Action Picture (Part Two)

After their backroom trysts, Fettig and Libba often went for a pizza. She ate five pieces to his three. One evening, after his mother’s midnight laundry run, they were leaving the store when Libba said she wanted to treat him to a new spot with “gourmet burgers.” 

A high-ceilinged, cavernous place. Pretentious, he thought, as he sank into the low squishy chairs. Then the waiter, bringing the water glasses, had to say, “What can I get you ladies to drink?” 

“Not a goddamn thing,” Fettig said, slamming his hand on the table as the waiter backed off. “Who wants to pay ten dollars for a burger?”

“I do!” Libba reached across the table, grabbed his hand. She had curled the ends of her light brown hair that night and it bounced around her neck mingling with her birthday earbobs. “I told you, I’m treating. He didn’t mean anything by it, Ozzie.” 

“Don’t call me that.” 

“I heard your mother saying that. I thought it was cute.” 

“It’s not cute. And you’re not my mother.”

He stood up to go. Libba followed him out. She had on a flowery dress that reminded him of his mother’s housecoat. He heard her clip-clopping after him in sandals with little heels. She reached out, trying to catch his hand. He drew it back. How silly they must look, he thought. A woman walking with her son—or daughter. Just when he thought he had escaped his dread of being neutered, he was taken for a woman. 

Libba slid into the passenger seat. “He made an honest mistake.”

They rode in silence till he pulled behind her car, parked discreetly three blocks from his store. 

 “My mother was wondering if we were getting too serious, if I was going to find out that you were, you know, if there was something wrong, down there. I didn’t know how to tell her that you seemed to be just fine. I mean, I guess it could be a genetic thing but your mother, your sister—Joyce is, what, 5’4” or something—normal size, right?”

“Yeah, she’s normal,” Fettig said with not a little sarcasm. “It’s hormones, OK? But I wouldn’t blame you, if you, I–”

“Oh, Ozz-car—don’t feel bad.” Libba reached across the front seat. She gave his dick a little squeeze and then she pet his leg. “You’re real sweet.” 

“Don’t pet me.”

“Oh, sorry. I just–I–”

They sat there for a while before she said she was sorry again. Then they sat for another while. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before she got tired of being with a squirt, before she ditched itty-bitty Ozzie for some normal guy. When she got out of the car, he let her go without a word.

He took a long look at himself in the bathroom that night. He didn’t have womanly features. He resembled his father—square jaw, short forehead, broad nose, dark, even brows. His wavy brown hair was carefully parted and combed, but he had skipped two visits to the barber what with its being summer, what with fishing his off Tuesdays and Sundays, what with spending most other free evenings with Libba. 

His legs were almost normal length. It was his torso that disappointed. His shoulders were narrow and rounded. His upper body looked like a half empty sack. Even when he sat as straight as he could, he appeared to slouch. From behind, with his longish hair, he probably did look like some dumpy old woman. 

Sid stressed the importance of a sharp appearance at the store: starched shirt, tie, and blazer. He’d gotten sloppy because of Libba. Leaving the store after being with her that night, he’d put his tie in his blazer pocket, untucked his collared shirt. Hadn’t even worn his blazer into the bistro. He’d gotten sloppy all right. He’d started thinking of himself as a regular guy. A regular guy with a girlfriend. 

The next week, as he and his father were closing the store, Sid broke his usual silence. “Son, ah, son, should you, you know, well, your mother, she wants me to talk to you about, you know. Things may not work quite the way they’re supposed to what with your condition. And Libba, she, well, she would need to know about any problems ahead of time, if you’re serious and all.” 

“I don’t have any problems. Everything works just fine. And we’re not––serious.” 

“Ah. Well. Then,” his father muttered, shaking his head. “Your mother, you know, women can get all kinds of ideas. Always something.” 

If Libba came by the store that Saturday, he wasn’t there to meet her. He left Pentauk and drove west where he had a wide view of the Blue Ridge and the winding river below. When boys his age were dating and playing sports, he was earning money to buy a jeep so he could drive out along a high ridge and watch the lazy James round a horseshoe bend. Or ride a little longer, out to the Jackson, to the riffling stream where trout lurk in deep pools. He’d taught himself to be a damn good fly-fisherman. Small hands, an asset for tying flies, just as they were with watch repair. He’d made the most of himself. Even got a girl. And all this time, his parents thought he was some kind of eunuch. A pitiful freak living in the basement. Yeah, he thought, even those gentlemen freaks from the old days—they might get the girl’s heart, but they never got her hand.  

