by Paul Hawkins
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I have moved to a smaller village. It is too small to be on the map. A missionary told me about it while I was fixing his car. The missionary tried to Christianize me in the born-again stripe and I tried to repulse him, but in the end we became friends. We discovered our friendship when we both agreed that white women are crazy. It is important to make friends in these last days. The last days are a dangerous place to be a Christian, but at least now if he dies he cannot blame it on his car or for that matter on his stupid motorboat. I do good work.
And so I agreed to follow him out here to this small village where people need stuff fixed if he promised not to try and fundamental-ize me. I am already Christian but can't prove it to his satisfaction. But I can fix cars and other things and he said they could use a man like me and so I followed him here to this quieter place, and I am useful and I am happy. I fix old cars and radios. It is fun work. It is satisfying work. I work with my hands. Here, they are not rich. Here, they still have old things. There are several cars from the 1950's, stuck in time, like I am. At first I tried to teach English, but I am no damn good at that.
After a few weeks, I met a Maria.
Well, I met a kind of a Maria. She is different from the girls my friend tried to fix me up with in the city. She is warm and caring and I love her. Of course she is not the same as Maria. There will never be a "we" made of she and I again. The trouble is I will love her until the world is unknit and reknit.
But dwelling in the past is death. Instead, we are here, and life is good solely because we are hopeful in a world that seldom merits hope, but because we hope we dare to want something bigger than this world can hold, except in the small things. We laugh at it. At night, on our porch, as twilight is casting itself into gold and red, my girl and I, my Marguerite, we laugh at it. We laugh that they say I am too old for her. But I am not that old - and if she were to tell the truth, she is not that young.
There may be a life after this, and in it, all things that are good and that were good may be, and I will be with everyone living and dead, and my heart will have no wound but will remember its wound precisely to prove I was alive, and I will be free.
From Rosalind’s Journal
Blaise is gone and Jude is gone. Janet is gone and Tess is gone, and their old man died years ago.
The land where their house used to stand has already been razed and planed and completely transformed. A strip mall sits there now, still new, with tape on the windows and smelling of paint. Its parking lot is still roped off and bright and drying. Someone has projected their ambitions on it, their hope to thrive.
The new hospital and churches are rising. I can’t even picture Boheme anymore. In fact, except for the bait shop, the whole land looks different. Ray Jr. will not sell his bait shop; it is an eyesore amidst the new anticipated growth and splendor. I foresee an inevitable showdown with people who enjoy the words “eminent domain.”
I have opened Fashion Shots II in the new mall. It gets a surprising amount of business, because, as Blaise once said, there are no stories of our lives. People always want to be who they are not. They always want to be one thing greater, one thing more interesting, so I give that to them.
I just found out that a pistol I have mistaken for a prop for decades is the real deal. I have carried it in my purse under the illusion that I would use to fend off would-be robbers. Well the other day I pulled it just for fun and shot out the bait wells at Ray Jr.’s. It put a pulse in my heart I had not felt in twenty years, and it caused Ray to blurt out that Dale Charboneau has been asking about me.
I don’t know - I like my business and my city, but I can’t help but think they have built out too far. Damn it’s all so shiny and clean out here now. I suppose I grew to like living on the fringe of things.
The other day I got a postcard from Blaise saying he’d figured out a cheap way to return to the Moon. He’s a nut, but hearing it from him, with his enthusiasm, makes me think it just might work. In his mind, in his world, lots of improbable things can work. Or at least seem to for a while. And why not think otherwise, until it’s time?
From Dale Charboneau’s Journal
It is not good that man should be alone. And Rosalind looks like she’d be good at chopping wood. A man aint free unless he can build a fire without matches.
I reckon I’d like sitting by the fire with her at night, just me and her and the stars.
### The End ###
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