Tag: unfinished stories

A Small Dent

Since New Mexico State Parks are closed, I’ve changed my running route. One trail I’ve used is so short it takes five laps to do my usual distance, but it’s right beside the Rio Grande, a great place for seeing blue herons and other birds.

As I passed by on my cooldown walk at the end of this route, a woman parked near a picnic shelter announced, “I locked my keys in my car.” No “excuse me” or “could you please help.” She was a middle-aged blonde in jeans and a purple shirt, accompanied by a tiny, dachshund-mix dog in a purple collar. I offered to call her roadside assistance club, ran to my car, and came back with my phone.

That was when she told me she had no Triple-A or Better World Club membership, and no money. She lived in the car. No wonder she didn’t say anything other than to declare her situation. That was her whole world, her whole reality. She was from Arkansas, stuck in Truth or Consequences while waiting for a check she hoped would soon arrive at general delivery. I didn’t ask how she ended up in that situation, and she didn’t offer to tell me, perhaps because I was on the phone so much as well as social distancing.

I spent forty-five minutes on the phone with my roadside assistance club, mostly on hold, trying to see if they’d cover rescuing a stranger through my membership. I’m grateful that I have my basic retirement income while I’m not teaching yoga and people can’t afford books, but I admit I was trying not to spend money on my tightened budget. The club representative never told me if helping a stranger was covered, spending time instead trying to locate this trail with no address. I wondered if she was working from home or with a reduced staff.  The inefficiency was unusual. Meanwhile, my phone battery was running low.

The stranded woman finally suggested the police could help. I told my roadside service rep to call me back rather than leave me on hold, and called the local police. No, the officer said, liability doesn’t allow them to help with lockouts anymore. He recommended a towing/wrecker service they use. I called, and they came. My roadside club rep then called to say she’d finally found a service for me. It would take ninety minutes more. She never confirmed if it would be covered for someone else’s car, and the towing service she’d found had a Northern New Mexico phone number. Not a good sign. What if I had to pay after they’d traveled all that distance? At least I’d negotiated a discount with the local company.

All in all, it took two hours. And it wasn’t a heartwarming experience. I made a small dent in the woman’s troubles, but no real change. Honestly, the smell when the wrecker service guy opened her car was distressing. No one should have to live like that. The only upside was that she was stranded in a beautiful place. While I was on hold, we admired a heron.

*****

I debated with myself over sharing this story. It’s not about me being a hero, because I certainly wasn’t. I decided to post it, though, because it’s the truth. I promise something more uplifting soon.

October Stories

As I was walking to the Charles Spa for a soak the other evening, I spotted what I thought was a purse lying on the sidewalk at the corner of Clancy and Broadway. Concerned, I bent to pick it up, and then stopped. It wasn’t a purse. It was a large pink bra. The cups—double-D, I guessed—were on top of each other, and the straps lined up, making it look like a purse. I left it there in case its owner should realize she lost it. If it had fallen from her spa bag on her way to or from a soak, she would surely miss it. There was no one else using or departing from the women’s hot spring baths, though, when I got there. No one to whom I could say, “Excuse me, did you lose a bra?”

On my way back from my soak, I saw two people approaching up Clancy from the direction of the river, and one of them was shouting something over and over. A thin man with a cane he wasn’t using and a thin woman in tight jeans strolled along, their pace and demeanor out of sync with the fact that she was yelling. As I got closer, I could make out her words. “Jeremy! Jeremy!” I paused and looked at her, puzzled. “I’m trying to find my husband,” she said, and kept walking and hollering. All the dogs for blocks around barked back at her. No Jeremy appeared. I didn’t ask her about cell phones. There are still a few people in the world who don’t have them, and some of us have been known to lose them. How she’d misplaced him, though, is a mystery.

I saw a perfect circle in the sand at Elephant Butte Lake State Park recently, near a trail where I was running the desert. Curious, I had to stop and examine it. The circle had been cut into the sand by animals, their paws and hooves digging deep. The paws ran up the center of the circle and followed the hooves part-way in the arc. On the trail a few feet from the circle was a scuffed and scarred area. Mule deer spring straight up, tucking their legs under them, when they take off. I pictured a deer stotting on the trail, then leaping away in an attempt to escape. The coyote came straight at its prey, but the deer kept running right past and around its enemy. Mysteriously, there were no tracks leading to or from the circle except for the take-off spot, the deer’s stot marks. No other animal tracks, that is. Plenty of humans. Shapeshifters? Eek. I wish I hadn’t thought of that.

But that could explain everything. Jeremy couldn’t answer his phone in his deer shape. The owner of the pink bra discarded it as she felt herself becoming a coyote. This transformation first happened when they met on the trail, and then again when passed each other in town. Anything’s possible at this time of year.

*****

My shapeshifter short fiction, Bearing, is a horror story without gore, as you might expect from the author of mysteries without murder.