Author: admin

Black ruffled dress, dark hat and ribbons flowing, one fishnet sleeve on the left arm, the right as bare as all sin, and hands as liquid love.  She steps into the fading rays of an overcast day looking out over the baked denizens of aural delight who appear for one show and witness another in the towering Goddess and her shorter white escort.  The pig-tailed delight grows tall, tall to heaven, and fills the room when there are no walls.  Smiles as she mingles in the crowd of onlookers and pauses when one of them wants a memento.  They all watch her walk along the path between the bodies, elegantly, and so easily that it makes them wish they could be as tall as the Goddess and hopefully half as beautiful in a tattered Victorian rag.  They never will, not like her, and she is blessed in this fact.

The trick to the grand show is in the crinkle.  No one notices, but that is where it is.  She looks down at a child as she looks down at a man and the crinkle at the corner of her mouth catches them all by surprise.  The Goddess smiles down upon them and they thank her silently.  It makes her like them and above them, above them all.

A little girl waves and the Goddess slows time as she waves back, left and right and right and left, fingers flowing as threads in space, and she is lost.  Visions of blinding sunlight and starshine filling her eyes.  A kingdom, far from here, far from now, and she knows that she is meant to be there.  She can almost reach it, high as she is.  It is there, and she can smell the burning embers of the warm fire that she must deserve for being here, and being beautiful and tall and elegant.  She does not just parade herself; she dwells among them.  She brings such joy into their hearts.  They love her so much and no one else understands that the Goddess presents the possibilities of endless beauty and in her steady lumbering stride she brings them all into her bubble, into her world.  She is good to them and they do not demand anything of her because they love her, even if they do not speak it aloud.

A mere thundering boom cracks the bubble, and a little girl’s attention is called to the stage back on the world’s surface.

Performers – men with guitars and women on tambourines – on stage to begin their show where the crowd begins to form upon them.  The grandest woman, the goddess, walks beside them, unnoticed and a distant memory.  A photograph, a smile, a caress of a hand – her remains among the people who dwelled in her space (for a time) and lifted her to great heights.  Her divinity crushed by so much interference and mic checks.

She dawdles along, out of view, and her companion closely in tow until they come upon a barren dirt-topped layover behind the food service tents.

“Hey,” says the Goddess.  “How’s your leg?”

The shorter white lovely reaches down, undoing straps one and the other, then lowers herself further until she is mere human.  She smiles up at the Goddess and touches upon her thigh.

“It’s not too bad, just needed time off the poles.”

“Yea, well don’t push it.”

She mustn’t, or risk not returning to her place in heaven.

“Yea I know.  I’ll keep off it this week, I promise.”  The woman, a deceptively small blonde beneath a curtain of powder, gathers her legs and walks toward the parking lot as she waves goodbye.

“You want to come?” she adds.  “I’m meeting Steph for dinner.”

“No,” says the Goddess.  “No, I’m okay.  I need to go to the store and pick up a few things.”

“Okay.  Call me tomorrow?”

The black-ruffled Goddess nods and says goodbye.

The sun rolls along the glass dome as the thunder above gets louder, and the cheers fill the air all around.  The Goddess’ strands fall free and slide across her face when the wind hugs her and urges her to stay where it can be with her.  She glances out across the top of the tents and sees a girl perched atop a young man’s shoulders, arms high in the air.  Beyond is a woman in a long coat coaxing a high-pitched screech from smoke-choked lungs.

The Goddess tells the wind “no” before loosening the straps and lowering herself.  The noises below envelop her further, all that she is.

Smiles and screams for the siren usurper.

Dirt gathers along the fringes of her dress; the woman in the black dress yawns.  What a glorious dream… what a glorious day.  Her feet ache and the red sheen upon her face reminds her of what she forgot.  She enters an empty tent and lifts her black bag from a pile.  The black dress, and the hat, and single fishnet sleeve come off.  Torn jeans and a t-shirt that reads TIDE then adorn her and make her more human than she cares to consider.  The ribbons in her hair fall to the ground as she shakes her curls loose and sighs through her nose.  Beer in a cooler keeps her company until she must leave.  Bitter and calming, like a sweet embrace from a hated friend.

When the day ends the workers dismantle the stage and ravel the cords, criss-crossing across the grounds where hoppers and dancers and arm flailers bounced to the music and lived for the moment.  As life resumes and the future beckons the revelers depart and leave behind the sense of wonder and freedom inside the beer cans, cigarette butts, and rumpled paper bags on the grass.

The woman in torn jeans and a t-shirt exits the tent and she is Mel.  No longer the Goddess… no longer above.  Long aluminum poles in hand, she exits the tent and waves to familiars on her way to the parking lot.  Her brown Honda Accord with the faded hood and red tape for a taillight does not beckon nor carry her on wings of golden feathered silk to the birthplace of light and the eternal loving embrace.  She drives among people, and cars, and dirty little animals, until she stops at a store near her home.

