Well, speaking of the fair, it has a place in an interesting story that happened just last night. I went to see a movie at about 7:30 and headed home to my new room at about 9:30. I went by this place near my room to grab a couple of hot dogs — they make the best — and a soda. I appreciate a good dog during late-night reading time.
The place is right next door to this black (I guessed) church, and I mean to tell you that those people got their money’s worth, or their souls filled, or whatever the medium of exchange was inside that vibrating hall. The windows to the church were all glazed over so you can’t see in, but the “Rev” rocked the block over a microphone and filled the temple with amplified electric promises of better things to come.
I had placed my order and stood leaning against one of the poles when this guy walked up behind me and spoke to me.
“Uh, ’scuse me, man.”
“Yeah?”
“I wonder could I get you to order me a sanwich from that man, he woan lemme order nothing, I got the money.”
I turned around and looked into the glassed-in kitchen area. The three or four guys working there were pointing and scowling and one walked quickly out the door.
The guy who had spoken to me had large eyes, depressed but alert, settled over a thick black mustache. Pulled down close on his head was a baseball cap with a blue bill, red top, and a white patch on the front on which was stitched “Even Steven” in cursive.
I have no idea what that means.
As I watched, the guy from the kitchen came out and ran off the man with the hat, getting all up in his face, like some white people will do to black people when there is a bunch of white people around and only one black person. I watched the black guy slump away in his blue nylon windbreaker, watched him walk toward the loud church next door.
Meanwhile, my order came up, I paid, turned, walked next door, walked up the steps and opened the door of the church, where the man in the hat had gone.
The sound was deafening. Right inside the door was the man, backing up again, while a huge black woman in a dress way too small was vehemently shaking her head at him and easing him back out the front door of the church. Behind her was a much smaller black woman with a look of fear and disgust on her face.
“Hey!” I yelled out. The guy turned around, looking pretty surprised. “Come on, man,” I said to him, holding the door open.
He followed me down the steps of the church, and we turned our backs on all that throbbing Christian grace and mercy.
“Come on, let’s find some place for you to eat,” I muttered.
“I don’t understand it,” he complained. We walked to my car. “This one?”
“Yeah, hop in.”
The guys in the kitchen were staring and pointing again, looking at me like a traitor or something.
“Man, I walked up here to get a sanwich and asked the man what was the cheapest sanwich you got, you know? And it was about a quarter more’n I had, so I asked this other man for a quarter an’ he gave me one, but then the man inside turned me out!”
“Hell with ‘em,” I said.
“I had the money, y’know, an’ he woan lemme order nothin’.”
“Well,” I sighed, “I guess they get a lot of jerks coming in here, bums, lobbyists, Senators and that, you know. I mean, this is the State Capitol.”
“Yeah, I guess so, but I had the money.” He looked at me and stuck out his hand. “William.”
I shook his hand as we rode down the street, and told him my name. The hand belonged to a working man. I pulled into a pancake house. “Let’s eat, William.”
He pointed to the back seat, where I had tossed my hot dogs. “But you already got yours, there.”
“It’ll keep,” I said, parking the car.
“This your car?”
“No, I stole it,” I said, but not out loud.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Looks brand new.”
I grinned. “Thanks. Four years old.”
“Naah, yeah?”
“Took me a while to get one, so I have to hold on to it for a while, you know?”
“Looks good, man.”
We walked in and were seated straight away. All around us were young and old people, Orientals, Blacks, Whites and that, and we were as welcome as dammit. And this place didn’t smell anything like a church.
This is difficult for me to explain but the character is void. I have little empathy for him. I generally like a narrator that is aloft (detached) but the genre you’re writing in requires warmth. What he experiences interests me but he’s a blank. If he’d mentioned some vulnerability, some hesitation, I’d be pulled right in.
I write smart-ass characters (even flippant) but I try to write them with self-acknowledgment.
“Write back soon, for I miss you.”
The ending is good but it took a while to get there.
I miss talking to people who understand me most of all.
This one sentence would explain his existential barrier.
The writing is fine. I see you write humor. For humor to work for me, I need to contrast it with sadness, sometimes even brutality.
This feels almost like it belongs in a novel. Like the reader is privy to a letter between two characters. Some authors have actually written novels almost entirely in letters. And like Brenda, I can see a few short stories out of this.
Very colorful, unique writing style. Left me wondering, at the end, what I had just read. Not sure of the intent of this story.
Barry, I’m glad you published another of your works. There is a lot going on in this one. I could imagine two or three stories, at least, that could be developed from the scenarios you describe here. The part about the buildings curling up toward heaven is quite poetic, and seems to hint of a voice that is different than what you have shown us so far. Keep ‘em coming!