IMOGENE
DAILY SPECIAL
Venison Cakes, Gravy and Biscuits and Drink .75¢
ANOTHER NEWT DEAD. The moment Tula left with Solomon, we launched our clandestine operation: Pearl ran down to her house, plucked a live Newt from the bucket where Theo now stored one or two at a time, ran back to the store, and handed it to me like a hot potato. I inspected it to make sure it looked at least a little like her beloved slimy creature, then wrapped the dead Newt in newspaper and tossed it in the garbage. I dropped the new Newt into the bucket. It was the third salamander-swap maneuver in as many weeks.
“I’m gonna take a break,” I said and headed outside to Solomon’s bench which we had surrounded with carved pumpkins and bundles of hay.
The sun warmed the ache in my bones—bones that throbbed from two days of painting and bones in pain more than ever for a cigarette. My head burst at the seams from not smoking.
I didn’t sit on the bench very often. Maybe I should. Maybe if I stepped out here and took in fresh ocean air instead of lighting a cigarette, I’d let go of the need for them.
After Christina I stopped going into Tillamook on Tuesdays to join friends for lunch and shop, because the ripple of gossiped whispers about “the dead baby girl” sent tremors through my body. Instead I’d return to Manzanita and sit on this bench and smoke.
For two years after her death Solomon came, sat by my side, and took my hand in his. We sat in silence. For those few brief moments he held not only my hand, but the brokenness in my heart—the relentless, stabbing agony that throbbed in my legs and the nightmares that woke me—and while he held onto those things that gripped me so tightly, I was free and at peace.
But then Thomas had lost his job and was home all the time. No more sitting in silence.
Solomon’s red-tailed hawk swooped down from the tree and crossed the sky to his yard. A deep relaxation suddenly washed over me. I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the geranium box, and listened to the birds that titter-tattered, chirped, and flitted about in the fence line. When I opened my eyes, Solomon was on the bench beside me.
“Sol,” I said sleepily, as if just waking from a dream. “I was just thinking of you.”
He took a pack of gum from his shirt pocket and said, “Chew . . . all day.”
I took the pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint.
“Then spit out your hurt and anger,” he said, “Make room for love. It comes.”
He stood and walked across the street. I unwrapped the foil from a piece of gum, set it on my tongue and felt the bitter sweetness unfold and spread.
As Solomon disappeared down Theo’s driveway, the birds dove from the treetops to sit on their perches in his yard, close to their weary knight, as Mamaí called him.