Just Right
Posted by Bob McGovern
Tom didn’t want to notice anything or anyone, he just walked. He hid his hands and lowered the brim of his old gray Coors Light hat; the one he found “That one night” ... the hell if Tom knows anything more than that about the evening.
Static sat between his ears, he had too many things to balance and today it was a hazy homogenous mixture. He glanced over at two kids playing catch and watched as a tall slender boy of about 14 threw with confidence to a small pudgy kid, who cautiously caught everything with two hands.
“Fucker can throw. I’d better get some cigarettes,” Tom thought to himself. He spit like a pro and felt for his wallet.
He walked into the store and said, “heavies,” while looking down to count his money. The clerk grabbed the red box and completed the sale. On the way out, Tom stopped in the doorway and felt in his pockets, “good fuckin’ thing,” he thought as his fingertips made out a $.99 lighter from the night before.
Crinkle, tear, slide, flick, breathe.
The familiar burn made him cough as he threw the pack’s tin foil on the ground. He started to calm down a little, fog out the static, and finally do something with his hand.
He walked and smoked and thought about what it would be like to be invisible. He inhaled and looked down at his chest, “Yea I guess you wouldn’t be able to see the smoke. If you saw the smoke, you’d see your own shit, right? Guess I’ll never be invisible. I wish this cigarette was a inch longer,” he thought, holding in the drag longer than usual.
Tom walked some more and eventually sat on a bench facing a river. He lit up another cigarette and took a small pad of paper out of his back pocket. He pulled out a pen and prepared to write.
“How cliché is a river maaaaaan,” he said out loud, “...fuckin’ river.”
He started to draw stick figures and made them fight in horrible stick figure battles. One decapitated another; just like that the head was a period.
Pages flipped, new worlds, open range. Tom furiously changed themes, but never wrote a single word. He kept muttering, “No way, bullshit.” He narrated to the bottom of his pen, but it didn’t listen.
Another page turned, but he had nothing to draw. The sight of emptiness started to internalize, from the bottom of his back, up his spinal chord, and right to the back of his brain. It hit him so hard that he jerked his neck back and involuntarily crushed the notebook.
The ash on the cigarette dusted his nose and forehead.
One foot in front of the other and he ran towards the river with his arm cocked back, ready to throw. He launched the notebook and fell into the water.
He grabbed his hat out of the water and put it on his head. “What a shitty time to swim,” he said as he got himself on dry land.
Back at the bench he sat and put his face in his hands. He wished he had never tried to become a writer. He hated what was inside him and no matter how many miles he put between the lines, he couldn’t get where he needed to be.
He retired for the day and cursed himself on the way home. The static was gone, the bath had helped what the cigarette started, but there was something else bugging him.
The damn cigarettes were all wet - the pudgy kid was still catching with two hands.
This entry was posted by Ben Myers, on
Thursday, April 20, 2006.
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