Going For A Walk

It was quiet in the way that it can be quiet even as cars drive by you, because there’s not that many cars, and the cars that there are, they’re not that noisy, and you’ve heard them so much, that their sound just sounds like silence and in the distance there may be a bus crossing an intersection and further away there may be more cars and maybe even some music in the distance but it all adds up to a kind of silence that is full and empty at once, and it slides through the edges of the afternoon like a breeze that has no direction and comes from everywhere at once. In this pool of quietness, his boys were the ones making waves, as they ran after each other, up and down the sidewalk, as far away as they could get, and then a little further, testing the limits, checking to see when he would call to them and say “Boys! Come back! That’s too far!” and they knew that their mother would say it sooner, the mother who was now in his arms, who walked up the sidewalk next to him, pressing up against the side of his chest, but when she said they could run a little more, they would turn to look at him, because they knew that then he would say yes or no, and if he said no, then and only then, would they have to turn back. And so they ran laughing and screaming, and they ran hard and intensely, both small and blonde and thin, both full of raw energy that had to be expended one way or another, and he looked at them with a relish that swam on top of the waves of warmth that he felt coming from her, warmth that trickled up through his chest, up through his throat, to his head and his eyes and his nose, and even to the tip of his short brown hair and he could tell that she could feel it too, and when a particularly strong wave would hit her, she would press closer to him and right then the boys were running all the way to the corner and he had to call to them again, “Boys! That’s too far! Come back!” and one of the little blond boys said to the other, “I won! I won! You lost! I won!” and the other boy didn’t bother to acknowledge what his brother was saying but simply ran back to the edge of their racing field, which started wherever their father stood at the moment and ended when he called to them to turn back, and the boy that had won called to his father and said: “Dad! I won that one! I won! Did you see it?” and he nodded and smiled at him “I did see it. Good! Now come back!” and the boy did and they both lined up again ready to run some more. Her body was thick and full and warm and it vibrated against his arm and his chest with a constant rhythm and his left hand trailed down her back and all the way to the edge of her blue jeans and pushed past the boundary of her waistline and came to rest at the place where her buttocks met each other, and when she felt his hand there, in the little crease of her ass, she let out a small sigh and turned to look at him and he turned to look at her, and her eyes were soft and seemed to be ready to spill their content all over her cheeks and his eyes were soft and warm and content and his fingers dug a bit deeper under her pants, under the tight jeans, feeling the slightly sweaty flesh of her big buttocks and then the boys had run all the way to the corner once again and she smiled as he called out to them, “Boys! That’s far enough! Come back!” and the two boys were even at that point so they simply turned around, knowing that neither of them had won, and they walked back to the two people that stood together at the edge of their racing field who were their parents who were really not people at all but pillars that moved slowly up and down the sidewalk, and both boys knew they would be there forever and whenever they ran too far they could always just run back and find them standing there, waiting for them, but he knew that her warmth would vanish someday and she knew that his gentle hand some day would not caress her under her waistline, and they both felt that knowledge like a little wave of cold air on a gentle warm afternoon and it just made them walk a bit more slowly, and it made them smile a little more because the day was so quiet and still and it would soon come to an end.