101 Words

Christine could hardly wait to tell her best friend Sue about the new shop: proper clothes for real women—not girls with figures like ironing boards.

The shop assistant was lovely—all big, cuddly smiles. The clothes were great—and with sensible styles too. In the changing room, Sue took off her size 14 top and hung it on the wall. The silk, flowery 8 she tried on was a bit tight but the 10 was perfect—honesty at last!

With two dress sizes lost in ten minutes, there was no problem with the celebratory coffee and white chocolate muffin afterwards.

They raised the food, prepared the meals, and took care of the homes. We stared at screens and barely noticed them.

When the work day ended, they were bussed back behind the wall. There they tended their gardens, raised their children, and studied computer coding.

When the virus began to spread, they did not come to work. Crops rotted in the fields, livestock starved, and our homes fell into disorder as the screens went dark.

We marched to the wall and pounded on the locked gates. Our cries for help weren’t heard over the sounds of celebration drifting over their wall.

Rainy evening. Cold and gloomy. Like any other day in my heart and mind.

Another day of getting off from a job I hate, stopping at this awful store, buying crap I don’t want or need, then going home to a wife and daughter, both who’ve grown strange and unpleasant to me.

I’m tired.

As I’m leaving the store, a young man wearing a long coat is walking in. He says to me, “You’re a lucky man.”

Offended, I mean to tell him “Fuck off,” but he’s moving too fast.

Seconds later, I hear gunshots and screams from inside the store.

I come from a warring family. My son in Afghanistan, my father in the Far East in 1940, and my grandfather in the trenches. My father never spoke of the war; silence reigned. My grandfather never referred to the ‘Great War’; there was always another adjective in between, expletives I didn’t understand as a child. The old man was considered odd, shell-shocked, but I loved sitting on his knee, sniffing and staring as he managed to chew mints and puff a pipe in the same breath.

I wear a Poppy in his honour because it is easier than remembering my son.

“Kendall, how long Silas worked that piece?” asks Worther.

“Recollect ’bout eighteen year,” allows the owner.

“His crop satisfy you?”

“Satisfactory.”

“Put on a tractor; you’d get more’n satisfactory.”

“Piece can’t support no tractor you.”

“If I allow a tractor on tick, that’ll work.”

Kendall never knew Worther to put his foot wrong. He squints; shied by the man he decides, “I’ll put the question to Silas.”

~

“Silas, what’d ya say I allow a tractor?”

“What happens to the mule?”

“Sell the mule.”

“Put in a heap o’years, shame to shuck ’em as reward.”

“So, no to a tractor.”

“Yes’m, no.”

The rain washes us into the waiting room.

Condensation trickles down the window like an angry man’s sweat. The smell of wet dog hovers in the stale air.

“The train’s late.”

You look at me, eyebrows raised.

“Patience.” You are unconcerned and flick to the next page of your book.

This unconcern feeds the tension between us.

Plato’s Republic. You have lofty ideals; mine are humble. I clutch a soggy magazine, a last minute glossy from the stand.

When the train pulls out you will be alone. I will flicker past in profile as another page turns.

You will not notice.