Sherri Hoffman Big Boat

58

CIRQUE

FICTION

Sherri Hoffman

Big Boat

Celia was a widow who lived alone at the Mill Creek Community, her condominium isolated and nowhere near the historic creek, and for eighty-four days,she'd been without her car. During the first month, her son drove her in his Suburban—more of a truck than a car—as if they were a family again, though she knew he did it outof guilt. He'd shown her the DMV notices stamped uninsurable— the worst form of cancelation. Celia argued that her accidents, three in a year, had been minor. Taillights, bumpers, a broken rear window. She might die without her car. Don't be dramatic, he'd said and punched the hole through her driver's license, per the enclosed instructions.

Later he returned with his oldest daughter for the gold Continental with suicide doors he'd named Big Boat when he was a kid. Celia watched from her kitchen as they taped signs in its windows, the garish FOR SALE softened by a swirl of hand-drawn daisies that made the sign look like a headstone, which sealed her defeat. Shadow Dancer

Eighty-four days without her car, Celia became weightless.

That morning, she ate the last egg with the heel of bread, toasted. Her son was busy. Wait for the weekend, he'd said. But she knew he wouldn't drive her to her store. Not to Harmony's. It'd be that warehouse where everything came in enormous packages, and she'd end up with another ridiculous box of toilet tissue and a slice of pizza on a greasy paper plate.

Celia licked the end of her pencil and added "eggs" to her grocery list.

She would not wait.

The sun was pleasant as she set out in her squaretoed shoes, two crisp twenty dollar bills in her billfold, and a plastic bonnet in case the weather turned. She carried her blue handbag in the crook of her arm.

At the top of the hill, she stopped to catch her breath. Heat prickled her neck. She'd only ever driven to the grocery, and the sidewalk veered from the expressway. It dipped into a tunnel, water-cool, the ghostly breath, Celia decided, of the dead lakebed below the city, its water absorbed by the desert until what was left became the Great Salt Lake. Celia emerged into a wild greenspace filled with the sounds of water. In developed areas, Mill Creek was diverted underground, but in this forgotten corner of nowhere, it tumbled in the sunlight, bordered by sedge and willow, a battered chain-link fence along its bank. The walkway forked three ways. Celia gauged her bearings against the rise of Mount Olympus on her left and picked a path that felt right. It pleased her to know north from south. Her son thought Gary Thomas her simple-minded. She'd seen his pity, tinged with alarm.

Let him see her now. Let him drive his truck to her condominium this weekend to find it fully stocked.

She secured her purse and set out again.

But it was snagged, caught from behind. The force of it spun her around, and she came face-to-face with a man, a full head taller than her. One hand on her purse. "Let go this instant."

The man did not let go. Celia yanked hard. The man's arm flopped with her efforts. "I know who you are," she shrilled.

He let go.

She fell backwards into the fence, and he came after

her.

Celia screamed.