Runner Up: Valerie Maczak
Gaithersburg, MD
Congratulations, Val!
Valerie's Bio:
Residing in Gaithersburg, Maryland, by way of Ohio and North Carolina, Valerie Maczak is a recovering bartendress, a reformed flight attendant and a beauty school drop out. Her published work spans innumerable financial newsletters, fiction crime journals, compilation books and a third-grade article about Walt Disney in The Daily Jeffersonian. In her very limited spare time, Valerie takes on freelance work, practices overcoming her stage fright and enjoys grocery shopping.
Rolling Along
By Valerie Maczak
A lot of people don't think a roller derby girl'd like pink. My uniform was black and yellow, but couldn't no one tell me not to wear my pink pom poms.
I could skate gentle as a whiff of honeysuckle or angry as a bearcat, but most of the time I was a ballerina on wheels. I thought them pom poms was little wings on my ankles. A lot of girls thought they had to storm the track, but they's the ones that got took out. I'd breeze right by.
I remembered seeing him the first time. I couldn'ta been but 17. I'd left school to spend more time on the circuit with the Renegades. Mama had a conniption, but until I met him, the derby was the best thing in my life.
We was jamming with the Detroit Destroyers, and they was some mean sons a bitches. I remember like it was yesterday. One of 'em square kicked my shin. There was blood. Lots of it, too, or I woulda kept going. But rule one is don't get the track wet.
Coming out of the pack, I saw him standing next to the box, eating a hot dog sandwich. I was bleedin' but all I noticed was this little bit of mustard in his mustache. I wanted to lick it off.
"Got you pretty good," he said.
"Yeah." Unlacing my skate, one of my pom poms fell off. He bent to pick it up.
"What you doing with this?" he wanted to know. "I figured you too tough for pink."
I told him I was only tough when I needed to be. "Do I need to be tough with you?" I asked.
"No, ma'am," he said, putting that pink pom pom in his pocket.
We watched the rest of the jam then he asked me out for a beer. I was still in my shorts, so he gave me his coat to wear. We had steak sandwiches and a couple of pitchers.
"Where you from?" he asked.
"Greenup, Kentucky. Family's been there forever. Everybody knows us. No one even puts our address on letters no more—just 'Get this to the Wright family' and they do." I swallowed a mouthful of beer. "How'd someone handsome as you end up alone?"
"I'm not. My girl's fixin' to have a kid. It ain't mine, but I done told her ma I'd marry her."
"Well, shit. Give me my pom pom back. One's no good, anyhow."
"No, ma'am. This here's mine to remember a beautiful lady."
We walked back to the rink. The team was going to Cincinnati, so I kissed him goodbye and climbed on the bus.
Seems about a million stops later, I made my way back to Greenup. I was raking leaves when Bill dropped off that box with the address "Get this to Jesse Wright. Greenup, Kentucky."
Now, what in the hell am I gonna do with one pink pom pom and a first-class ticket to Reno, Nevada?
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