They'd watched her arrive, the high cheek-boned girl, and what they'd seen (bright, flowery couches, two dogs, two medium aged boys struggling with the weight of a wooden box of record albums) they decidedly did not approve of. What's she want living here, no kin? running from something, got to be. Minuscule amounts of information were jawed into pulp: the bookstore owner claimed she'd wanted to order a thesaurus in Spanish (for what, for why?) but special orders were Christmas only; an Albertson's clerk claimed she bought cheap jug wine and when the Welcome Ladies inquired as to whether her boys were enrolled yet, in school, she'd shrugged and said, no, they don't go to school, haven't, won't.
They'd watched her leave, watched her intimately conversing with the older boy, shoulder to shoulder, heads bent. Twenty below that week, they both rubbed their hands and blew frosty breaths while covering the load with blue tarps and bungee cords. So cold it hurt to do more than squint but still she tossed sticks to the dogs. When the Hamm's beer truck squeaked past on the snowy road, she'd turned her face toward them and they'd seen cheek bones, chapped lips and the eyes of her two sons staring back.
Outsiders had come and gone before, and whatever their particular high hope, it was always chewed up and spit out, not from any cruelty, necessarily, only matter-of-fact logic. There would never be any industry, tourism, culture, no commerce to speak of, save that which was already distributed, but the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed continued to flock in, only to flock the fuck back out. But never in the history had someone come and gone so quickly, two weeks, twenty below.
The weather, generally, could not be defied, it simply wasn't logical, and logic, goddamnit, had made their small town the prize they cherished, protected, from whining animal-loving, tree-hugging faggots and the mothers who'd made them that very way. Arriving anytime, winter, spring, summer, fall, didn't matter, winter, the torment, the utter fatal cold, could strike at any moment (snow on the Fourth, the latest frost late June and the earliest in August, middle, late, so BUY your tomatoes, it was only something to keep the OLDTIMERS busy, anyway).
Flocking in they all, everyone of them, flashed huge, white, big-city-health-plan smiles, full of bravado, full of plans for renovations and restorations and rehabilitations and sometimes it took YEARS before their eyes finally LOWERED while shopping at the store, ashamed, well, what WERE you thinking?
Someone said they'd seen her gathering wood at the mill where they threw the scraps out each day, the dump truck backing up in a sawdusty rush. By that time of year it couldn't have been much, popsicle stick-sized pieces, left over from the mousetraps the mill contracted. Three pairs of identical eyes, chapped hands, they scrambled, gathering, filling a wooden box, the kind that may have stored old record albums. Then, the fire, they'd watched that, the flue fire, idiots to not foresee that the hose would be frozen and the younger child throwing snowballs, high, high towards the chimney, the wailing of the fire truck. But it had gone out by then. They'd scrutinized for slumping shoulders, but discerned no noticeable difference.
Two weeks, dear mother of God. Winter lasted until the third week in May, plenty of time to trade observations. Seemed as though everyone seen'd her somewhere; she'd run into the Stockmens' around the 12th, slammed a couple down, hunched, jogging home through sleet; a silhouette at dawn (from the utility company manager who'd arrived to work as always at five o'clock in the a.m.) swaying? dancing? drunk, still? his scope-perfect view straight through her front window as he stood outside smoking, flowery couches in the background.
Filling up her rig with gasoline, cash, charge?
"Oh, cash. Honestly, how could you really think so?"
Washing her windshield, Paul had reckoned she seemed skitterish, yes I would say so, nervous, definitely, about something. Who knows?
The wife of the man of the cousin whose kid was the next ELVIS (did you happen to catch him on that Nashville station?) who'd, tragically, played Russian Roulette with a tad bit too much seriousness January the First after his gig JUST THE NIGHT BEFORE at the Elks, claimed to have spoken with her at the library (she was only reading, nice boys, they sat quietly) and said she'd looked up from her reading and asked, can a person make friends here?
Two weeks. She hadn't even tried. In their thoughts she tumbled off an unexpected dark and icy corner while crossing Cabbage Hill, the truck unexpectantly shifted from the weight of one sleeping boy upon another. In their thoughts she was one pushed out, forced, abandoned, running. But then, in their thoughts she never existed at all as they shot craps at the YOU AND ME CLUB weekly at the Elks, and in their dreams she copulated freely and produced dozens of high cheek-boned babies, none of whom subjected their fathers to interrogations, rebellions, or other forms of forced vicissitude.
In their dreams in the days that followed, and then the years, she grabbed their bent bodies tight, whether strung out or lit to the hilt, and smothered their screams with soft, hot kisses.
Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine, 1999
