‘The Great Compromise’

Chelcie S. Porter is a bold and unapologetic artist, photographer, and creative director whose work defies conventions and embraces the raw complexities of human emotion. With over a decade of global exploration spanning 60+ countries, Chelcie draws inspiration from themes of migration, identity, and liberation, weaving these into her fine art photography, multidisciplinary creations, and community-driven projects.

The Great Compromise

Barrington Tabor, fascinated at how territorially combative the little sons of a bitch were, watched delightedly as the eight or ten, maybe more, hummingbirds vied for dominance—or simply out of pure orneriness—around the feeder that he’d put out on the tree stump behind the deteriorating one-car garage, a building that hadn’t housed an automobile in fifty years, if ever. It was the ninth of April. The little suckers had arrived unexpectedly early. 

Yesterday morning, Barrington woke to the buggers darting from scrub oak to scrub oak like the speed freaks he’d known in art school in the Bay Area, back in his days of folly and bullheadedness, before he met Debra. Much like the would-be artists used to flit from one student’s easel to another’s in the hope that their work would be the piece that received the attention of the instructor, the hummingbirds seemed to perform their feisty aerobatic maneuvers just for Barrington.  In those classes, years ago, if not praise, then advice or, hell, even criticism was all the future Piccasos and Pollocks lived for. Any notice from an instructor was a victory. Obviously, these little fluttering sons of a gun were irritated that the artist hadn’t had the decency to set out the feeder with the sugary, gooey blend for them to stick their greedy little beaks into upon their arrival from God only knows where. But how was Barrington to know? They used to show up precisely on the fifteenth of the month, year after year, but with global warming, they seemed to be adapting to less time spent in Mexico and more in Texas. For better or for worse.

Even more worrisome than the changes in the Earth’s climate and the impending doom that the alterations foretold was Debra’s, his schoolteacher wife’s, not being home yet. She should have left El Paso before eight. It was now four-fifteen. It wasn’t at all like by-the-clock Debra to dawdle at her parents’ home—of all places—and to not get an early start on her seven-hour trek across the West Texas desert.     

Debra had dreaded her return to her hometown, but it had been twelve years since she convinced Barrington that they should relocate to the dwindling town of Dos Pesos, Texas. A dozen years had slipped by since they made what Barrington called “the great compromise”. Jobs were few and far between back then—the recession and all—so they agreed to give Dos Pesos a try, for a year or two. No more than that. How bad could it be? If either of them one day were to say, “I’ve had enough of living out here in the middle of nowhere,” they’d pack up and skedaddle in the blink of an eye. As it turned out, the circumstance that the Contreras County school district was the only system that needed a high school English teacher that fall semester proved to be almost fateful. She could teach. He could paint with little distraction. Neither Barrington nor Debra regretted that she had waited too long to get her applications out after graduation from New Mexico State. The “great compromise” wasn’t all that bad, not really. So now, here they were, stuck in a town of eleven-hundred people, a place no one had ever heard of, a dusty little settlement neither of them really cared for, yet had no inclination to desert anytime soon.

“Something terrible happened between Van Horn and Ft. Stockton,” said Debra from the threadbare, dilapidated chair in the corner of the living room. Both husband and wife had intended to find someone in town who could reupholster the ugly wingback monstrosity, but neither had the gumption to seek anyone out.

“Geez,” said Barrington. “What was it?”

“I think I might’ve gotten someone killed on I-10.” Red-faced, wide-eyed, Debra pointed toward what she thought was the western wall of the living room in their one-bedroom, hundred-year-old adobe bungalow. It wasn’t west that she pointed, more like north-north-east, but Barrington knew where she intended to indicate. Debra was a teacher, not a cartographer.

“Killed? How did you get someone killed?”

She sighed. “I was driving over eighty. I knew I was running late, but you know how Mom is. I couldn’t get away without a whopping breakfast.” She shook her head, then shrugged. “Anyway, I was about halfway between Van Horn and Ft. Stockton, near Balmorhea. A semi was poking along in front of me. Like I said, I was trying to make up some time. When I pulled into the passing lane to get around the truck, I heard a honk, then the truck driver blasted his horn and, in my mirror, I saw a gray SUV swerving in the lane I was pulling into, the damned passing lane. The SUV must have been passing me, but it had to have been in my…what do you call it? My blind spot. The driver of the SUV lost control and rolled over I don’t know how many times in the median. I looked back and all I could see was the damn car tumbling over and over…and the billowing dust. It was awful.”

