101 Words

I don’t want to buy any china, but the sales clerk is cute, so I enter.

“Something for your girlfriend?” she asks.

“No girlfriend,” I say.

She makes a pouting face and replies, “Poor baby.”

She begins showing me figurines, and I feign interest because I like watching her.

Finally, I admit, “I don’t really want to buy anything.”

“Ahh,” she gasps, putting her palm against her chest. “You’ve broken my heart.”

She points to a sign that reads ‘You Break, You Buy.’

“Now you have to buy something.”

“Would lunch count?” I ask.

“I get off at 11:30,” she smiles.

Granmama said, “Jimbo, you gonna die you don’t stop eatin’ that cornbread.”

Jimbo was so big and ornery, he never listened to his granmama.  He never listened to anybody. Not one soul in that town thought he’d stay on the right side of the law.

And now here he was sitting in the state penitentiary mess hall, looking at his empty plate. His stomach growled. That cornbread was on Rooster Johnston’s plate next to the chicken fried steak and beans. Jimbo grabbed it. Rooster punched him in the throat, broke his windpipe.

“I warned that boy,” Granmama cried at the funeral.

Up there, under the eaves, is a hole between the roof and the masonry. You can’t see it now, but in that hole a tiny bird has made its tiny nest.

Keep looking, and most days you will see a small, anxious cat climb onto the roof and watch the bird fly busily in and out of its nest. The cat twitches and mews, but the hole is too small. It cannot get at the bird.

Although the cat knows this, it still comes every day to watch the bird. The bird ignores the cat, but it knows it is there.

I chose this island.

Shipwrecked my job and my marriage. Took a sinking lifeboat here. I needed to release my primal self. Live off the land. Escape the brain-numbing social media and poisonous politics. The world used to be better.

Fourteen days later, I’m stumbling, crawling, to evade disease-carrying bugs, escape flesh-eating predators. My primal self has not shown up. I’m beginning to wonder if he ever existed. The absence of time dulls my brain and senses. The water and plants reject me. I wrench it all back up into the sea.

I chose this island.

It has not chosen me.

He stood in the shadows of the alleyway so I couldn’t make out his face. He passed me the grainy photograph. “Take care of this person for me.”

I nodded, and he handed me a brown envelope stuffed with notes. I checked the contents. Not as much as I normally charged, but it probably wouldn’t be difficult to kill an 85-year-old.

It is a week later and I am back in the same alleyway. “It’s done.”

“Did she eat all her meals? Did she take her medications?”

I pause and then I realize. “Oh. Take CARE of…”

I turn. And run.

Going through my recently passed mother’s effects, a green-inked, hand-addressed envelope catches my eye. I open it.

Marvin,
You told your mommy you don’t believe in me. You had better take it back, or no more presents.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Santa Claus

The envelope is postmarked 1984, the year a six-year-old me insisted—over mom’s vehement protests—that Santa wasn’t real. 1984; the first year I didn’t receive a gift labeled ‘From Santa Claus.’

“Ah, damn it.” I mutter, barely audible, and think of all the Transformers, G.I. Joes, and He-Man action figures that ended up under the trees of other kids.