Love & Darts (9781937316075) by Nath Jones Page A

went to a
drawer in the kitchen. She pulled out a hammer and a small nail.
She wiped her fingerprints off the glass over the picture with her
apron. She walked back to the hallway and found a spot just over
the light switch for the picture to hang. She held the tiny frame
between her knees and pounded the tiny nail into the wall
carefully. She hung the picture and backed away from it. She smiled
her own smile as a salute to the two in the picture and turned out
the hallway light.

 
SPARROWS

    I wish you
had known Marylyn. She tried crying alone on dry nights in the
attic. But no one came to ask her why there was all the sobbing and
moaning so there was little point in indulging such drama. She
forced herself to be sullen for a while, but she kept forgetting
and smiling anyway, regardless of having charity teeth.
    She wasn’t much of a girl. She was the kind of
person who was afraid of standing on her own two feet. Not because
she didn’t trust her feet, but because she knew the world was
quicksand. That timidity was her presence. Her hair was a nasty old
brown color like shoes that have never been polished and have
walked miles and miles in the loose limestone dust alongside the
road. Long and straight, like any girl’s hair should be, but
stringy and hers had a habit of getting tangly. Brushing takes time
and patience. No one who’s starving knows time and patience.
    One of the boys at school used to laugh at the way
her shoulders jutted straight out from her neck. He called her
Razorback Marylyn saying her spine and shoulder blades reminded him
of his daddy’s razor. It was just another mean name made from
harmless nothing and a bit of prejudice. You know how it is; she
was poor. And she knew it. Once you know it you can either give up
or move on.
    I guess she sustained herself the same way desert
plants do. Conservative. Very conservative. Not heedless. She took
smiles from strangers in the supermarket as love, and made friends
with the people she saw from a distance on a regular basis. Shop
clerks, crossing guards, bus drivers—that sort of thing. Just like
a desert plant, never expecting too much and adapting, compensating
as a result. But not dead. Not at all dead, and in a slow scraggly
way moving on in life. No bitterness, no pain, but still dirt
poor.
    High school was hard on Marylyn. There was no room
for her in the well-dressed crowd of whispers and giggles. No one
wanted to waste her time on a girl who didn’t have anything bad to
say about anyone. They called her weak and noncompetitive; said she
would not thrive. She had nothing against them.
    She spent her lunch hour with her brother and his
friends under a sycamore tree near the baseball field. Every day
five or six of them sat there in the root dust smoking cigarettes
and talking about cars. In the winter, when they couldn’t sit down,
they’d shield themselves from the wind with that big tree. Their
wet feet coiling away from the slushy mud, they still smoked
cigarettes and talked about cars. Marylyn didn’t smoke. She just
sat, or stood depending on the weather, and listened. The boys
rarely paid much attention to her. They had too many different cars
to dream up and then smash to nothing in their minds using all
their reasons for impossibility.
    Do you understand the desert? No. I suppose you
wouldn’t. You water your lawn and let the faucet run while you’re
brushing your teeth. Well, hold your mouth open for five or ten
minutes. Then put a drop of water on your lips and remember that’s
all you’re going to get. It’s hard to be poor.
    Being alone is virtually impossible. I don’t know
what drove her. Instinct, I guess. There was nothing to her. She
didn’t speak, really. She had hardly anyone to care about or who
cared about her. That brother was always a little bit loose, if you
know what I mean. It’s strange really. But the way I look at it,
you can either give up or move on. I guess I already said that. The
point is, the only way