Horrible Harvest

Allison Weaver Duffy give me a look when I was done with my story. She was curious about something, but she didn’t want to dig in a spot that ain’t meant to be dug up. We turned the corner and seen the train station a block or two away. Silence followed us for a small stretch of sidewalk, and it felt as unnatural as the sun coming out at night, so I give a huff and said, “You got questions, go ahead and ask’em because once I get you on that train, it ain’t in my plans to see you ever again.”

“I ain’t owed an answer to the questions I got.”

“Ain’t heard a question yet that deserves an answer.”

“Well, I don’t agree with you on that. My husband goes catting around, I’m owed an answer, but on this occasion, I just ain’t invested enough time in me and you to ask what I want to ask. We just met a couple of hours ago.”

“There’s something you should know about me.”

“And that is?”

“I’m tired. I’m bitter, and I’m old. That puts me in a high state of not giving a shit about what folks think. There’s never been a better time to ask me questions that got no business being asked.”

She sighed before saying, “Felix – he always said you was running from something, but he didn’t ever know what it was. Said you was scared of something. Said it chased you around from one town to the next back in the day, but you never spoke a word on it. He didn’t want to know what it was, deep down, because you was the toughest sumbitch he ever met. If something scared you, it was bound to scare him to near death.

“I hear you tell a story like that, I got a good idea what it was.”

“You do, do you?”

“I do.”

We walked another stretch of silence before I said, “Spit it out. We’re running out of sidewalk.”

“It’s you.”

“What’s me?”

“You – you’re running from you.”

I give a laugh, stopped in front of a bakery and stood facing the front window. Allison come to a stop beside me. “In case you ain’t noticed, I’ve caught up with myself,” I said pointing to my reflection.

She smirked. “That’s a piss-poor likeness, is what that is. It’s what the world sees, but it ain’t you.”

“I told you. I’m tired, bitter, and old. That’s exactly what I see looking back at me in that reflection.”

“The judge called you a sodomite.”

I didn’t reply.

“Well, don’t get quiet on me. You’re the one who claimed it in your story. He wanted to kill you for it.”

“We’re almost to the station. We should get on with getting there.”

“It don’t make a damn to me, if that’s what’s got you concerned.”

“I ain’t concerned about nothing.”

“Well, you’re making a show of being concerned.”

“I’m making a show of caring you get to the station safe when it’s the last thing I could give a care about.”

“My question is who is he?”

I looked at her reflection in the window.

“Felix always said there was rumors, but he didn’t pay them any mind. He said the fellas you run with, they’d gossip and such, but he never put any stock into it. He said he know’d you all those years, and you were his friend. That’s all he knew about. That’s all he cared about. All the other stuff was just talk.”

“Felix was a good man.”

“He said the same about you.”

“Well, he never was a good judge of character. I’ve kilt more folks than I’ve greeted with a handshake. That don’t stack up to be good by any measure.”

“Well, s’pose there’s truth to that, but knowing you for the small time that I have, it don’t surprise me that you’ve kilt a fella or two or twelve or more. It does surprise me that you’ve loved one. And, no, it ain’t the fact that it was a fella that’s caught me unawares. It’s the fact that you actually loved another. Man or woman, I wouldn’t think such a thing possible. That’s what I want to know about. That’s my question. Why’re you running from that part of you?”

“The station,” I said. “It’s calling.”

“I’m not moving until you tell me who you loved – ”

“You keep using that word. Loved. Like I stopped.”

Her cheeks turn flush.

“Time won’t never put him in my past.” I turned from the bakery window and stepped toward the train station. “You wanna know the answer to your question, it’ll cost you the rest of the way to the station.”

She joined me, and I told the story I hated most in this world.