Literary Orphans

Numerations
by Christina Murphy

xSagi25

I.

From the river bank,

watching cars on the highway.

In an hour

26 red cars go by

11 white

14 black

1 truck with primer paint—unknown color.

 

II.

I am eating bacon and eggs with grits (which must be required by law for breakfast in some towns) and wondering why whole wheat toast never is when a truck with primer paint pulls up and two women in fake cowgirl outfits get out and come into the diner. “Hi ya,” Stephanie the waitress calls out. The taller woman nods a hello and both women sit at the counter, place an order, and Stephanie puts down two mugs of coffee and some type of pie—maybe cherry, maybe strawberry—hard to tell what the red goo is with all the Cool-Whip on top. I can’t quite hear what the women are talking about so lose interest and look at the truck. The primer paint looks like the bacon I am eating—not the dark part that is the bacon, but the fat between the strips that is some kind of creamy color with a pinkish color running into the edges. I’m kind of appalled and not sure I want to finish eating the bacon on my plate because it is so ridiculous to see your  food matches the color of primer paint on a truck, but I paid for the breakfast, so I finish it and signal to Stephanie I would like a refill on coffee. She comes over, fills me up and smiles. “Everything good?” “Yeah, delicious. Did you see how the primer paint on that truck looks like bacon?” She takes a quick look. “Not so much. To me any way,” she says. “The creamy color—you know like the fat part of the bacon.” She takes a quick look. “Oh yeah, I can see it now. You want anything else—pie maybe?” “Pie for breakfast?” I ask. “It’s fresh—thought you might want it while it was hot.” “Nah, I’ll just stick with coffee for now.” Pretty soon I’m done with my coffee and come to the counter to pay, and I ask the woman closest to me, the taller one who was driving, if she knows the primer paint on her truck looks like bacon. “Bacon?” “Yeah.” She turns around on the stool and takes a look. “No,” she says. “You know the name of that paint?” I ask. She turns and asks the other woman, who says, “Alaskan Ambrosia.” “What the hell kind of name is that?” the tall woman says. “I don’t know. I didn’t name it, just bought.” “Well, that ain’t bacon is it?” the tall woman says to me. “Do you know what ambrosia is?” I ask. “Some kind of desert with marshmallows in it,” the shorter woman says. “Oh, I guess I was right then,” I say. The taller woman looks at me. “How’s that?” “Food—your primer paint looks like food.” “You said bacon.” “I was close though.” The shorter woman is getting annoyed. “Why you so interested in our truck?” “I was sitting on the river bank and I saw this truck go by, and I thought that was the strangest primer paint I had ever seen, and I wondered what the color was, and I didn’t know, but when I got here and ordered my breakfast, it looked like the bacon I got—not the dark stripes, which really are the bacon, but the fat stripes in between that have that kind of creamy look, especially when the bacon isn’t cooked that crisp.” The women look at each other, and I notice that Stephanie is watching me, too. “You were watching us from the river bank?” “Not watching you per se, just watching. I saw a lot of cars go by. 26 red cars—that was the most for any color. And then I saw your truck, and I couldn’t put the color into any category, so that was weird. See what I mean?” “No,” the two women say, almost simultaneously. “Well, like your pie there.” The women look at their plates. “What about it?” “Well, it’s an odd color too. Like maybe cherry, or strawberry, maybe even raspberry. It’s hard to tell once it gets mixed in with all the Cool-Whip. What is it any way?” “Rhubarb.” “Rhubarb?” “Yeah, rhubarb,” Stephanie says. “Made it myself this morning.” “I don’t think I’ve ever seen rhubarb before in a pie.” “Well, it’s a new experience for you,” the taller woman says. “Maybe if you go sit back on that river bank, you’ll see a rhubarb-colored car or truck go by, and that will make your day for you, won’t it?” They’re all three laughing now, even Stephanie, who asks me if I would like to try a piece of the pie—“On the house,” she says. “No, I’m too full, but thanks.” I can tell by the way they are looking at me that that’s pretty much all there is to say. None of them thinks the primer paint looks like bacon, and I don’t think it looks like Alaska or ambrosia, so there we are.