A day later, his mother tried to broach the subject she had never mentioned. “We just thought. I mean, Ozzie, we always thought. The doctor said…” 

“You never asked me.”

“I told your father to talk to you, but he always said, why bring it up? So we just assumed…” Her reddening face began to change then, some new idea forming. “But, now, that Libba, she is a good catch. She has an eye for jewelry, too. Smart girl. And pretty enough!” 

Pretty enough. In other words, as pretty as he could expect to find. Pretty enough for little Ozzie?

Pretty enough, he repeated to himself on the way to work. And he began to recoil suddenly, thinking of Libba’s awkward profile, those folded eyes, the protruding teeth. Why not just call them bucked? 

Later that week, he pressed his father to send him on a long-discussed gemology course in Reno. Tacked on two weeks for fishing in Montana. He learned how to shoot out there, too. Bought a revolver and a rifle at a gun show. He went to a firing range where some guys invited him on an elk hunt. To their surprise, he got one with his second shot. A six-point Royal bull. He knew right off that he would have a mount made. He was gone over two months, all told. Long enough for Libba to get the message. Sure, he thought about her. He thought about her all the time. But he didn’t call. He’d learned that you had to take your shot soon as you saw it. The nights he cried (and there were many), he told himself that she was better off without him. And he knew he was better off not waiting for the inevitable break-up call. You had to take your shot if you had one. 

He hadn’t been back a week when Libba called him at the store. He hung up. 

“Honestly, Ozzie,” his mother said. “I don’t know what’s got into you. Helen says Libba was sick the way you treated her. Actually sick to her stomach. What could I say?” 

“It’s not up to you to say anything.” 

He moved out of his parents’ house that year and into the apartment on Thrall. His father was dead within two years, stomach cancer. His mother followed a few years on. 

For a long time, until it closed, he met his urges at a house with blue shutters on the outskirts of Lynchburg.

~

Next morning, Fettig starts awake at half past eight, embarrassed by the indulgence. His shoulders ache, his limbs are stiff. He thinks for a minute that he might have the flu. Then recalls his pursuit the evening prior. Good pants ruined. What a fool. 

After a quick washing up, he forgoes his usual cup of instant and his morning cigarette, secures his Luger in its shoulder holster, stuffs his bills in the pocket of his nubby brown blazer, and sets out, more than an hour behind schedule. Fifteen minutes later, he pulls his SUV into the lot behind the deli. Owing to a recent spate of burglaries, Enzo has taken to locking his back door so Fettig has to walk around the entire block to reach the store’s entrance, which he does that morning with mounting irritation. 

“And coffee,” he says after he’s ordered his customary breakfast of an apple and a plain roll along with his lunch of salami on rye. “Black,” he adds, describing his mood and the coffee. 

“Lucky to have coffee this morning!” Enzo throws up his hands. “My water off almost all day yesterday. On! Off! Crazy!”

“Same damn thing at my place,” says Fettig. “And they charge more! I’ve been calling for weeks. Can’t get through.”

“Eh!” Enzo’s sigh breaks open his bearded face. “The city! The worst! Nobody answers. Ever!” 

The five blocks between Enzo’s and his store used to be full of going concerns—selling everything from shoes to home appliances. Now a copy center and a Thai restaurant are the only ones hanging on. Fettig’s Fine Jewelry has occupied the same corner building for sixty-eight years: a two-story yellow stucco with Deco fans over the doors and windows. Blinds drawn across the upper-story windows ever since the last tenant left four years previous, the side entrance bolted closed. At least the courthouse and the bank still guarantee some foot traffic. Even so, he hasn’t turned a profit in almost two years. This past holiday season was his worst ever.

Entering his store, Fettig commences his routine, which has begun of late with a variation: he opens the faucet to check his water supply. In luck today, he flushes away yesterday’s business. In the backroom, he removes his holster and semi along with yesterday’s shirt. He takes a freshly dry-cleaned button-down from the closet where he keeps a week’s supply. He holsters up again over his fresh shirt, slips back into his blazer.

He proceeds to open the safe and remove his best items for the front window. Keeping the hinged section of the counter up, he fills the window, then all the retail cases with merch.

