The Belt Buckle
Two conflicting memories. Who is right?
Written for a writers’ group prompt: coincidence.
The belt buckle caught her eye immediately. Youth Calf Roping Champion, Rockyford Rodeo, 1980. For a moment, she couldn’t catch her breath. It had to be his.
She reached out to pick it up, and her hand collided with another. A man’s hand. She looked up, irritated. “I wanted to see that,” she said. The hand belonged to a guy about her age, tousled brown hair, blue eyes, unshaven on this spring Sunday.
“So do I,” he said mildly. “I’ll hold it. We can both look at it.”
“Why do you get to hold it?” she challenged.
“My hand’s bigger.”
She couldn’t counter that. He rested in on his palm, the vendor watching them closely. She reached out one finger to touch it, as she had as a child, tracing the raised lettering.
“It’s a rodeo prize,” the vendor said.
“I know,” she said. “My father had one.”
“I’m asking a hundred twenty-five for it.”
“Where did you get it?” The same question she’d been about to ask.
“It was in a junk store in some small town north of here. Don’t remember exactly where. I visit a lot of them.”
“I’ll give you a hundred,” the brown-haired man said.
“One twenty-five,” she countered, immediately.
“One fifty.”
She closed her eyes in frustration. Even the one twenty-five was more than she could afford: it would have meant a month of pot noodles for lunch. She willed the threatening tears not to overflow. “Can I look at it first? I want to see the reverse.”
“Sure.” His voice was gentle. Long fingers flipped it over. The back was bare, no engraving. It had been a hope.
“OK, thanks. Can I…can I take a picture of it?” At least she’d have that.
“I don’t see why not.” He hesitated. “Look, I can tell it’s important to you, but it is to me too. Can I buy you a coffee to say sorry? There’s a coffee truck and picnic tables over there in the shade. I’m Mike, by the way. Mike McConnell.”
Mike. Well, that was just the icing on the cake. “I’m Michelle. Michelle Girard. And yes.” Maybe he’d let her hold it, feel the familiar letters and the coil of rope that decorated the buckle.
“Well, hang on a moment, Michelle, while I pay for this.”
At the coffee truck, she asked for a latte, turning down his offer of a pastry. He had a black coffee. They settled at an empty table under the trees. Mike took the belt buckle from its box and laid it on the table. “Photograph away.”
Michelle took several pictures, front and reverse. He didn’t object to her handling it. “Why does it matter?” he asked, finally.
“I’m sure it was my father’s. I remember it. He’s been gone since I was eight.” A brief flicker of hope rose: maybe he’d sell it to her now he knew. But where she’d get the money…
“It can’t be.” Mike’s voice was firm. “It was my father’s. I’m sure of that. You must remember the year wrong. I was twelve when my parents split up, and I know he won this in 1980. He told me the story many times.”
“I’m not wrong,” Michelle insisted. “I was born in 2000, twenty years after he won this when he was sixteen. He used to tell me he’d had to wait twenty years for another prize.”
Mike frowned. “Maybe it was a tie that year? Except…”
“Except what?”
“My father used to say almost the same thing to me. I was born in 1996, sixteen years after he won the buckle. He’d say that good things came to him every sixteen years.”
They stared at each other, coffees untouched. “What was his name?” Michelle asked.
“Michael Armstrong. McConnell is my mother’s last name.”
No. It couldn’t be… “When did he die?”
“I didn’t say he did. I don’t know what happened; my mother refuses to talk about it. But one day I came home from school and she had our things packed in our old Toyota, said we were leaving. That my father was a liar and a fraud. I kind of assumed he’d had an affair, or more than one, out on the road. He was gone a lot, driving truck.”
“This was 2008?” Michelle could barely form the words.
“Yeah.”
“The same year my mother took me away. Saying almost the same things…my father wasn’t who we thought he was. His name was Michael Armstrong, and he drove truck as well. Long haul, between Ontario and BC.”
“We lived in BC.”
Silence, for several heartbeats. Michelle met Mike’s eyes.
“You must have looked for him,” he said.
“I have. He’s vanished.”
“I know. Armstrong can’t have been his real name.”
The belt buckle lay on the table between them. Neither made a move to touch it.
Like what you read? Here’s the link to my Substack archive, with lots more stories.
Donations for my local foodbank are gratefully received.
Find all my books at https://scarletferret.com/authors/marian-l-thorpe
Free books! Including A Divided Duty, an introduction to my fictional world and some of its characters. Here until May 26th, here until June 2, 2025. and here until July 17.
Well, they might have lost some fond memories, but they each found a sibling!