“That’ll be three-fifty,” says the clerk.

A bottle of sunblock in a bag on the front seat as she drives to her apartment over the hill on La Brea, near Hollywood where dreams go to die.  Near Hollywood where her boyfriend Kevin finds her tired and not in the mood.

“C’mon, Mel.  Look at you.  I don’t get why you keep doing this.  You come back tired and depressed every time.  If this stilts shit is so much fun why’re you always like this when you get back?”

“I know you don’t get it. There are lots of things you don’t get, Kev.”

“Look, I don’t want to get into a fight about this again.  You do it until you realize there’s no point.  I’ll support you…” her hair in his hand, “as long as you like.”  He kisses her neck and she turns away towards the television; there is a commercial for laundry soap.

“There’s always a point.  Good or bad, there’s always a point.”

“Don’t get poetic on me now, Mel, or I’ll really be lost.”  He sits beside her and holds her hand.  “You know I care about you, babe.  I just want you happy.  Is it too much to ask to see you happy?”

She crinkles the corner of her mouth and allows him to kiss her, softly then with increasing pressure.  He gets high along her thigh before she pulls away.  Kevin pleads and he charms; she relents.  Mel stares past his glistening ear and dark hair and she notices that a stain on the ceiling is shaped like a dog paddling along a lake, probably looking for a stick that was never there.

She said it would not take too long, all the make-up and the clothes and the hair, but it took too long.  Forty five minutes too long.  The barbecue would not miss us, but I would miss the first chance at the bacon-wrapped hot dogs.  Those don’t last very long at one of these barbecue events and they certainly wait for no man who waits for his girlfriend.  All I can do is idle in despair from the kitchen to the living room, occasionally glancing at the clock on the mantle to see if it matches the clock on my wrist.  Patience is not one of my virtues.

Nor, evidently, is memory.

Sylvia finally walks out and I’m reminded of why I never mind that she takes so long to get ready.  Her unusually shimmery brown hair (byproduct of a costly kitchen skylight) is tied back and away from her shoulders in a simple ponytail, which allows the purple sweater-blouse thing to show off what she knows she has in ample supply.  The black denim wrapped around her legs stretches and creases to the point of vulgarity.  As she nonchalantly approaches I note that her demure eyes and steady, low-heeled step show no sign of remorse.  Barbecue, even bacon-wrapped barbecue, means less to her than the presence and air of a beautifully tardy woman.

And yet, no matter the depth of my observations, I have to ask.

“What took so long?”

She smirks and picks up her oversized wallet.  “I could not find the address that you lost, and then I had to get directions online.”

I’m certain the humility on my face is missed as I turn away in a faint toward the door.  “It’s what I get for writing things on matchbooks.”

“Spending time at the bar, are you?”  More curiosity than accusation in her tone, but too much experience with the latter puts me on the defensive.

“Just passing time with the boss.  It got us invited to his house for this didn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says.  “It did.”  I hold the door for her and pretend not to notice the glare as she steps out into the sun.  The afternoon wanes and almost beckons us to the car for more moments of awkward bliss.

Car silence is unlike any other kind.  The space only allows for so much lack of sound to exist before it is echoed back, worsened by the proximity of sounds outside the car.  The honk of a horn is all too loud and the reverberation of every engine creates a very small space in which to sit silently and avoid speaking.  To prevent agitation at what should be a pleasant gathering I decide to burst the bubble.

“Do you suppose President Bush could have defeated the Batman during his presidency?”

She turns to look at me and I can feel the retort building, but being in our ripe old twenties we have learned to avoid the argumentative pitfalls that young couples fall into.  She gets my meaning and turns back to the windshield.

“Only if Bush conscripts Batman and fiendishly masterminds a plot in which Batman believes he is fighting a foreign enemy and unknowingly defeats himself.”

I tell her that I don’t believe Bush could have done that on his own.

“What did he ever?”  I see her smiling in the windshield.  My day is suddenly dramatically improved.  The sun’s rays are therapeutic, the honking horns are music, and the barbecue, bacon-wrapped or otherwise, will be that much sweeter.

My hand rests on her thigh as we sit in traffic and watch the backs of other cars.  She looks to the side, where fields of rooftops appear beyond the concrete banks.  Her eyes dart from one to the next, searching for one that could be like the one that will someday be ours.  Sylvia’s eyes behind darkly shimmering glass.  I squeeze the coarse black denim beneath my hand.  Her muscle flexes responsively.

The sun stares at us in the million-mile stretch.  More waiting.

“Give me your hand for a second.”

She turns to look at me, hesitates.  “Why?” she asks.  I still surprise her.

I tell her I’m curious.

