The Four-Wheeler

FICTION The Four-Wheeler Elizabeth Howard The four-wheeler was a surprise to me, even after the hat and boots. I'd never dreamed tight-fisted Hubert Wiggins would buy such a monster, but it took some time for me to realize the full meaning of it. At first, I was just mad, "on the warpath," as Hubert used to call it. He didn't even tell me about it. Before I knew it was on the place, it was roaring around the pasture. I ran out to see who was disturbing the peace, thinking it was that shiftless Arwood Bayless. When I recognized Hubert's red bandanna and the cowboy hat, I thought I'd been in the sun too long. The hat should've tipped me off-all the tails and feathers, not something Hubert would've wanted, in his right mind, with both feet on the ground. I thought the hat too fancy, but I kind of liked it (though I'd never tell Hubert that) until I discovered what he'd bought it with. My egg money! The money I was planning to use to buy myself a jacket I'd seen at the flea market. A red jacket studded with glass beads that glittered like diamonds. I hadn't realized the money was gone until I found the empty candy tin in the back of the pantry. "Hubert Wiggins!" I screamed. I heard the door slam, Hubert doing what he'd always done, run from trouble. I wanted to cry, it was such a heartless thing Hubert had done, and so unlike him. I knew of men who pulled such tricks, but Hubert had never been one of them. If he'd wanted a hat that bad, why hadn't he come to me? I'd have bought him a hat. I'd kept the tin since I was a child because it had a ship on it. I always wanted to see a ship sailing out to sea, but Hubert wouldn't take me anywhere near the ocean. Said he'd spent the best years of his life on a tanker, looking at nothing but walls and water, and never wanted to see another ship nor a body of water any bigger than the pond. Mountains was what he liked. I'd spent my life looking at mountains. I wanted to see something different, an ocean or a prairie. By the time I learned about the money, Hubert had already gone to the flea market, my money burning a hole in the pocket of his Elizabeth Howard lives and writes in Tennessee. 34 Wranglers, and bought that hat. I pitched a fit about the money, but Hubert just swaggered out of the house in his new pointy-toed alligator boots (I never did learn where he got the money to buy them) and spent half the night at the barn. He came back to the house when the coyotes started howling and sneaked into bed. I pretended I was asleep so I wouldn't have to talk to him. The hat led to other things, long hair and abeard. He tied his white hair in a wispy pony tail and wore a straggly goatee, grizzled as the old donkey's tail. "No fool like a old fool," I said when he spent an hour shining his boots instead of helping me plant the garden. "Who you think you are? Willie Nelson? A bronco-buster at a rodeo? Well, you ain't neither one. You're just a small-time tobacco farmer in the Tennessee hills." Maybe I was the old fool, for I'd missed the meaning of the hat and boots. I stood under the catalpa tree at the edge of the yard and watched Hubert ride the four-wheeler. It bucked across a ditch and gathered speed as it raced downhill. His hat flew off and sailed up the hill behind him. There it was, my egg money in the flesh, scraping through the morning-glories and passion-flowers. Riding the four-wheeler became Hubert's obsession. I had come to expect foolishness from him. Thought it was second childhood. Thought it...