Tucker

This one was recently rejected, and I would like to know more about why. Please have a read and leave me a comment describing what about the story would make you reject it. 

Tucker

What surprised him was that he didn’t feel, he heard–heard every fist, every knee as it slammed into his head and back. Heard a thumping like plastic watercooler bottles being thrown onto a wooden floor, hollow and fluid. Transmitted through his bones. Heard from the inside, not through his ears.

Tucker had never been in a fight before, mostly because he was sure that it would hurt. He wasn’t the kind of man who could put hurt in a box and ignore it in order to get things done. He hadn’t been that kind of boy, either. He avoided hurt—he avoided almost everything hard, in fact—and now that he was actually in a fight, he wondered why.

Still, he wasn’t fighting. There was no violence in him. A fight had started, true—a beating really in which he fell to the ground the second he was hit, resting on his left side, hands covering head, knees protecting belly. To be honest, the fact that he had defied his soon-to-be attacker at all, a stringy teenager in a concert t-shirt, surprised him. He knew the kid was going to have to hit him, to show the rest of his friends that he wasn’t a coward, but he didn’t back down, didn’t run like he always had before. He had no idea why.

And now the boy was on top of him, sort of sitting on him and punching at the patches of hair and skull that Tucker couldn’t cover with his hands. The friends were hooting. The parking lot smelled sweet and dirty from so close up. The boy grunted as he inflicted his damage.

There was a kind of peace in it, in suffering if that’s what it was. Why had schoolmates teased him because he wouldn’t fight? Sissy. He hated the word. Why did women reject him because he lacked courage? Spineless. Weak. If he had known how easy it was, he would have been brave long ago. The pain of something you accept is nothing compared to pain that you’re trying to keep out. He hadn’t wanted the fight when it started of course, but now that he was in it—now, he could lie there on the ground and absorb the thumping for the rest of his life.

He chuckled at the thought, and the pounding stopped. “What are you laughin’ at Faggot?”

Tucker laughed even harder at the question. The word faggot seemed funny, infantile, weak. But the situation wasn’t funny. Asphalt grated the left side of his face. His eye tooth seemed broken. He could taste blood in his mouth for the first time, ever, and was surprised that it tasted so much like metal, like the stink that stained his hands when he helped his grandma roll coins into paper sleeves. For the first time in his life, Tucker was in danger. But he wasn’t scared.

Nearby, he saw the feet of one of the girls who was watching, just her feet, one crossed in front of the other, and noticed through the open toe of her high heeled, little-girl-trying-to-look-chic shoes that her big toenail had a happy face painted on it. He laughed, hard this time, from the belly. Bobby slapped him, just behind his right eye. “Shut UP!”

“Oh, gross. I think he likes it,” a girl said, one he couldn’t see. “Bobby, I think he likes you being on top of him and shit.”

Suddenly, the weight was off him and the kid was yelling, hollering. Tucker didn’t pay attention to the words, just to the sound the retreating voice made. He could tell that Bobby had moved a few feet away and he heard the others jeering, calling their one-time hero names. Tucker uncoiled from his protective ball, and stood. There seemed nothing else to do. He swiped with the back of his hand at a tickle near his right ear, and was astonished at seeing his own blood. He had feared it so long, seeing his inside come out, but now he knew that there was no reason for it. He licked the crimson from his hand. And smiled.

“Oh my God, look at him.” the unseen girl’s voice said. “He’s totally like, in-to this.”

Silence.

They stood, quiet and motionless, all of them looking at Tucker, staring at Tucker, now not a group of hormone fueled hoodlums but a gaggle of bewildered children. Tucker enjoyed calmly looking back at them, breathing heavily, exhausted, and smiling. He rubbed his thumb against the ragged edge of his eye tooth—broken.

“Come on you guys,” Bobby finally said, tugging at the arm of the happy face toe girl like a little kid who sees the playground but who knows that Mom would rather go home. “Let’s GO!”