“Did you stop?”

“No. But in my mirror I saw that the semi had pulled over and a bunch of other cars had pulled off the road. People were running toward the overturned car.” Debra blinked. “About ten minutes later three state troopers’ cars came out from the east, probably Ft. Stockton. They had their lights flashing…and their sirens blaring. Then, a few miles farther down the road, two ambulances came from the same direction.”

“Oh, God. But you don’t know if anyone was hurt?”

“How could I? I didn’t stop. I panicked.” She glared at Barrington. “I couldn’t have helped anyone anyway.”

“Did the trucker get your license plate number?”

“How would I know?” she cried, took a deep breath then coughed. “He might have been too busy pulling off the road. But he knows that the driver of an old blue Camry is the idiot who caused the whole thing.” She rubbed at her eyes. Her hands shook like Barney Fife’s. “Should I call someone? Tell them it was me that caused the accident?”

“Jesus,” said the artist. “You could call. I guess. But I don’t see what good it would do. What’s done is done.”

Debra knotted her hands in her lap. “I teach my students to take responsibility for things. How can I just walk away from this?”

“You already did. And, holy shit, there’s a big difference between responsibility and taking the blame.” Barrington winced. “You could lose your job over something like this, causing an accident. Or leaving the scene of an accident. Could you see who was in the car?”

“I think I saw a woman in the passenger’s seat. In the front seat. She looked terrified and she must have been bracing herself against the dashboard. But I might have imagined that. I was in a panic myself.”

The artist nodded slowly. “I think you should just let it go.” He turned both of his palms upward in supplication to the gods of randomness. “If they know who you are they’ll show up here pretty damn soon. If no one got your number, you might be in the clear.”

Debra harrumphed. “But I’ll have this guilt to live with. I don’t think it’s worth it. How will I ever know what happened to those people in that car?”

Barrington grinned. “I think you’re better off not knowing. If they’re okay, so much the better. If they’re not, you don’t want to know. Not really. Like you said, what could you have done?”

“I don’t know how I can live with myself,” said Debra.

“You will,” said Barrington. He exhaled heavily. Finally, after a long moment, he said, “They called from that gallery in San Antonio, the one on Hildebrand Avenue. They sold one of my paintings. The one of the coyote on the hillside. The one you liked so much.”

Debra smiled wanly. “That’s good, isn’t it? And just out of nowhere. You weren’t sure anyone would want that one.”

Darrington nodded. No, he thought, I knew someone would want it. It just takes the right person coming along at the right time. It’s all a matter of chance.

Outside, behind the garage, the feeder rested on the stump, abandoned. The frenzy was over. They must’ve had their fill, said the artist to himself. Lucky little bastards. 

He stepped through the knee-high weeds and cactuses then bent over to check if the feeder needed refilling. It was still half-full. At the base of the stump lay a hummingbird. Motionless. Lifeless. The artist was sure of it. Like a penitent on Good Friday, he got down and his knee and studied the creature then poked at it with the forefinger on his left hand. Nothing. It was dead all right. Its pinhead-sized black eye was fixed on something beyond him in the late afternoon sky. He pulled his cellphone from the hip pocket of his Wranglers. He took the picture he would need if he decided to capture the likeness on canvas. In his mind he already had a title for the piece. Nothing Contemplating Nothingness.

“What happened to you, little guy?” he said in a thin voice. “Did the others do this to you, or did it just happen? You flew all the way from Mexico, and for what? I’ll bet you never saw it coming. How would you know? Birds don’t know about this sort of thing. It just happens.” He sighed. “Now, I’ll give you a proper burial. You know how Debra is. I can’t let her find you out here. She gets all weepy over this sort of thing.”

David Larsen is a writer who lives in El Paso, Texas. His stories and poems have been published in more than forty literary journals and magazines including Cholla Needles, The Heartland Review, Floyd County Moonshine, Aethlon, Oakwood, Coneflower Cafe, Literary Heist, Change Seven, El Portal and The Raven Review.