Gather Writing Essentials Tuesday Character Development - Adam

Adam's life was writ large on him, for those who knew how to read it and had the inclination to try. Unfortunately few could or would.

He worked in the branch office of a large company; a tiny cog on a small wheel of a large machine. He was tall and lanky, and had developed the stoop of someone who tried to take up as little room as possible. His hair was sandy brown and devoid of style. He could have been handsome if fate had arranged his features only slightly differently, but it hadn't. He avoided women, attractive ones especially. His clothes were cheap and ill-fitting. He walked with a limp. And he would constantly, nervously rub the palm of his left hand with the thumb of his right.
In short, Adam was the sort of person easily overlooked. The only thing he was known for was the fact that, no matter what was asked of him, he would hardly ever say No.

And that had been the bane of his existence.

The signs were there. Like the thin silver scar that ran down the palm on his left hand, a legacy of the father who wanted to teach him to be a man: to this day it would tighten and cramp so much that constant rubbing was his only relief.

Or the permanently cracked shin, a gift from Eric Marten, notorious as the boarding school bully who had pushed him down the dormitory stairs, put him in hospital for two weeks and given him a limp for the rest of his life.

And then there had been Amanda, whose beauty had only been matched by her callousness. For her, he had simply been a means to an end, and when she no longer had need of him she had extracted one last measure of schadenfreude in his public humiliation.

These people were no longer in Adam's life, but they had left marks on him that nobody cared to read.

Until Jonas, that was.

Jonas was their new boss. He had arrived from another branch, and his reputation preceded him.

Jonas had never been fired because he was someone who knew how to get things done. And he had never been promoted because his success always came at the cost of others' misery. So he became resigned to a career of horizontal progress, forever frustrated at the advancement of others, and determined to extract whatever pleasure he could from whatever power he still posessed.

He was a master of the casual insult, the impossible deadline and the menial task. He knew how to break people, and how to make an example of one to cow the many. And he had chosen his victim the minute he had walked in the office door.

But Adam would continue the way he always had. He endured. He did whatever was asked of him without reply or retort and this, Jonas was not prepared for.

Before long the mere sight of Adam would cause his neck to redden and his voice to go hoarse.

It had to come to a head of course. One Friday evening just before 5 o'clock, Jonas came back from a meeting visibly drunk. Even the most obtuse could see that he was spoiling for a fight. He stood at the door of the office, swaying slightly. "Adam!" he yelled "Get your arse in my office right now, you little cretin!"

Adam followed him into the office. Jonas slammed the door shut, flipped the curtains closed, and started shouting.

The rest of the building emptied in two minutes flat.

Some spent an uncomfortable weekend wondering whether they ought have said something in Adam's defence, and convincing themselves that they would have done so any time now... well maybe if the bully had been anyone other than Jonas, and the victim anyone other than Adam.

Others told themselves that it was Adam's own fault, that he should have grown a pair long before now.

Either way, they all knew that come Monday it would all be over, and Adam would be gone.

And they were all wrong.

On Monday Jonas called in sick. A week later the memo came from head office that he had resigned, effective immediately. No reason was given, and despite all the gossip around the water cooler only one person knew what had happened, and he would never tell.

Because what Jonas had learned that night was the same thing that Adam's father, Eric and Amanda had learned before him: that somebody does not need to say No often, to know how to say it well.