A Boy with a Truck -- Flash Fiction

image from everydayfamily.com

"Gran, whatcha doin'?"  Michael asked as he climbed onto the bed.

"Folding laundry. What are you doing?"

"Nothing." The three-year-old held out a small, battered red truck.

"Where'd you get that?" she asked, checking the tag in a T-shirt.

"Grandpa." He tried to see the tag, too.

She turned the shirt so he could see. "XL, that's Grandpa's shirt."

"Michael starts with M," he said.

"Right. But XL is the size. Grandpa starts with G."

"G?"

"XL stands for extra large."

Michael took his truck and ran to the living room where his Grandpa watched the news. He stopped in front of the TV.

"Boy, you'd make a better door than window," his grandfather said.

"Extra, extra," someone sang as the announcer shouted "Welcome to Sports Extra." Video of people swimming flashed in the background and the sports-caster said "One hundred days until the 2016 Summer Olympics. Michael Phelps and our own Missy Franklin are in Colorado Springs training."

"Michael? Like me?" the child asked.

His Grandfather nodded. "But bigger."

"What are Olympics?" One knee down, travelling in a half-crawl, Michael pushed his truck across the floor.

"It's for athletes who excel at their sport. There'll be wrestling and basketball and running and jumping."

"Extra large?" Michael asked. Sure that his Grandpa watched him, he ran fast and jumped as high as he could.

"That's pretty good. You just might get to go to the Olympics in sixteen years or so. When you're a lot bigger. Go ask Gran if she wants some ice cream."

"Can I take Red?"

"Red?"

Michael held up the little truck.

Half an hour later the three of them and Red were outside the ice cream shop. They had to wait and let Michael watch a convoy of trucks. Big white trucks with the iconic red logo of a Colorado electric company on the doors.

"Xcel Energy trucks, headed for Kansas," the grandfather said. "They're expecting bad weather."

"Extra large," Michael said, entranced by the passing trucks.

Michael's grandmother looked up at the clear blue sky and watched a man in shorts enter the ice cream shop. "It must be Spring. Tornadoes on the prairie and we're expecting snow."

"Not until Saturday." Grandpa laughed and scooped Michael up.

Inside the shop a teenager behind the counter asked "What'll it be, little man?"

From the vantage point of his grandfather's arms Michael had the ice cream man say the names of each of the possibilities.

Finally he said, "Chocolate. XL, please."

Life in a Tree -- flash fiction

image from beforeitsnews.com

“Stevie, are you still up there?”

“But what about Daddy?”

“Steven Michael, you come down here this instant. We’ve got to be at the airport in six hours.” Now he decides he’s not going. I won’t have it. He does not make decisions for me. “Steven. Now!”

“I won’t leave Daddy.”

“I’m coming up there.” Climb a tree after a six-year-old? This is the stupidest damn thing I’ve done in a long while. “Steven, do I have to drag you out of this tree?”

“But, Mom, look at the world. You can see the whole world from up here.”

“Yes, very pretty.” She sat down on the limb and let her legs dangle. “Stevie, this is exactly why we’re leaving. What you can see from here is not the whole world. It’s not even a little bit of it.”

He’s just like his father, no imagination. Satisfied, satisfied, satisfied. He’s a little boy. He doesn’t understand. We’re one hundred and fifty miles from an airport. A regional airport. Not even a hub. You can’t get anywhere from here without going somewhere else first. That far from the nearest ballet company. Not that Michael cares how far his son is from a ballet company. But we’re just as far from a hospital – a Level II trauma center. There is no Level I in the whole state. God forbid if he fell out of this tree. We’re talking med flight into Salt Lake or Denver.

“Just think of it Stevie. Washington, D.C., the Capital of the United States, the most important city in the world.”

“But we won’t have a house. Where will we sleep? I don’t like hotels.”

“No, honey, we won’t live in a hotel. We have an apartment there. You’ll have your own room just like here.”

“I don’t think Rufus will like an apartment.”

“He’s too big for an apartment. Besides he can’t go on the plane with us.”

“I’m almost as big as Rufus, maybe I’m too big for an apartment.”

“We’ve been through all this before.”

And much, much more with his father. Michael knew what she was like when they married. He was handsome and brilliant. He was proud to have a wife graduating at the top of her class, then clerking for a State Supreme Court Justice. He knew she wanted out of Wyoming. She thought he would want to go where they could actually make a difference. Actually protect the wildlife he loved so well. She thought the National Park Service would be just the beginning. The first step. Decisions were made in D.C.

Michael should have been there an hour ago. He should be the one up in this tree.

“Hey! What are you two monkeys doing up in the tree?”

“Daddy! Come up. Come up.”

“Yes, Michael. Do come up and see if you can talk some sense into your son.” She moved toward the trunk of the tree. “Wait. Let me come down first.”

He lifted her out of the tree and set her on the ground. “What’s going on?”

“Steven Michael doesn’t want to come with me.”

“Okay.” He took a slow deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to him. Explain it to him.”

“Explain divorce to a six-year-old? I’m not sure I can.”

She snorted in disgust and stomped away.

He climbed the tree and sat on the third from the bottom most limb. Drawing his son into his lap he asked, “Now why don’t you want to go with Momma?”

“It’s too far away, and you know how she always gets lost and she needs you to tell her how to spell words and Rufus can’t go.” The little boy’s eyes filled with tears.

Michael kissed Steven’s forehead, knowing that this was one hurt he couldn’t kiss away.

“Stevie, your Momma won’t get lost and if she does there’ll be lots of people there to help her find where she wants to go. And you know she never goes anywhere without her phone so she can use it to find out how to spell any word she wants to.”

“Okay.” The child sniffled and snuggled against his dad.

“And Rufus will go to work with me most days.”

“But why, Daddy? Why?”

“Why what?” he asked, knowing very well what. “You know how unhappy Momma’s been, for a long time now. Sometimes grown-ups just don’t love each other anymore.”

She had loved him once, he was sure of that. She was beautiful and intelligent. And she had been enthralled by his intelligence. She could have had any of the campus jocks, but she loved him. She knew what he was like. He lived out-of-doors, in the wild places away from the corrosive element of human beings. Wildlife management was his way to save at least a little part of the world he loved. He thought she would settle into the life, appreciate the vitality of Wyoming, the skies, the fresh air, the unlimited opportunities for discovery.

“Daddy?” the child put his hands on either side of Michael’s face and made him look at him.

Michael would never get over how completely beautiful the child was. His child. The wild must be preserved for all the Steven Michaels.

“What?”

“Do they have elk in Washington, D.C.?”

“In the zoo, maybe. They have deer. Not mule deer like we have here, but white tail. And raccoons and rabbits and some varmints like you’ve never seen here.” He set the child on the next lower limb. “Be careful.”

Before the boy climbed down, he asked another question. “Do grown-ups stop loving little boys?”