The rest of the little gang followed him across the parking lot, turning here and there to look over their shoulders as if they expected Tucker to follow, ready to scatter like gazelles in every direction if he did. He could hear them beginning to relive the experience as they got further away, telling each other the tale with ever widening ranges of exaggeration so that, when they spun the yarn at school on Monday, the story would be more captivating and more scandalous than any Hollywood blockbuster could ever hope to be.

And Tucker loved it, loved that he would be the villain in their epic, the pervert, the trickster who had manipulated Bobby into the fight, lured him in as a pawn to satisfy masochistic urges. He imagined that in their telling, he would be huge, muscly, hyper-aggressive. The anti-hero. He imagined that he—he–would become an urban legend.

“Thanks Bobby!” he yelled after them as they passed between the shrubs that separated the parking lot from the city sidewalk. “See you soon!”

His joy was boundless when he saw them all run as fast as they could.

Cal

This one is based on something that happened in my life recently. It’s a rough draft–just a getting down of the thoughts and emotions. Is the story enough to hold your interest? Is this something I should refine?

Cal and Grant had been friends since they were boys. They played high school sports together. They went to college together and both majored in finance. They both worked for the same mega-bank early in their careers. They were the best men at each other’s weddings. So when, one night, they sat together in Grant’s back yard sharing beer and talking about the future, it was a natural thought for them to go into business together.

For twelve years, their business flourished. They looked forward to going to the office each day, to seeing one another. Cal was the working brain of the organization and Grant was the face, traveling to meet their clients. They had the midas touch, and everything seemed to go their way.

The hot July morning seemed to Cal like it would be the same. He unlocked the office door at 6:00am, just as he always did, turned on lights and started coffee for the staff who would be arriving soon, and sat behind his desk. The computer clicked and whizzed when he rolled the mouse, and its monitor leapt to colorful life. His morning ritual was underway, and as he clicked open the windows he needed in order to get his bearings, he heard the front door open—far earlier than it should have been.

Cal rolled his desk chair to the left so that he could see the entrance. It was standing open, but no one came through. “Hello?” he called through his open door. He was surprised to see Rachel, his assistant, enter the building. She looked as if something was wrong. “Rachel?”

Without a word, she walked toward him. He could see that she was crying. He got out of the chair and met her half way. “Rachel, what’s the matter? What happened?”

“I have to quit, Cal.”

“What?” He chuckled a little, disbelieving. “That’s silly. Why do you have to quit?”

She said nothing, but handed him her cell phone, bursting into sobs as he took it from her. The text messaging app was open, and Cal was shocked to see images of a man’s naked body. He scrolled quickly up and down, scanning through dozens of them. He looked at her, bewildered.

Rachel was still sobbing, but knew that he wanted more explanation. She choked through her tears to say “Look who they’re from.”

Cal looked at the phone number that the messages came from. He recognized it. Knew it as well as he knew his own. It was Grant’s.

During the next hour, Rachel explained that when she had attended the conference with Grant a few months earlier, he had kissed her and fondled her and tried to have sex with her. Since then, every day, he had been sending the texts that Cal had seen, and had been pressuring her while they were in the office together to meet him at night. He groped her at every chance he had when others couldn’t see. She explained that she hadn’t said anything because she hoped that he would stop, that he would get tired of being rejected. And she had rejected him, a thousand times.

“Rachel, don’t you worry. I’ll talk to Grant. He’ll stop. I promise.”

“Oh, Cal.” Her tears refreshed, and she wailed “It’s too late for that now. I have to quit, and I have to move away.”

“Why?”

“Because for the past few nights, Grant has been at my house, outside. He’s sick Cal, and I’m afraid of what he might do.” Her eyes were pleading with him to simply accept, and not to ask anything more.

He did the best he could for her. He would pay her until she could find a new job, and he cashed out her vacation and sick time to give her a little money to work with. Once she was resettled, he would send her things from the office. Grant was traveling to see one of their customers, so he wouldn’t notice she was gone from work for a couple of days. She apologized to him for leaving him and the company, told him how much she loved everything about it, wished him luck, and left.

