Saturday's Storyteller: "Red."
by Belinda Roddie Red. That's all that she wore. Red shirt, red vest, red slacks, red coat. Red belt winding across her broad waist. Dark crimson boots gliding all the way up to her knees. Red buckles, too. A red hat to keep her hair out of her eyes. A red umbrella to ward off the rain. She donned red in a town where most wore black, where grass was more brown than green, where skies were more gray than blue. When she ordered wine in restaurants, it was red - dark red. The kind that left tattooed stains around the corners of your lips when you drank it. She used a red handkerchief to dab at her mouth after each sip. That way, when you looked at the cloth, you couldn't even tell it was marked. Many people had once found her attire alarming, perhaps even sinful. They had left it alone afterward, when she showed no signs of changing her clothing's color, or of leaving the town at all. They did not speak to her, though. Nearly everyone didn't speak to her. They watche