Free Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

have liked to cry with sheer relief. Yet a part of her brain thinking calmly Of course. This has happened before. You will know what to do.
    At a gas pump stood an attendant in soiled bib overalls, shirtless, watching her approach. He was a fattish man with snarled hair, a sly fox-face, watching her approach. Uneasily M.R. wondered—would the attendant speak to her, or would she speak to him, first? She was trying not to limp. Her leather shoes were hurting her feet. She didn’t want a stranger’s sympathy, still less a stranger’s curiosity.
    “Ma’am! Somethin’ happen to ya car?”
    There was a smirking sort of sympathy here. M.R. felt her face heat with blood.
    She explained that her car had broken down about a mile away. That is—her car was partway in a ditch. Apologetically she said: “I could almost get it out by myself—the ditch isn’t deep. But . . .”
    How pathetic this sounded! No wonder the attendant stared at her rudely.
    “Ma’am—you look familiar. You’re from around here?”
    “No. I’m not.”
    “Yes, I know you, ma’am. Your face.”
    M.R. laughed, annoyed. “I don’t think so. No.”
    Now came the sly fox-smile. “You’re from right around here, ma’am, eh? Hey sure—I know you.”
    “What do you mean? You know—me? My name?”
    “Kraeck. That your name?”
    “ ‘Kraeck.’ I don’t think so.”
    “You look like her.”
    M.R. didn’t care for this exchange. The attendant was a large burly man of late middle age. His manner was both familiar and threatening. He was approaching M.R. as if to get a better look at her and M.R. instinctively stepped back and there came to her a sensation of alarm, arousal—she steeled herself for the man’s touch—he would grip her face in his roughened hands, to peer at her.
    “You sure do look like someone I know. I mean—used to know.”
    M.R. smiled. M.R. was annoyed but M.R. knew to smile. Reasonably she said: “I don’t think so, really. I live hundreds of miles away.”
    “Kraeck was her name. You look like her—them.”
    “Yes—you said. But . . .”
    Kraeck. She had never heard it before. What a singularly ugly name!
    M.R. might have told the man that she’d been born in Carthage, in fact—maybe somehow he’d known her, he’d seen her, in Carthage. Maybe that was an explanation. There was a considerable difference between the small city of Carthage and this desolate part of the Adirondacks. But M.R. was reluctant to speak with this disagreeable individual any more than she had to speak with him for she could see that he was listening keenly to her voice, he’d detected her upstate New York accent M.R. had hoped she’d overcome, that so resembled his own.
    “Excuse me . . .”
    Badly M.R. had to use a restroom. She left the fox-faced attendant staring rudely at her and climbed the steps to the café.
    It was wonderful how the sign that had appeared so faded, derelict, was now lighted: BLACK RIVER CAFÉ.
    Inside was a long counter, or a bar—several men standing at the bar—a number of tables of which less than half were occupied—winking lights: neon advertisements for beer, ale. The air was hazy with smoke. A TV above the bar, quick-darting images like fish. M.R. wiped at her eyes for there was a blurred look to the interior of the Black River Café as if it had been hastily assembled. Windows with glass that appeared to be opaque. Pictures, glossy magazine cutouts on the walls that were in fact blank. From the TV came a high-pitched percussive sort of music like wind chimes, amplified. M.R. was smelling something rich, yeasty, wonderful—baking bread? Pie? Homemade pie? Her mouth flooded with saliva, she was weak with hunger.
    “Ma’am! Come in here. You look cold. Hungry.”
    Out of the kitchen came a heavyset woman with a large round muffin-face creased in a smile. She wore a man’s red-plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy slacks and over this a stained gingham apron. She was holding the kitchen