Sylvia’s hand rises and hangs in the air, limp fingers pointing to the silent CD player.  Her hand is small, light.  Nails are manicured, crafted by a Korean artisan of local renown.  Tiny lines and wrinkles where the joints meet.  As I run my hand along the surface the fine hairs act as conduits, bring a series of moments into view.  Memories of a dip in the water before she dives in.  Holding a purse.  Gently nestling a glass between the fingers and cradling it on her palm.  A smile through orbed glass.  A fine hand, with many memories to its credit.

“Your hand is the start,” I say, moving further along her arm.  Slightly thicker hairs line her forearm.  Soft wrinkles on the inside of her elbow.  “It’s the start of the path.”  Up along her bare arm, toward the purple fabric that begins at her shoulder.  Her eyes follow my hand until she moves.

“No, no,” says Sylvia.  “We’re on hands.”  She takes me and moves me back down to the start.  Holds me still.  “We’re at the starting line.”

“Why?” I ask.  She purses her lips, and thinks.

I wait.

“To get a sense of where we are,” she finally says.

“To torture me,” I tell her.  I hold her and feel her palm with my thumb, gently kneading.  “Your hand is too enticing.  It pulls me into you, into your heart.”

She chuckles at me then. It only hurts a little, and I don’t allow it to show.  “You are too preoccupied with the heart,” she says.  “Right now, right here, just focus on my hand.”  She brings my hand back down to her thigh, placed over hers.

I tell her I’ll try.

Holding her hand I look at it, swaying forward as the car stops again.  It is then that I catch a glimpse of my hand over hers.  It is a worn hand.  Marks along the surface.  Veins.  Hair and tendons moving at the slightest twitch of a finger.  My unevenly colored hide in stark contrast to her smoothly pale skin.

“Look at my hand.”

“What about it?” she asks.

“Look at it.  There are wrinkles.  Hair.  Ridges and dents and scars.  It’s the ugliest hand I’ve ever seen.  How could you possibly allow me to touch you?”

She looks down at my hand and pulls away, repositioning her own hand over mine.  Most hands are warm.  Hers is searing.

“Because it is your hand,” she says.  “I don’t allow you to touch me.”  She turns and her lips brush against mine as she kisses the side of my face.

“I want you to touch me,” she whispers.

Reassurance.

She returns to her side and looks at me.  Several feet of asphalt pass underneath as we sit in pleasant silence, quite unlike the beginning of our drive.  A 65 MPH sign moves from the front to the side to slightly behind.

She holds me in her silence until she finally speaks.  “Your hand is yours. I’ve watched you use your hand.  I’ve felt you.  It is rough, and wrinkly, and hairy.  Your hand is yours, and after all this time it’s also mine.”  She brings my hand up to her chest.

“I could do whatever I want with my hand,” she says.

I nod.

She raises our hand to her mouth.  A gentle press of lips on hairy, dented skin.

“You don’t mind if I take this seat, do you?”

“No,” says Paula.

“Oh, good.”  The tall man smiles, and he is blonde, and he is older.  His suit screams of class; her clothes scream indifference.  It’s only a sports bar at ten-thirteen at night.

“A glass of Merlot, please.”  His order screams of class as well.  Paula’s beer is looking mighty dull at this point.  He is alone—no woman.  A business man.

He swirls the wine in the glass, takes a whiff.  “God, it’s so warm out there, isn’t it?”

“A little bit.”

He thanks the bartender for bringing the wine, then glances at the television she stares at.  The game’s over, and only highlights are played.  Night at a bar in the airport.  His face has lines and freckles.  It looks comfortably worn.  Friendly.

“So where are you headed?” she asks.

He turns back to Paula, smiles again.  Perfectly combed hair.  His shoes shine like the brass bar below them.

She hears D.C., and purses her lips as she nods her head.  “Good place, I hear.”

“Yea,” he says.   “It’s great.  Though it’s somewhat difficult to get around.”  Only in a bar, and only at an airport.

“How so?”

“Well, people drive like maniacs.”

“Don’t go to L.A.,” she says.

“Why?”

“Driving,” she says, “is not easy to manage.  Strange that it’s required of every human being within the county limits.”

He delivers an uneasy smile.  Too many beers already on her tab.

“Come now.  Are you perhaps being melodramatic?”

Paula is not being melodramatic.  He waits and then glances across the bar to the rows of bottles.

“Well, I have been there.  It’s not that the driving is bad, it’s just odd.  Likewise, D.C. is very odd.”

“What’s odd in D.C.?” she asks.

“Driving… the people.  Very pressured lifestyle, you know?  I’ll often just find myself walking on streets in the middle of the night to free the mind a bit.  It can be overwhelming.”  One of those.  Opens up easy, like a flower in the morning dewlight.

Paula says, “huh.”

He says he was visiting a sister.  Probably another Nordic beauty, like him.

“How was she?”

“Good.  She just recently moved out there.”

