Ballad of a Bland Man

Based on real experience, only the names have changed to protect the guilty. I call all my prose fiction so as to protect myself if someone I know reads and doesn't like my portrayal of them.

Then W.’s truck broke down.

On the way to pick up Charlie, his wife, at her work, that hotel I used to work at too, the truck just up

and quit.

Coming around the corner up the hill it stopped, we didn’t know til he couldn’t turn the steering wheel,

the radio up loud so we couldn’t hear the engine, whether it was running or not.

“Uh…” and he cranked it over as hard as he could and pulled it over into the driveway of a little white

house, shabby and cracked paint and all that, overgrown garden in the front, hazard lights on, flashing,

“clack-clack: clack-clack.”

We sit there for a minute, not sure, turn the radio down at some point, try turning it over again,

“RrRrRrRr”, nothing man. He gets out and I follow, pops the hood, looks underneath. Nothing to see

here, move along.

“Maybe it’ll turn over now? I’m gonna try it again, look at it, tell me if you see anything, k?”

“Sure.” I say, but don’t know what to look for or what it would look like if I saw anything short of a

radiator blowing up or a fan flying off, I’m not good with cars.

Turns it over again, nothing.

W. stares at it for a while, and calls Charlie.

“Hey sweetie, I’m gonna be late, the truck just broke down, again… Yeah, I know… it just… yeah… no…

we’re by the Autozone, so maybe we can get what need there… yeah, just cleaned all the tools out too…

great, right, yeah, just great… fine, I’ll let you know in a minute if we find anything. Bye, love ya.”

Now the great white guy comes out of the great white house, all same peeling paint and the same

windows, just not to the same places. He walks over to us, smoking a big cigar - a breeze blows his

Moses hair.

“Hey boys! Troubles?”

“Yeah, not sure what’s going on, but, yeah.” W. stares at him.

“Well, from the sound of it, mmm… I dunno boys, well, it sounds maybe like an oil filter or something,

but I dunno, I haven’t worked on cars for years, we used to use carburetors, this isn’t running a

carburetor is it?”

“No, fuel injection.”

“Okay, well, well, I dunno about that. I’ll tell you what, not that this has something to do with this here,

but it’s something else, we were up in the woods, me and my brother back in the day with his truck, we

were out back there in the woods way up north and his transmission blew out.” He looked down at his

cigar, then at me. “I see you looking at that, sorry about it, I’m too old to quit now though, wouldn’t do

me much good. Awful smellin’, I don’t really even like em myself, but yup, that’s that. But anyway we

were up in the woods and he didn’t have any tranny fluid, nothing, don’t know why, but he didn’t. He

did have oil, he had oil and we put that in the transmission. HA! Shot that transmission to hell and back,

but it was already shot so it didn’t do much trouble. At least we got it back into town. Now that doesn’t

have anything to do with that truck, your truck, I’m not saying that’s what it is, but… yup.”

I looked at him, his sweat pants stained, his old white shirt like his hair, him and his house, nothing but

all that, all everything, keeping held together til the time he won’t be anymore, just held together by

crusted cigar smoke and sweat and dirt til it’s time for him to break down and not be anymore.

“Now, I’d get down there and take a look but my knees, really I can’t get down.” Moses turned to me,

blue eyes, (I think they were blue, they should be blue anyways) and all. “You have smart hair kid!

Really, that’s smart hair, you must be fightin them girls off! HA! Really.”

“I try to keep away from that as much as possible.” I chuckled a little bit, not sure, taken by surprise by

that, just cause I comb my hair makes it smart? What about what’s underneath all that hair? Can I comb

that too and make it smart?

“Well, now that’s probably good, you’re a good kid, good idea, you got time for that later, buncha time

for that. Anyway, I’ll go now, leave you boys to it, looks like your pretty strong and got it under control,

I’ll let you to it, I can’t fix your engine, but if you need anything else I’ll be back in the garden, out back

there.” He turned around, walked back, Moses hair a blowin’ and soles of his shoes flapping, sweat

pants flopping. “Right out back there, sure, if you need anything, need anything at all, wish I could fix

that engine but can’t really.”

What was I feeling through all this?

Nothing.

Nothing at all, I chuckled, I commiserated but I didn’t feel a thing. But it wasn’t even like a void, it was

more than that, even VOID is a noun, it’s a thing, when you have a void you have something, you have a

void, I really didn’t even have that. I felt pure white, white, absence, like the house and the hair and the

man.

Even when Charlie finally got a ride from someone at work and made it there to the truck, the dead

stuck truck, and she gave me her wedding ring so it wouldn’t get dirty or lost while she was poking

around, I put it on my pinky finger so I wouldn’t lose it and walked out down the road by the man’s

house to the big old cemetery out back, filled with old tombs and mossy dead grass, brown, not growing

yet, brown trees and all of it - one brand new grave near the front, fresh dirt, fresh flowers, fresh

inscription. What about it? Who is it down there? No one, that’s who. Even when I saw the tombstone

near the back, tiny and cracked and tipped over, worn by the rain, not a thing on it just “MOM”, no date,

it made me think of my own “MOM” and how I didn’t know where she was buried and this was how her

grave could look right at this moment, and no one would look except a stranger, like I was here.

Even all this, I didn’t feel anything at all, just that lack of void, lack of noun, pure whiteness.

Am I drained, hollowed out? No, can’t be, not at this age.

“Impossible!” As he hands you a bone.

Not possible. 

Reviews

[nostal]

Haha. This isn't really a review because I haven't even read your work. This is just shameless self-promotion