riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (03/29/85)
Courtesy of AP and reprinted without permission, here is Peter Applebome's
winning entry in the 8th annual International Imitation Hemingway Competition:
In the late summer of that year we lived in a condo in North Dallas
that looked across the tollway at the discos and honkytonks of the Rue
St. Bubba. We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its
strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like
a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant.
"The Great Landry says the Cowboys will be back," said the girl.
"Then it must be so," I said, though I knew it was a lie.
"When football season comes, then it will be cold. Like Switzerland.
But not now. The cold will be later."
"Pass the Doritos," I said, and her eyes shone like the stars over
Amarillo.
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched
her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You
ride the bull, sen~or. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough
like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And
when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do.
And the pain was washed away but the image of the woman stayed with me
like a blessing and like a curse.
We went that summer to many clubs. We went to the Longhorn Ballroom
and to the Palm and to a honky tonk in Fort Wprth that was what Harry's
Bar would have been if it had 85-cent Pearl beer and a barmaid whose
peroxide hair could damage your eyes as if you had watched an eclipse.
That night we visited the mall, but as we drove home I did not think of
the Pearl beer and did not think of the peroxide. I did not think of the
girl who sat beside me. I thought of the woman of the tollway, and I
could feel my heart pounding in the heat of the summer night.
"Stop the car," the girl said.
There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the
woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she
raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a
lie. Life is like a bad maragarita with good tequila, I thought as I
poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
--- riddle@ut-sally.UUCP, riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally