Word Count: 386
Nobody stopped her, nobody even suggested that what she was doing was strange, not in the subtlest manner nor with outright honesty. Nobody cared enough, I suppose.
For after her lover died, she started wearing his clothes.
He’d been a lineman, following storms across country, one of the best the phone company had. He was as cautious and meticulous as he was quick and good but it only takes one mistake on a pole. They sent him back in his jeans and plaid shirt and that’s what she buried him in, so they say, since he had no family and she was the only one to make the decisions and she was insistent, so the funeral director had said. Then she started wearing his clothes.
She was above average height for a woman and trim, matching his wiry frame. Nothing hung on her, no sleeves to roll up, and a belt took care of the waistline. Nothing would seem out of place to a stranger, but those who knew or knew of her understood that before, she only wore dresses for that’s what her lover had liked.
She looked like a farmer, or maybe a telephone lineman, and her long hair she eventually chopped short. With the onset of winter she donned his canvas parka and stocking hat. His boots she wore with stuffed toes. She came into town maybe once a week to stock up, driving his old pickup truck. Women would nod and murmur polite greetings, completely at odds with their thoughts. Men were more openly negative, their stares hitting and sliding away.
Just before spring, in the deep snows of a storm that hit hard, a man found her plodding her way home from the truck she’d had to abandon. He gave her a ride, helped carry her groceries, brought in some wood for a fire. He helped her get warm, insisted she wrap in a blanket and that’s when he saw her belly near ripe.
He said nothing, just always made sure to look in on her, called the doctor when the time came to deliver.
Nobody said anything to her, but smiled and admired the woman dressed in soft cotton and the baby she strolled around town. If they asked her she’d have told them. They’d really always wanted a boy.
