In the Telling

This is one of those mornings when something left-over from dreams is still floating in the air just over the trees and sifting down to powder the windowsills, then wafting between the blades of grass to settle—or unsettle-- in the dust. The kind of thing that leaves everybody a little uneasy and a little defensive without knowing what it's about or why. You know what I mean.

 

I laugh, as I always do, and stage-whisper to Mrs. Mulvaney that it’s a good thing she doesn’t scare easy, and she harrumphs and elbows me, harder than it looks, hard enough to leave a bruise, and the kids roll their eyes, their fathers give me the har-de-har-hars, or their mothers smile indulgently and say, “See there, kids? Listen to Mr. Wilson—that sounds like a warning!” and then they wink at me and the kids sigh loudly and I smile conspiratorially at each and every one of them, letting them know it’s the others that don’t get it.

Each Halloween this short scene plays out over the counter of my little corner grocery store every time the bell announces the entrance of new customers. They never can remember what the monster was last year, but the moment they see a hint of this year’s ghoul, they know exactly what to look for when they prowl the wooded hill around that abandoned rattletrap of a haunted house and they never see anything else.

Knowing all this, why do I keep falling asleep in my chair this year? Lord knows it’s not the cozy old rocker I used to inhabit when Hannah was alive, but somehow I still get comfortable enough to doze off five minutes after the store empties. I light the fire in the ancient woodstove and get comfortable in the shadows back there in the corner by the heavy wooden barrels of flour and oats, and I tamp down the tobacco in the pipe carved by my own grandfather, lifetimes ago. Often I'm joined by Hal Sorensen or Eddie Martella with their own heirloom tobacco kits, but today I don't get to sit long enough for anyone to congregate, and anyhow, the neighborhood grandpas have got their grandchildren with them this afternoon. Any other day Colleen could run the register and nobody would miss me, but it’s Halloween. The kids want to know everything and these days they aren’t afraid to ask. There’s no such thing as respect for an old man’s catnap, or a polite silence while the memories play themselves back, or a withdrawal out of respect for reticence.  They see me dozing behind the counter and they run back outside and skid around the block, looking for my car, wanting to know where Chip is and why he isn’t with me today and where’s the car and does he have it out. And if they still have a question when I open my eyes—and they always do—I sigh and tilt back against the flour barrels with my feet up to the fire and cough a bit as a preamble to the story they want to hear.

“Friends,” I begin, clearing my throat, and they grin and nudge each other and quiet down, already recognizing in that one word the very rhythm of my story. It is my Word, the one that I always use In the Beginning, when everything seems to be as it should, when everyone is equal. They’re just children wanting to hear a story, and I am an old man wanting to tell it the way it should be told. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[498 words]

[I don't really know where I'm going with this, or even if there's anything more in it, but it's very short, so it shouldn't have been too taxing to read. It's either the beginning of something longer, or needs a whole lot of subtle little suggestions packed into it to tell the story without explaining what happened, if that makes sense. Any crits or ideas would be great. Also, if any of those obnoxious "Â" things got into the story, I have no idea how to get them to stay out -- they seem to resist repeated edit-deletions.--Gillian]