Fiction: Her Name(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

My one-block street goes straight to a high school. I look out a window all day every day onto that street, only because my laptop rests on a desk so that sunlight falls on it. Through the window I can see if it rains, or really, if rain has brought down sticks or limbs from three huge oaks onto my front yard that I must clear away before I mow. Woodpeckers love those oaks, and sometimes a hawk visits. When it snows or freezes, I can gauge road conditions by how many cars brave my one-block street, always the last one salt-trucks clear. But mostly, I watch students heading from left to right to school and returning from right to left at 2:30 in the afternoons.
    I fell in love with a girl I watched from that window.
    I know what you’re thinking.
    I shall start in medias res with the best part.
    I was mowing one hot spring day right up against the street, my back to the school. I turned my head and saw my sweet pretty girl’s face maybe a foot away from mine. I jumped up, and I jumped out of my skin, as the lawnmower had obliterated all other noise. She laughed at my fright, so I laughed, too. She smiled so beautifully, I still haven’t forgotten it. If only I could have heard the laugh.
    I wish I’d known it was the last day of school or that I’d endure all summer without seeing her.
    The first time I saw her lacked any memorable significance. I must have noticed she walked alone. Day by day, I noticed her hair and her clothes. Brown hair to her shoulders or just past, but so thick that it looked longer than it was. Glasses. I love glasses. Always a bright, multi-colored sweater. Always skinny jeans tight on her skinny legs that I came to realize were those new tights rather than denim. Chic, beautiful, intelligent and hip.
    She walked slowly to school, so I had plenty time to notice details of hair, clothes.
    She walked more slowly homeward. I asked why, and answered.
    Once, no, two or three times, she cried, slowing her step to delay arrival. I loved her. No.
    Bullied at school? Abused at home by Daddy or by a relentless Banshee mom, as mine had been? I was already inventing stories. She’s a singer! She likes the old music. She’s never studying her phone as she passes my window. Now I loved her.
    I realized she needed me. I’d take her to my patio in the company of her friends so she’d feel safe. I’d point out the shortcut through my back yard.
    I started checking my mail right at 2:30, or picking up sticks or trimming hedges or any such nonsense, hoping to see her, to catch her eye, to say hello. Hoping she’d see me.
    She did. I saw her coming along the road home. I was at the mailbox and waved. She waved back and smiled. I should have waited and said hi and told her my name and asked hers, but no, that would have scared the poor girl away. No doubt I would have started telling her I’d realized she was a singer and abused at home. Once I could charm the ladies, but no longer. Especially one so young and hip and chic.
    I imagined inviting her and her friends to spend a bit of a sunny afternoon on my veranda, with its rocking glider and the possibility of a visit from a bunny or a deer or hawk, in case my girl wanted to delay going home, as her slow trudge from right to left had suggested to my mind. I might serenade them with my guitar and find out she played guitar, too, or piano, or anything, and we’d harmonize well at once, and then I’d be hopelessly lost.
    She might begin to tell me bits of her life story, which might lead to more visits. She might be a nonstop yakker. I love those.
    Love requires no reciprocation to spread itself around the neighborhood. Most warm or hot and dry days I spend reading out on my veranda under the umbrella of Oak Tree #4, enjoying the view of my back yard, the size of two football fields, most of which is not mine at all. It belongs to that church right over there, but except for some peanut-sized football kids in Fall in helmets as big as their torsos, and my neighbor who kicks a soccer ball around rain or shine or snow, I got it all to myself and somebody else mows it for me.
    I interrupt my reading frequently to burn leaves I neglected to rake up last Fall or to burn other yard debris and junk mail, tons of which is all anybody gets anymore.
    I was in a reverie one twilight when a “Hey!” startled me, and she rounded a corner of the house and plopped down on the glider and rocked it with ferocity.
    I reacted not with awkwardness or panic but with the charm that had long ago served me well. I didn’t ask her name or how school was. I asked her if she wanted cranberry juice or beer.
    “What kinda beer you got?” Striding up the steps and into the house before I could even rise and follow her into the kitchen.
    My kind of woman.
    You’re thinking I should have asked her age. Listen, pal: I hit Germany at 15 and learned what real beer was and saw little kids imbibing beer and wine with their parents because it’s a normal, healthy thing to do.
    Yeah, and you’re thinking I’m going to get her buzzed and force my disgusting self on her.
    Just let the story unfold, willya?
    She grabbed the opener off the side of the fridge and took a slug, but I took the Heineken bottle from her hand and decanted into a glass.
    “We’re civilized here,” I said, fairly certain I detected a fresh application of some sweet appealing fragrance.
    She laughed a little, musically, made a half-curtsey, and asked why I was not joining her.

My heart did a little summersault. I wanted to take her glasses off. “Oh, I’ve got my drink on the table out there. You wanna go back out, or stay inside?” I really needed to know her age.
    So I asked, “How much do you weigh?”
    She laughed again, knowing I was pretending to be a dumbass.
    See? We had made a wordless connection during our two prior fleeting encounters.
    “I love your hair,” I gushed.
    She primped it with her left palm and batted her eyelashes with some irony.
    “And your glasses. I will never hurt you.”
    At that, she gave me some sideways dubiousness.
    “I’ve seen you crying walking home. Not that I want you to talk about that, yet, but I am gonna stop jabbering like an idiot now so you can tell me your life story. Please.”
    Again, she just laughed, but I just waited.
    “You know how puppies and cats know a good human right away?”
    “Yeah, but I could be a Harley-chomping sadist molester wife-beater.”
    “You gave me your good beer.”
    I had to ask her to slow her hard rocking of the glider. I don’t know what was making me so dizzy.
    “Do you play guitar?” I managed to ask. “I missed you all summer. Did you feel me missing you?”
    I’m a fucking 60-year-old man. But I never had such boldness when I was 17. Probably missed some opportunities.
    She mentioned a brother, a little sister, a mother. Then some small talk I don’t remember. Said she should be getting home but that she really liked my back yard, refusing a second beer before shyly accepting.
    I remembered her slow step toward home. I wanted her to feel the twilight, the tuning-up of the crickets. They add so much to the magic of the place in September.
    “Come back soon,” I said.
    “I will,” she said.
    “Promise,” I said, but only to myself.
    “The lil crickeys sing all night long.”
    Then I told her I knew she was a singer, and a couple of other stories I’d imagined about her.
    She wasn’t scared. She took a cigarette and said, “I love smoking when I’m walking in the snow, sucking on a peppermint. I don’t smoke all the time, though.”
    She came back a couple more times, never staying long enough for a second Heineken.
    Nothing beats an instant friend who’s yours based on no information, no reason.
    Nothing hurt worse than never seeing her again, no explanation.
    I think it had nothing to do with having said I love you. What could be nicer than that?
    Sometimes love becomes sweeter in recollection.
    I did want to push my fingers through her thick chocolate curls, though.

Copyright © 2023 by Pat Hamilton Pat Hamilton has written three novels, hundreds of songs, and a handful of book reviews for the papers. He taught College English for 30 years, which helps him blend popular and classic literature in his writing. As an Army brat, he traveled the USA and Europe before settling into the beauty of Tennessee, but the rock star he used to be still lives on inside him.