James’s Bio:

James Tipton lives in the tropical mountains of central Mexico where he writes short poems and short fiction. He is also a columnist for and Associate Editor of El Ojo del Lago and El Ojo del Mar, monthly magazines published in Mexico for the English-speaking community. He is also book review editor for Mexico Connect, the largest on-line source for “all things Mexico”. He has published more than 1,000 short stories, poems, articles and reviews in North American magazines, including Esquire, The Nation, Christian Science Monitor, American Literary Review, and Field.

His book of poems Letters from a Stranger (with a Foreword by Isabel Allende) won the Colorado Book Award in 1999.

His most recent collections of short poetry are published in bilingual (Spanish and English) editions: Washing Dishes in the Ancient Village/Lavando platos en el antiguo pueblo and All the Horses of Heaven/Todos los Caballos del Paraíso. He is currently completing a collection of short stories set in Mexico, Three Tamales for the Señor.

Washing Dishes in the Ancient Village is available through Bread & Butter Press/1150 S. Glencoe/Denver, CO 80246, $10.95 plus $3.00 shipping & handling. All the Horses of Heaven is available through www.themetpress.com, $12.95 plus $4.00 shipping & handling.

Getting to the Bottom of the Girl in the
Blue-Jean Cut-Offs

By James Tipton

The twenty years of his adult life had been a series of false starts.

Mitchell Parrish was sitting at the bus stop in front of Weminuche Community College. He was waiting, as he did each day, for his wife Myrna to pick him up and take him home after he finished his part-time teaching duties. He was thinking about his future and about his highly developed inability to focus on a single thing long enough that that thing might lift him up into a "career."

Today was the last day of the summer term at WCC. Three months ago, when he first began waiting here, Mitchell decided that this iron bench, bolted so firmly into the concrete, would be where he could dedicate twenty or thirty minutes of each day to get to the bottom of things.

Mitchell's wife, by nature content, was satisfied that her duties as a dental hygienist held meaning as well as income and benefits (for both of them). Myrna had always been considerate of Mitchell and what she called his "job luck." Mitchell began each job only to lose it, through a fluke, like the company itself closing, or the product line he was responsible for moved to China.

Mitchell knew, though, that it was more than that. He knew that he began to lose focus after the first day of every new job.

Now, teaching a single course at the local community college, Mitchell was no longer earning any significant money. Still, that strange luck, that problem of focus, that lack of useful ambition, that inability to decide "what to do," that easy tendency to be distracted, bothered Mitchell. He needed something so simple, so clear, that it became obsession.

Each day while he waited, Mitchell studied the other people, mostly students, getting on, getting off.

Today a woman, with the rich copper-brown skin of a southwestern Indian, so common here in western Colorado, was waiting as well.

Just above her waist and below her white shirt, on the delicate skin at the small of her back, he saw two bewitching snakes, tattooed, reddish-brown, intertwined like two lovers as they rose out of her jeans to stretch leisurely along the length of her spine. He thought he would be healed if he kissed them. Mitchell wanted his wife Myrna to want a tattoo like that.

At the very moment when he was staring most intensely at those tattoos and contemplating what joy might lay further down beneath the blue fabric, she whirled, as if it were part of her exercises, bent low toward Mitchell...and looked him directly in the eye.

"You're Professor Parrish," she said.

Mitchell, who at best might be called Instructor, said, "Yes, I'm Professor Parrish. Do I know you?"

"My name is Karma," she said.

"Karma," Mitchell repeated.

"'Karma' was my mother's idea. She's a Mexican Apache. She liked to call me 'Karmacita.'"

"You go to school here?"

"Yes, but today I'm tired, the term is finished, and I'm going to head south to Taos."

Taos, he thought. He had always loved Taos, and before meeting Myrna he had wanted to move there.

"I love Taos," he said, not knowing what to follow that with. He wanted to say, "I also love your incredible ass. It reminds me of Taos after a rain." Mitchell shook his head. He couldn't get her ass out of his mind. He tried to focus on how he would force Myrna to want that tattoo.

He saw their familiar Dodge Intrepid, two blocks away, waiting at the light. He stood up, satisfied to be back into his routine. Soon he would be home and he would be grilling Atlantic salmon, brushed with orange juice and finely chopped ginger. It was Myrna's favorite. He fixed it for her at least once a week.

The girl was standing now, half turned toward Mitchell, half turned toward the bus that was just opening its doors.

Mitchell wanted to say something romantic like, "I wanted to meet a woman like you my whole life," but he knew it wouldn't sound true. What he really wanted was to be meeting the same exotic woman over and over, each time in a different way, until something began to spiral out of each of them that was bigger than life itself. 

Two blocks down the light had turned green. Mitchell stood up and half waved.

Then Mitchell followed Karmacita onto the bus.

 

***