Her eyes are on the television.  The Lakers are not doing well.  A shame.

“So why is driving a pain in D.C.?”

“Ah well, everything is different.  I’m just not used to it, I suppose.  I tell my wife that…”

Wife.  Unimportant.  Something about a Mercedes.

The bartender says, “Your tuna melt and fries,” and she says “Wrap that up to go, please.  And give me a shot of Jack.”

Paula drinks the shot and smiles; she has to go catch her flight.  He smiles back and says it was nice to meet her.  The momentary pause of consideration and wonder is lost in an instant as a loud paper bag is dragged along a bar and placed in a messenger bag, destined for the overhead storage compartment of an Embraer ERJ 145 on its way to Seattle.

She sits in the airport terminal for forty-five minutes and watches the lights slowly roll by the window as the arrivals are taxied into position.

A dimly lit airplane in the middle of the night is a den of philosophers.  Travelers attempt to sleep as they reflect on the past and consider the future in the context of traveling aboard a time capsule.  They enter, they sit, and just as quickly as they take off, they arrive at their destination.  These people had lives and fly quickly back to those lives, but in the airplane in the middle of the night they are frozen.  The forty-four minds are momentarily contained.  The man in the brown waist-coat and spectacles reads the card detailing the airplane’s emergency procedures as if he intends to follow the procedures if the plane were to fall over the Cascades stretching north below them, as if he were not going to panic and groan to the Lord to save him.  The tanned German teenager and her boyfriend in the pink hooded sweatshirt talk softly among themselves, holding secret conversations and expressing what seem like hidden desires but are in actuality thoughts about the parents they left behind in order to take a vacation.  Paula, too, is deep in thought and passes the time by assuming and gleaning secrets about those around her.

Beyond a cough and a whisper there is silence, but silence screams loudest of all when every mind is abuzz with possibility and regret.  Those left behind are remembered and those waiting for them are considered.  The lights outside the window are few and far between, partially obscured by the engine located at the rear of the craft where she has been seated.  Thunderous noise is not so noticeable when it is constant, and the silence remains undisturbed.

They do not serve meals on this flight.

The bus stop in front of an empty airport terminal at night is mostly devoid of life.  Few people come and quickly go as they ride away in a taxi or hotel bus.  There is no bus or taxi for her.  She sits at the end of the curve in the road and watches the windows for approaching headlights from around the bend.

The air is cold here.  Paula wonders if pigeons fly at night.

Buildings are cold and lifeless and they are designed for efficiency, a trait that is as useless to the heart of the mind as wings on an elephant.  She is patient to an extent and impatient enough to sit, then stand, then pace from one end of the walkway to the other.  Time passes in hours at first, then minutes.

As she ponders an action and all possible reactions she rests her hand on a messenger bag and finds strange warmth.  Velcro tears open and inside is the wonderful smell of a tuna melt and fries.  Flashes of hunger spring into her and the plastic box is torn open.  Buttered bread, now soggy, slides into her hands.  The aroma of shredded tuna fish whipped and spread with a tangy mayonnaise across the thick toast fills her nostrils and cause Paula to raise her head to the air for a heavy dose.  A cold breeze blows through an aluminum bus stop’s slatted walls and moments later the tuna melt is in her hands and in her mouth, vanishing one bite at a time and difficult to swallow as she forces the clumps of softened food and wishes she had accepted the water bottle aboard the flight.  The tuna melt is gone in the span of a few minutes and the warm stale fries shortly thereafter.  She sits for a while as her esophagus is cleared and she returns to herself in the cold night at a bus stop at an airport.  Reality is mere fantasy when there is nothing to keep a person grounded.

As the cold surrounds her she reaches into a gray nylon sack and removes from it a white towel, using it to envelop herself in shallow warmth.  The white towel stands out against the surface of the night’s cloak, and she stares at the windows waiting for headlights that will never come.

“They’re always married,” she mumbles.

“Don’t know why?” she asked.  Ms. Potterson pointed anxiously at the clouds that had been cast over our little town of seven hundred thirty-seven for over a month now, sometimes raining down the dogs and cats and sometimes just menacing over like they were going to pick a fight but didn’t have the gall to go for the first shove.

“There’s no sun up in the sky!”  It was getting tiresome, to be sure, but what God did with his sky was not for us to judge, and even then some people started to feeling stressed over the whole thing.  All I was asking was why she looked so down, but I should’ve known better.

“Stormy weather,” I muttered.

She turned away and gathered one of those children of hers, the rest bundled up in that car outside like they lived out of the old jalopy. She caught me looking at that sad old sight and then turned her back to me, clearly agitated, and walked out. She paused just before stepping out of the shop and into that rain.

“Since my man and I ain’t together… keeps rainin’ all the time,” then she left.

