Imaginary Men (19 page)

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Authors: Enid Shomer

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors), #Literary Collections, #Literary Criticism, #test

BOOK: Imaginary Men
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Page 118
woman meant taking care of her. Now it seemed to mean sitting back and watching her tote a bucket of manure. I did enjoy watching Alice work. No matter how serious she was, when she carried a hoe her hips swung back and forth in the same old way that made my heart flop around in my chest.
"Liberace owned a piano-shaped diamond," Jackie told me. I was helping her set collars made from tuna cans around the spinach seedlings to keep off cutworms.
"I never cared for all that glitter myself."
"John Travolta's got a weight problem," she went on.
When Jackie wasn't talking about gardening, she talked about Hollywood stars. Her favorite TV show was "Entertainment Tonight."
"My daddy used to sprinkle vinegar down the spinach rows," I said.
"Not good for the soil pH." She adjusted another tuna can.
Just then, Alice came out of the A-frame carrying the Heavy Hands that Jackie had loaned her to build up her biceps and pecs. She reminded me of a cheerleader with red dumbbells instead of pom-poms. "Don't you get enough of a workout tending your farm?" I asked her.
"That's not the same as a regular program of exercise." She wiped her forehead on her sleeve.
It was another one of Jackie's ideas. Every morning when I left for the feedstore, Jackie was outside her trailer, doing chin-ups from a bar over the door. No amount of working out, though, changed the shape of her behind, which was flat as the bottom of a skillet. The seat of her jeans was always a couple of shades lighter than the legs.
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It was at Mrs. Yancy's that Jackie heard about a half-blind quarter-horse that was going to be sold for dog food. "I've got to save the poor thing," Jackie told us. We were having supper in the A-frame: bean sprouts grown under the kitchen sink, meatless meatloaf, and acorn squash. Jackie's cooking. "I can get her for nothing," she said.
"This place already looks like the petting zoo at Busch Gardens," I said, buttering a stony biscuit left over from breakfast.
"It would be nice for Amanda to have company," Alice mused.
 
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Amanda was her Appaloosa, in foal to the palomino down the road. ''Jackie and I could ride together every afternoon."
So they paid $25 to trailer the mare over and another $150 to the vet. "Isn't this putting a pinch in your pension?" I asked Alice the next week. "It's not practical to spend so much time and money on livestock."
"Maybe Catholics feel different than Baptists about animals," Alice said. She was milking one of the goats. I watched her hands pulling on the udders and wished Jackie would go back to California.
"I'm a believer," I said. "That's what counts."
"God intended us to care for His dumb creatures. Roman Catholics take these things more seriously."
Maybe she was right. I'd been going to church since I was six years old but couldn't remember a single Baptist sermon that mentioned a horse, cow, pig, or goat.
"It's in the Bible," she said, scratching the nanny's face.
"Everything's in the Bible if you look hard enough."
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When Labor Day rolled around, I couldn't get Alice to go to the Baptist Singles beach party. She said she had to pickle cukes and tomatoes over the long weekend and she couldn't leave home anyhow, because Amanda was due to foal. "We're gonna have a whole pantry full of homegrown crops." She was washing green tomatoes.
Through the kitchen window I could see Jackie pushing a wheelbarrow full of mulch along one of the spokelike paths through the circular garden. The big African marigolds on the outer rim. made the whole thing look like it had caught fire.
"It's worth all the work," Alice said, inspecting another tomato as she rolled it across the drainboard into the sink. "No insecticides. Everything natural."
"Seems like you got time for everything natural but me." As soon as I said the words I wanted to take them back, but there they were, lined up like another crop waiting to be picked over by Alice.
"I'm not sure I catch your drift." She pulled the sink stopper and wiped her hands on a towel.
The last time I'd heard those words was right before my second
 
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wife, Leota, threw her V-neck sweater in my face. ''I don't catch your drift," she'd said. I'd asked her to stay home more with our son, Ellis. If she had, maybe Ellis wouldn't have turned out so rotten and ended up serving time. Leota's last words on the subject, right before the divorce, were, "Children grow up in spite of their parents, not because of them. It's all in the genes, nothing to be done about it." I always wondered how come if Ellis was half mine and half hers, it didn't break her heart when he went bad.
"Look at that," Alice said suddenly, pointing out the window. The wheelbarrow was stuck on a hose. Jackie spit into her palms, bent her knees like a weightlifter, and cleaned and jerked the wheelbarrow over the hump. "She sure has upper body strength," Alice said. Then she turned back to me. "Just be patient, Cleland, things will be back to normal soon." She kissed me juicily. It was hard to stay mad at Alice. If there's one thing I've learned from my years with women, it's that where patience leaves off, your hormones take up the slack.
Amanda's foal came two days later. Sturdy, all right, but real pale. The first week, half of Archway paraded through the paddock. Against my advice, Alice turned down a quick $500 for him. Then those china blue eyes got lighter and lighter. "Oh boy," the stud owner said, "you've got yourself an albino."
That didn't sour the women on him. They rubbed sunscreen on his muzzle and said it didn't matter that they couldn't register him. Jackie wanted to sell him to a circus that ran an ad in
Saddle Bred
calling for blue-eyed white horses. But, as I pointed out, he was dun-colored. The $500 beauty was a $50 misfit.
"You can't keep him," I told Alice. He had gained forty pounds in the first three weeks of life. "I love you, Alice, but I can't feature us working to pay for animals that don't bring a return."
"We just don't see eye to eye like we used to," she told me, slipping a bright blue halter over the foal. The diamond ring sparkled in a bar of sunlight coming through the barn door. "I think we ought to reconsider our engagement."
"Because of a horse?" I swatted at my knees with my feed cap.
She took hold of my arm. "I think we need some time apart."
I could hardly believe my ears. Being apart from people I love has never made me feel anything but sad.
 
