Long Division

The man and the woman are dividing the Christmas ornaments. He wants to get it over with. She doesn’t know what she wants. She suggests he take the creche made in Ireland; he is the one with the Celtic heritage, though she will keep the last name. The name their children have. The family name. But the miniature wooden creche they hung on the tree, a gift from the church they were married in, is rightsized for her now. At some point the tiny cone of the Virgin’s body had lost the round bead with its circle halo perched on top. Mary had a baby and her head popped off! the children laughed. This was before. After they would give Mary a jelly bean for a head. Or the balled up foil from a Hershey’s kiss. Once a wasabi pea. No one ever tried to replace the halo, and for some of those years the Holy Mother just stayed headless. The woman thought this just as well. Her heart did all the pondering anyway.

Mr. Tumbleweed

                                        after James Tate / after ZZ Top

I saw the Sharp-Dressed Man coming down the street, but I didn’t realize it was him. The closer he got, the older he seemed. He was bent down so low his black tie was dragging on the ground and his fat wallet fell into his top hat. Then I saw he was a tumbleweed rolling down the sidewalks of Saint Paul, bouncing each time he hit a heaved concrete slab. Once he stopped to read a poem by Diego Vazquez Jr. engraved in the cement. His gold watch, diamond ring and cufflinks spun around his insides like laundry in a front loader. When he passed me, I could smell the Stetson Coty on his white gloves.  I nodded to him and continued on my way. The Wells Fargo drive-through was open but the teller wouldn’t let me make my HOA payment without a car. I looked across to the building where the flat voice sat in a window, shaking its head. I had other errands so I walked on, down Grand Avenue past Macalester College, Where Ideas and Intellectual Curiosity Matter, past the canopy tent where graduating students milled with their families. A younger sibling of one of the cap-and-gowns grabbed me on the sidewalk. “Are there any condensed books in the DeWitt Wallace library? No one will tell me! What’s the secrecy about?” “Honestly, I have no idea,” I said. “He was the Original Aggregator!” the boy cried to my departing back. At Breadsmith, I picked up my whole wheat loaf, unsliced, no plastic bag, then went into the original Dunn Brothers for my pound of whole beans. The tumbleweed was in the corner sipping an Americano, which dripped through his silk suit onto the floor. “Aren’t you the Sharp-Dressed Man?” I said. “The very one,” he replied. “You’re a bit sloppy now,” I said. His tumbleweed shoulders shrugged. “It’s my birthday,” he said. “Happy Birthday,” I said. “How old are you?” He lowered his shades. “Forty-one,” he said. “Still too young for me,” I sighed. My word bubble rose, and he popped it with his stick pin.