Short story : Estranged

11 September 2000

After the divorce, my wife said she didn't know who or what she wanted to be. When I heard that she had become a toaster, I felt vindicated.A toaster! Was that all she could be without me? And she wasn't even good at it. She could only do two slices at a time, and they came out charred on one side and white on the other. Obviously, she was the one with inadequacies.

True, I was unemployed myself. But a toaster! I would never fall as low as that. I would take a job as a human being, or I'd stay on the dole.

Later, she worked as a hotel washing machine, then as a high-capacity dryer until she was demoted. She became one of those laundry hampers with four wheels and a canvas hopper. Finally, she lost even that job.

Soon, however, I felt less and less like gloating. I still couldn't find any work at all, no matter how I tried.

I next saw her while on my way to an interview for janitorial work at a hospital. She was in the parking lot, backed into a reserved space. And she was stunning.

There was no mistaking her, even with all the changes. She had white sidewalls. Her body was lustrous teal everywhere but on the inward curving white panels that streaked back from her front wheels. Her chrome sparkled in the sun.

I just stood there in front of her, searching for something to say until a man came out of the hospital and walked up to her."Beautiful, isn't she?" he said, fitting a key into her door. "I restored her," he said, "built her up a little from her original 283 small block, gave her some juice. Dual-Carter-carbed. You know cars? Want to see under the hood?"His generosity made me uncomfortable. "No."

I hadn't noticed the plates until now. They said "MD." He was a doctor.

"She's the finest 1960 Corvette on the road," he said, patting her roof affectionately.

She was older than that. But damn if she didn't look 1960.

"She used to be mine."

"What?"

"I said she used to be mine."

"I know something about her history," he said, trying to keep a smile in place.

"She was mine. She once belonged to me."

All the friendliness went out of his face. "I don't think so." He opened her door.

"Sure, just because she's gleaming now, you don't think she could ever have been attached to someone like me!"

"I said nothing of the sort." He got in and closed the door. He started her. The way her engine hummed, I could tell she was getting only the best of everything.

He revved her, but he couldn't drive off. I was in the way. I glared. He glared.I looked from his face to the checkered flags of her hood ornament. Those little flags did something to me. This was a side of her I had never imagined.He rolled down the window. "Get out of the way," he said.

Oh, the sun on her satiny finish. The gleam of her front grille. . . .

He raced her engine again, menacingly now, then started to pull forward. He might have run me over, but she stalled out. She still cared. But it was too late for reconciliations.

He started her again. I felt all the regret that I had concealed with my gloating. Too late. Too late to change anything.

I stepped out of their way and let them drive off together. I went in for my interview, and I got the job.

I am . . . a mop.

*****

Stallion

Before Calderon walked home to his own ranch, he drank coffee. A lot of coffee. He could tell Palmer's wife wanted him gone. She was moving things on the stove that didn't need moving. But he was tired and kept asking for another cup. He drank the pot dry, and then regretted it because that would be the end. Now he'd really have to go.

Palmer sat across from him at the table, staring out the window past Calderon's shoulder. Toward the corrals. Maybe Palmer was thinking about the stallion, and maybe he was only looking that direction because he was too tired to look anywhere else. The sun was going down, shining in Palmer's face.

Without shifting his gaze, Palmer said, "You want some more?" Meaning coffee, Calderon supposed. He said some more would be nice, but they had drunk the last. Palmer had no answer for that. He just kept looking out the window.

The stallion had never shown any sign of tiring. It threw them just as hard in the afternoon as it had in the morning. The way things looked to Calderon, the horse might break them before they could break it. And maybe that was good. Maybe once in your life, it was good to find a horse you couldn't break. Palmer wouldn't feel that way, of course. He had paid money for the stallion.

Mrs. Palmer came to collect the coffee pot. She put it in the sink and filled it with water. She left it there. Then she went back to moving things around in the kitchen.

Ordinarily they wouldn't have quit until it was too dark to go on, but that horse had taken it out of them. They'd stopped when there was still a good hour and a half of light.

Calderon had heard stories about a certain kind of horse, a horse that might break eventually but would kill a man first. In those stories, the horse always had something wild in its eyes, something that people remarked when they saw it.

This stallion wasn't like that. He'd let you touch his neck and flanks, let you saddle him. There wasn't any madness in his eyes, or meanness.

He just knew he wasn't for riding, and he didn't care to be convinced otherwise. After he'd throw you, he'd look at you like he was sorry that you couldn't get such a simple thing into your head.

Palmer's wife got fed up and went to another part of the house. Palmer hadn't moved.

The room was getting dark. It would be a long walk home in the night, Calderon thought, and there would be no moon. He really ought to get up and go, he really should. The longer he sat here the more he felt every bruise, every ache in his bones.

"I ought to shoot that damn horse," Palmer said.

"Sell him."

"Can't. I have a conscience."

Calderon didn't answer. In a moment he would get up. He would. He would stand and walk away from the pleasure of sitting in the dark and aching and thinking of a horse that wouldn't be broken. He could buy the horse himself, but that would be a waste. It would be money spent to hold on to something that can't be held. Not in the ordinary sense, anyway.

Outside, the crickets were starting up. "Well," he said, taking his leave, and as he pushed back from the table, Palmer asked him, "Tomorrow?"

Calderon stood up, went to the door. He heard the stallion nicker. The first stars burned. "Be just the same tomorrow," he said, letting the words take whichever shape they would.

And he stepped outside to inhale the cooling, horse-scented air.