It was getting on and even though the grayness of those days made it tough to separate morning from day and day from dusk, it was clear dark was coming on. I had to start closing up soon but everyone was always waiting ‘til church was up to get out and rush into the shops before they closed. Being close to the only grocery in town made it wrong to lock up too early, and I wasn’t the depriving type.

Barry Johnson, a plumber who lived on Willow (near the old mill before it got tore down back in seventy-eight), he was watching that whole scene with Ms. Potterson and sort of shrugged, because he knew what I did, which was folks were allowed to be bothered these days.  It was getting tough to get by here in town and only us old people and the kids too young to leave on their own were left.  Seeing that kind of gap in a community, whole generations missing like that, well, it made me sad to think about.  It was like when there were wars and we lost so many of the young folks, only this wasn’t no war against an enemy, just the times that we were in.

Barry walked up and dropped a loaf of bread and milk on the counter.

“Life is bare, gloom and misery everywhere.  Stormy weather…” and he trailed off when he heard the cash register ding open.  He tried to smile, sort of, and then nodded.  He reached around in his front pockets, to pull out his cash I gathered, but wasn’t coming up with anything.  He looked sort of concentrated like he was trying to will the money into his hand, but nothing.  I was worried he wasn’t going to have any cash and I’d have to have another tab on my hands (which ain’t easy to keep track of with so many as I had, try it sometime), but then his eyes lit up and he reached his right hand down into one those big side pockets that his Levi’s had on them.  It was the type those carpenters need for tools and nails and all, and in old Barry’s case it seems it’s where he kept his change.

He chuckled and said, “Just can’t get my poor self together.”  I smiled back as he counted the change in his hand and reached out to hand it to me, twisting his face a bit as he did.  He’d been having some wrist trouble and I should’ve known to reach over my own self so he wouldn’t strain it.

“I’m weary all the time,” said Barry, then he furrowed his brows like he was trying to remember something as I pulled out his change. Maybe he’d finally remembered that he had my lawn mower (the Craftsman, mind you, not my old Honda that I’d had to use since he borrowed my good one).

“The time?” he asked, and I was tempted to ask about my lawn mower right then, but those kinds of things are better discussed during the week (and I made a note to myself to ask him that following Monday, believe you me).  I pointed to the clock on the far wall and he looked over and nodded, then took his change, the loaf of bread, and milk, and put them all in that sack of his.  He saluted to me (a queer sort of greeting and goodbye he’d taken to, which I thought was right respectful if anything), and headed out into the rain.  As he walked out I noticed the queue to pay was longer than the number of people still picking out items, and I quickly pointed Andy over to the door to flip the sign to CLOSED.  He had been stacking empty boxes over by the door and was used to waiting for me to tell him when to close as dusk came on.

I then heard a sniffle, and “… so weary all the time.”  It was Mrs. O’Haley, mulling over those words of Barry’s.  She knew what they meant, given the time she’s had with those medical bills after her daughter, Lorrie, got the back surgery.  Poor kid had fallen off a horse.  Didn’t help any that her dad was in prison (who is not Mrs. O’Haley’s husband, another gentleman she was with before moving into town), riding out a sentence he got for selling those damn drugs near Johnny’s by the train tracks.  He was no good for her, or anyone, but she’d gone on with him probably just like she’d gone on with that old husband of hers, except this time she got saddled with a kid, good kid mind you, and all the tribulations bound to come up.  We got to talking about it once, as I helped her move her groceries into her car.

“Since he went away, the blues walked in and met me.”  I guess it was more she got to talking and I just moved the bags into the back of her stationwagon, me not being the talking type and all.

“Since he stays away, old rocking chair will get me. All I do is pray the Lord above will let me walk in the sun once more.”  Suppose it was sort of poetic, what she was saying then, though not being one for all that flowery nonsense I never did bother with it.  It’s just that with the weather we’d been having lately it seemed more appropriate than any thought I’d conjure up.

“Can’t go on, everything I had is gone, since my man and I ain’t together…” and she kept it up until I was done with her bags and clanged the bottom door of the stationwagon shut.  She smiled politely and stepped toward her door, sort of stopped to look back at me, maybe to apologize or explain her rambling, I don’t know, then just waved and left.  Mrs. O’Haley, young as she was, would find herself a good man, I knew it.  Even if he wasn’t here in town, and if it took her a lifetime, she’d do it.

Anyway, Lorrie’s surgery had been done in the city since the only doc in town was not near learned enough to do that kind of thing.  Lorrie was sort of mobile now, using crutches and all, and Mrs. O’Haley had told me that the city doctors had told her she’d be having a tough enough time walking let alone riding horses.  Poor kid.

Mrs. O’Haley was buying some carrots, peas, noodles, a few chicken breasts, and some bouillon cubes, and as she stacked the items her wet coat was dripping water all over the counter.  She looked at me exasperated and said, “stormy weather.”  I just shook my hand and brought out the old rag I kept under the counter to wipe the moisture off .