After Sid’s death, he had the 300-square-foot retail area remodeled to accommodate a custom desk and workbench behind the front counter. He had the contractor mount this workstation on a platform with a low-glass front. Stepping up to this daily perch, he takes a seat in his high chair and snaps on the computer. The only decision he has to make then is whether to listen to easy country or smooth jazz. In no mood for heartsick lyrics, he goes for the jazz.

Watch repair and pawn make up the bulk of business now. Today is no exception. The highlight: the sprung calendar slot on a 60s Bucherer. The low point: a strung-out girl hocking what looks to be her grandmother’s brilliant-cut sapphire for a fraction of its value. Her cheeks, the color and consistency of popcorn. 

In the lull after lunch, Fettig tunes in to the University’s public station, surprised to learn that the cow is still at large. Hearing this, he becomes aware of a growing ache in his right knee. The one he banged into the raised bed, then sacrificed to the wall. Oscar. He descends to the retail floor where he paces and shrugs, rolling his shoulders and windmilling his arms as if to cast off last evening’s shameful charade. 

To clear his head, he resorts to bills. The dreaded water notice crowns the stack. This one, marked Final, is triple what it should be. In a fury, he dials customer service once more. “Ah!” he cries, gleeful and incredulous, when the call is answered. Preparatory to unleashing his low opinion, he clears his throat, only to hear a beep and realize he’s trapped in another digital do-loop. He slams the receiver. Tears up the bill. 

When the phone rings a few minutes later, he answers hopefully, uplifted by the absurd notion that some kind water company rep is returning his call. But it’s that Guy. 

“Guy Craddock here, checking back with you. Wondering if you’ve reconsidered my offer. The building and the inventory. Like we discussed. I could do–”

“Like I said yesterday, Guy, I’m not interested.”

“It’s a solid offer.”

“Nowhere near what it’s worth!”

“No need to make any decision right away—if you want to get together to discuss–”

“I don’t.” Fettig hangs up. 

It’s four-fifteen when the entrance chime draws him from his perch to greet an elderly woman come to pay down her grandson’s class ring. Her brown hands tremble as she unfolds a wadded handkerchief and gives over the crumpled bills. He locks the door behind her. The throb in his knees says it’s close enough to five.

He pulls back the curtain behind the window display and begins carrying items to the counter. He’s reaching in for the last ring box when he hears knocking. Sees a hand tapping on the window. He leans in. Gives an exaggerated shake of his head. CLOSED, he mouths, barely looking up.

Then, near eye-level, a face presses to the glass and Fettig sees a ghost. The ghost he has been waiting to see for years: Libba. 

Of course, he recalls, all too well, seeing her last evening, but the ghost he sees is not that Libba. The ghost has the face of the younger woman he was sure would show up and shame him for ditching her. This specter haunted him until he heard Libba had gone off with the car salesman. Then his dread turned not to relief but to something more like abandonment. And the ghost contains all of that, the younger face, the current face, the dread, and the loneliness. A ghost that lives in his mind because he does not look up again, cannot look.

She taps again. Three quick taps. 

He moves as if under a spell. He turns the lock. Opens the door a crack. Gently, but firmly, she pushes her way inside. Her flowy sky-blue coat brushes his arm. As the cold air hits him, he realizes the temperature has dropped. Or maybe that, too, belongs to the ghost. A velvety black hat slants off her head. Blue paste, he thinks, noting her necklace of shiny beads. The observation serves to ground him, partially at least, in the here and now. 

“Cow!” Libba says with a little wag of her finger. “I was right! You said cow.” She shakes her finger again, smiling down at him. “You’re a wily one.” 

“What, now?” Having envisioned this moment so many times, having fantasized about her while beating off in the backroom (less and less often, but still), Fettig can’t get adjusted to the three-dimensional version, the ruddy-faced reality: Libba. 

She speaks in that full, throaty voice that funneled la’s into the air the night before. “It wasn’t a dog you were chasing last night. It was a cow! The cow that’s all over the news today. Am I right?”

Fettig feels light-headed. “I just—I didn’t want to alarm you.”

“And they can’t catch it. I know who I’m rooting for!” She drops her pink sack of a purse into the single chair on the retail floor—the husband chair, Sid had called it. The goldish green armchair looked so threadbare suddenly, so tired. The upholstery had been changed since Libba was last here, hadn’t it?

“I was after some of Enzo’s mozzarella—for a party tonight after rehearsal—and I had to stop in to tell you that I know your little secret!”

