RED CORDUROY COAT — AMBER RAY GARCIA

Outside, near a plum tree, small hands rub rust-orange chrysanthemum heads into palms. Little ravaged petals cling to the cuffs of her red, button-up corduroy coat, warm with quilt batting that pokes out at worn elbow places and tears on the back from tree climbing. The coat’s two pockets carry peeled sheets of mica, acorns, pink quartz, white pine needles, rumpled chrysanthemums.
           “Your mother won’t be able to let out my seams again this year,” the coat says.
           The girl shrugs, rubbing more flower heads together. Her coat exhales, making the bottom edge flare out around the girl’s waist. 
           The girl walks down the gravel lane to where her father dumps the ash from the fireplace. She paws through the ash with the toe of her tennis shoe, looking for charred wood pieces.
           “This will be our last winter together,” the coat says. 
           The girl pushes a narrow piece of charred wood into a pocket and runs over to an abandoned particle board leaning against her swing set.
           “Coat, how many more days until Christmas?” 
           “Six.”
           The girl draws six tally marks on the slanted board, making it bobble. She slides the charred wood back into a pocket and walks to the swing, the plastic seat wraps up around her hips as she sits down. She moves the swing with one foot on the ground.
           Oak flavored smoke from the chimney gathers in the front yard, creeps toward her. She puts the pads of her fingers on the wales of the corduroy, shifting it back and forth as she stares into droopy winter grass.
           “If I get a new coat for Christmas, I won’t wear it.”
           “If you get a new coat for Christmas, your mother will make you wear it.”
           The girl moves her tongue around her teeth, swallows. The coat sniffs. 
           “I could ask my mother to make you into a pillow.”
           “You could.”
           A tractor motor starts in the distance; the girl looks to the barn. 
           “What if my mother cuts you up into rags for my dad to use?”
           The coat clears her throat.
           “Well, in that case, you steal a few of my pieces and put them in a secret place.” 
           “I could put them in the rafters of the barn.”
           “But the rats.”
           “I could put them in my diary – It has a lock.”
           “You could.”
           The girl cups her fingers around her nose, inhaling chrysanthemum, wood smoke, the bits of ash and rock, then crosses her arms to grab opposite chains of the swing and pushes her cheek into the shoulder of the coat, hoping for an imprint.

---

Amber Ray Garcia grew up in the Piedmont region of South Carolina and has resided in West Virginia for the past eleven years where she currently teaches Spanish. Her work, Hemlock Brook Inn, received an honorable mention in the West Virginia Writers 2018 Annual Writing Contest in the Middle Grade and Young Adult Book Length Prose category. Her story The Produce Stand was a finalist in the 2020 West Virginia Fiction Competition.