“Keeps rainin’ all the time,” I told her.  “Keeps rainin’ all the time.”

She smiled again, a pretty sort of smile, in a more mature way, and paid what she owed.  I was getting her change out and she brought her hand to my arm, patted it gently, and shook her head.  We played this every time, me getting her change, and her refusing, telling me to keep it because I’ve been as kind as I have to her, helping her out when I can.  At first I was refusing every way I could, of course, but we’d been here for some time now, and I just played my part so she could play hers.

By and by we got through the remaining customers: Mabel Bernstrom (Doc Bernstrom’s wife); Lefty; little Rita Huxley (girlfriend of the captain of our high school’s football team, the Badgers, and in fact same team Andy was on); George Winston; Ms. Durand (one of the few young teachers still in town); and, surprisingly, Lola Baxter.  She lived up the block and never, ever came in herself, always asking for Andy to come by and drop off her groceries.  She was in her nineties somewhere so we were glad to do it, but now here she was, our last customer and looking as spry as any old body I’d seen in there today, especially with that weather outside.

I grinned as she brought up what she was buying: Happy Soup for the Heart and Soul.  It was something we were ordering out of Cincinnati and I liked the name of it more than anything, but I’d tried it myself more than once and it was right good, so we kept stocking it.  They’d recently started putting some kind of songs or something right on the labels, which I got a kick out of even if I wasn’t into that flowery stuff, and sometimes I’d just sit on the box and read the labels when the new shipments came in every month (not many folks bought the stuff, you see).

Lola Baxter came up with two cans, one of which she held onto so she could read: “I walk around, heavy-hearted and sad.  Night comes around and I’m still feelin’ bad.”  She chuckled and handed it to me so I could put it in the bag for her.  She wasn’t even wearing glasses when she did that.

I picked up the other can and read: “Rain pourin’ down, blindin’ every hope I had,” then just sort of scratched my ear and placed it in the bag with the other.  It’s amusing that they put this stuff on soup labels, but they ought to at least make it a bit more cheersome.  Those particular cans weren’t doing much for my soul, not much at all.  She shrugged, Lola Baxter did, and whistled as she handed me her coins and I gave her the change.  She seemed even more cheerful than I’d ever remembered, and walked back out into the rain toward her house up the block, her bag held under the big shawl she’d come in with.

Well by the time I’d finished with the customers, Andy’d finished with the rest of the shop.  We’d gotten our routine down so good that I never had to tell him anything, that kid.  I surely would miss him when he left to college in a couple years, and probably for good.  He was another clean-faced bright kid, who had more to offer than shop boy in a town like this.

Andy would normally ride his bike off after work, probably to visit Jean, his girlfriend of some odd years, but today he asked me if I’d give him a ride home.  Sure, I told him, and we got into my old Mercury Marauder (still sharp and powerful as the day I’d bought her, better believe).  Andy lived over on Woods Drive, on the other side of town, so I rightly guessed, I’m sure, that he wouldn’t want to ride a bike around in this rain.  I wondered about it as we wrestled his bike into the trunk of my car, which thankfully fit since I’d just cleaned out all the miscellaneous nonsense that I’d gathered up in there.

We got going and I don’t like guessing about folks so I asked him about it, him needing a ride.

“This pitterin’ and patterin’ and beatin’ and scatterin’…” he said, and I nodded.  Some believe rain is a calmative but too much of it has just the opposite effect to my mind.  Drives one wacky in the obscene amounts.

“Drives me mad,” said Andy, almost like he was reading my thoughts. He seemed down, more than the usual kind of down most folks were, so I figured I’d change the subject.  I asked him how he and his girlfriend were doing, and if she was going to make it out to see Andy and the rest of the Badgers play against the Wildcats the following weekend (not here of course, but over in Fitchburg, where it wasn’t raining every day).  Andy just looked on out the window and didn’t answer right away, and I was going to ask if he’d heard me, but didn’t get a chance to.

“Love, love, love…” he said, real sarcastic.  I asked what the problem was and he got into how Jean had broken up with him.  I figured they’d had some row over something, but turns out Jean just wanted a boyfriend who had a car.

“Love…” he said, again.  “This misery’s just too much for me.”  I patted him on the shoulder as we crossed the bridge onto Woods Drive and up to the curb.  He thanked me and apologized for being so dreary but I told him to think nothing of it, and not to worry over Jean.  He’d find himself a nice, pretty girl in no time at all, football star and good guy as he was.  He smiled lopsidedly and then got out, telling me to stay in and keep dry.  He got his bike out of the trunk then waved at me through the sideview before disappearing around the side of his house.

