For ten hours that day we had pushed on through some of roughest country
in the world.
Arriving at the village just before dark had been sweet beca the sky was filled by cloud and thunder echoed up the va through air pulled tight.

We smoked tobacco after spreading out our gear. The fire soon burning brightly withing a circle of stones suspended sand from the black palm verandah. It looked like we were in a comfortable night at last after a few rough ones spent bene the canopy of rainforest. But that was not to be.

My charge was a young guy about twenty-one. A really ni fellow who kept telling me about his girlfriend back home, h he had never been away from her before and how much s would be missing him. It was easy to form a mental image them together at the pub or driving in his holden and it broug back strong memories of the woman I had parted from in rece time after several beautiful years. I envied his youth and t simplicity of the things he spoke. She would be there to m his home-bound flight.

Just as the light was being lost from the sky, rain fell as if t make up for lost time. Streams formed through the middle of th village and water poured off the thatched roof in a continuous curtain of water. It reminded me that i had stayed in that same hut four years before and how amazed I had been when the rain poured down just as it was again, and not one drop had penetrated that thatch.
 
Things change in four years, as if I needed reminding, and by then the roof was old and ragged. The rain spilled through a range of bad leaks while the wind that accompanied it sprayed the verandah with enough water to douse the fire.

I felt embarrassed for him as it became more obvious the direction of his dream. She was in his arms and they were making love, perhaps on the lounge at home or in a frilly suburban bed. Somewhere in heaven he was, and ! envied the effortless power of his mind.