Fettig sees that he’s still holding, gripping, the ring box. He carries it to the counter with the other items bound for the safe in the back room.

“I don’t mean to keep you.” 

“I close at five o’clock as a rule.”

Libba glances into the display cases, then spins around. Once, twice. Her wide skirt and coat lift out from her body as she turns. “Oh!” She stops suddenly. “Look at those! You went on safari, huh?”

Fettig nods. Every day, he sees the three 8 x 10 safari photographs that hang over his workbench, but he doesn’t often look at them. Facing them now, he not only sees what the pictures contain, his short body standing over the fallen immensity of a cape buffalo; he also sees the bushveld that extends beyond the picture, the tawny land stretching under a limitless sky, wild herds thundering by. “That was Zimbabwe, fifteen years ago.”

“Wild, wild, wild,” Libba says. She’s a couple inches taller tonight—in heeled boots with flowery designs. She spins again on the back of these heels, spins toward the chair as if she might grab her bag and go. But she snaps around to face him. “And you didn’t feel the least bit…guilty?”

“Guilty? Oh, nothing endangered,” Fettig says, though this isn’t strictly true. A guy in his group had taken a cheetah and he’d been jealous. “Game needs to be managed. And it’s not cheap to get on these reserves—the money goes to the local economy, the schools, roads. The meat, too.” Fettig lifts the hinged section of the counter and steps behind it. He feels better with the counter between them. 

Libba turns again, more slowly this time. “Fettig’s Fine Jewelry,” she says with a low chuckle. Her teeth aren’t exactly bucked, no, he wouldn’t say that. Not exactly.

She unbuttons her coat and angles her torso over the counter toward him. As her coat falls open, he sees her boobs, hitched up now inside a tight purple top. She peers at the display case. “Still have some good watches, I see.” She lifts her head and juts her chin over Fettig’s shoulder. “Still keep a workbench—back there?”

Did she really need to mention that? “Naw, I work up there–”

“Such a long time ago,” she says. “This whole place makes me think of Daddy, and you, of course. First him, then you.” She runs her hand down the edge of the countertop until she comes to the hinged section. “Really. Can you believe all those years ago?”

Fettig’s skin is clammy, his mouth parched. “Do you want some water?” 

“Sure. OK.” 

Fettig turns to the water cooler a few feet behind him, fills his only two mugs. Then he hears her behind him. 

“Do you mind?” She is lifting the hinged countertop, stepping behind it. He doesn’t know how to stop her. 

Accepting the mug, she walks past him down the short corridor to the former workroom. Fettig follows. 

“Everything looks so much smaller.”

“I, uh, I changed a few things.” He catches a whiff of freshness and blossoms—a perfume, or the scent of flowers that must surround her all day? 

“Just want to have a look. May seems strange. I’m sure it does seem strange. Old time’s sake, I guess.” He watches her in profile, sees her cheeks rising and falling as she scans the dim room. “It’s funny I was thinking about you—just last week. I’ve been working on this part I’m playing. The character turns into a tough gangster moll. But she starts out so innocent and I was thinking of how she got to be who she was, and I thought about what it was like before I knew anything about, well, sex, and of course, this place came to mind.” Another laugh. And those big front teeth. 

The skin atop Fettig’s head starts to prickle. He feels as if his eyelashes are on fire. He gulps his water down. He has a bottle of Scotch in the filing cabinet back here, which he keeps around like his father did—to offer a good customer after a nice sale. He prefers Bourbon, when he drinks, which isn’t often, but he’s always kept Scotch in the store because his father did. He recalls only now that his father kept Scotch because it was Ike Pritchett’s drink. 

“I do a lot of dream work,” Libba says, “you know, journaling, visualizations and stuff. And this room sometimes appears. It would. I mean, primal scene of sorts. Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No, I mean, I mean, I, no, I–” Fettig’s speech unrolls in this jumble until he arrives at an unambiguous decision: “I’ll have just a nip of Scotch then. Would you join me?”

“No, thanks. Rehearsal.” 

Fettig pulls the bottle from the filing cabinet, pours a healthy finger in his mug. 

“Then you showed up out of the blue the other night. And I thought it was a sign. All that was so long ago. I was angry. I was furious, for a while. It’s my Scorpio-Taurus combo. I mean, once you cross me, Katy bar the door.” Libba looks up at the clock’s yellowing face. “But you did give me a taste of—you know, how it should be. I’ve always appreciated…well, a vigorous lover, ever since.”

