A Very Nice Story

The divorce final, she drove out of the city and on to the coast and crossed the bridge to the village on the little island and parked the car by the water and got out and left.

She had not walked very far when a pebble from the gravel got into her shoe. She was standing on one leg with the shoe in her hand when an elderly man came running from the village. As he came he waved and shouted, "You there! You there! Wait!"

The woman waited. The man was not used to running anymore. When he got there he was out of breath and unable to speak. Instead he just looked at her with pain in his eyes, as if she were the one who had put the pain there.

At length, still panting, he said, "Why...why are you standing on one leg? Are you a...a crane? Are you going to...to snap me up? Do you think I'm a...a fish? Do I...do I look like a fish?"

The woman put her leg down. "No," she said. "You surprised me. That's all."

"Do I smell like a fish?"

"Actually," she said, sniffing, "you do, rather."

"Well," he said, "that's no excuse. It hasn't rained much and there's not much water in the cistern and I can't be wasting what I've got on washing every day."

"Or every week," said the woman.

"Whatever," said the man. "It's no excuse. You may not park your car there. I like to look out at the water. You are blocking my view."

"If you don't like it, move it," she replied.

"What?"

"The keys are in it. Move it yourself."

With that she walked away. The man called after her, "Well, I will. But you may not like it."

"I never liked it," the woman said to herself as she went.

It was a very nice car. The man thought as he switched on the key that it was too nice, perhaps, to do to it what he intended to do. Then he said to the car, "She thinks I smell like a fish. Now you will too. So there." And he drove the car into the water.

"The people there are a little eccentric," the officer said to his wife over dinner. "So no, there won't be any charges. We've hauled the car out. There was a crab on the steering wheel. Can you believe it?"

The wife smiled. She let her husband do the laughing. He had a very nice laugh. She loved to hear it.

30 May 2018
Texas Jim
Passepec, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca