Final Week Count-Down: Random Excerpt #2

I’ve been so caught up with writing and rehearsals that I completely forgot I was going to post regular excerpts here.  So I decided to make up for it by posting one a day for the final 6 days of NaNoWriMo. Looking over the previous passage, I realized it was far too long for a blog post, so these will all be short and easily digestible (like cookies; although given the complete lack of either context or editing, cookies that fall into the “how did these get here, and why do they have a sign saying ‘eat me’?” category).

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Sometimes, in a good moment, when the sun emerged from behind the clouds and kissed the world so the grass shone green once more and winks of blue hinted at a real sky, when the puddles lay like pools of light and the telephone wires caught fire and stretched before him along the road in looping lines of molten gold – then, and only then, and only sometimes, he would remember his name.  He could no longer be sure whether the name belonged to the man in the dreams, or who he had been before the long walk began, when he had other men at his side, and at his back, but it was a name nonetheless, and so better than nothing.

In these moments, he would say it out loud, relishing in the sound of it, despite the hoarse, cracked, phlegm choked sound of his voice.  He would say it over and over, matching it to the rhythm of his steps, the beat of his heart, the drawing in and exhaling of breath, the sound his boots made against the gravel, or the packed earth, or the asphalt.  He would repeat it until his voice cleared, until the wretched, tortured sound of it smoothed, morphed into something that sounded like a real voice.  He would continue to say it, until his voice began to grown hoarse and dry once more, and then he would stop, and take a draw on his canteen.