Almost epic fail of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month, like NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month–but you just have to post every day for a month).
Anyway, Saturdays were/are fiction day, so this is a short piece of fiction I’ve written. Please with all content of this blog, be respectful and do not copy or reproduce it in any way (or without proper citation)! Thank you kindly.
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boy with a penny
The boy walked with purpose on the hot pavement, just to make sure even the birds thought he was going somewhere. He clutched his shiny penny in his fist, debating whether to put it in his pocket. If his pocket had a hole in it, the penny would be lost forever… but if he tripped, the penny might fall out of his hand.
He didn’t yet have a reason to distrust most people, but he wanted to pretend he did. If he pretended, it gave more purpose to his walk and more meaning to his penny. And it didn’t have to mean much, but why not pretend about that, also? He walked with even more purpose, with the determination of someone who had something to protect.
The penny dug into his palm, but he liked it. He clenched harder, and it hurt a bit. The boy smiled wryly, thinking that even if he did lose the penny, he would have proof that he had it once. What he needed was a scar, something that didn’t fade. Anyone who cared could look at the scar on his palm and see that, yes, the penny had been there. And it had been important.
A dog barked at him as he passed a yard crowded with someone’s possessions. The boy started, cringing when he saw the yard. Children’s toys were scattered everywhere and there was a line of empty flower pots of various sizes and shapes, perhaps waiting to be filled. The boy’s nose wrinkled at the disarray and neglect, and he made to walk more quickly, but music was drifting from an open window. He looked toward it, barely recognizing traditional negro music. As someone who didn’t listen to music on his own, he didn’t know how he could tell the band had a typical New Orleans jazzy sound, but somehow he recognized it. They played with a washboard and probably a homemade bass—it was live inside the house.
His gaze concentrated on the darkened window. Inside the house, he could just see outlines of dark faces and white teeth inside open, smiling mouths. A sitting man, a standing man, a standing woman closest to the window whose young profile he could see most clearly, and one or two more female voices.
He just had time to think that it was so odd, that these people were playing music in their own home, not for an audience that might pay to come see them, not even for people walking past who might deposit money in a jar (or maybe that’s what the flower pots were for), and that they weren’t just listening to music while they cooked or worked (or maybe cleaned their yard), when the music stopped. The music stopped, but the voices continued.
They rose and rose, and the boy could have sworn that there were ten pitches at a time, when there could only have been five voices at most, and then one of the voices sounded like it was crying, but another one must surely have been laughing.
And then he was sure someone was laughing, because he saw her—the young woman next to the window was turned toward him, and everything up to her eyes showed that she was amused, whether at the fact that he was probably standing and gawking stupidly, at the fact that her dog had barked at him a few more times and he hadn’t noticed, at the fact that he had slowly realized he’d been spotted, or at him losing his footing as he came to his senses and tried to stumble away, dropping something that glinted in the sun before it hit the sidewalk and bounced through the chain link fence into the dirt of the yard.
Everything seemed to be in slow motion. The boy dropped to his knees immediately, reaching under the fence to grapple in the dirt. The dog, who did not seem to be as menacing as his bark, sat down to watch the boy’s struggle.
The creak of the screen door to the house fell on deaf ears, but the black girl’s approaching steps caught the boy’s attention. He vaguely wondered what she was doing as his fingernails dug for the penny. Does she think she can to talk to me? Does she actually think I would respond?
The girl came closer. She was no longer laughing, but the boy didn’t look to see her face. It was traumatizing enough to be kneeling on the ground as she was walking to him; he didn’t need to give her his attention. Especially after he’d paid so much attention before, when she was singing.
She was too close now, still walking, but slowly, at a distance where it would have been awkward to speak, but even more awkward to stay silent. Just when the boy was sure she was going to say something, a finger scraped something hard and flat.
The dog got up to examine it as well, but the boy was too fast. His fingers caught the penny with a fistful of dirt, and he was gone, running quickly but in such a way as to keep his pride.
He couldn’t keep as much dignity when he realized he was lost. But he still had his penny. He looked at it as he slowed in an alley, and was dismayed to see that it was significantly dirtier and more scratched.