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"You think all this farming and husbandry is a waste of time, don't you?" She put her hand on her hip.
"Not exactly. I think it'd be a waste of my time. Problem is I want to spend my time with you, like we used to."
"Well I want to be more independent." She leaned her whole body against the foal to budge him toward the stall.
"You are independent. You were independent when I met you."
"I was doing woman's work though."
"I'm gonna move my trailer back to my property for a while," I told her.
"We can keep on courting," she said, "like beforesquare dancing, the movies. All right?"
It always surprises me that when I'm feeling the worst I act the nicest. "I'm gonna miss making love to you." I could feel my neck turn red.
Her eyes flashed. "No you aren't. I don't plan to let you off that easy."
What's a man to do? My first wife, Ina, died before she grew up enough to talk so free. When I think of her I remember a thin young girl who sat for hours on end with her hands folded flat as road maps in her lap.
I moved my trailer three miles the other side of Archway and kept busy at the feedstore. It was deer season and rainy. We sold out of everythingammo, camouflage duds, rifles.
Alice let her hair go gray and quit polishing her fingernails. She said she didn't have to be stylish around her animals, that she was getting in touch with her real self. It might as well have been Jackie speaking to me from under the pink-striped sheets.
We went square dancing every Tuesday. And every Sunday after church there was dinner with Jackie. I don't hold with being rude to women, but Jackie pushed pretty hard.
"We're doing fine without a man around the house," she said one cold November afternoon, serving up her vegetarian chili.
"If I'd never tasted chili with meat, I guess I wouldn't miss it," I said, spooning the red gunk over my rice.
"I've been in love," she said. "I know just what I'm missing."
Alice didn't say anythingjust drank her goat's milk and stared at us.
 
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When I left for North Carolina to see my new grandson two weeks later, Alice didn't even notice I hadn't invited her to come along.
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Now, standing in Jackie's dim little trailer, I felt bad for Alice. I looked at her blue jeans with straw stuck to them. Her hair was a two-tone mess, gray around her face where it had grown out and blond at the ends. It was like seeing both my wives at oncethe one no more than a child, the other a gadabout who kept closing doors in my face.
Alice was shaking her head and sighing. "Yep. I let you change my whole life. I've been blind as a bat."
Hudson smiled and nodded. "You know, Jackie changed my whole life, too. This woman's charm runs deeper than the Chattahoochee River."
"Boy, oh boy!" Alice let out a breath.
"Well, honey," I reminded Alice, "you wanted to be more independent."
"That's not the same as never having a minute to myself because Miss Physical Fitness here won't keep her half of the bargain. I didn't set out to change my way of living and my looks." She plucked at her torn western shirt and fought back tears.
Jackie snuggled into Hudson's shoulder and sniffed. "I'm sorry, Alice. I thought you wanted a new life as much as I did. I never twisted your arm." Hudson handed her a big plaid handkerchief. "I've got better things to do right now than rake hog pens."
"Oh, I get it." Alice was shouting. "You don't give a damn about intensive gardening, do you? It was just something to do till this cowboy came along."
Hudson opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
"I'm living in harmony with nature, all right, all by myself!"
"Listen," Jackie said, "I'm real grateful for everything you did for me."
"That's the truth." Hudson leaned forward. "She's told me how grateful"
"Oh shut up!" Alice said. "I don't care what she told you or what you think."
 
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"But you have to," Jackie said. "We're partners now, Hudson and me. And you've still got Cleland."
"You jilted me," Alice said to Jackie. "I've been jilted."
"Me too," I said. Alice turned to me, moving as slow as a housefly on a cold day. We both looked at Jackie.
"It's your karma," Jackie said.
Alice smacked her own thigh hard enough to sting. "Is that what you call slopping pigs and mucking out stalls? Karma? I call it work. Work you wanted to do. Those animals and crops out there were your idea."
Jackie blew her nose; Hudson patted her like he was burping a big baby. Alice's chest was heaving up and down, but she looked spunkier than ever. "I could wring your neck," she said.
"She's right about one thing," I told her. "You've still got me."
Alice stared at me like she was trying to remember something real hard. Then she took my face in her two hands. "I'm a real lucky woman."
I put my arms around her.
"Don't you go thinking I'm beaten because of her. I still plan to live off the land, partly. And keep the animals tip-top."
"I know it," I told her. "We're adults. I guess we can work it out."
She said she was sure we could now that she realized how much work was involved. We looked over at Jackie and Hudson entangled on the couch, his blue denim and her bright print housedress heaped together like a pile of laundry.
"Isn't puppy love sickening?" Alice said.
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Hudson and I sat across from each other, smoking and staring at the ceiling, while the women divided up the farm animals and equipment. Jackie halfheartedly agreed to help get in the cold weather crops before she and Hudson moved on. "We can sell the new coops at the flea market," she told Alice. "You can have my subscription to
Organic Gardening
."
"What am I going to do with three horses?" Alice asked.
"Mrs. Yancy can help us find buyers for them."
"Just for your half-blind mare," Alice said. "I'll keep Amanda like

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