Chapter Nineteen
Another Sunday came into being and this time Mirabelle found herself sitting on the porch with Kirk Patrick. As he sat beside her whittling away at a piece of wood, they began to talk about life and dreams and the choices one made in life.
"So you're really from Boston, Kirk?" asked Mirabelle.
"Yes I am," he answered, as shavings of wood continued to fly from his cuts.
"What made you come to Colorado?" questioned Mirabelle. Maybe there was some unsavoury incident in his past he was getting away from, she wondered.
"Childhood dreams," he answered philosophically. He stopped whittling to recall them in his mind.
"And are you happy here?" asked Mirabelle.
Kirk came back from his imaginary trip to the past then proceeded to stroke his bearded chin. "Yes, I am," he answered then paused, "But sometimes I wonder."
"Wonder what?" queried Mirabelle.
Leaning forward, Kirk rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. After a moment of silence he spoke: "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in Boston." He paused again, thinking reflectively then continued, "I could have stayed there, gone off to university, gotten a status job and married my old flame." He stared before him, his eyes distant.
"Why didn't you?" asked Mirabelle She couldn't imagine Kirk in a university for he seemed too simple to be of the intelligentsia.
"It was a choice I made," he answered then proceeded to return to whittling his stick. "Life's full of choices," he added, "You make them and you live with them."
"Do you regret your choices, Kirk?" asked Mirabelle. Perhaps he wasn't as happy as he claimed to be.
"No," he replied, "I've had a lot of good times and good experiences here in Colorado. I'm out in the open country, free from a punch clock, doing something I enjoy..." He paused momentarily to think it over then stated, "No, I don't regret my decision."
Kirk looked off into the distance, mulling things over in his mind then said aloud, "It's just that every once in a while I get to wondering what things would be like if I had made a different decision." He stopped to place the toothpick he had whittled into his mouth and remained silent for a long time. Mirabelle turned her head to look at him. Turning to meet her eyes he bobbed the toothpick up and down in his mouth. Mirabelle wondered what he was going to say.
"Oral fixation complex," he said to her as he took the toothpick out of his mouth.
Mirabelle burst out laughing while Kirk grinned ear to ear. He then replaced the toothpick in his mouth. When she had calmed down she asked the comic cowboy, "Don't you take anything seriously, Kirk?"
"I try not to," he answered back in complete honesty while holding the toothpick in between his teeth. "You live. You die. That's the long and short of it. So you might as well enjoy yourself," he told Mirabelle.
"Have you ever been back to Boston?" Mirabelle asked him. She wondered what Kirk had been like before he turned cowboy.
"I haven't," he replied, "I've never gone back ever since I left." Kirk stared off into the distance and chewed on his toothpick. "God, I wish I had a cigarette," he said to himself as he patted his shirt pockets in mild desperation.
"Did you have a girlfriend back in Boston," questioned Mirabelle, wondering about his "old flame".
"I did," answered Kirk. He silently replayed his memories in his mind then said to Mirabelle, "When I first left we wrote to each other every week." He paused to take the toothpick out from between his teeth, then continued, "But as time went on the letters just stopped."
Kirk threw the toothpick into the yard then said to himself, "I wonder how's she doing." Oblivious of Mirabelle, he stood up and walked to the porch's fence to lean on the rough-hewn pine-wood post. "Part of the price of a dream, I suppose," he said reflectively as his head and eyes dropped down to look at the toothpick he had discarded.
Mirabelle stared at Kirk's back. With his exuberant behavior, he seemed at times almost invincible: that nothing could hurt him and that life was a joke. Right now, however, he almost looked dejected.
After a couple of minutes Kirk turned to face Mirabelle then asked, "How about making some coffee for me, Mirabelle?"
"Certainly, Kirk," she replied then got up to go to the kitchen.
Kirk remained behind leaning on the post. His eyes were locked on the toothpick, and his heart on other things that were no longer within reach.
