You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, dearie, but I’ve had what they call a checkered past.\u00a0 I know, I know, nice young girl like yourself wouldn’t be in a dump like this in the middle of the afternoon if it wasn’t raining and blowing so bad outside.\u00a0 You were right to come in and sit it out.\u00a0 Can’t keep up like that for long, now can it?\u00a0 Irish coffee, eh?\u00a0 That’s a good pick for a day like this.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What?\u00a0 Yeah, I guess you’re right.\u00a0 It’s not such a bad place.\u00a0 Only any bar in the middle of the afternoon has a kind of seedy feel to it, you know?\u00a0 That sour smell, like old stains.\u00a0 The clammy air.\u00a0 After dark, bars are more sparkish somehow.<\/p>\n
Where you work?\u00a0 I’m between jobs myself, though being between is beginning to stretch into just being, if you catch my meaning.\u00a0 I’m getting too old to work regular, anyway.\u00a0 Waitressing is hard on the legs.\u00a0 Varicose veins.\u00a0 My mother had ’em; grandmother, too.\u00a0 You can’t fight genes.\u00a0 I do mostly catered affairs now.\u00a0 It’s a little unreliable, but it suits.<\/p>\n
That’s a nice ring you’ve got there.\u00a0 I never had a rock like that, but I had a husband.\u00a0 Might still have him, for all I know.\u00a0 Never did bother to get a divorce.\u00a0 I would’ve had to find him first.\u00a0 I think of myself as a widow.\u00a0 Probably am.\u00a0 Yes, I’ve got good reason to suspect my husband’s dead.\u00a0 I had lunch with his murderer once.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure I did.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You heard right.\u00a0 Murderer.\u00a0 Won’t hurt to tell you, I suppose, being that it was so long ago and I’ll probably never see you again.\u00a0 Hell, you don’t even know my name.\u00a0 It’s Velma.\u00a0 Ugly, I know.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well, nice of you to say so, but you got to admit it’s old-fashioned.\u00a0 And country.\u00a0 My mother was a cracker.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A cracker.\u00a0 You\u00a0 know—white trash.\u00a0 That’s what they called us, anyway.\u00a0 Still do, I guess.\u00a0 I haven’t been back home in years.\u00a0 All cracker means from my side of the fence is that we were poor and we lived in a little falling-down house up a dirt road.\u00a0 Now, what’s trashy about that?\u00a0 Just because you have nothing doesn’t mean you are nothing.\u00a0 I know that now.\u00a0 Of course, when I was a girl, younger than you, I sometimes felt ashamed.\u00a0 Leastways, I felt I should run away if I got the chance.\u00a0 Even my mother said that.<\/p>\n
Lord, I was pretty then.\u00a0 I didn’t know how pretty, living like I did with so few other folks around.\u00a0 I found out fast when I came to the city, though.\u00a0 I got into modeling right away.\u00a0 Calendar stuff, you know, but some straight ahead work, too, with that big agency over on Market Street.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Yeah, that’s the one.\u00a0 Fuller figures were the fashion then.\u00a0 Mine fit the bill, plus I had the face of a schoolgirl.\u00a0 Men go for that.\u00a0 They like to think they’re breaking you in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oh, I wouldn’t leave yet if I was you, honey.\u00a0 It still looks plenty nasty out there.\u00a0 One more coffee ought to just do it.\u00a0 Don’t worry, it’ll let up soon.\u00a0 Any man would give you a diamond like that will wait.<\/p>\n
You know the man I mentioned?\u00a0 The murderer?\u00a0 I shouldn’t call him that really; I’ve no proof.\u00a0 It’s like when people used to call me white trash when they didn’t even know me or what I thought or what I wanted from life.\u00a0 I don’t want to be one to make assumptions like that.\u00a0 I’ll just call him my visitor.\u00a0 That’s all I can be sure of about him.\u00a0 Anyway, what I was going to say was I sat through a storm with him, too.\u00a0 And we both came out different at the other end.\u00a0 Don’t get nervous, though.\u00a0 You and me, we’re just two ladies passing some time and drying out our shoes.\u00a0 In a little while, you’ll put on some fresh eyeliner and pick up your briefcase and be out of here home free.\u00a0 I can see you’re not the impressionable type.<\/p>\n
