SUN FICTION:........"My Year At Western Auto"...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | That year, I had landed a job at the Western Auto on Old Hiway 83, its well-known location just past the Second Street irrigation canal and across the way from the expansive Sears & Roebuck store that always loomed busy, residents streaming in and out of there from the time it opened in the morning until the time it closed in the evening. Some days, I would walk over there and check out the rifles, the boots and the cowboy hats. A woman named Irene Salinas always helped me with the hats. She liked to say I look cool in a Stetson; I liked the cheaper ones in black.

And so, I would work the tire-changing shop at my job and dream of buying some hat, maybe a rifle and boots for sure. The dream always came with me grabbing Irene by the hand and running out of the store with her. Marry her. Love her and love her some more. You could say that she was everything I'd ever look for in a woman. I'd say that even as I also knew Irene was some seven or eight years older than I was when we met.

To describe her would be to paint some sort of calming watercolor of her, something in moving burnt-orange for a dress, liquid black for her long straight, shiny hair and an arrogant back of the sort men love but say they hate in dark blue. My early days of falling for her had seemed endless. I'd go by the store and see her, only it would be just that, seeing her. The times we lived in dictated restraint. Things were not as they are today. Romance via the Internet has stolen something precious from romance. I could meet thirty women online today, speak to them in that fashion and never, ever see them in person. I saw Irene in the flesh every day she worked.

"Can't make up your mind on the hat, huh?" she would say more often than not. "You know you can pick one and put it in layaway and then, if you change your mind by the time you pay it, you can always exchange it for another one. We get new hats almost every week."

I would hear her, listening to that sweet all-occasion voice. Anyone seeing her in that setting would have said Irene was a professional saleslady, one going places with the company. I nodded at the layaway suggestion. Her face stared at me as if a huge billboard drawing me to some island beach resort. "Okay," I said, "Let's do the black straw cowboy hat."

"The one for $14.99?"

"Yes."

Irene laughed softly, perhaps in final victory. She went about the dynamic of grabbing my hat and stashing it in its hat box before ringing up the sale and handing me a receipt for my layaway payment of $3. "It'll be in a special place back in our stock room," she said next. "Just come in and make a payment of at least $1.50 a week. You'll pay it off before you know it."

The hat was okay. Not quite the hat guy, however, I told myself as I strolled out of the store that day, walked out as if I'd asked Irene for a date and she'd said, "Yes!"

Time would fly (which is what they say about being in debt) and I would make my weekly payments, always knowing that I wanted the weeks and balance on my hat to last for eternity. Irene had warmed up to me, but not in that way. She was a professional, I told myself. She dealt with all her male customers in the exact same way. One day, she called me over as I was strolling toward the hat department after walking into the store.

"I have a picture of you," she said, somewhat excitedly. Irene, I knew, had taken her small camera during a visit two weeks earlier and snapped off some shots of me wearing the cowboy hat. I had made some faces as she clicked away.

"This is my favorite, Arnoldo," she said, using my name for the first time ever. "Here, look at it. You look like a TV cowboy!"

I took the glossy photo in hand and stared at it as if it was something valuable, perhaps because Irene had made such a fuss about it. It was just a guy with a hat on his head. That's all. Just another customer.

A week later, I made the final payment on the hat and Irene went back into the stockroom to get it. I actually wanted to put another one on layaway, just so that I could come see her. When she walked back to the showroom, Irene saw me trying on another hat. She said, "Oh, that's a good one, too! Do you want to exchange it for the one you paid for?" I said, "No, the straw hat is really me."

All that was some 49 years ago in another McAllen. I lost track of Irene after she quit the job at Sears. A co-worker told me she was working at The Popular, a high-end women's boutique downtown. I suppose I could have gone to see her there.

Yeah, I guess I could have.

But I never did. The other day I again thought of her and, well, my mind took me to a place where my brain told me pretty Irene had married, had four/five kids and lived out a great life with a good man.

That's what guys say about women they loved but never had...

-30-

[EDITOR'S NOTE:...From time to time, we will write & post fiction derived from what we consider to be life in McAllen and in the Rio Grande Valley. Our effort will rest on looking back in framing of these stories, as well as in writing about the here & now...]