Alan Sincic

The other hand – hammer hand – she folded into a fist. Held it. Trembled it there. There she said. Take that. She made as if to thump the graven surface of the tray. The biscotti cowered. The fly buzzed, landed, buzzed again. She closed her eyes, tipped into the wind, listened for the fly to land. You don’t mess, no, you don’t mess with Maggie.

Blind Maggie is what they’d called her behind her back. She’d hidden it as long as she could. Inside the Slapjack – a cosmos she breathed into being every day at dawn – it was easy. Every implement belonged to her. Every maneuver she mastered. Even the regulars, in the silent morning, when they’d weary in to break the fast, smoke up the counter, rustle the newsprint into wobbly tablets that crackle in the hand -- she knew who they were by the gait, and the rhythm of the breath, and the scent of the aftershave. The tick of the watch. The creak of the stool. The dust of the trade in the thread of the clothing -- the rust or the gunite, the soot or the grain. So long as she presided over the diner and the yard – the henhouse and the woodshed and the garden – they were none the wiser.

Only when she ventured out did they notice the difference. At the Feed and Seed how she pinched at the packet to suss out the name. At the grocer with the spices, how she’d sniff the lid, shake the jar as if to weigh the price. Maggie, who’d always been the fierce, who’d always dare the trucks to hit her when she speared off into the mid-day rush, they watched as she nudged up into the crowd at the crosswalk, felt her way up the shelf of sundries at the Five and Dime, fingered the tin dome of the talc and the bulb of the eu de cologne and the tube of lipstick, Ruby Red, Flame-Glo, cylindrical as the shell of a shotgun.

Maggie fought the sun to stay awake. Straightened herself. Parried the sound of the birds and the wind in the pine. Set herself to the task at hand, battled her way back to the time, to the place, to the day they found her in the rain, in a stand of oaks, a mile off the trail.

She’d followed the stream till the water rose and then – as the slurry ripped at her ankles and her knees – climbed up onto higher ground. Where? To hell with where. She was where she was. It was the world was in a tangle. Then by and by Cochrane come along. Out gigging bullfrogs, round about dawn, and that dog of his. Yip-yip she hears it, dog got a possum maybe, got a squirrel but no. On the scent is what he is. Got himself a Maggie. Yap-yap. Yap-yap-yap. Up out the cane he comes, Cochrane. Slooshing up a swamp in the wake of them waders, dragging a sack of hoppers, high-stepping up the mucky bank. Up the trunk he runs a torch and bingo. There she is. Pressed up into the hollow of the oak, stick in hand, the mushrooms at her feet, the basket broken.

“Yo Maggie. Been out shopping I see.”

“Digging you a grave, Cochrane. You and that dog of yours.”

“You want I should fetch you an umbrella?”

“If I was made of marzipan. Look like I made of marzipan to you?”

Now Cochrane, he got the wit to run a dog, maybe, navigate a hand of poker, but a woman? “You… you got me. You got me there.”

And that was that. And off he went.

Waiting for the clatter of the rain to cease, that’s what she was about, waiting to where she could hear the road again, and the whistle at the depot, and the distant whine of the dredge at the base of the phosphate embankment to sound her back – through the woods, and over the fields, and under the shade of the oak in the yard – home.

So be it, right? You make do. You live the life you got. Stands to reason, really, when you think about it. Never would she admit, even to herself, the need for another set of eyes, no, any more than she would think to order up a sun to compensate for the one she lost.

Shhh. Listen. There it is now. You hear the buzz?