Return to: Still SurvivingSweet Wine and Saddle Oxfords Fara comes to me often lately; she comes down from Grey Hill, leaving an empty hole between white stones. She wears the black and white oxfords from her 1970 cheerleading tryouts. I still remember how hard she cried. I am carried by her memory to 1974. I come into the white house on State Street and sit primly at my desk, waiting for the ringing of a hard black phone. The Victorian office smells of Clorox, with an undertone of stale piss. I am busy writing unsigned prescriptions for back beauties and yellow jackets. The truckers will bring me presents, of whatever is in their loads. They bribe their way into being first in line; snatching the degreed signature of dated medicine. He comes shuffling down the back hallway where the black patients used to sit, separate. I have never seen him look so tired. His worn charcoal suit coat falls in loose, thin folds of soft shine from his shoulders; it’s lower in the front, because he has a hump. She’s dead he whispers, with his head low. Who’s dead, Doctor Pittman? I think through all the old folks who come to sit musty in the parlor; seeking relief of small white pills. I am absently unprepared for his news. Fara Vaughn. She just died on me. Somewhere far away, I hear a whispered name. Somewhere in the bottom of my heart, I hear a dull breaking sound. I think of a laughing skinny girl, with glasses and a soft blonde flip. I think of cutting donuts behind the high school, with Fara riding shotgun in a yellow Torino. I think of sweet Boone’s Farm wine in a brown paper bag, two girls laughing, two boys touching tight tan knees above black and white saddle oxfords. She comes to me often lately. She comes to laugh over old times; she comes to warn of new days; she comes to share a glass of wine, and helps me dance the Tiger dance of sunshine days, when life was clear. Shirley Alexander © 2007
