R. T. Smith

In Stetson and calico vest, spandex and Calvin jeans, she was the best at the bar. Does Gucci make range boots? Hers were snakeskin with heels like railroad spikes. The rest you could guess: eyes the blue of West Texas yonder, complexion like hot coffee with cream. All night I gave her slack but kept my dally-knot tight, hoping she’d like the stories I could tell—drunk Indian twins fighting with icepicks in Cheyenne, Carolina moonshine, deer breaking open watermelons out of crazy hunger. Regular as breath she’d say, “Damn!” or “Yes!” and stomp a heel through sawdust to the pine floor. I nearly had the rest of my life planned out, downing Coors and forking out for God-knows-whose, till a dude in a Brooks Brothers suit moved in, flashing a wad of Andrew Jacksons like cold cash grew on trees, and she said to me—she fairly spat it— “Get lost!” So I did, prostrate all night in a roadside hay field, watching the sky sleek as a coal-black stallion’s flank. Damn if every star wasn’t a spur burning its wheels into my foolish eyes.

I seam towels for Dundee over in Georgia, a non-union sweatshop with a dozen rows of them blue glass windows all around. Some of ’em says it’s like a church. Been there fourteen years, since just before me and Hubert said vows at Devotee Baptist. We’ve been divorced since eighty-four. Seems he had another woman on the side. Yessir, I been cold and warmed my hands at the motor of my jury-rigged machine, been Florida-hot and deaf from the fans that don’t do a damn bit of earthly good, for me at least. I’m right fleshy, as you can see. Been so hot I’d get the hives and swell up like sourdough rising, but I hardly miss a sick day, you understand. I hate the feel when another woman’s been sewing on my machine. Substitutes will break a needle or jack the floating bobbin out of line. They don’t give a hoot. It ain’t like they got a steady station or reputation to uphold. This working’s almost a moral thing, Preacher Wilkes would say, like marriage, and every thread has got to be caught in the hem’s edge so the whole towel won’t ravel first time some salesman in a motel or shoe clerk in his own home after a sweaty day dries off from a cold shower bath. You see, I know it don’t take no giant brain to sit behind a Singer machine and stitch hour after hour, but I’m proud just the same. I’m regular as a clock, and I don’t dare fiddle with another worker’s machine. Some nights I lie in my bed, once was my mother’s, and watch the gas flame jump beautiful blue as the mill’s windows and wonder how many skins have been wiped dry on my towels, and whose. It gives me a blushy pride right on the edge of sleep. I’m over here tonight with my sister Lily and her husband, Buddy, supposed to be having a fine time instead of talking my whole life at you. This country and western band, specially the drummer in a blue silk shirt, makes me want to eat a hot pig’s foot, drink beer, and shake my tail. Let’s show ’em a thing or two. You ain’t married just now, are you?