The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [49]
An old man grips a fiddle in his calloused hand.
A woman carries a fistful of lavender.
Gray-haired Isabel, my ride up from the bus shelter, holds a bottle of red wine. “I see you found your way,” she winks.
No need for miracles now, just Dorothy’s sun-reddened friends and everything begins to multiply. Someone’s brought bright orange flowers he says we can eat, so I place a blossom on each small square of campfire-cooked fish.
A woman with a thousand braids offers a bag of apricots. “Dessert!”
My jeans still haven’t dried, so I’ve wrapped a found red sheet around my waist, figure I’ll call it a skirt.
The worn wooden “Hospitality” sign on Dorothy’s door, and who knew I’d be the host? I pour wine into mugs, glasses, and Sierra cups, offer rounds of herbed fry bread and flowered fish.
“Catch this today?” someone asks.
“A few hours ago,” I brag.
“I’ve been a vegetarian for twenty years,” the guy grumbles. Bearded hobo.
I swallow hard, thinking of my dancing trout. They gave their lives for this dinner. What if the whole lot of them are vegetarians?
But the old guy just scoops up a forkful of fish and brings it to his chapped lips like some kind of delicacy. He chews slowly. “Damn good,” he says. “This’ll hold me for another twenty.”
Cheers.
A young guy with a scruffy goatee has a gift for Dorothy. Darting eyes, he reminds me of someone who once gave me bus fare when it was raining.
Dorothy peels away the green tissue paper, careful not to tear it. Inside, a hand-knit brown wool sweater.
“I hope you’re not going to give it away,” the guy says.
Dorothy shrugs, running her hand over the wool. “It’s beautiful, Gerald.”
One of the old hermits is talking about UFOs that hover near his campsite up at Shealor Lake in the earliest hours.
“Do the Martians talk to you?” someone wants to know.
“Yep,” he nods. His eyebrows are manzanita bushes. “They tell me the glory of this nation’ll fade right before my eyes as we’re attacked from inside and out. But they tell me they’ll save the world on the brink of doomsday. That’s when they’ll land, huh. Twenty-twelve.”
“Armageddon?” someone else pipes up.
But the old hermit shakes his head. “Not like the one you’re thinkin’ of. Holographic energy…”
“What’s in the bread?” Isabel wants to know.
Exactly everything I found in the cupboard plus the pine nuts and thyme, but Dorothy answers for me: “A city girl’s best intentions.”
I’d never thought of myself as a city girl before I met Dorothy, but I guess it’s true. I’m far off the interstate now.
“To the sweetest ingredient of all,” she toasts.
More wine.
Old man fiddle, arms covered in fading prison tattoos, lifts his instrument from its black case, resins up his bow, and starts to play a quick bluegrass tune.
The woman with a thousand braids excuses herself to the outhouse.
The wine courses through my veins like some kind of electricity.
“Are you expecting anyone else?” the woman wants to know when she comes back inside. “There’s some European guy out on the ridge. Claims to be looking for one Frances Catherine.”
A flash of anxiety.
The fiddler finishes his song.
All eyes on me.
“Don’t tell him I’m in here” is all I say, but he’s already standing in the doorway. Barbaro. “How did you find me?”
Isabel hums.
Dorothy rises, hand outstretched. “What she meant to say was, ‘Welcome.’”
Barbaro hesitates.
“There’s plenty of food,” the vegetarian offers.
I want to slap him.
Barbaro’s got stubble on his chin, mud on his red corduroy pants, looks like some young Grizzly Adams stumbling in from the wilderness, disoriented. “I am grateful that I found you,” he says. Salty water wells up in his eyes, but no tears fall.
Isabel pours him a mug full of wine. “Yes, welcome!”
The fiddler starts up again, this time bowing a slow country tune.
I can hardly look at Barbaro. My shame and indignation, my sorrow and dread, all mixed up into some sour brew.
Dorothy points him to the empty chair, the extra plate of food she served for no apparent