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The mood is a bit sad until Ruth Halford, a 74-year-old-widow with a silver permanent, pipes up. "I'm not sad about anything. I don't owe nobody nothing. I scratch my plans in the dirt. I'm not looking for anybody. The only person I'm in love with is me. Right, girls?"
This is maddening to the eligible bachelor, like a dog chasing a pork chop on a string. A waste of a perfectly beautiful woman.
"Those girls, they get to being independent and they don't need men," said John Clairmont, 77, a retired truck driver. "You can never get them to come home with you."
The evening dissipated. The sun set a violent red. The lonely hearts played cards and listened to the old records. The gossip went around the tables.
The pastor's wife was one topic. Mrs. Cole promised to go see the pastor on Sunday and take him soup. "Such a shame," she said. "They were together a long time."
Mrs. Cole and the pastor would make a handsome couple, someone said with real feeling. The others agreed.
In the morning, Pastor Phil awoke alone, put his change in his pocket, put on his shoes and shared coffee around his fire. Rusty was there. So were others from the north side, the stumblebums and the alkies.
The pastor talked about random things from his life with his wife. The snowstorms and eggs in a rooming house. The smell of her hair. Ceramic snowmen she collected. Her face lighted by the dashboard lights. Recipes the children do not ask for. Grandchildren who, chances are, will not remember her name. Death in the desert in some nameless place without longitude or shade.
"That's the tragedy of old age," the pastor said as his eyes welled once again. "I'm alone. I'm derelict without her."
Rusty stared at his feet. One guy asked for 20 bucks. An old transvestite drove by and waved.
- charlie leduff, "Parked in Desert, Waiting Out the Winter of Life," new york times december 17/2004
posted December 17, 2004 in print.