Distinctly Montana Magazine

them because his feet had worn through the soles and they were flopping around his ankles. "Where am I?" he said, and I started laughing and couldn't stop. Then he started laughing too. Later while I fed him, he said that he taught philosophy at Carroll College in Helena and decided to go for a walk. I didn't ask him how long he had been walking or how he had been feeding himself. There was something about the way he talked and looked at me that made all of those things superfluous. The next morning I gave him a bottle of water, dried apricots, bread, jerky, socks, a windbreaker I'd found in the cabin and an old pair of boots I'd brought for working in the mud. He didn't tell me where he was going and I didn't ask him. That was 10 years before I met her, but I never told her the story. The breeze is dying down now and the clouds have left in Light BY GREG KEELER There were times when I was watching television in one room and she was reading in another when I would turn off the set and stare at the blank screen for a few minutes. I would think about her, about the things I wanted to say to her, about how quickly our lives were passing, about the darkness that surrounded our small house. And then I would see my reflection, there on the screen. in Light a small gap for the sun. I can almost distinguish a change in light on the lake where the tops of the trees meet the sky. When I was away from her, fishing or on business trips, I missed her almost as much as I miss her now. But then, when I re- turned home, I'd say something or she'd say something, and all of the joy and pain would return to the monotony necessary for two people who need to share a life for more than a few years. Greg Keeler is an unpretentious but highly regarded poet, playwright, musician, songwriter, artist, and fisherman. He is a professor of English at Montana State University and lives in Bozeman with his wife. His work is full of humor, satire, and sadness. www.distinctlymontana.com 41

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