Fettig downs the whole finger.

“But when I heard about the cow, I thought how funny and I–”

“No, I should have said,” Fettig tries to get in a word. 

“No big deal.”

“I should have told you–”

“It’s just a cow. I just–”

“No, no. It was up to me,” Fettig says, failing to make Libba see that his words are supposed to stand for what he hadn’t said all those years ago. He should have called her, told her directly. That was the decent thing to do. He shouldn’t have let her go at all is the plain damn truth. He sees that, has always seen it, has tried not to see it, has failed miserably at not seeing it. What he also sees on her face is that his larger meaning isn’t coming across. But before he can organize his thoughts into words, the chime at the front, the chime announcing a customer, rings.     

The front door—unlocked! 

Fettig is behind the counter in a trice. A punk with a scruffy beard is standing by the counter. As the kid looks up, Fettig thinks he sees his arm moving, dropping in a flash, to his side. Fettig’s eyes dart to the counter. The watches at least, all five from the front window, are accounted for. He looks back at the kid whose hand has disappeared into the pocket of his red track suit. Did he snatch something else? One of the rings or a pendant? He can’t take his eyes off the kid again to check. 

“Don’t move,” Fettig says. 

“Whoaaa,” the kid says, his hands lifting from his pockets, his open palms stretching out before him. “Hold on.”

As the kid’s hands reach forward, Fettig reaches, too, for the Luger under his arm. He pulls the gun, draws a bead. Aims for the chest. 

“What the fuck, man.” The kid is dirty and youngish, early twenties. Small dark eyes. Thin cracked lips. His filthy blonde hair might have been rinsed in glue. 

“Stand back. Everybody. Back.” Fettig says. He is speaking to the kid and to Libba whom he senses more than hears approaching from behind. “Empty your pockets.” 

“Fuck, man. I come in here to shop.” 

“Sure you did.”

“Walk in an open door and you pull a gun on me?” 

“Oscar?” Libba whispers.

Fettig’s vision narrows. The red of the kid’s track suit seems to expand, shrinking him or enlarging the space around him until he feels suspended, then trapped in stone, a pyrope garnet prison beyond which he cannot see. 

He cocks the semi. “Do like I said: Empty your pockets.”

“Surely you’re not going to shoot him?” Libba’s voice, smooth and glassy. “Oscar?”

Libba comes to stand next to him. He wants to push her away, but he can’t turn toward her, doesn’t dare take his eyes off the kid. He feels her hand pressing lightly on his left arm. He does not lower the gun. 

“Young man,” she says, “did you take anything from the counter there? If so, I’d put it back and leave.” 

The kid mumbles. Looks down. “I didn’t take nothing.” 

“Oscar, you can lower the gun now. You can go, son. Go on.”

“He will do no such thing. I’m calling the police.” Still holding the gun out, Fettig elbows Libba away and reaches for his belt. 

Libba’s hand is already there, covering his phone. “Let’s all breathe.” She inhales and exhales loudly. Fettig experiences her voice like a wave washing over the garnet room, liquifying it. What he’s doing might not be breathing exactly, but he lifts his finger off the trigger. 

“Did you? Did you take something?” Libba asks the kid. 

“I said, I didn’t.”

“But you were going to, weren’t you?” Fettig says. 

“Fuck you, man.”

“Okay then, run along now,” Libba says. “That’s it. Go on—get out of here.” 

The kid backs up, keeps an eye on the gun before turning, dashing out. 

“Damn lucky is what you are!” Fettig says as the door shuts. 

“You’re lucky, too, Oscar. Lucky you didn’t shoot him. The door was open.”

“That’s no license to steal!”

Fettig brings the gun with him as he lifts the hinged counter, crosses the store, and locks the door. Back at the counter, he puts the gun down. His eyes refocus, his store comes back into view. His counter. His workbench. His heart, throttled. 

He points at the merch on the counter. “Look here, I had four rings here. Had just taken them out of the window when you came in. There’re only three now.” He opens each ring box. “Look, only three. The emerald solitaire is missing. My best estate piece. Gone. Goddamn it! Gone.”

“Oscar.” Libba steps from behind the counter, comes around to face him. “Put the gun away.” 

“I would’ve gotten it back, too, if you hadn’t interfered.” He takes the clip out, puts the gun back on the counter.

