She wore a big, black dress in the middle of

summer, covering her more than ample

girth down to the five-finger knock offs

picked up at a Dollar Store in a backwater,

Northern Michigan town; she sat next to

her twelve-year-old van in which she

sleeps and keeps all her jewelry, which she

is showing at an art fair, one in which she

has been showing for, this, her fifteenth

year. She is camping at a near-by city camp-

ground located at the end of one of two legs

of a large lake leading to Lake Michigan.

It is a warm, wonderful day up north, 75

degrees, sunny and 52% humidity, a perfect

day for an art exhibit. She had a really good

day at the first of the two-day event.

She said she had an increase of one-

hundred percent over the previous year’s

first day. She kept griping about her

ex-husband who had a site near her

site at the campground and is showing

his very similar scrimshaw artwork at a

booth near her’s. She said her ex be-

longed in the hoosegow for all he had

done not counting the adultery but she

wasn’t going into the details. On Saturday

evening, she had a disagreement with a

tent camper she said was encroaching on

her site and the previous day, Friday, had

griped about a pickup truck and boat block-

ing her site. Saturday evening before she

crawled into her van for the night, she spent

a lot of time on her cell phone mumbling and

grumbling, maybe about her ex who never

mentioned her as he sat around the campfire

with several other exhibitors that evening, but

he had sneaked a peek toward her booth

earlier in the day to see what was going

on. He laughed freely at the jokes and sell

or not, it seemed like a vacation, they all

said.  On Sunday, the second and last day

at the fair, all the exhibitors hope to make

some more money before heading home,

the woman and her ex to the same

town and only a few houses apart.