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Order this writing in the collection book Hope & Creation available for only 1495 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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9-5
Max Youngquist
Her hands were ice. Wind threatened to blow her over, but she did not budge. She stood on the corner and waited.
A man approached her. “Uhhh, excuse me, sorry to bother you, but may I ask you one thing?” She felt shocked. No one had ever asked her a single thing. No one would ever ask her a single thing. She had imagined it. “Ma’am?” She stomped down hard on her foot. She mustn’t let her imagine play tricks on her. The cold had gotten to her head. The man stared at her for a moment, then walked away.
He came again the next day, wearing a woolen cap. “Why did you act so rude yesterday?” “Leave me alone.” “Ma’am, I just want to speak with you, that’s all I want, I want to talk.” “You can’t tell me what is real.” He walked away.
The next day he parked his car next to her, and he got out and stared into her eyes. They fought each other to maintain control of the silence. He wore his woolen cap. “Where did you get your cap?” she asked him. “Why can you ask me that, but refuse to answer my own questions?” “I asked you where you got your cap,” she answered. “Why do I have to answer all of your questions?” “You don’t, but I like it. I want to know where I can get one.” “What do you mean, where can you get one? I followed your sign, the sign you’re holding! The sign you’ve been holding the last two days!” He seemed irritated now, his cheeks puffed out, he swallowed giant gulps of freezing air. “How could I have known that?” she asked him. “Well, haven’t you read your own sign? It says right there, Discount Winter Gear, 50% off, doesn’t it?” “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never read it.” “Well, you must’ve read it sometime, I mean, someone must have given you this sign to hold, you must’ve read it, you must know what it says.” “You can’t tell my past from this sign. You can’t look at it, and say where I’ve been. It points you where to go, that is what it does.” He was downright angry now. “Yes, I understand that ma’am, I comprehend that I can’t tell where your life has taken you, I know I won’t understand you from this sign, but I do know one thing about you, that this is your job, to stand here on the corner, and hold this sign.” “You don’t know anything about me, yet you read this sign, and think you do.” “Ok,” he said softly, “well, what do you know about me, then?” “I know that you are wearing a woolen cap that I like, and that’s all I know.” “Yes, I am wearing a woolen cap, and I told you, I followed your sign, and went inside a store, and I bought this cap there. You know that about me.” She looked puzzled. “And how do you think I could know that my sign lead you to that store. It doesn’t tell a story, it points toward the future.” He got very close to her now, his face red with rage. “Tell you what, why don’t you just flip it around and read it already, then you can know what I’m saying is the truth!” He didn’t understand her. “This sign doesn’t point towards my future. I hold the sign. It tells others where to go, what difference does it make if I read it?” He drove away.
He did not return for several days. She wished he would come back. She liked his cap, very much. She saw him walking one day, on the other side of the street, but he did not come to talk to her.
A woman approached her cautiously. “So are you the lady my husband keeps talking about?” She thought it was an interesting question. “It depends. I may be, or I may not be.” The woman took a step closer. “My husband keeps telling me of a woman, she holds a sign, and he followed it, and bought a cap. He always wears it now.” She remembered the man with the cap. “Yes, I’ve seen him. I like his cap.” The woman looked down at her feet for a moment, and then slowly up at her. “I think you know him a little better than you let on. Every day, he comes home, talking about you, about how he can’t get over how much he likes his cap. And he won’t stop talking about you, about how you have no past, and you just get out of bed every day and hold this sign, and you don’t even know what it says. So what does it say, huh?” This woman didn’t understand her, neither. “You are the one looking at it, why can’t you read what it says?” The woman ignored her. “What are you doing to my husband? If you say you have no past, then how can you remember him, how can you remember his cap?” She thought about this. “This sign points to the future. If it indeed brought your husband to that hat, then that hat is in my future.” The woman glared back at her. “What does that mean?! What do you mean, the hat is in your future, and tell me seriously, now!” She could tell the woman was infuriated now, but she remained calm. “Could you hold this?” She pushed the sign towards the woman. “What do you want me to do?” the woman asked, grabbing the sign. “Stand here, where I stand, and point it that way.” The woman huffed and puffed, but did as she said. She read the sign. Discount winter gear, 50% off. She looked off down the street, in the direction of the big red arrow. “Thank you,” she whispered, and before the woman could respond, she walked away up the sidewalk. She came to the sporting goods store, and glanced over her shoulder. The woman was lost to her now, the snow flurries blocked off the corner from her sight. She turned, and a man stood rocking back on his heels, his hands in his pockets. She kind of liked his hat.
