WINNEMUCCA EXCERPT

Bobby and I were over. I’d stood him up for the second time.

“End of life as you know it,” Lizzy whispered in my ear.

The only part left undone was when Bobby would demand to know why. And I would have to answer.

Lizzy took my arm in hers and backed us up into the small stock room to get away from Charlie’s Masters of The Universe pow-wow with the Tie Guy.

“You’re better off just hiding in here. I won’t say a word,” Lizzy said, her eyes had a far away look to them.

“I want you by my side,” I said.

We walked in the tiniest of circles, arm in arm, in a room a bit bigger than a jail cell, trying to figure out what to do. And in that short space of time we grew as close as ever because that’s the way of tricycle friends.

“Bobby’s gonna kill me,” I said.

Our eyes locked, knowing what Lizzy and I would never say out loud––Bobby would do worse.

“Don’t tell him alone,” Lizzy said.

“Tell him what?” A muffled voice came from the corner of the room where a body jack-in-the-boxed itself up off the floor. Only the stranger wasn’t a stranger––his apron all cockeyed, his longish, black hair pulled back in a pony tail. Standing there in the darkness was the one man who’d always been on the outskirts of my boy-filled life.

“Virginia,” Clyde said, in the most familiar, unfamiliar voice I’d ever heard. Far different from the murdering kind I’d imagined.

Lizzy lost her words for the first time ever.

He walked sideways down an aisle of giant cardboard boxes and placed a hand on my waist as he slipped between Lizzy and me on his way out. Word was Clyde had killed a man. Serial Stalker, Lizzy called him. And the way he was right there on Highway 33, I was inclined to believe her. My road blood raced to my twitchy feet, hotter than ever. Like it was about to burn up for good.

The stock room door swung open and Clyde took two steps back, brushing his murdering hand against mine. He shuddered a little at my touch. And yet, besides that split-second, he always had a calmness about him. Like he’d seen it all. Old soul, Poppa would say. A lot of things about Clyde didn’t square. Him fixing old ladies’ cars for free. Tricking out neighborhood kids’ skateboards. Rumors about his victim.

Charlie peeked inside, wide-eyed. “What’s going on in here?”

We all froze like people do when they’ve done something wrong.

“Clyde?” Charlie said.

“Yes, Sir,” Clyde answered. His big-sky blue eyes never left mine. I looked down at my chest to make sure my skin hadn’t turned green or I hadn’t had idiot tattooed on my chest or left a button undone.

“Show these girls how to do an honest day’s work,” Charlie said. And for the first time Charlie looked at me like he knew I shouldn’t be there. Like it registered somewhere that Bobby made me quit a month ago.

Clyde placed his murdering hand on the doorknob and took his eyes off me for the very first time. He walked out of the stock room but something floated in the air behind him and whatever-it-was caught in the door Lizzy held open. I bent down, and freed the paper, but it was just an empty toilet paper roll. I tossed it into the garbage but when it landed on a pile of folded Pampers packing boxes, I saw what I hadn’t seen when I held it in my hand––ribbons of blue words.

“What’s that?” Lizzy said pawing my hand.

“Nothing.” I rolled it over in my fingers trying to make sense of the scribbling. But, it wasn’t scribbling. It was, poetry. Even had a title, No one loves you like me. Dated the day before.

There’s a circle, a spiral I walk with dear Ginny and a wish we’d never part as we lift over our barbed wire sea

Ginny. Me. Clyde signed his name so hard it indented the cardboard.

“Let me see,” Lizzy said. But I stuffed the poem in my apron like a used Kleenex. Like it wasn’t the most enchanting moment of my life––that a man I’d never spoken to wrote a love poem about me. And for the first time I didn’t believe the rumors about Clyde.

Lizzy unloaded another box of shampoo and I peeked at the next line:

The Devil’s rope around my heart

I wanted to know more about Clyde as desperately as I wanted nothing to do with Bobby.

“Now, you girls get back to work,” Charlie said, all fake mad, his forehead a sea of wrinkles, his tuffty eyebrows formed a V like a Muppet. Tie Guy sighed, scribbling on his clipboard again.

“Anna knows where you are. Bobby’ll be here any minute,” Lizzy whispered in my ear.

I rolled Clyde’s poetry in my fingers, trying to read every word.

“Let me tell Bobby.” Lizzy eyed the poem.

I shook my head, dropped the poem into my apron pocket and grabbed Lizzy by the hand so we could catch up to Clyde. My cell vibrated again. I searched up and down every aisle but Clyde had vanished. The clocks on the new majestic shelves in aisle nine weren’t running. I stared at them anyway.

“Why are you just standing there?” Lizzy asked.

Clyde walked past empty picture frames and table lamps.

He met me at the frozen clocks and leaned his mop against the majestic shelves.

My cell vibrated again, and all I wanted to do was breathe in Clyde’s big-sky, blue-eyed stare. My stomach sank knowing why. My heart had Devil’s rope around it too. I held tight to Espy’s charm.

“Lizzy Fairchild, to the register,” Charlie announced over the loudspeaker.

Lizzy said, “Keep away from my best friend, Convict.” She threw Clyde an axe-murdering gaze on her walk down the aisle. She was a master at axe-murdering gazes.

I’d never really seen Clyde before. And right then he wasn’t just one of the people on the edges of my life anymore, he was front and center.

“Straddling the fence is the same as straddling the middle of the road,” Clyde said, like he knew the ripening would seal our fates. Like he’d been with me when my sleep went thin and I’d straddle the open road. And there, in aisle nine, I fell for Clyde. It was wrong. It was lousy timing. But it was real. My heart jack-hammered and more than anything, I wished the frozen clocks had the power to freeze time.

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Dream Cast for Winnemucca, a small-town fairy tale: