By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
FORT SUMNER, New Mexico |...Perhaps it was cold enough, or maybe he'd just wanted to wear his old black, snap-button cowboy shirt over his even-older cotton sweater. There were much-bigger questions to deal with, more than a dozen swirling around like skinny flies starving for attention.
Paul Cruz had left his wife and house and mother and father and friends behind. You had to do that after you signed divorce papers, was his rolling-along feeling. Ten years of marriage gone. Life as a collection of episodes, this one one of thousands, the final one a dagger.
It was Paul's opinion that a new start was a new start, dammit.
Change followed change, also an opinion. Lovely Gina, dark-haired and forever about as friendly as a lost puppy, had strayed on him and that simply was unpardonable. Here, he rolled toward the west in a used pickup he had bought back home in Dallas.
His watch told Paul it was almost noon.
A catsup-stained paper bag carrying three Whataburgers and fries rested at arm's length, there where sweet Gina might have been had she kept up with her wedding vows. A hawk surprised him a mile west of Lubbock and it wasn't until he drove past passive Clovis that he saw it stop following him.
It had flown off toward down and out Pueblo, Colorado to the north, according to the sight out of his passenger-side window. Hawks didn't have his problem. They mated and often mated until death, and it was hard to visualize a hawk committing adultery. Divorce was a bummer, but not a crippler.
Paul thought he likely would be in the mood for new romance by the time the sun set somewhere west of Albuquerque...
-30-
[EDITOR'S NOTE:...Once more, a contribution from the short story collection...]
I've made that drive. Not bad, great scenery once you leave Texas behind.
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