Western Women Are Tough
Lucinda Hughes
In the mahogany sleigh bed a man reaches for me: he wants something, or anything, pretty soon I'll decide what it is. At my glassy office downtown the last of the problem folders waits on my desk. Someone must be emptying my ashtray. I turn over.
I don't think about Caffy. Why would I? I don't expect to find a horse in my closet, nuzzling my only silk blouse. Neither would I imagine a sweet old hardworn cowboy, broke bones a-jingle, dismounting from my kitchen countertop.
But in the morning now I'm needling my way through the stalled traffic on Sixth Avenue, hot engine air breathing on my ankles. I edge between bumpers just inches apart; my shins tingle at the nearness of danger. A lone businessman on the same trail meets my eyes.
His look says: we're two of a kind. I like this for a microsecond. Then I remember something. At home this evening I scrabble in the closet for the bitten-out shoe box where I keep the old snapshots and Caffy's letters, unread for 30 years. But when the first one came, a month after he left, I ran all the way down to the creek to read it. He didn't say blessed much.
