Single-Syllable Story – The Truck in the Rain
June 16th, 2010 |“The bull stops here,” said Zack with a dumb smirk. He shrugged as he said it, and he said it once, twice, three, four times.
“Get it? Get who I am? Guess? Who am I?”
Grace thought Zack was an ass.
“God, shut your damn mouth or else I’ll slap you,” she said with a sneer.
“I just made a joke,” said Zack.
“No, Zack. Jokes make me laugh. Fuck. You just make me mad.”
The rain hit the glass of their truck, and Zack stared hard at the drops that splashed and died. It was cold now, and the sun was low in the sky. Red leaves blew through the field of the park on Grace’s side.
“It’s hard to make you laugh, Grace. You don’t smile hon. At least not in the past month or so. Why not?” asked Zack.
“It’s not hard, Zack. It’s not hard, and if you think it’s hard, then you’re… well, you’re just a fag. Plain as day. That’s what I think. I think you’re dumb when you do that voice. And say those things. So there. What do you think I am?” she asked.
Zack winced.
“You’re just… well… mean… a bitch, kind of…” He shrugged. “Why are you in such a bad mood? You… you just have a way to cut me down a notch with each small thing. I do one small thing, and you cut me down. I try; I try to make you laugh. To make you smile. I try to take gray days, like this shit, these sad days when it rains in the fall and we don’t have a clue what to do and I try to make them fun. I thought it would be nice to look at the park… but you make them… I don’t know.”
Zack turned the knob to turn on the fan and make it blow, and then he leaned down and took a smoke out of the pack of Pall Malls he left on the car floor.
“I thought I did a good Bush voice,” he said with a frown. “You know, he laughs like that. Kind of dumb like that. My fault.”
“No, it’s my fault. You have a point,” she said, as she looked out at the cars that zoomed by them. “The bull stops here. I should have said no.”
She paused as Zack turned to face her.
“This won’t work, Zack. We need to break up… I can’t kid you, and that’s the truth. That’s the real truth. Here’s the ring.”