Cal’s routine ground to a halt for the next few hours. He closed his office door, and shut out the lights. The implications were incredible. What would he tell his wife? What would Grant say to his family? How could he explain to his children that they couldn’t spend time with Grant’s any more? What would he tell customers? How would the business be effected—could he eject Grant, or would he have to leave? His phone was ringing, both the desk phone and his cell. He knew it was Grant, checking in as he always did.

Cal ignored the calls and messages. How could he possibly remain composed and professional knowing what his one-time friend had done? Although he knew it was unfair, he felt as violated by Grant as Rachel did. Everything that made Cal who he was, everything that he believed about himself, had been crushed by this new understanding that Grant would take what he wanted with no regard for anyone else—not Rachel, not Cal, not his own children or wife.

But anger wasn’t the main thing he was feeling. It was shame, and that surprised him. He hadn’t done anything wrong—he hadn’t been involved at all. Nonetheless, he kept searching through his mind to find the thing that made Grant do what he had done, to find what he had done himself that made it happen. And shame draped itself over him as he searched, made him feel like this would happen again with someone else who he trusted, and that it probably had happened before with Grant, with other women—and he felt stupid for not being able to recognize it in him, for not knowing that he shouldn’t trust this man and shouldn’t accept him as a friend and shouldn’t bring him close.

There was anger in him too, a force that was prodding him to do something, to take action, to lash out. He heard Anger’s voice in his head, telling him to call the police, to tell Grant’s wife, to punch Grant square in the nose and to tell him that he knew what he did, and to tell him that he was a sick fuck who was worth less than nothing.

Shame reminded him though, that if he did that, he would have to explain all of this over and over, and showed him how embarrassing that would be, and warned him that people wouldn’t believe such a thing about Grant and that people would point their fingers back at him, and accuse him, and ridicule him.

He sat in his desk chair, in that place that had been a symbol of everything good in his life for more than a decade, and cried. His cell phone buzzed on the desk again, and he smashed it with his hand, cracking the glass. He could still see through the shattered screen that it was Grant texting him, and in his fury he picked the device up and, with his high-school baseball pitcher’s arm, dashed it against the office wall, sending pieces of electronics scattering all around the place. And his shame deepened.

He wiped his nose and cheeks with the back of his hand, rolled his chair back in front of his desk, and picked up the desk phone. Everyone who worked for him had arrived while he had been thinking about what had happened, so the first thing he did was to tell Gustavo that Rachel wasn’t going to be in today, so he would need to cover her duties. He surprised himself with how normal he sounded despite how he felt. Next, he dialed his wife’s number.

“Hey, Baby.”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Hey, what do you think about taking a few weeks and going up to Maine for a vacation?”

The Righthand Turn

This one just got rejected–I see why. I rushed it too much to make a deadline. I’ll rework it down the road. Tell me, in the comments below, what you would fix.

Just as the blast of her horn ended, a truck sped past his front bumper pushing a wave of air that jolted the car. Fury tingled in his head and tunneled his vision into a point focused on his rear view mirror, and he watched as she gestured. Her mouth danced as she screamed at him from behind, and he saw a curl of hair flop in front of her eye, unable to resist the violent thrashing of her head and neck as she hollered. She wasn’t going to stop. Before he knew what he was doing, the gear shift had been jammed into “P,” the door was opened, and he was out of the car walking back along the roadway toward her.

v v v

What is this idiot doing? Why is he just sitting there? You can turn right on red these days, grandpa. “Let’s move it,” she said under her breath as she glanced at the clock on the car’s radio. Late again. She tapped the steering wheel in her impatience, slapped it really, like a drum.

A moment came when he could have charged his blue Chevy into the river of passing cars, but he didn’t.

