Collected Short Stories by Robert Reed

Author:Robert Reed [Reed, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-07T21:26:54+00:00

Poet Snow

by Robert Reed

For years she had been their neighbor and that was all she was: a quiet, solitary woman with a passion for long walks that took her to every end of their little city. Everyone must have seen her, at least in passing. She looked to be in her thirties, and then her forties—a small skinny creature with long purplish-black hair, smart gray eyes and a Roman nose, with a face handsome enough to catch the notice of a few men but never so pretty that the local women regarded her as a threat. In cold weather, she wore oversized coats and high boots, and there were still plenty of winter months in that northern latitude. This was one of the new cities born during a very warm century—a community that sprang up in the midst of what had been a shaggy spruce forest and peat bogs. One hundred thousand people had migrated from the sultry, overcrowded south, drawn by cheap land and nostalgia for old-fashioned winters. It was an utterly modern city, diverse and clean, aesthetically united, and despite that unity, surprisingly lovely. The woman lived near the city's largest park, alone inside a tiny house. Yet her yard covered several hectares of rocky ground, and unlike almost every landowner, she had maintained the original spruce forest. That fact alone made her notable. People might not know who the walker was, but everybody understood what was meant when they heard the “Christmas tree place” mentioned—a dark blue-green woods surrounded by a simple split-rail fence, both the house and its occupant left invisible from every outside vantage point.

Her immediate neighbors knew a good deal more, of course. They saw her with some frequency, and over the years, they had managed more than a few conversations with the woman. Given the chance, she was nothing but pleasant. She could smile and make small talk, and if pressed, she relinquished little clues about herself. Her name was Brenda Liles, for instance, and she was an artist. Just what sort of artist remained a mystery. People eventually settled on the term “poet.” Ms. Liles had used that word, or she hadn't dissuaded anyone who used it in her presence. But unlike several other local poets, she wasn't a teacher at the city college, nor did anyone seem to know the titles of her work or even under what name she wrote. Some speculated that she was just a strange woman wearing the arts as a kind of camouflage. But then her next-door neighbor managed to learn something incredible. The woman was indeed a poet, yes. But she didn't work with prosaic, old-fashioned words. And since childhood, nothing that she had written had actually enjoyed the honor of being published.

Ms. Liles's neighbor was an elderly woman originally from Haiti and then Orlando. Ruby was outgoing and persistent, and in some cases, relentless. Learning a little bit about Brenda, she wanted to know everything. One summer day, using the excuse of searching for

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