“Might have killed him, too.”

“But–”

“Listen to me.” Libba takes both his hands. He’s too upset to object. “You did not want to hurt that young man. Or ruin his life for something petty like that.”

“That ring was worth five thousand, easy.” He feels the pressure of her hands on his. He is crossing a long dark field toward a lighted house. Here. Now. 

Fettig meets her serious gaze. “No,” he says, “no.” He can hardly believe he is agreeing with her. But he was mad enough to shoot the punk. Could have put ten rounds in him. Might have done it, too, if not for her. Shot a kid for five thousand dollars. 

She lets go of his hands. “You went off, you know. You do that often?” 

“What?” 

“Go off like that?” 

“I have a temper.”

“Yeah, me too. But I don’t shoot people.”

“Look, I mean, I’m sorry. Sorry about what happened. With us. All those years ago. I was a—a real creep, like you said. I want, I want to apologize. I know it doesn’t change anything. I just–” 

“Oh,” Libba says, looking out toward the street. “Oh, but it does.

“Look,” she says, turning back to him, “I didn’t have to come in here. When I heard that about the cow, I could’ve ignored it, shrugged it off. But I came. I gave myself the excuse of Enzo’s. Truth be told, I mostly stay clear of Acorn Hill. Sure, I like Enzo’s goodies. I run in a few times a year, but always quickly, always park at the other end of the avenue—to avoid running into you. But then I got to thinking about us. I was feeling bold, I guess. God, I never dreamed I would end up starring in an action picture—complete with a gun and a would-be hold up!”

“Don’t forget the chase scene.” It comes out before Fettig knows what he’s saying. 

They almost laugh at the same time. Almost. 

But when she looks over at him again, Libba is smiling, not laughing. A few tears are falling down her face. She’s beautiful, Fettig thinks, she really is. 

“I forgave you. A while ago. Had to. I couldn’t carry all that around.” She wipes her face, smears mascara across one cheek, and continues. Continues to astonish Fettig who hears her from inside a storm of disbelief. Disbelief that she is there, disbelief that he came so close to pulling the trigger. Disbelief that she is still talking, still talking about this. About them. That she is saying, “I loved you. I honestly think I did. But I was young, what did I know?” She crosses to the chair, takes a tissue out of her bag and blows. With her back to him she keeps talking. “What else was I supposed to do? It would have killed my mother, you know.

“Oh, but no! You don’t know.” She drops into the chair. “You don’t know because I never told you. I should have. I realize that. But I was so pissed at you. I just, I had the procedure–”

“You. Had. Abor––?”

“Yeah, I had one. I called here that once. You probably don’t remember. You’d just gotten back. I was going to tell you–”

“But I hung up. What a jerk. What a shit I was.”

“Yeah. So, I just went on down there. To the clinic. I was lucky there was a clinic. It was the last week I could go in the first tri–”

“God, Libba.” 

“And for a long time, where you were concerned, I was so– I threw your earbobs off a bridge–” She sucks in a deep breath, lets it out loudly. “Let’s just say I was not exactly in a forgiving space.”

“I had no idea.”

“You had to have some idea I was hurting.”

“I didn’t think you would, ultimately, that you would, that we would work out.” He can’t say it. Can’t say that he didn’t believe she would want him. 

“Look, I didn’t come here to talk about this. God’s truth. That was the farthest thing from my mind. I could’ve told you back then. I could’ve forced the issue. You know that. The mothers—they would have seen to it. I was plenty proud, yes, but not crazy enough to stay where I wasn’t wanted.” 

In conclusion, Libba says, “huh.” It comes out like a sad laugh with a question in it. A messy question. This, Fettig thinks, is what he’s been avoiding: messy questions. But what was he doing thinking of questions when she was talking of a child. A child. 

As if reading his mind, she says, “Sometimes, I wonder what it would’ve been like. A kid. Probably would have fucked it up. And God knows what that nut job I married down in Pulaski would have done to it.” She straightens her back. Extends her legs in a wide V. “But things work out—I love my shop, the flowers. Love the theater. No complaints, really. I’m dating a little, nothing serious. I stay open. Try to be more open all the time.” 

“Open,” Fettig says, almost to himself. It comes out as a statement, but he means it as a question. Open—what would that look like? 

“Oh, shit!” Libba pulls back her sleeve, looks at her watch—a man’s, gold, vintage, Longines, maybe. “I’ll be late for rehearsal!”

