Charms

FICTION Charms Becky Bradway-Hesse TRUTH IS SLIPPERY. People tell you that what you thought you knew, you didn't, and what you thought you might learn, you never can, and that they know. They know the definitions and how to carry through, so you're left holding the bag, or the video cam, or the box, or whatever it is that we use to store who we are. This is the way it was with Maurie. Maurie lived down county road ten. He'd come to E'town and loop the metal necklaces and bracelets he made around my car aerial, my doorknob. On them a hanging moon, a sun, nothing so obvious as a heart. Even our only night of kisses had interfacings, braided limbs and winding hair. Maurie was married. Married the night he slept with me, after years of lusting, dreaming, playing lonely jukebox songs and fashioning earrings with clear cheap beads. We drank on a hot night freckled with stars, told lies and stories that took on their own lives. And my son was conceived. And once Maurie saw him, we were never friends again. I wasn't a temptress, no black-haired, violet-eyed doe or prissy blond. My hair was brown and I felt more comfortable in jeans than a skirt; but I never had trouble finding men. Maybe it's that I like them. Summers passed with my brothers and cousins, rambling down river banks, swimming the forks. So I'm like a man, but don't look like a man, and I plain like sex. Not that I sleep around, but men know. I'd had my baby only a few months when they started hanging around at the mine office: tired and rowdy men, sick men, wild, fun men asking the boss for more pay or time off. They always stayed and talked. The mine office was where I met my husband. Carlton was ten years older, wise and thoughtful. Bookish, I thought at first, but he just seemed so. Carlton is a studier. Of leaves and clouds, of what forms a thing and what a thing constructs. And then he builds. He built us a life with a field left by his mother, an apple grove of fruit and shade. Carlton's walk-into-walls awkwardness touched me, but not in the way I sucked my breath the first time I saw Maurie cross a room— more a punch than a caress. Carlton had a sweetness—a big face, blocky chin and green eyes that seemed to expect a hurt, and tried to harden themselves so you couldn't see. He often looked past me, at the 41 ceiling, the floor, or a spot behind my shoulder. His wife had run off with a fellow from the grocery in Mound City. Everyone knew from the day they married that his wife would cheat, because Carlton was just too nice. Nobody imagined he'd end up with me, a girl knocked-up by some arty type from another town. A girl whose own dad ran off. In our town, the only good family was a whole one. That day in the office, Carlton smiled. I was moving files from one cabinet to another. "Let me help you, Alabama," he said, so he handed me files, and I hauled, and in silence we went through two stacks. "Don't you need to get back to work, Carlton?" "I quit." I lost my place in the alphabetical order. "You're going?" I looked at the file drawer opposite my head. "Personnel," it read, typed with the manual on a thick white label. "I'm taking over the orchard from my dad. Wasn't sure; thought the old man'd go till he was ninety." I pretended to sort files. But he knew I had nothing to sort. He came up beside me with an armload. His thigh brushed mine. He looked down and my face was at his chest. A chest to sleep on for days. I was tired. The baby kept me up nights. "Guess you have to," I said. He put the files in the drawer, right behind the others...