For the ride home I figured I’d take the scenic route, since I was out on this side of town and all, and I drove up from Woods Drive to Middlefield, which cut through the old cotton fields and then looped around along the ridge that overlooked the town.  From there I could see it all, from the one end of town to the other, all the lights just starting to come on as the last brightness of the day faded down to dark, made even darker by the clouds blocking out any chance of moonshine getting down to us.  I hadn’t driven by this way in a while, and I remembered how Marie and I used to stop along here for picnics, back in the old days, when we were young and inseparable.  It reminded me of why I stayed, the purpose of it.  Some people had diamonds and photographs and such, and I did, too, but I had more than that to help me remember.  I had every house and every tree, the whole town, reminding me of those days when we were happiest and the most trouble was getting ice cream off our hands after spending too long making out on a summer day.

Eventually the road came back down and houses appeared again, until I was in the thick of the old part of town.  Houses here were more rundown, though still respectable by any right.  I was about to turn onto Randall to head back toward Main when I heard a loud explosion, least it seemed as such, and I was sure the engine had started acting up again, except immediately after I started to feel the road grinding up under my rear end and realized that I had blown a tire.  I stopped to look out and sure enough, the rear driver’s side whitewall was out for the count, flat as a pancake.  I got out then and went to the trunk to fetch the spare.  Of course my rain-addled brain had forgot that the old spare tire was one of the things I’d taken out yesterday, looking to replace it in case a thing such as this happened.

I ran back into the car and sat down then thought for a bit about what I’d do, figuring I’d have to knock on someone’s house here to get to a phone, when she appeared.  Mrs. O’Haley, in the same dress she’d been wearing earlier and an umbrella, was at my window, knocking lightly.  I rolled down my window to listen to her explain that she’d heard a loud noise and came out to check, and that the big lavender house on the corner was hers.

“Can’t go on,” I said.  “Everything I had is gone.”  I pointed out to the empty trunk and she nodded and pulled at my sleeve for me to get on out of the rain.  I locked up and followed her onto the porch where we shook off what we could, then she invited me into the hall so that I could use her phone.

“Stormy weather!” I growled, because I’d had just about enough of all this.  I didn’t mean to scare her or nothing but I was just plain angry now, angry that Andy’d been broken up with and soup labels had melancholy sayings and Barry was hurting for a proper set of jobs (which you’d think the rain would help with and not make more difficult), that Ms. Potterson and Mrs. O’Haley were alone, and that my Marauder, beautiful car I tell you, was out there getting worn down by all that damn rain.  She opened the screen door to the living room and let me in, with me apologizing all the way for being so damn ornery and stepping all over her nice rug that way I was.  She told me to forget it, and showed me where the phone was.

As I dialed the number she asked if I’d had dinner, and I told her no, though it wouldn’t take me long to cook up some of yesterday’s fried chicken (which I’d bought from Johnny’s, because although it was a place for scoundrel types his barbecue and fried chicken were top of the best).  I think she was going to say something else when Mack at the gas station picked up.  I told him I needed a tow from Randall to my place because of that flat, and he said sure, though he’d just sat down to dinner with his two kids.  I wasn’t going to go rushing him out here so I told him not to worry, and to come and look for me in front of Mrs. O’Haley’s when he was ready.

I’d just put the phone down when Mrs. O’Haley asked me to stay for dinner.  I was feeling right improper just then, imposing on a single lady and all, not to mention making a mess of her nice rug, but Mrs. O’Haley, she wouldn’t have it, and took my hand in hers when she insisted I stop being ridiculous.  It was soft, her hand, but sort of foreign, like a warm blanket after it’d been warmed up by someone else.  I told her I didn’t feel right, this kind of impropriety, but again she told me not to be ridiculous.

“Since my man and I ain’t together,” she said.  I sort of pursed my lips and took her hand, which she used to lead and set me at the table in her kitchen.  Lorrie came in and smiled, saying she was glad to see me, and apologizing to her mom for not being able to help set the table. Mrs. O’Haley just shushed her and went on about finishing dinner as we sat quietly.  Mrs. O’Haley was a spitfire, no doubt.

Lorrie and me sat and listened, least I did, to the pot in the kitchen bubble up, and Mrs. O’Haley click her shoes on the tiles as she walked from chopping vegetables and back to the pot.  The sound of the rain outside was getting louder, loudest I’d heard it I think.

“Keeps rainin’ all the time…” said Lorrie, and I nodded.

“Keeps rainin’ all the time.”

It had rained.  The ground along the path to Jasper was particularly sopping.  Luis pulled his boots and mud-coated trousers from the earth as he turned onto the thoroughfare that crossed through town.  Slick mud and puddles would be a common sight for another month, possibly two, but today’s puddles were from the night before.  The storm was departing and as he crossed the floorboards in front of the post office, Luis developed a lithe spring in his step.  There were no clouds.  There was no work.  It was a Sunday, and he was a man with a purpose.

In the alleyway between the post office and the arms shop, he was accosted by a broad-shouldered figure.  Luis quickly recognized the shadow whose beard draped over the rough fabric of a well-worn cotton shirt.  Gray hairs shown through the gaps that ivory shirt buttons once adorned.

“Hold up now.  Where ya off to in such a huff?”  Luis backed against the wall to get some distance between himself and the old man, who was close enough for Luis to see the dried soup clinging to the corners of his grin and beard.

“Just walkin’, Old Barnaby.  Nothin’ special.”

The grizzled beard brushed at the younger man’s dusty sleeve and turned his head down to the end of the thoroughfare.  The general store was opening.  A click and slurp emerged from his mouth as Old Barnaby turned back to Luis and placed his long arm around his shoulder.  “Come on, son.  I’m goin’ that way.”

Luis immediately shook him off, his face indignant.  “I don’t need no geezer walkin’—”

“Ya shut yer mouth and show respect, boy!”

Luis recoiled at the outburst.  The old man’s face was as decrepit as before, and there was no sign of anger.  The comment was then swept away as quickly as it had been released.  Luis allowed Old Barnaby to lope ahead of him a few steps so that he could regain his composure.

“Ya need to grow up,” said Old Barnaby.  “Kind of man are ya?”

Luis scratched his head and turned to look at him.  “Law says I am and I grown up enough already, so I’m a man.”  He squinted as he turned away from Old Barnaby to the corner where the grocer was sweeping the floorboards in earnest.

“Just can’t say what kind.”

Old Barnaby shook his head and let out a deep groan from passing gas, or possibly disgust.  “See,” he began, “that’s what I mean.  If another man questions the kind of man ya are, ya don’t start talkin’ about it.  Ya look that man in the eye and tell him yer the kind of man who’ll clear out a couple of his front teeth if he don’t shut his trap.”

“So ya want me to hit you?” asked Luis.

Old Barnaby raised his brow and continued his steady pace toward the end of the path.  “Ya do and ya’ll find y’self in the pile of horse shit we’re passin’.  Now tell me, kid.  Where do ya find yerself going with s’much intent?”

“General store,” said Luis.  “Going to meet a gal there.”

“Of course, of course.  A bit of the hokey pokey, ey?”  Old Barnaby chuckled as he croaked out the word “pokey.”

“No sir, none of that.  She don’t know I’m sweet on her yet.”

Old Barnaby paused for a moment and squinted as if trying to see into Luis’ head.  “She don’t know?  That ain’t no good.  Ya have to show her.  Talkin’ won’t do much when yer too scaredy to get close.  Have to show a woman ya have confidence.  Let her know yer interested, and more importantly,” he added at the waggle of a finger, “let her know that ya know she’s likin’ ya.  Don’t matter if she knows it yet or not.  She’ll come to see it.”

“But ain’t that like forcin’ myself?”

“No, kid, no.  What’d I tell ya about bein’ a man?  A man knows when he’s bein’ persuasive and when he’s been a poor Christian.  A difference, y’see?”

Luis shook his head.  “Not Emma, no sir.  She’s real smart.  She’ll know I’m bein’ fresh.”

Old Barnaby shook his head as they passed the general store, where he managed to take a couple of plums from a wooden fruit stand.  Luis paused to look at the stand when Old Barnaby grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along.

“Here, kid.  One of these a day’ll keep the teeth white as a bone.”  Luis took the plum into his hand and glanced at the windows of the store anxiously.

“Ain’t that apples?”

“What’s apples?” said Old Barnaby.

“For teeth.  Apples’re for white teeth.”

The old man suckled a piece of plum into his mouth.  He slurped the juice that seeped from the wound as he muttered, “I don’t like apples.  I like plums.”

Plums in hand, they made their way to the side of the general store where a young woman of seventeen or so emerged from around the corner onto the thoroughfare.  She held the hems of her blue dress in her hands as she stepped across the muddy avenue, her eyes fixed on the storefront.  The shadow from the bonnet she wore partially concealed her face, which became clearer and clearer until Luis could make out the dimples of her cheeks and smattering of light freckles.

“That’s yer gal, is it?” said Old Barnaby.

Luis nodded and deftly bit into his plum, watching as she moved closer to the men while crossing the street toward the general store.  He forced down the plum in his mouth before discarding the remainder into the mud.

“Wastin’ a plum, y’fool.”

“Yea,” muttered Luis.  Old Barnaby watched as Luis straightened his shirt and swept the dirt off his trousers, ready to advance.

“All right, son.  Just mind what I told ya.”

“I will.”  Luis stepped forward to meet her as she approached the storefront floor.  He bunched his fists and grimaced slightly – sweaty palms were inevitable.

“Um, mornin’,” said Luis.

“Good morning,” said Emma.  Luis gazed at her in silence.

Old Barnaby shook his head and bit into the plum.  “Goddamn kids,” he sputtered, and stepped out onto the fresh mud.