“Come on!” She could see that his gray head was pointed down the road studying the cars and trucks as they approached. Why didn’t he go? “Go!” she said, louder than before. She eased her foot off the brake just enough to let the car inch forward, a signal to him that she was tired of waiting.

Another gap in the traffic, but he still didn’t move.

“Jesus Christ!” She yelled this time. “Are you gonna sit there all day, dumbass?” She turned the wheel hard to the left and craned her neck to see if there was space to pull around him. “Shit!” she complained as a plumber’s van pulled up beside her.

Another chance to dash into the procession. His brake lights glowed, unwavering, red.

“Son of a bitch!” She pounded both hands into the center of the steering wheel, forced it down with all her strength to release her frustration on the weird H logo there and to let the horn yell in its angry goose voice while she screamed insults and slurs that he couldn’t hear but that seemed to her like revenge.

She let the horn go only when traffic began streaming in front of him again.

v v v

The anger was in his eyes and neck, heavy, black tar smothering fear and timidness and civility and granting him permission to do things that he normally wouldn’t do. Savagery replaced everything. He wouldn’t accept this kind of abuse any more. It was the last time he was going to be the one who didn’t react. He was going to cause trouble, make destruction, draw blood and settle the score not just with her but with every jerk who had ever used their insulting horns, their vulgar hand signals or their false security in the driver’s seat against him. Parking his car on a road and blocking traffic was the first offense his outrage allowed him. There would be others. He wanted there to be others. But when he unfolded himself from his seat and turned toward her, when she got a look at him, her complaining stopped and her face changed. Softened. Became like the face of his big yellow dog during a thunderstorm, begging for the chance to be safe, pleading that the threat and the danger should go away.

v v v

“Oh, shit. He got out of the car” she said out loud while her mind raced over the details of this man who now was walking toward her. He was huge, both tall and wide, and she could see anger shooting out of his eyes and into her. He was locked on her face. His massive hands were clenched into fists, and he walked toward her in strides that seemed superhuman. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” she heard herself repeating. She purposefully mouthed the words, exaggerating the sounds’ shapes with her lips and tongue, so that he would see that she was saying it, so that he would know that she understood her error, so that he would accept that she wished she hadn’t done it. She felt the urge to cry rising into her throat and her face, thought for a moment that if she let it come, it would help. But he was beside her now, looking down, making her self-conscious. She instinctively clamped her knees together.

v v v

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He could see her mouthing the words through the windshield and then through the driver’s window as he moved beside it. She pressed her hands together in her pleading, a pantomime prayer. Rage still ruled him. He stood looking down at her, disgusted by her sudden transformation from banshee to saint. He wanted her to pay for what she had done and for how she tried to hide it, how she worked to erase it only because he had moved close enough to do her damage. This thirty-something woman with her beat up Hyundai and too short skirt needed to remember him and what she had done to him. He rolled his right index finger in slow, tight circles, demanding that she roll down the window.

v v v

The thoughts flooded through her in a panic—why is he just standing there? What’s he gonna do? Oh God, he wants me to roll down the window. I can’t do that. It’s the only thing between us. I can’t do it! But what if he breaks it? That would be worse.

Almost involuntarily, her hand rolled the silvery crank so that the window opened a couple of inches, inviting sound to enter but nothing else.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said in a voice that surprised her with its calmness. She noticed for the first time his precisely pressed shirt and neatly knotted tie. “Treating people like that is rude. I don’t deserve that, and neither does anyone else. And it’s dangerous. What if I had pulled in front of that truck?”

“I know. God,  I know.  You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m late for work and wasn’t thinking.” She looked directly into his eyes. “I am so sorry.”

“And what if I had been some kind of psycho that came back here with a gun? What then?”

“You’re right, you’re right. It was stupid. I know that. It’s just that I can’t be late again or I’ll get fired.” A tear rolled out of the corner of each eye, and a raspy sob escaped her throat in a gasp. “I really am sorry. I swear to God.”

