up onto the bank, but the current running along it was too strong. He saw something he took for a tree limb, a willow, though willows, he knows now, don’t grow so far south. He reached for it, and it was a clump of poppies that came off in his hand. This could have been on the other side, where there are no flats, just cliffs with rock screes at their bases, and those too steep to climb onto. The river bed was small stones, mostly smooth, though some with sharp edges, and when he fell back in, they dug into his thighs and the backs of his upper arms. He had marks for days after, and several cuts that his father swabbed with alcohol. Late that afternoon it rained, and they sat under a tree and drank lemonade. He checks that the battery in his radio is still good. If only he weren’t so young – if only he’d lived a little first. The air is dry and it hasn’t rained for weeks, and won’t for months. Someone on the other side helped him climb out onto the scree. He’s sure of this. His hand leaves a print of sweat on the side of the radio handset, the spot where all the hands that have held it, in just this way, have worn off some of the paint, in the form of a palm. He has eight more watches, then he’ll go home for good. He’ll be called up again, and sent to the same place, to do twenty more. The sun is high now, and he squints to look across the border, where something, he’s been told, is happening, something he should watch though he hasn’t seen anything to note, a couple of shepherds with their flock, nothing else. At his feet is a bag and, not looking down, he feels in it for his sunglasses and canteen, and his last two cigarettes. There’s a noise – rustling, coming uphill, and closer. His relief. He can’t be sure. He knows not to be sure. When he gets back home, a year, year and a half from now – home for good, not on leave – his daughter will be in school, and he’s not sure, will his wife tolerate him, changing her routines and loud and into everything. He can’t find his cigarettes. His neck is flush now and his forehead too. The rustling stops. Someone hiding, having come in sight of him. His father steered the boat toward him, slowly – under the surface were rocks that neither of them had seen at first. The cigarettes could have fallen out. He walked out to the promontory an hour ago and reached into his bag – he can’t remember, for what, something that seemed important but god damn it now. The next sound could be a bird, pecking at a hard rock. The sun is high and if he looked for a shadow he wouldn’t see one. If only he had a girl at home, or some scheme to do something meaningful, even just to go somewhere else, or enjoy his life in a way we’d want to enjoy our own lives. He wants his fucking goddamn cigarettes. That day, he sat on the scree and the shade disappeared, and in an hour he was sunburned. The rustling should start again now. He digs still, flush everywhere, irritated at being scared, at being here at all, and close now, the boards in the prow of his father’s boat, cracking as they snap on the rocks
