The first inn our aimless path happened upon was a warmer, smaller place. This innkeeper was thinner than the last, smiled a great deal and had a nervous habit of twirling his wedding ring around one thin finger when he was nervous. His heart had melted at the sight of Roderigo's weak body, and my story won us the ability to stay gratis, provided that I helped with some of the work he and his wife could not do.
The innkeeper twirled his ring. "I mean, since my son left, and I'm not..." he shrugged and looked down at his thin body, spin "and we can't ask any of the guests..." spin, spin, spin. "We need someone to help with some of the harder work around the place, you know, chopping firewood, moving furniture..."
"I'd be happy to."
"I don't know if we'll be able to pay you," spin, spin, "since we don't have many guests and..."
"We'll negotiate something. There's no need now."
The innkeeper and his wife had settled Roderigo in the most comfortable bed they had and fussed with him until he had no choice but to smile. But it was still a forced smile.
The first crack appeared in Roderigo's melancholic reverie soon after, on a bitter, squishy winter morning that I had spent chopping and carrying firewood. The task was the furthest thing from absorbing, so it came as a welcome surprise to hear Roderigo's voice.
"Hello down there!" When I turned towards the inn, Roderigo was resting his arms on his windowsill on the second story.
"You're out of bed?"
His pale face looked cheery. Almost mischievous. "I have been for a while."
"I'm... glad to see it."
"It's a bright morning. Couldn't help but get up. I'm glad I did."
"Bright and cold. Close the shutters, or you'll catch your death." When he did, I threw myself into my dull task. My sore arms would regret it the following morning. At the time, it felt good to do something simple. Chopping firewood was a small achievement, something I couldn't do wrong, unlike speaking to Roderigo. After weeks spent wishing he would start talking in earnest, now that he was... all the charm that I used to deflect unsettling feelings was failing me.
"It's not that cold." Roderigo's voice came again, softer and closer. He stood on the inn's back steps steadily on his own two feet, a hesitant smile on his face. He was wearing the clothes I bought, and they made his trim body rugged and romantic. "I look good, don't I?"
I wiped my face with a sleeve. The air still bit, and sweat dried cold on my skin. "You do."
"You don't think it was foolish... to get up... without help?"
"No."
"It was like something unraveled inside me or some cage came undone, I felt so much stronger this morning I don't know why..." His voice trailed off. "These are comfortable." He stroked the material on his legs. "Thank you."
"That was the point of them." I said and picked up a pile of logs.
"Sorry to interrupt."
"Don't be."
He was quiet for a long time before he said, "How long have we stayed here?"
"A few days." My breath was coming in starts now. I brushed off the stump on which I'd been chopping wood and sat down. "You really don't remember?"
"I've been... solitary. More than a little... when you aren't listening to the world, everything kind of blends together, and time is less... less absolute. Sometimes that is a welcome thing. I haven't... been as ill, in body, as I've said I was. I just wanted... to be left alone, and you did that. But I meant it that this morning was clearer and brighter somehow, and I wanted come out to apologize and..." he choked off.
"Apologize? What for... sir?" I added the final word as an apology of its own. I did so whenever Roderigo's silence made me doubt the words I had just spoken. He flinched at the word as usual.
"I am many things, but I am not a sir..." Perhaps this meant he thought of us as equals. He'd never say so, but I could always imagine it. "Not now and not to you, not now..." His fists bunched in the fabric of his trousers, a deep red that looked warm as the embers of a fire.
"Why not now, Roderigo?"
His lips began quivering and his knuckles turned white.
In a moment I was at his side again, and placed my hands over his. "Roderigo – " I cut myself off, uncertain of what else to say beyond the sweet syllables of his name. "Are you alright?"
"Men don't cry."
"Where'd you hear that nonsense?"
He looked like a single tear would break him. So I started to tell a story. It was little more than embellished memory – and I even hate to embellish without cause. He breathed easier when it was done. He did not take my hands. Neither did he push them away. "Can I stay out here with you?"
"Yes, of course you can." He watched me in silence the rest of the morning; and when I went inside, he took the arm I offered.
No matter how strong Roderigo's body and soul grew, brilliant light no longer shone from his eyes. He smiled on the outside, and his smiles were still beautiful, but they were never deep. In order to draw happiness from him, I feigned some of my own and soon found it wasn't an act. The thrill that I felt every time he touched me, every time he smiled, didn't fade with time. An easy intimacy grew between us that made my heart race and believe there had to be something bright and golden still inside of him. Because if there wasn't, if I had imagined it, then I was a sodding fool, as Gonzalo would say, and a dreamer. I didn't want to have risked my life for a dream.
We traveled from town to town that winter and spring. I found work where I could. Time passed, and we spent it together. Roderigo was a dreamer, and his unwillingness to speak of his past did not mean he had little to say. By sundown of the day his mouth came unhinged, I found he had an opinion about everything – from the innkeeper's habit of twirling his wedding ring to the construction of the heavens, from the meaning of goodness to the meaning of love.
He confessed early on that our travels seemed "the sort of adventure that a boy in a gilded house grows up dreaming about." Those three months became a dream for me as well. Adventures and escapades I had done before. What was new and exciting was having a friend by my side. There had been other handsome men, with neat beards and bright eyes and skillful hands, who'd made my nights less lonely and other companions by light of day whom I had needed more than I'd loved. Never had I traveled so long with a dear friend. Later I counted up the days we spent together, but at the time I didn't want to. Every day was one closer to Roderigo's decision that he no longer needed me.