At the door, she reaches for his hand, and he lets her have it. With a quick squeeze, she says, “Gotta run. Don’t shoot anybody. You’ll thank me!” 

And swoosh, she’s gone as though on the back of a cloud. 

Standing, stunned, with his back to the locked door, Fettig stares at the chair where Libba was sitting just moments ago. From there, his gaze drops to the floor. A shiny gold object catches his eye. He takes it for a holiday bauble; something must have dropped when he took down the decorations. 

He crouches. It’s just out of reach. He can’t kneel and he isn’t inclined to lie down. Stiff as he is, he might never get up. From the back closet he fetches his father’s old umbrella—the one he used to escort women to their cars on rainy days. 

He crouches again, holding the chair for balance. The umbrella tip barely reaches the bauble and as he pokes and scoops, drawing it toward him, he sees that it is not round but square. Not a Christmas ball but a ring box. The gold ring box containing the emerald solitaire. The punk must have been grabbing for it, must have sent it flying across the room.

He leans forward and reaches out again. This might be where the story ends: Oscar Fettig crouching in his store, reaching for his best solitaire. 

But, while reaching, Fettig sees that he will take what Guy is offering—for the building and the inventory. He will pull his camper out West and wet a line for a month or two or ten. Out in the wide open, he will enjoy, as always, not having to stand beside anybody. But no longer will he be so sure about what comes next. 

~

He will surprise himself by completing preparations for his departure in two weeks’ time. All this while, due in no small part to Fettig’s initial misdirection, the cow will run loose through Pentauk, earning much attention from a growing band of save-the-cowers, backed by national animal rights groups. 

The morning he plans to leave town, eleven days after making his decision to sell, Fettig wakes before dawn. His SUV is packed. His thermos is full. He has only to drive to Joyce’s house where he parks his camper. On his way, he takes a detour through a subdivision until he finds what he’s looking for: a hydrant on an unlit street. He gets out and hooks his come-a-long to the hydrant just below the stamp that reads: Pentauk Waterworks. 

Back in his vehicle, he accelerates fast enough to pull the hydrant right out of the ground. Stopping to unhook his rig, he marvels at the great thrust of water shimmering like a stream of diamonds in the first light. 

Driving on, he comes to a barricade blocking the street he’d driven down less than half hour ago. The blockade is made of bodies holding signs. Several people wave a long banner spelling LIBERTY! Some are standing arm in arm. Irritated by the idea of a delayed departure but not wishing to call attention to his vengeful act against the Water Department, Fettig kills his headlights and pulls his rig over. For a few minutes, he observes what he gradually identifies as a protest—as baffling as that is at this hour in a residential district. 

As the sun comes up, he sees that the growing crowd is a variety pack, a blend of young and old. The group must be thirty strong by the time he decides that enough is enough. Exiting his vehicle, he starts toward the intersection where the protestors are arranging themselves, two rows deep, across the entirety of the street. Vegans Rule reads one sign. Eat Plants, B*tch, says another.

Steaming, Fettig approaches a linebacker type at one end of the human chain. “Look here, I’m headed to the Cross County highway on important business. I need to get through here right now!” 

The kid assumes a wide stance, hands on hips. “No one comes or goes. Not over our dead bodies.” 

“What in the hell?”

“It’s the cow, dude,” replies the linebacker, his biceps the size of Fettig’s neck. “We decoyed her to the park at the end of the street. She’s safe there now, eating hay. We’re not gonna let them take her.” 

Fettig reads his T-shirt: The Cow That Bellows Does So for All Cows –African Proverb.

“One of our guys has a direct line to Weiselberg—the pop artist? He’s down for taking the cow to his sanctuary in Vermont.” 

“I don’t care if you’re taking it to the Emerald City, you’re blocking a public street.” Fettig reaches for the mobile on his belt. “I’ll call the police!” 

“We already have.”

“Oscar? Is that you?”

Turning, he sees her stepping from the line. That stretchy white cardigan hanging open over jeans and a snug T-shirt with a slogan he doesn’t dare read. 

“Libba? You’re part of this—this crowd? Blocking a public right of way?”

“I could blame you.” Her voice sounds stern, but her eyes are smiling. Then she flashes that toothy grin, followed by a belly laugh, an invitation. “Coffee and donuts over there.” She points across the street where some folks huddle around a card table. “Help yourself.”