Now me, I was very impressionable in those days.\u00a0 That’s how I got married.\u00a0 Charlie was a traveling salesman.\u00a0 But have no fear, this isn’t going to be one of those farmer’s daughter stories.\u00a0 He courted me proper.\u00a0 That is to say, he didn’t paw me or gobble at me like the boys at the high school dances.\u00a0 He was slick, that Charlie.\u00a0 Hey, I guess that’s why they call them city slickers.\u00a0 Never thought of that one before.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I say he was slick because he just talked and looked dreamy-like into my eyes until I was the one aching to paw and gobble.\u00a0 That first kiss, wow!\u00a0 You young folks today, you don’t know the spice of just kissing.\u00a0 You get it all mixed up right away with everything else.\u00a0 Leastways, that’s how it happens in the movies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You’d rather not enlighten me, eh?\u00a0 That’s okay.\u00a0 I’m glad to see there’s some modesty left in the world.<\/p>\n
You know what Charlie talked about mostly?\u00a0 Why, the city, that’s what.\u00a0 The lights of it and the hustle and bustle, the picture shows and people in their finery, the food from all over the world, the noise and heat of it.\u00a0 When I married Charlie, I thought I’d married the marvelous city he’d spread out before my imagination.\u00a0 I couldn’t wait to pack my bag.\u00a0 Only trouble was, Charlie thought he’d married the country.\u00a0 He was sick of the city.\u00a0 He bought us a snug little house on the edge of a tiny country town not twenty miles from my home.\u00a0 He went to the city all week and came to me on weekends.<\/p>\n
The weekends were fine, as far as they went.\u00a0 We spent them in bed mostly.\u00a0 Charlie could make me feel like the homecoming queen with the whole football team turning handstands to see which one could pleasure me the best.\u00a0 I spent every Monday putting salve on my sheet burns.<\/p>\n
I hope I’m not embarrassing you.\u00a0 Of course I’m not—you’re a modern girl, it’s written all over you.\u00a0 That diamond’s not for nothing, now is it?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sorry, didn’t mean to offend.\u00a0 You’ll let me finish my story, won’t you?\u00a0 I’d feel unhappy if you didn’t, like if you was to interrupt a condemned man during his last meal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thanks, I appreciate it.<\/p>\n
Well, those weekdays alone when Charlie was away, they were bad.\u00a0 Boring and lonely.\u00a0 No one could call me white trash any more, with my new house and store-bought dresses and furniture out of the best catalogs, but the satisfaction in all that wore down quick.\u00a0 Soon the weekends didn’t seem so grand either.\u00a0 Charlie didn’t want to talk about the city like he used to.\u00a0 He wanted to forget the city.\u00a0 That’s what I was there for, he said.\u00a0 Roll over and give us a smile, he said.\u00a0 I’m all you need, he said.\u00a0 Feel this and this, Velma, and this, he said, and you’ll see I’m all you need.<\/p>\n
My body wouldn’t let me nag at Charlie about moving to the city.\u00a0 My body\u00a0always went wherever Charlie wanted to take it.\u00a0 You’re like a cat in heat, he said, and he meant it as a compliment.\u00a0 But my mind started to wander.\u00a0 And though my body kept at its work, it wasn’t having so much fun after a while because my mind just wasn’t there.\u00a0 And you know something?\u00a0 Charlie never even noticed.\u00a0 That’s why I couldn’t feel guilty about anything that happened later.<\/p>\n
We went on for a year, maybe a little longer.\u00a0 Then my visitor arrived.\u00a0 I was reading a magazine one Friday afternoon, and for some reason I got up to look out the window.\u00a0 It was too early to watch for Charlie, and I wasn’t wishing him home anyway because we’d been arguing so much lately.\u00a0 But something called me to that window.\u00a0 I bent apart two slats of the venetian blinds and looked out to the lawn, and there was this man hunkered down behind the hedges next to the garage, like a kid playing hide-and-seek.\u00a0 That was my favorite game when I was little.\u00a0 I wonder if kids still play it.\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 Too busy with video games.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
