I Saw My Reflection

By

Karen W. Waggoner

I saw my reflection in a store window tonight just after the street lights came on. Nice tweed coat, last season's at Goodwill, my son's stocking cap, the one he wore in seventh grade when all the kids had those hats that were five or six feet long. Wrapped it around his neck. I said he'd trip over it and break his leg but he didn't. Always in a hurry, like his mom. At least, I don't remember that he did. Good thing I had on gloves too, mittens really, because when I reached into the big trash can behind Applebee's, I came up with nothin' but a handful of coffeegrounds. Wet. I shook my mittens real good before I reached in again. This time I tried to watch what I was about to grab. Once in a while, some idiot throws away a perfectly good burger, all wrapped up in a napkin.

Well, this time I looked and fished around with an old flyswatter I found just so I could avoid the handful of wet stuff, and this time I heard something clink against the metal of the handle. I leaned over the edge, standing on tiptoe and remembering to grab my hat with the other hand, while I stirred until I saw a gleam. Not aluminum foil, but metal, like the stainless steel double boiler I used to have in my kitchen. Only thing wrong with it was the handle broke. I wrapped some tape around it and cooked stuff in it for a while. Until I didn't have a stove any more. Anyway, I hooked the piece of metal with the handle of the flyswatter and sorta dragged it toward the edge of the trash where I could get a better look.

By that time I was sure what it was so I checked all around me by the light on the tall pole beside the trash. It was pretty dark in the alley. Lots of shadows, places to hide, but I knew no one had seen me slip behind Applebees except my voices and they didn't have eyes. It was too late and too cold. We didn't generally stay out all night during the winter months. It was a gun and it looked real.

I used the handle of the flyswatter again to hook into the little round place where you put your finger. It took a while to work it to the top of the trashcan. I could hear myself breathing pretty loud from the effort. Too many damned cigarettes. Gonna die before my time is up. My voices usually laugh when they hear me think crap like that, but this time they stayed quiet. Using just the thumb and one finger of my left hand mitten, I picked it up and sniffed around the barrel. It didn't smell like anything as far as I could tell, but I was looking for the smell of caps I remembered from when I was a little kid and had a cap gun that used those little red rolls of paper. You loaded up a roll of paper that had black spots on it and pulled the trigger. The flat part of the thing on top popped and snapped down on the black spot and went "Bang." I really liked my cap pistol and used to shoot it till the roll of red paper streamed out behind it when I ran, smelling up the whole neighborhood with that special smell.

This one I had here wasn't a cap gun. It was heavy, not as shiny as the toy I remembered, and had one of those spool, round, things in it. When I pushed it around, it clicked from one space to another. It was real.

I thought to myself that I needed to know if it was loaded, but we weren't sure how to tell. Maybe I should pull the trigger, just once, they said. Aim at something high up or far away. I looked around again and listened. No, too quiet here tonight. I'd have a half dozen of the old bums right here in ten seconds, if not sooner. I remembered seeing those Western guys look into the spool thing for bullets, but I tried it, holding the gun up toward the light. I couldn't see anything. The voices whispered, "Be careful," and this time I laughed.

It slipped into the coat pocket that didn't have holes. The fly swatter under my feet reminded me I was hungry, and I looked over the edge of the trash can again, straining my eyes to find one of those white boxes they give people for taking stuff home. From Applebees. Pie. Maybe a whole potato with sour cream and those things all chopped over it. My mouth watered. One voice said I'd have to stop being so particular about my diet. Even a clump of green stuff would do. It took so long to find anything to eat my feet hurt more than my stomach from standing and bending over and the voices kept saying for me to get away before they found me. I asked who and they said, "The Barrow gang."

I didn't recall any Barrow gang. Actually, my feet hurt from wearing shoes too short for my toes. When the lady gave me them last week, last year, sometime, she said they'd do, even though they were only 7"s and my feet are bigger than that, but they were dry and almost new, so I took them and I've regretted it ever since. So I couldn't stand too long and if I sat down, my feet get cold. The voices laughed when I worried about my circulation. "you might die before your time," they said, repeating my worry. "Your toes turn black and somebody will cut them off. Then your feet. Then your ankles." It was so funny that sometimes I laughed with them.

Who were the Barrow gang? Somebody in a movie when I was Faye Dunaway in a skimpy slip, staying in a fleabag motel with Warren Beatty, I decided. If I was Faye Dunaway and I had Warren Beatty, why should I worry about the Barrow gang? I am the Barrow gang. Everybody's afraid of me and Warren. The voices shut up when they were wrong. Faye had a gun of her own, just like me. I looked around and stuck my hand in my pocket, holding the gun by its handle and letting it stick out in front of me like I'd seen in the gangster movies. "Give me the money," I whispered, low down just like Faye, and I walked out of the alley and looked both ways.

All I had to do was find Warren. My voices giggled, low down and sneaky. "That's right," they said. "Go find Warren. I'll bet he'll like to see you now that you've got the gun." I walked out of the light and turned left. There must be one of those motels around here. Warren will be waiting.