Playing Fair and Being Kind

AMOS MEETS THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE

 He Flubs It

Amos crawled out of the old Mustang and grabbed his denim jacket from behind the driver’s seat. He was going into the western wear store just off the interstate in Tulsa. He liked the place with the hats and boots and belts and all. Just the right kind of place to stop and get out of the ’65 fastback and take a break from the road. He was on his way to California from Boston and this was a convenient place to take a breather. Amos liked the western wear but he never actually owned any. He wasn’t a dress up kind of guy. He stuck to what he knew and didn’t like to pretend what he wasn’t. He did like to wear denim though and that is what he was wearing when he walked across the large parking lot of the western wear store.

Amos had on a pair of faded jeans and chambray shirt with Dingo boots. He carried a red bandanna in his back pocket and carried his denim jacket slung over his left shoulder. He always carried things in his left hand out of a military habit of his. The right hand needed to be free to salute. Amos moved away from the Mustang and across the asphalt parking lot toward the western wear store. Coming toward him from the main entrance of the store was a tall blonde woman maybe in her late twenties. She was walking directly toward Amos carrying a shopping bag in her hand and a purse with a long leather strap over her right shoulder. She and Amos locked eyes and smiled at the same time. Her smile was all white teeth and sparkling blue eyes that laughed at Amos. His smile did about the same thing. His heart was in his throat by now and he muttered a simple, “H’lo”. If he’d had a hat he’d a touched the brim with his off hand. He didn’t.

“Hey, Cowboy”, she sang to him. Her voice like wind chimes and angel’s sighs. His mind was unable to focus on anything but her. She was moving a little slower and trying to engage with him.

“You look a little lost. Did you lose something?” She continued looking directly at Amos. She was feeding him a great opening but he was caught flat footed and had no answer. He had no convenient response.

“I’m good”, Amos shot back. Oh, for cripes sake, he thought. Is that all you got? Too late. The moment was gone.

They passed each other, both of them awkward. He felt the fleeting vacuum of the moment being sucked into the void of ‘never happened’. The imagined beauty of chance meeting destroyed in the stopped-time that tore the scene in two, shoving him forward into the rest of the afternoon. He was discombobulated. At the same time his gut was wrenching. Amos wanted to retreat in time to gather his thoughts. He needed a ‘do over’. This moment, he knew, was a very important piece of his life and it was passing out of reach with each step toward the store. He let it slip past and shoved the bad feeling of a missed opportunity aside. As they continued Amos glanced over his shoulder and saw she was moving toward a red Corvette convertible that was parked next to his Mustang. What a picture, he noted. A beautiful woman with a hot Corvette and she was making time for him out here in the parking lot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Damn! Amos could only shrug. He rolled along toward the western wear store entrance. He was trying to pull himself together. Each step away from her felt like a hundred miles of bad road.  It was pretty damn difficult. Impossible…schmuck!

G. M. Goodwin
8 June 2019