Without another word, he walked back to his car, climbed in, closed the door, and pulled away into traffic.

v v v

That’s it she thought, he’s leaving. She noticed that her fingers trembled as she reached for a tissue to dab at the moisture in the corners of her eyes. “Holy shit” she burbled as the last of the crying faded away. Her sinuses demanded a quick double snort to clear away the remains of her fear. “That was crazy.” She rolled up her window, chuckled to herself in disbelief, and watched as he calmly pulled around the corner and into traffic.

“What an asshole,” she said as she checked her makeup in the rearview mirror.

Chosen for Best of Friday Phrases!

Two of my tweets for Friday Phrases were chosen for the “Best of” compilation. See them here:

The Very Best Of Blood Money and Melodious!

 

Critical Partner

As a writer, the most maddening thing to me is that I cannot be sure if what I have written sounds as good to other people as it does to me. Each of us carries the bias of having written our work, so we have extra perceptions that were not captured in the words that we wrote–the characters are whole people in our heads, but snapshots on the page, for example.

My personality allows me to believe, after I have worked and reworked a piece of fiction, that it is brilliant. The people around me, the people who love me, feel the same way–but they also think that I am handsome, charming, clever and all around a really wonderful guy. (I suspect that their opinion might be exaggerated.)

For that reason, I am searching for someone who will be critical of my work–someone who will read what I have written and tell me in plain words where it is good, but more importantly, where it is bad. And why it is bad. And what they would do to fix it.

I realize that these people are professionally called “editors,” but truth be told, I can’t afford an editor. So, I am looking for someone like me, someone who writes and who loves language and who will tell me, honestly and with a cold heart, where they have sniffed out the stinky cheese lurking in the refrigerator of my prose.

In return, I offer the same to my soon-to-be partner.

Here is the plan:

  • Small pieces—no more than 5,000 words at a time
  • A commitment to turn around criticism within a week, but an intention to do so within a day or two.
  • Pieces to be e-mailed in non-editable pdf format.
    • Double spaced, 1” margins
    • Criticism done by hand and scanned back to writer
  • Notation conventions to be determined mutually as we develop the partnership
  • Either party can leave the relationship with a simple e-mail at any time.

I believe that this kind of partnership will help both of us grow as writers, much more so than working alone could. I hope there is someone out there who agrees with me. If you’re that person, please e-mail me at bruce@brucewisener.com. I’m looking forward to meeting you!

Hey writers! Here’s a contest you can enter with a short little piece that you might have in your files.

Enter the 2016 Your Story Contest

Scars–First Scene Second Pass

Scars

“Well hell, it ain’t like I died!”

David wiped away the tear that pestered the corner of his eye. What an odd day it had become. In the soft light of the early morning, he had been circling through the parking lot of the Home Depot in Ridgeland, quietly excited, energized by the idea of beginning his new project and a little frustrated that it seemed that the man who had answered his Craig’s list ad was a no show. Once, twice, three times around the track of the lot’s little roads with no sign of the man who had convinced him that he was capable of the job, and who had agreed to meet him in front of the store at 6:00. David stopped under the carport where people load lumber before making a fourth lap and, irritated, struggled to pull his phone out of the pocket of his shorts. He scrolled through his recent phone calls, hoping that the guy’s number was still on the list, and tossed the phone into the passenger seat when it became apparent that it wasn’t.

Only when he looked up did he see the kid standing there, one hand resting on the Audi’s hood. They made eye contact. The kid smiled a broken smile of crooked teeth, then waved, then mouthed something that David couldn’t hear. Panhandler. From behind the wheel he shrugged his shoulders, then put his hand up to his ear to let the boy know he couldn’t hear him and thought for a moment about driving away, but instead rolled down the window when the kid moved toward the driver’s side.

“Yes Sir, good morning,” the kid said with the southern drawl typical of that part of Mississippi. David recognized the voice from their phone conversations “Are you the fence guy? I apologize Sir, but I ain’t too good at remembering names.”