“Well okay, thanks for your time,” I say. I feel like if I had a hat on, I would tip it to them and try to make a graceful exit, but I just smile, turn, and walk toward the door.  I can hear one of them, I think the shorter woman, say “Weirdo” as I walk out. Yeah okay, so what? I think to myself. So what?

 

III.

I’m doing a Google search, and I find Alaskan Ambrosia, which I don’t think looks all that much like the primer paint on the truck, but these websites don’t do a good job with colors sometimes, what with they give you a little square to look at and imagine that color as big as a house or a truck. I look to see if there is a Rhubarb, too, and by God, there it is—supposedly some kind of crimson-red color “often used in kitchens and bathrooms.” How do those two rooms go together? I’m thinking. And who thinks this stuff up? I take a look at my kitchen. Beige. Definitely disgusting stuff. I open the refrigerator. On the top shelf I have a row of model cars and in the vegetable bin a pile of trucks. I find a pickup truck I like, and then I get my set of acrylic paints from the pantry. I have nine glossy colors—red, purple, blue, teal, silver, black, white, gold, and green. That’s the way it should be—nice and simple and no fancy names. I think about mixing some colors to try to get the bacon color and paint one of the trucks like that, just to remember those women and how dumb they were about colors and about food. But then I would be stuck with a bacon-colored truck, and that would depress me. It’s easier to go with a glossy silver, so shiny I can almost see myself reflected in the paint—right there on the hood. I like that tiny image of myself like I’m part of the truck, riding along and feeling the wind. Pretty soon I’m finished painting, and I put the truck on the counter to dry. I write in my notebook to keep an eye out for the bacon-colored truck when I am on the river bank again. But it probably won’t happen because the primer coat will be painted over, and then the truck will be some ordinary color and fit right in. So I will have to keep an eye out for the two women instead, especially the tall one who will be driving. She had a mean look on her face, and I’m pretty sure she will aim her evil eye toward the river bank every time she passes it, and look for me, and if our eyes meet, she’ll send a curse my way to turn me into a bacon-colored chunk of meat that will roll down the bank and disappear into the river. Either that or a rhubarb pie that will float along in the currents oozing Cool-Whip into the water until I am stripped down to my bare soul of a vegetable soaked in sugar and trying to pass itself off as a fruit. I’ll use my evil eye, too, and send a curse to her that the truck will turn the most super glossy silver and reflect her ugly face so large that both of the women are terrified and never drive in the truck again. That’s as it should be. Let them walk or hitchhike or fly or whatever—just so I never see them again and I don’t have to count them in my notebook, which already has 217 entries for silver cars and trucks. Silver is definitely taking over the world, and that’s enough. I’ve seen enough silver from the river bank, and this truck I am painting is silver’s swan song—just as I hope it will be for the two women who have upset my universe and made me angry at how things work out in the world. Enough is enough, so sayonara to silver and to the two women in fake cowboy garb who are upsetting the order of the universe as it should be—and must be—and that I will see will be as I paint their truck and send them into the world of finality and oblivion. Sayonara, ladies—see you in hell or on the other side of the moon. The moon needs silver, hell maybe less so, but I don’t need you at all. There’s so much to see from the river bank to try to play up to you, and if I see you again, your truck will be gold—a useless color on the moon or in hell or in my notebook and model car and truck collection.  Sayonara, ladies—to the two of you and your bacon-colored truck, and all the people who think they can mess with colors and upset the world and have everything on their own terms. Not so ladies. Sayonara.

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Christina Murphy’s stories have appeared in a range of journals and anthologies, including A cappella Zoo, PANK, Word Riot, Spilling Ink Review, and The Last Word: A Collection of Fiction, among others. Her fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was the winner of the 2011 Andre Dubus Award for Short Fiction.

Christina Murphy Photo

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–Art by Sagi Kortler

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