The first thunderstorm to hit after the shipwreck began, rip-roaring and rollicking, a month after Roderigo first walked without aid. He hated it. When he wasn't drumming the table with his fingertips, his toes tapped just as fast. He jabbered constantly, nervous and desperate to hear something other than the storm outside. He was talking about his childhood, a subject he'd never spoken of before, and I should have been drinking in his every word. But instead I itched to pin down his hands and feet and tell him to be quiet.
"...overhearing young men talking about their girls and realizing I knew nothing about it."
The tapping had ended. I looked up. "Nothing about what?" He blushed. "Oh, that," I let the word linger. "You don't have to say a thing."
"I'm ashamed, really." He shrugged. "If there's one thing a man's not…"
"It's a virgin." He cringed at the word, almost as much as he did at sir. "It's not an insult. It's just a fact."
"Certain it wasn't a fact about you, when you were my age."
My lips turned into a hard line, and I counted to ten slowly. I knew he did not mean to insult, because he knew nothing of what he was saying. I had not blamed him for his innocence before, and now would be a hell of a time to start. I cleared my throat. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in a sheltered life."
"There's nothing to be envied…" Roderigo looked away. "But I don't know a thing about your life... so I shouldn't have said that." There was an unspoken question in his silence.
"Is this something you want to talk about?"
A loud thunderclap followed a flash of light outside, and his fingers started tapping again. I put a hand on top of his to stop the noise. He pulled away.
"Sorry... just stop. Please?"
He nodded and started tapping his toes.
"Perhaps... if I were more of a man... I could have stopped..."
"The storm? No matter how many conquests a man has, he can't stop a force of nature."
"Then what's the point of it?"
"The point of... making love?" He blushed again and would not look at me. "The point of trying to be a man?" His toes tapped faster, and his breath came in starts. My patience wore thin and my voice rose to match the thunder. "I want to comfort you, Roderigo. Please tell me how."
"You can't. No one can stop a force of nature." He spoke peevishly, as if he half expected me to halt the thunderstorm at his request. "I want to run away, but I can't..."
His brown eyes met mine, and against all logic, I understood him. "If you can't run, had you thought of facing it?"
"Facing what?"
I walked out the tavern's front door. Roderigo waited at the table nursing his drink until he saw that I was running outside and had no intention of coming back in. He ran to the threshold and halted. "What on earth are you doing?" I was, in fact, taking off my shirt and my boots and running out into the rain.
"I said to follow me!"
"My clothes will be ruined."
"It's water, Roderigo." I lifted my face into the downpour. "It's beautiful. Come out... please." On that last word my voice became a plea.
He pulled off his boots and his shirt and walked down the creaking steps into the storm. The wind blew wet hair into his face. "Alright. I did it. I'm going back inside now."
I took his hand, and he let me lead him around the side of the inn and to a wide field that let us see for miles. The rain had turned the sky a milky grey and drowned out the colors on land. Through that mist, rolling hills disappeared into the horizon. He stared into the downpour without blinking. "You're right... it's beautiful." I let go of his hand, but he stood staring into the distance like he had grown roots to that spot. "Why is it so beautiful?" he sounded angry and as though he wanted to cry. I had been wrong, terribly wrong.
"I'm sorry..."
"Don't be. It's beautiful. It shouldn't be... but it is..." The wind picked up, throwing rain into our faces and blowing away Roderigo's frown. He closed his eyes and held up his hands. When he started to spin; I moved out of his way and stepped in a puddle. He shrieked when the cold water hit his legs and stomped, splashing back at me and laughing. I splashed him again. "Stop it," he said, giggling the whole time.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you."
He shoved me but his feet slipped and we both fell into the mud. I was afraid rolling on the ground would dampen his spirits again, but he wrestled with me, still giggling, until he pinned my wrists to the ground.
His face glowed, and the light in his eyes shone without restraint. A smile broke across his face. His fingers let go of my hands to run through my hair and trace circles in the mud on my cheeks until it washed away. He lowered his body to mine in a way that had not a thing to do with fighting. When he started drinking water from my lips, I unfroze, wrapped my arms around him, and kissed him back.
A bolt of lightning cracked the sky above us. Roderigo scrambled off of me, sputtering and held himself close. "P-please forgive me. I don't know what... came over me. Please just... forget this happened... I..." He started rocking back and forth. All desire to protect him deserted me, leaving only a burning frustration.
"For God's sake, if you want to cry, just let yourself cry, damn you!" I yelled. He buried his face in his knees and rocked back and forth. I wanted to shake him out of that tight ball. He thought that holding himself would protect him from whatever he was running from. He was wrong. "I mean it."
"What... am..." he gasped, "I... to do? What do you want... me... to do? I feel so damned helpless!" He slammed a fist on the ground, and water splashed high. "I hate it!" he screamed. His nose dripped with snot, and his fists slammed into his legs and into the ground. "I hate it! I did nothing and now I can do nothing. So what do you want me to do?"
My breath caught in my throat. If ever I had inspiring words planned, I couldn't remember them now. "I'm sorry, sir - Roderigo - please forgive me."
"It's not your fault. It's mine. It's all my fault." He wrapped his arms around his chest, but they slipped in the mud no matter how he tried to hold on. "All... my... fault..."