Sharon Erby
One Suffers
Those leaves danced across the road like Texas line dancers. Lenny would be waiting and they’d do their own dancing soon. Sheila rolled down the window, tossed off her shoes, tapped her bare feet on the floor of the T-bird, and sang “Honey, I’m Home,” as she wended the mountain.
The day fell away during this part of the trip. But her neck sure needed rubbing. Working nights for two weeks and then shifting to daylight right after felt like being thrown out of rehab just when you thought you might be able to finally kick the habit. Nothing was ever sure.
Except the mountain. She smelled like a lady ready to go out on Friday night—although now it was early in the morning. With the window down and a breeze that felt like June instead of April, her perfume spritzed through. And such curves! Lenny liked riding the Timmons fast; Sheila didn’t. Mountains meant deer. Last year when she rolled the Jeep to miss a doe, she lost both the Jeep and her cheap insurance premiums. Afterwards the cop said, “Next time something like this happens, hit it. Accidents like this—one suffers. Let it be the other one, okay? You’re lucky to be walking away.”
Right now, all she wanted to do was go home, get laid, and sleep. At least she wasn’t on the side where only the guard rails shielded cars from the mountain’s edge. Still, the steepness didn’t keep idiots from passing, and the weekend Harley couples made things worse.
Once on the other side of the mountain, she remembered her shoes. She couldn’t find the flip-flops that felt good after her feet had been holed up in work boots. She looked down for an instant. When she looked up, there he was—right in front of her, by the downed motorcycle.
“My God!” She yanked the steering wheel.
“No!” Why did the car lunge instead of stopping? His eyes were wide, his mouth gaping. Then the dull, hollow, thump—like an under-inflated basketball hitting the court.
The car continued, the guardrails its guide, as Sheila looked past trees whose leaves had been unleashed by April rain, seeing neither them nor the dry leaves the wind whisked into the car’s path. The T-Bird handled the curves, while the scent of spring, now mingled with the scent of other, sifted through.
The mountain stayed behind, smug with its secrets. The further Sheila and the car got away from it, the lovelier it looked. Her hands molded to the steering wheel, and her wonderment at finding herself in the driveway was like a baby watching a music box for the first time.
She got out. Her flip-flops. Still on the floor of the car. She left them. When she stepped onto the driveway, the gravel stung her feet, but she skipped over it like a firewalker. She was lucky to be walking away. This time the other one would suffer. Lenny would be upstairs wondering where she was.
Sharon’s creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kaleidoscope, Feminist Studies, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and Touch: The Journal of Healing, among others. She currently teaches at Wilson College, Chambersburg, PA, a small liberal arts college dedicated to the education of women.