No, I wasn’t scared.\u00a0 It was the boredom, I guess.\u00a0 Any break in routine was welcome.\u00a0 And remember, times were safer then, especially out in the sticks.\u00a0 Or they seemed safer, which is just as good.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Do?\u00a0 Why, I opened the kitchen door and called him in.\u00a0 This was in February.\u00a0 It was damn cold out there, and the sky was looking like snow.\u00a0 And him without a jacket.\u00a0 Just dungarees and a blue work shirt.\u00a0 Of course, as soon as he came in, I saw it was a uniform.\u00a0 The state prison was on the other side of the valley from us, not ten miles away.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Naw, I wasn’t scared even then.\u00a0 He looked so sweet in the face, and he wasn’t more than a boy.\u00a0 I found out later he was two years younger than me.\u00a0 My uncle and my brother both spent some time in jail.\u00a0 My uncle for bootlegging whiskey and my brother for stealing a car, so I knew prisoners could be just regular people that have been unlucky.\u00a0 I thought my visitor was that kind of prisoner.\u00a0 I never could come to believe what the sheriff told me later.\u00a0 Not in my deepest heart.\u00a0 To this day, I wish that boy well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What’d he say?\u00a0 Why, not much at first.\u00a0 There was no need to say he was from the prison; he knew his clothes said it.\u00a0 He was actually kind of shy.\u00a0 That’s what set me even more at my ease, I think.\u00a0 He was so shy and so worried, like a rabbit cornered by a hound, that it made me feel important, like I had that mean old hound on a tight leash and could jerk it away from him and set him free.<\/p>\n
I gave him some soup and toast.\u00a0 We talked about the weather, like strangers do.\u00a0 The weather, for its part, obliged by giving us something to talk about.\u00a0 A northeast wind came up, and it commenced to snow those big, wet flakes like you know will go on for hours and mound up into deep drifts.\u00a0 I told him how me and my brother used to sled down the hill behind our house on trays he’d swiped from the school cafeteria.\u00a0 He got broody then and mumbled something about his lousy childhood.<\/p>\n
I opened a fresh bag of Oreos for him, even though there were still some left at the bottom of another bag.\u00a0 It was silly, but I wanted to give him something special to make up for his having never gone sledding as a kid.<\/p>\n
We sat on in the kitchen eating cookies and watching the snow.\u00a0 It kept getting darker, but I didn’t turn on a light.\u00a0 He wouldn’t tell me his name, but he did tell me some more about himself, like how his dad, a pastor, had beat him all the time, both for things he’d done and for things he might have been thinking about doing, just for good measure.\u00a0 He talked about getting away to some big city where he could fade into the crowd, maybe get a job as a mechanic.\u00a0 He wondered could I give him a ride.\u00a0 Two towns over was a bus.\u00a0 The end of the line.<\/p>\n
Now, one of the most countrified things about me was that at that time I still hadn’t learned how to drive.\u00a0 Plus, Charlie had the car.\u00a0 But I assured my visitor that I’d get Charlie to take him to the bus.<\/p>\n
Let’s get you some clothes, I said, and I took him into the bedroom.\u00a0 I opened the closet and pulled out one of Charlie’s plaid flannel shirts and a heavy sweater I’d given him for Christmas that he never wore.<\/p>\n
The visitor took off his prison shirt and I rolled it in a ball and stuffed it in the wastebasket next to Charlie’s desk.<\/p>\n
He had no hair on his chest, which was real different from Charlie, who was almost furry.\u00a0 Now, I loved the feel of Charlie’s fur moving against my skin, but that boy’s smooth chest set my curiosity to sing.\u00a0 I saw by his slim hips that Charlie’s pants would never do, so I turned to my dresser and was digging around in a lower drawer of my things to find a loose pair of corduroy slacks I knew were in there somewhere.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Yes, you’re right to raise your eyebrows, missy.\u00a0 That boy come up behind me just as easy as hot butterscotch slides down vanilla ice cream, and before I could even straighten up all the way, he had both his hands full and the rest of him ready for business.<\/p>\n