“Yeah, that’s me. David. Are you Tony?” He emphasized the “you” too much, inadvertently made it obvious that he was disappointed with what he saw, letting the kid know that he was expecting someone older, bigger, stronger.

“Yes Sir, Mr. David. Glad to meet you.” He stuck his hand into the car to shake David’s hand.

“How old are you, Tony?” David asked as he took the rough hand in his own. The boy was immediately crestfallen, had the look of a person who had been disappointed countless times before, and let his chin sink to his chest.

“You think I’m not the right guy for this job, don’t you Sir?” He let David’s hand slip from his own, quietly, and averted his eyes. He paused for a moment, as if considering whether to walk away but then in a sudden burst of resolve blurted out “I work construction all week, every day.” He paused again, eyes to the ground, obviously deciding whether he should keep talking or just cut his losses and leave. “I know what you’re seein’ is a skinny kid, and you’re thinkin’ that you made a mistake and that I won’t be able to handle this.” His face screwed up with regret for what he was about to say, eyes now focused on David’s, but quickly flashed to a look of determination. “To be honest Sir, and with all due respect, I’m wondering if I made a mistake and if you’re gonna be able to handle this, ‘cause you don’t look like you ever done ANY hard work or ever built nothin’.”

Tony was right, of course. David was a key account manager for a telecommunications company but felt the anger and shame boil up inside of his head. He was sure it showed on his face and knew the kid saw it because he turned to walk away.

“Whoa whoa! Slow down!” David suddenly felt guilty for judging him. “I never said any of that. I didn’t even think it. I guess I was just expecting an older guy, but it doesn’t matter how old you are if you can help me get this done.” Tony stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “I need your help.” He flicked the button that unlocked the doors. “Hop in.”

Reluctantly Tony went around the car, opened the door and slumped into the seat. He stared straight ahead. While they rode the few miles to David’s house, he secretly examined his new employee, scanning him from the corner of his eye. Tony was still a kid, 19 or 20 years old at most, and with a long, bony frame that seemed like it would snap under even the lightest pressure. Black hair jutted out in clumps from beneath a filthy Atlanta Braves cap, and the hairless skin of his face shown with the baked chicken brown of people who spend all of daylight outside. He seemed taller when he was standing outside the car and looked like a little boy sitting in the passenger seat.

He was wearing two work boots but they were not a pair, one very dark brown and one light. David couldn’t see if he was wearing a sock on his left foot, but he definitely had one on his right—a bright pink, fuzzy one like women wear to bed on chilly winter nights which disappeared into the leg of a threadbare pair of jeans. His hands were the rough hands of a worker, broken, ashy callouses in the crook of his thumb and along his index finger, and with splits surrounded by borders of white, freshly healed scar tissue in the creases of his knuckles. He rubbed his knees, slowly and constantly.

His phone buzzed and Tony instantly retrieved it from his back pocket. Experienced thumbs tapped in a security code, he chuckled as he read the text he had received, and tapped in his reply. The phone buzzed again and when David glanced over, he noticed that the text was in Spanish. “You speak Spanish?”

“Yessir. I’m Mexican—well, half Mexican. I know I don’t look it. My dad’s white, but my momma’s Mexican.”

“Well, it’s great that you’re bilingual. Gives you a lot of opportunities.”

“Yessir.” He said it more in acknowledgement of David’s words than in agreement.

“Did your Mom teach you Spanish from the beginning?”

“Yes Sir. It’s the first language I learned. I didn’t speak nothin’ else until I was eight.”

“Eight?” David laughed a little. “That can’t be right. You would have gone to school when you were five, and you couldn’t go to school without knowing at least some English.” He turned his head to look at the kid, who sighed deeply and then looked at the floorboards.

“The thing is, Sir, that Momma didn’t send none of us to school until I was eight. My sister was nearly 10, and we didn’t either one of us speak no English, except maybe some words that we learned from television.”

