We fly to Florida tomorrow for a week long vacation. Our plan is to sit by the pool. For all seven days. It will be glorious.
As we busily pack our bags and finish a few last minute to-dos, I’d like to take this week’s newsletter to share a bit of flash fiction (is that the term?). I’ve been developing two characters, Plymouth and Burn, for a novel that I hope to write soon.
The piece below is an exploration of these two characters and their relationship. Just a little blip of something. I hope you enjoy.
PLYMOUTH AND BURN
Cleveland passed by like a pimpled forearm, invading Plymouth’s periphery, helping itself to a second filling of watery soda from the dirty machine in a roadside fast food joint. Before he could make eye contact with the city, it had already turned its back, leaving him to make out its broad features in the reflection off a greasy, glass door. He knew there was beauty there. There was beauty there because there was humanity there, but the brittle, brown snow covered it over so that a new spring would have to come before those just passing through could see it.
Burn rolled down the window and spat. The wad of slimy expulsion was airborne for a split-second before aerodynamics figured into the scenario and the back window was covered in a frothy Rorschach test. Plymouth almost hurled at the sight. It reminded him of too many of his father’s old friends and their late nights drunkenly falling off the dock at Lake Hiawassee in the consuming heat of a Georgia summer; the morning after when he would steal away from the musty cabin to find the wooden boards covered in chewing tobacco and cigarette ash; nearby bushes trampled where a fat man still slept, nacreous drool glistening against the red clay soil.
The past three hours had been comfortably silent to the point where the only sound was the occasional unsticking of skin from the UHaul’s humid pleather seats. Gusts of wind bucked at the sides of the seventeen foot truck. Burn kept his eyes on the road while Plymouth kept his eyes on Burn. A roiling rancor coursed through both of their veins. The move to Detroit was not of their choice, but was bound up in the choices they had made and not made; the years spent in New Orleans watching their intentions melt into a putrid pile; the inactions in critical moments; a murder-suicide of the soul.
As they moved west, Cleveland shambled away from 1-90. Reflected in the rearview, the pillars of its bridges standing proud like teeth in a mouth without many. Burn turned on the radio. Each station seemed to have coordinated a commercial break. Up and down the dial, the two men heard advertisements for car deals, car insurance deals, and car-wreck-litigation deals. Zero-Down! 20% less than the big guy! I’ll fight for YOU!Â
Finally, an NPR station broke the pattern and told them a story of America; the upcoming election, the rollicking economy, and the skyrocketing housing market. Like a giant orange and white turtle with a tattoo of the Grand Canyon on its side, Burn and Plymouth carried home on their backs. Smashed into the back of the truck was a collection of items that, in truth, were not worth the cost of the gas it took to move. That was, of course, only if you deeply discounted the intrinsic value of sentiment and nostalgia. A favorite microfiber blanket was a two-part item: microfiber blanket plus favorite. Favorites are hard to come by and therefore worth a bit of something. Favorites are not easily replaceable.
Burn was Plymouth's favorite.
Give me more!