The end of a game of giant Jenga – Community Beer Company, Dallas, Texas
I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.
I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.
Here’s another one for today (#64) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.
Thanks for reading.
Empty Bottles
Amber was drunk again when Darien came home from work. Darien was tired, he was always tired. Sick and tired. Darien worked late every night now. The sad truth is that he was afraid to come home. He was working later and later week by week on purpose.
While Darien was at the law office Amber would sleep until noon. She would watch television until three and then head down to the Rusty Duck – a dark bar full of unemployed plumbers and valet parking attendants getting a buzz on before work. He knew this is what Amber did all day because that’s what she told him.
Darien wasn’t sure when it had all gone bad but he knew it didn’t take very long. It felt like it had happened overnight.
Today there was a galvanized bucket with 3 inches of ice melt water in it on the floor in the living room and empty Budweiser bottles scattered around the couch.
“You have to give me a ride down to the Rusty Duck” Amber said “I left the Suburban there.”
“How did you get home?”
“Oh, Terry and some of the boys gave me a ride.”
“I see they stayed a while. I see you all had a nice little party while I was at work.”
“Now if you’re going to be working until after dark we’ll have the party without you. What do you expect me to do? Now don’t you go leaving me home all alone like you been doing.”
“Somebody has to make a buck around this place. You’re sure not bringing anything home.”
“Oh keep it up buddy and I’ll be bringing plenty home. Just you watch.”
The next time, Amber wasn’t even home when Darien came back from work. She had been there – the Suburban was parked crookedly in front of the house. The backyard was scattered with beer bottles, though they had remembered to take their bucket with them this time.
Darien didn’t know what to do. He grabbed a trash bag, turned the porch lights on, and walked around the back yard picking up bottles.
He could not figure out how it had come to this.
A memory came back, against his will. There was a time when they both were young. When he first met Amber he always had a book with him. He read constantly, voraciously, always had, all his life. He carried the current dog-eared paperback the way most people carried a wallet. He didn’t think twice about it and couldn’t imagine anyone else even noticing.
One evening, when Amber showed up, she had a book with her. She carried it awkwardly, like she didn’t know exactly what to do with the thing. Darien took a look at the thing – it was a cheap junk paperback thriller, with a lurid cover featuring a woman in a torn dress and a man firing a pistol from a speeding sports car.
“Oh, you don’t want to read this,” Darren said to Amber. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring you a real book.”
The next day he dug around in the old suitcase he always brought with him, his portable library. After some consideration, he dug out a slim volume – “The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin, and brought it down to the pool. It was the only paperback he had that he figured she would be able to get through. He handed it to Amber down at the pool that evening. She looked at it with suspicion, but took it anyway.
Darien realized that he had never, not in his long, awkward, desperate courtship of Amber, or in their years of marriage, asked her if she had ever read it. He knew she still had the book, she kept the same copy in her makeup drawer, but he never felt like he could talk about it. He had never seen her read another book.
He had finished gathering the bottles, so he sat down in a wooden chair in the back corner of the yard, and began to weep. He knew Amber would come home, eventually, but what was he to do then?
He was startled by the sudden loud rhythmic croaking of a single frog, somewhere in the groundcover under the tree by the fence. He looked, but couldn’t figure out where the frog was at. The sound was constant and seemed to come from several directions at once.
Listening to the lonely sound, Darien realized that he would do nothing – that there was nothing he could do. He was being mistreated terribly, but he needed this. He needed this. He had fallen that evening years ago when Amber had driven up on her little motorcycle and the cavern had become deeper and the walls steeper every day since then.
He abandoned the call of the solitary frog and went back into the house. He dialed his office and left a message that he would not be in to work the next day. He unlocked the front door and then stretched out on the sofa, trying to get a little restless sleep, waiting there for Amber to come home.