“What!?” David was incredulous. “Why did she wait so long? Why didn’t they teach you English? They had to know that it would put you behind.”

“Yessir, she knew that. But the thing you gotta understand is that my momma is an illegal. She don’t speak no English, even to this day. Daddy left when I was just a little baby, so Momma was on her own. She was afraid that if she sent us to school, they would find her and send her to Mexico. Because of the forms, you know?”

“The forms?”

“Yessir, the forms that you have to fill out to put a kid in school. Mexicans don’t like to tell the government who they are and where they are, ‘cause they’re afraid that they’ll get sent back. Me and Millie were born here, so Momma was afraid that they would send her back but keep us here.”

“Oh my God, that’s terrible. What a thing to live with”

“Yessir.”

“So why did she eventually send you? To school?”

“Well, and of course I don’t remember this but this is what they tell me—I guess one day, somebody from the welfare office or something came to talk to her, and told her that the state would take us away if she didn’t put us in school. Momma says it was a woman who she worked with who got mad at her and called Human Services on us, but Millie thinks it was Chucho.”

“Huh. So how did you learn English?”

“Oh, it sucked.” He wagged his head slowly from side to side, still looking at the floorboards, and rubbed his hands together. “They just put us into class. Didn’t speak no English. I didn’t even know when people were saying my name at first—it’s really Antonio—because it sounds so different when you say it in English. I was in the first grade—Millie they put in second ‘cause she could read, but in Spanish.

“To be honest Sir, I don’t really know how I learned English. I just did ‘cause I didn’t have no choice. But I do remember this. The teachers yelled at us all the time. Every day. I remember that lady—the one who was my first teacher? —holding a pencil in front of my face and screaming pencil, pencil, pencil over and over like she had to yell in order for me to get it. Or maybe ‘cause she was angry that she had to teach it? All I knew then was that people were yelling at me ‘cause I was different, so I made it so I wasn’t different, and I learned. It was terrible. Never did like school because of it.”

David didn’t know what to say, and neither of them said anything for the few minutes more that it took to get to his house. When they pulled in the driveway, Tony said “I’m gonna grab a smoke before we get started. You mind?”

David never let anyone smoke at his house but didn’t have the heart to tell the kid so. “No problem. See you around back.”

Scars–First Scene Rough Draft

First Rough, single pass, no edits yet done.

Scars

“Well hell, it ain’t like I died!”

David wiped away the tear that slid back and forth in the well of his cheekbone. What an odd day it had become. In the morning, he was driving through the parking lot of the Home Depot, excited to be beginning his new project and looking for the man who had answered his Craig’s List ad. He had passed the kid twice, dismissing him, until during the third pass he stepped in front of the car. The kid spoke, but David couldn’t hear him. He gestured, put his hand to his ear, and the kid came around to the driver’s side of the car. David rolled down the window.

“Yes Sir, are you the fence guy?”

“Yeah, are you Tony?” He emphasized the “you” too much, made it obvious that he was disappointed with what he saw, inadvertently let the kid know that he was expecting someone older, bigger, stronger.

“Yessir,” Tony said and then averted his eyes. “You think I’m not the right guy for this job, don’t you Sir?” he paused for a moment, as if considering whether to walk away, and then blurted out “I work construction all week, every day.” He paused again, deciding whether he should go on. “To be honest Sir, I’m wondering if you’re going to be able to get this done, ‘cause you don’t look like you ever done ANY hard work.” He was right, of course. David was a key account manager for a telecommunications company.

“Whoa whoa! Slow down!” David suddenly felt guilty for judging him. “I never said any of that. I didn’t even think it. I guess I was just expecting an older guy, but it doesn’t matter how old you are if you can help me get this done.” He swallowed too hard and his palms were sweating. “Hop in.” He flicked the button that unlocked the doors. Tony went around to the other side, opened the door, slumped into the seat, and slammed the door shut. He stared straight ahead.