I won’t go into detail because I see you’re looking for the door again, but let me just say that I was surprised but I wasn’t ungrateful.\u00a0 We didn’t even move away from the dresser for that first one, we were so much of the same mind.\u00a0 We opened our clothes, and I took him with us both still facing the mirror.\u00a0 I tell you, it was amazing the changes that washed through my features.\u00a0 I hardly recognized myself.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sure, Charlie got home.\u00a0 But not for a couple more hours. \u00a0 I’d tidied up by then, and we were at the kitchen table again, like two lambs, when Charlie come in.\u00a0 I gave him a long, wet kiss and pushed my bones against him hard, you know, and I could just feel both men throwing heat at me and each one being embarrassed to do it in front of the other.\u00a0 Then I served Charlie some soup in the same bowl the visitor used.\u00a0 Didn’t wash it first, neither.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oh, I told him he was my cousin, down on his luck and needing a ride to the bus.\u00a0 Wasn’t so far from the truth.\u00a0 He didn’t say anything about the sweater.\u00a0 That’s how I knew for sure he hadn’t ever liked it, no matter what he’d said when he opened the box.<\/p>\n
I didn’t feel like I was deceiving him, really.\u00a0 Charlie would never have understood about the prison, not having come from around there.\u00a0 He had different ideas about law and crime.\u00a0 He didn’t know what it was to always want and never get and to have your betters decide what little you were good for before you could hardly even talk.\u00a0 I knew that deep down Charlie didn’t really care to know about such things, so you might say I was following his own wishes.<\/p>\n
So, Charlie took him to the bus.\u00a0 The snow had stopped.\u00a0 I wanted him to wait ’til morning, but seems like neither of them felt too comfortable with us three spending the night under one roof.\u00a0 I was nervous on that myself, but I hungered after it all the same.<\/p>\n
Like my brother’s old hound who favored coyotes.\u00a0 Every once in a while he’d go out hunting a bitch, be gone all night, come back in the morning torn up and bloodied.\u00a0 Still, he’d go out again when the fever struck him.\u00a0 Romance is like that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That’s right—romance.\u00a0 I only had but that one my whole life, but one’s all you need to be an expert on it.\u00a0 There’s nothing neat and sensible about romance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What?\u00a0 No, never did see him again.\u00a0 Charlie neither.\u00a0 When he didn’t get back by the next night, I called the sheriff, mostly to keep on the right side of the law.\u00a0 Can’t say I missed Charlie much, though that first night alone, I felt mighty scared, jumping at every least sound, and in the country there’s always sounds in the night.<\/p>\n
Sheriff figured Charlie had run off on me.\u00a0 Though he didn’t see, he said, how a man could find complaint with a woman like me by the fireside.\u00a0 I tried to look flattered and sorrowful at the same time.<\/p>\n
The sheriff patted my shoulder and sucked in his breath like he was getting ready to dive underwater.\u00a0 We got a runaway convict somewhere, he said.\u00a0 He’s probably well away from this area by now, he said, but I’ll drive by the next few nights just so’s you’ll feel safe. \u00a0 You leave on the porch light, he said, should you want me to stop in.<\/p>\n
I nodded and made a weak little smile, like I was too filled up to talk.\u00a0 He liked that.\u00a0 Gave a big, old grin like a man on his way to the Thanksgiving table, and hitched his pants up over his beer gut.\u00a0 Don’t you worry now, he said on his way to the door, things will work out.<\/p>\n
I left town three days later.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well, sure, that’s okay.\u00a0 I’ll be leaving, myself, in a bit.\u00a0 Nice talking to you, too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hey, barkeep, one more glass of port here.<\/p>\n
No, I didn’t know her.\u00a0 She was just looking to come in out of the rain.\u00a0 You know how it is with strangers.\u00a0 They can get you going sometimes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“The End of the Line” was published in the journal\u00a0Women’s Words<\/em>, Maynard, MA, 1997.<\/p>\n
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