Copper-colored contest entry

Literati.

With a style uniquely his own, long-time member of our writing community and personal friend Mike Stang submits this entry into our contest.

COPPER CANYON

By Michael Stang

When I met Soty she was practiced as a Doll Doctor in Topolobampo on her way to Los Mochis for a convention.Hoar winds seen off the Pacific basin rent through marked bolts letting the 78’ Datsun’s sub frame slip from its chassis. Engine met road deserved in an irreversible release of death.

She was visibly disjointed.

Avoiding the wreck I pulled to the side seeing an unfortunate young woman limping under a drizzle. An overweight doctor’s bag of miniature-scale body parts, alongside toy-like surgical instruments; tools for carving and patching marionettes, action figures, and highly poseable resin puppets, slipped from her hand.

Somehow I knew the headpieces matched her copper canyon hair.

She looked but didn’t see me.

“Are you all right?” Her eyes trembled to look at the wreckage. “Here, come sit. I’ll call it in.”

The hospital fixed the hip but not the limp. Soty rested easy when I visited; got her name from a driver’s license and noticed how the copper extended to her skin. No one came to see this orphan. I stayed with her every day and then the nights. When they released her she asked me to take her home. She wouldn’t leave her workshop. My patients was all she said.

We’d go to the mountain caves I couldn’t shut up about and came home laden with native copper she used to sequin her dolls. The shop glowed orangey-gold. Photos of Soty taken outside had to be perpendicular to the light. Her rose metallics mirrored the valleys and timberline crests; she’d disappear into the panorama. Our favorite shot hung above the workbench chiseled mess, a selfie showing a grizzled Man Mountain Dean next to copper penny traces of maybe a woman’s body.

Soty was left barren but akin to her hitch-hike walk she didn’t think of it. She loved the caves as much as I (cave fever) and dragged me up there before the sun. We entered the portal well used to a sharp left tunnel that opened to a dais boulder. A me — quite new to the world — Baby Doll Dean sat up there on top waiting.

~~~

Clarity shared nothing about Soty’s death because there wasn’t any. Never one to gnash teeth; flay her thoughts, or uncontrol her tears, she left fear on the shelf for me if ever needed. I’ll admit it could wait until maybe facing my own crossover. I think of her that way; no demise, rather like skipping stones.

The shop burned down in a way not tragic but honored her legacy. Me and the photograph made it out.

The selfie had changed. Soty’s copper was as complete as it was separate from the landscape. As if on its own terms the metallic purged the connections between ethereal and portrait: Arms around old Mountain Dean she’s kissing his cheek on exuberant grounds. She stands with her savior on the dais a stage no painter could match. Once loved, loved again.