trouble Super Short Stories

Chuckles and Full Pint sat around their shared record player, playing the game they played most nights, drinking cheap beer and listening to cheap records. The rules of the game were easy. Pick one half of a LP or a full 45, and then it was the next guy’s turn. They were currently half way through Chuckle’s pick of side-one of Lou Reed’s Rock n’ Roll Animal.

Punk nicknames were acquired in one of two fashions, either you were so cool you got something great, or, like most, you stumbled into one through unfortunate life choices. Neither Chuckles or Full Pint were that cool.

Full Pint’s real name was Jason Vala, but after a five-day bender of cocaine and Little House on the Prairie he demanded to be called Half Pint; the name of some girl in the show. After a few years of beer and fast food, the once skinny punk had ballooned to 260 and his once demanded nickname of Half Pint was ballooned to Full Pint.

Chuckles’ case was less in-depth. Originally named Charles Dearth, an evening of laughing fits thanks to huffing nitrous oxide and computer cleaner had forever deemed him Chuckles, and possibly borderline retarded.

The pair lived in a seedy part of downtown Oakland, in an apartment on a corner above a Japanese ramen house. The apartment was constantly engulfed in the smell of boiling noodles and pork belly, something both craved and neither could afford.

The apartment gave them a good vantage point of their corner. They could see everybody coming and going. They could see if friends were bumming around, or getting off the bus at the corner stop, or if there was some creditor out there, someone dumb enough to have lent them money.

A friend of mine named Hal Pressman called and said, “Hey, Walt! You gotta come over here and see this!” He hung up with a chuckle, not even giving me a chance to say I was working in the garden with Marci.

She noticed the perturbed expression on my face.

“Who was that?” She asked, rising from the ground and dusting dirt from her bare knees.

“Hal,” I rolled my eyes, put my phone back in my jean pocket.

“Good grief,” Marci said, exasperated. “What does he want?”

“He wants me to come over to his cottage.”

“You were just there yesterday.” Fuming, Marci added, “Watching Porky Pig cartoons for twelve hours, I might add.”

“Popeye,” I corrected her.

“What’s the difference?”

There was no arguing a point when a person has no interest in the subject of their outrage.

Marci continued. “When the University job starts you won’t have as much time for Hal. Because what little time you will have will belong to me.”

“I know,” I whined.

Marci had hammered home that statement since Coleman University hired me to teach Film studies last month.

“Why is he obsessed over cartoons?”

“Animation,” I corrected.

“Whatever it’s called, Walter, a grown man shouldn’t be watching that stuff as much as he does.”

I shrugged. “He’s writing a book.”

“So he says. I think he’s just lazy. Weird to quit a good job managing one of the biggest resorts in the country,” Marci said. “He does know you have a wife, doesn’t he?”

“Marci, what can I do?”

“You can say no. That you are spending the day with your beautiful, charming wife.”

“I could.”

Marci sighed, rubbed my back affectionately.

“But you won’t.”

I sat down in the driver’s seat and slid the key into the ignition. I left the door open. The man in the store straightened up a little in the doorway. I started the car, pulled my left foot inside the door and floored the accelerator, cranking the wheel as far to the left as it would go, spinning the car around in a sharp left turn, dust and grit spraying out from beneath the sheets. The force of the turn slammed the door shut next to me as I came out of the turn and headed for the highway.

As I ran onto the road and the tires took hold, I shot into the westbound lane, cutting off a stake-bed truck that was coming in from the west. As I squealed tires into my lane and the tires took hold, I could hear a squeal of tires from the truck and a flood of curses from the driver. Straightening out, I caught a glimpse of the man in black standing in the doorway, a machine pistol clutched in his hands. That lasted just a second, as the truck was between me and the front of Drury’s Country Store.

He yelled something in Spanish, and as I came out from behind the truck, I saw him raise the gun and get ready to fire.

He had expected to have fallen by now. Part of him wanted to but his feet kept trudging through the snow. The cold had stopped bothering him and all he wanted was to sleep but some stubborn, thoughtless, and uncaring sense of survival kept him walking southeast across the arctic wasteland.

His sword hung reassuringly on his back. The furs he wore sheltered his body from the sharp bite of the cold. Only his face was unprotected and this he covered from his nose down with a strip of blanket. His large pack was lighter now that his tinder and food were almost depleted. He was starting to feel as empty as his meager supplies.