Jewelweed by David Rhodes Page B

slid into shoes. Everything about them seemed in contrast to the spartan world he and his father lived in. The smell of perfume filled him with a wonder too delicate to explore. What kind of creatures would wear that scent?
    What was going on with females, anyway? What made them different? Could their difference be unmade? How did one go about talking to them? Everything about them seemed terrifyingly attractive yet alien. He couldn’t imagine any appropriate way of approaching them, and when he saw others performing this utterly impossible feat, he couldn’t imagine himself imitating them.
    On one particular occasion in his adolescence, he had succeeded in making eye contact with someone he felt deeply attracted to, and immediately burst into tears. Needing to protect himself from further occasions that could provoke this shameful vulnerability, he energetically applied himself to excelling in activities designed by males for avoiding this vulnerability altogether: sports, roughhousing, and risk-taking.
    After high school Blake began working in the foundry. He bought an old pickup and several motorcycles to race on weekends. He moved out of his father’s house and into a room in Red Plain. Several years went by, and while he was living there he met, or rather saw, Danielle Workhouse.She rented a tiny apartment above a secondhand store, and six days a week walked to and from the cement plant on the edge of town.
    The way she walked drew his attention. It was almost as if one leg might be slightly shorter than the other. The tiny imperfection caused her hips to swivel a little farther around on one side, though not enough to unbalance her stride. The visual result was a subtle clicking into place, a repeated cocking motion. Most people would not have noticed, but Blake had always been interested in how people moved forward. Each step entailed a conscious act of falling into the future, and even though the act had become habituated to where there was little conscious effort involved, it still revealed something essential, an infantile attitude toward the unknown. No one moved forward in the same way, even in the same family. Danielle Workhouse was determined to get where she was going—an adventure looking for a suitable place to unfurl. There were no extra movements, no swinging arms; there was no looking to either side, changing speeds, or adjusting clothes—just a straight-ahead-leaning, brisk, and thrusting movement.
    She walked from her thighs.
    She also looked as if she might cut her own hair. The sides of her black curly mane appeared better thought-out, more even than the back, and Blake didn’t think there were styles in which the back was supposed to be crooked. It looked a little like his own hair, which he cut himself.
    She seemed to have three outfits: a blue skirt with a white top, a brown dress, and black slacks with a ruffled orange blouse. And she appeared to have just two pairs of shoes, brown and black. She wore a thigh-length gray sweater with widely-spaced buttons up the front in even the coldest weather.
    At exactly seven o’clock each morning, she stepped out of her building, locked the door leading up the narrow staircase, and walked the ten blocks to the cement plant. Her return times apparently depended on how busy they were at the plant. Some nights she didn’t get home until Blake had left for the night shift in the foundry.
    Once, when leaving the plant, she stepped out of the stone building and crossed the street between two cement mixers. Blake was on his way to work. He turned around in the gravel lot, drove back, and asked if she wanted a ride. He’d never been this close to her before. Without stopping,she glared at him through the pickup window, her eyes bright black inside a tightly stretched brown face, an angry yet slightly fearful expression. Scrubbed clean, no makeup, no jewelry, no frills. Her black hair had the color of a burned field, her lips