Nancy by Sunlight

On the cusp of nothing more, and of nothing great or worthy, Tom clutched at his hair in the road dirt café. The only things left to him in the world were a few cents for coffee and his mothers blue eyes. The empty seat opposite yawned in his face while the whispers went around the room; Nancy Brown is coming back.

The stories never stopped, not with Nancy. She’d inherited her cousin’s oil business; she’d eaten fish with the Queen of England; she’d been to the mountains and seen ice. Bessie had sworn she’d married a dropout called Bindle Joe, but found even living in an Arkansas caravan had been too much settling down. Whatever the truth, Nancy wasn’t spilling a drop of it, and the cold facts could stay buried behind the criss-crossing web of bus tickets that followed wherever she went.

She entered the café and slid in opposite Tom. Nothing had changed in her feathery blonde hair, or the bite of her lime perfume.

“How you been?” he asked. His mouth felt full of molasses.

“Good,” she said, “real good, ‘cept all the stares I’m getting.”

“Whatcha expect? You’ve spun up quite a legend.”

She tilted her head and peeked out at him, a little girl again. “So, you asked me here to wag tongues with a legend?”

“No.” He took a breath. The air tasted of sand and limes. “I asked you here to marry me.”

Her lips parted. Tom had never seen anything so close to surprise in her. “Come home,” he said. “I mean it. I’ve not had any woman since you. Babe, I’ve been waitin’ for you.”

“Since me?” she hooted. “Boy, you barely so much as touched me.”

“You kissed me once. When we was kids, Nancy.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I did. I did that.” She shifted in her seat. “You and a lot of boys. Sorry, Tommy, but I can’t marry you. Not you or anyone else.”

“Why not?”

She stood and looked down at him, flattered by the sun through the window and the pretty flower dress she wore.

“Because…because there was a sweet little gal, and she loved this little boy, lil’ clumsy boy who followed her round and once got a kiss off her, but that little gal’s gone. She took the train, honey. It’s too late.” She blinked and touched her right hand to the empty third finger of her left. “I’m all Nancy Brown, now.”

“So’s the girl I knew.” Tom could feel the weight in his chest. “And she’s a rare, soft thing,” he said. “Rare indeed.”

She shook her head and walked away, with only the slamming of the café door and an edge of lime left behind to show she’d ever existed at all. The tears gathering in his eyes turned everything to snowflakes and Ottoman slashes as he watched Nancy leave, taking with her all the smiles and hope and mystery in the endless roads of America.