While they drove, David secretly examined his new employee. Tony was wearing two work boots, but they were not a pair. It looked like he was not wearing a sock on his left foot, but definitely had one on his right—a bright pink one that disappeared into the leg of a threadbare pair of jeans. His hands were the rough hands of a worker with ashy callouses in the crook of his thumb and along his index finger, and with splits and scabs in the creases of his knuckles.

A phone buzzed in the kid’s back pocket and he instantly retrieved it, tapped in a security code, chuckled as he read the text he had received, and tapped in his reply. The phone buzzed again, and when David glanced over, he noticed that the text was in Spanish. “You speak Spanish?”

“Yessir. I’m Mexican—well, half Mexican. I know I don’t look it. My dad is white, but my momma’s Mexican.”

“Well, it’s great that you’re bilingual. Gives you a lot of opportunities.”

“Yessir.” He said it more in acknowledgement of David’s words than in agreement.

“Did your mom teach you Spanish from the beginning?”

“Yes Sir. It’s the first language I learned. I didn’t speak nothin’ else until I was eight.”

“Eight?” David laughed a little. “That can’t be right. You would have gone to school when you were five, and you couldn’t go to school without knowing at least some English.” He turned his head to look at the kid, who sighed deeply and then looked at the floorboards.

“The thing is Sir, that Momma didn’t send neither of us to school until I was eight. My sister was nearly ten, and we didn’t neither one of us speak no English, except maybe some words that we learned from television.”

“What!?” David was incredulous. “Why did she wait so long? Why didn’t they teach you English? They had to know that it would put you behind.”

“Yessir, she knew that. But the thing you gotta understand is that my momma is an illegal. She doesn’t speak any English, even to this day. Daddy left when I was just a little baby, so Momma was on her own. She was afraid that if she sent us to school, they would find her and send her to Mexico. Because of the forms, you know?”

“The forms?”

“Yessir, the forms that you have to fill out to put a kid in school. Mexicans don’t like to tell the government who they are and where they are, ‘cause they’re afraid that they’ll get sent back. Me and Millie were born here, so Momma was afraid that they would send her back but keep us here.”

“Oh my God, that’s terrible.”

“Yessir.”

“So why did she eventually send you?”

“Well, and of course I don’t remember this but this is what they tell me—I guess one day, somebody from the welfare office or something came to talk to her, and told her that the state would take us away if she didn’t put us in school. Momma says it was a woman who she worked with who got mad at her and called Human Services on us, but Millie thinks it was Chucho.”

“Huh. So how did you learn English?”

“Oh, it was terrible.” He wagged his head slowly from side to side, still looking at the floorboards, and rubbed his hands together. “They just put us into class. Didn’t speak no English. I didn’t even know when people were saying my name at first—it’s really Antonio—because it sounds so different when you say it in English. I was in the first grade—Millie they put in second ‘cause she could read, but in Spanish.

“To be honest Sir, I don’t really know how I learned English. I just did ‘cause I didn’t have no choice. But it was terrible being the only kid, the only one. The teachers yelled at us all the time. I remember that lady—the one who was my first teacher?—holding a pencil in front of my face and screaming pencil, pencil, pencil over and over. It was terrible.”

©2016 Bruce Wisener All rights reserved.

Reading with Dad

Here’s a piece to give you a little taste of how I write. Let me know what you think.

We all have certain things from our childhoods that we remember with a crystal clarity. One of mine is that I can smell my father as he used to smell when I was a boy, the fecund floral fragrance of Borkum Riff Cherry Pipe Tobacco permeating his skin, his sweat, his breath, his clothing and overridden by MFC, his aftershave tonic. I smelled it when he kissed me goodnight, or when he held Dad and Sonme close to him to help me overcome pain or fear, but most often of all, and most significantly to me, I smelled his smell when he would lay with me on my bed or on the sofa and read to me. It was more often my mother who read to us, to me, and so I remember those times when he did it and remember the comfort of smelling that smell, because it was my time with my dad, alone, having to share him with no one.