William ordered a burger and some fries and coffee, which pancake houses brew with a demonic vengeance here. Just at like home. I ordered a side of bacon and no coffee, then proceeded to drink William’s. He laughed.
“I thought you ain’t want none,” he grinned.
“So did I.” I asked the waitress for a new cup.
“Did I order too much?” William asked.
“What?”
“Hain’t ordered too much, I hope. Y’know.”
“Eat,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable, feeling like one of those idiots who go around saying things like ‘Well, some of my best friends are black.’ I tried to shake it off. “So what are you doing here?”
William slumped down a little, settling a little, molding in to his seat. “I’m from Jacksonville. I worked it up this way north, picking potatoes.”
“And you’re heading back to Florida now?”
“Uh huh.”
“How’d you get up here?”
William stuck out his thumb and grinned. William had a cool grin.
“I wouldn’t have thought they grew potatoes in Jacksonville,” I thought aloud.
“No,” William corrected me. “I’m from Jacksonville, but I came up here to work.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
William shrugged and looked around the restaurant.
“Well,” I continued, “I guess you need to get near Fayetteville or somewhere, get near I-95 to head back to Florida, huh?”
William looked back at me. “Huh?”
“I said I guess you need to get closer to I-95, so you’ll maybe have better luck getting south.”
William nodded silently. He looked at me, in me, for a few serious seconds. “Man, I ‘preciate what you did.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been there.”
You know, Cousin, it doesn’t take much to be nice to somebody, does it? Just a little human decency.
“What do you do up here?” William asked.
“I’m a writer,” I lied.
William dished up another grin. “So you just write stuff down on paper an’ there she is, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I got to say thanks again,” William went on. “God will take care of you.”
I kept my opinions to myself.
“I thought,” William ventured, “maybe you ain’t live here, neither.” He nodded his head toward my car in the parking lot. “You got all those big boxes in the back seat.”
I explained briefly to him my situation, still looking for a permanent place and that. William nodded, looked out the window, nodded again.
The food came. Just about 45 seconds later, William looked up at me, wiping off his face.
I smiled. “A little hungry?”
William’s laugh was bells ringing a Christmas. “I told you, man, I was starving!”
Suddenly, I had a thought. “You know, William, the fair is in town here, and they’re from Florida.”
William perked up. “Yeah?”
“Well, I don’t know much more than that,” I stated, “but they are from Florida, and they’ve got their own train and that, and maybe you could, you know…”
“Yeah,” William pondered. “Maybe, some work … maybe they…”
“I don’t know what their schedule is, you know, I don’t know where they’re going from here. I can drive you over there.”
William looked at me, wide-eyed, as though I’d handed him my wallet or something. “You will?”
“Sure.” (And there it came again: ‘You know, some of my best friends are black.’) “You ready?”
We got up, I paid, we got back in the car. Why did I feel guilty? Or what was it?
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!