Xemidoofnac

A heron watched me from painted rushes, brush-stroked by a man who lived in a wagon lacquered with stars and road-dust and wind, who sometimes drank too much and thundered. They say he wandered for years, trading canvases for bread, for gas, for silence— until his heart gave out beneath a turquoise sky. His wagon still sat out back, faded scallops of red and gold peeling like secrets no one quite remembered. Inside, the air was musty and warm but cooler than the desert outside, as if time itself had drawn the curtains. The woman behind the counter looked up without surprise, as though she’d been expecting me for years. Wearing turquoise rings on every finger, she spoke in a voice that cracked like sunbaked earth. I found a Camel lighter, dense plastic, off-yellow, cool in my palm like something meant to be forgotten— but it still worked. Next to it, a metal vase— tall, cylindrical, with etched art deco rings and a nick near the rim, perfect to hold my brushes. The heron stood in a leaning row of secondhand paintings, its eye fixed on something just beyond me. “Painted by the wagon man,” she said. “That one never sold— he kept it by his bed.” So I bought it too. That was years ago and I meant to come back but never did, and now the store and wagon are gone— but I remember its goofy name: Xemidoofnac. The vase still holds my brushes, stained with work and waiting. The lighter sleeps in a drawer with old marbles and foreign coins, its flame long gone but still sparking memory. The heron hangs in the hallway, eye still fixed on something I haven’t reached. And sometimes, when the house is quiet, I wonder if he knows— that someone came, and saw, and bought a piece he meant to keep— in remembrance.