Archives for October 2008

Davis’ hands shook as he pulled the shirt from the hanger. Kendra had ironed it like she said she would before she left for her shift. The linen felt crisp against his bare shoulders. He snorted knowing if she were here his mother would chastise him for his lack of undershirt. He didn’t have to look at the thermometer to know that it bore out his decision. Besides, his mother wasn’t here. For once in his life, Davis knew right where she was.

Trembling fingers forced the last button into the hole before he picked up the envelope with the eulogy in it up from the dresser and slid it into his shirt pocket.

Raymond Blue knew even before the smoke cleared that would always be “that guy.”  Trouble seemed to follow him like a noxious fart.

It wasn’t anything necessarily that Raymond did; he just had an almost genetic knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The upside, though, was that most of Raymond’s mishaps ended up being comical in retrospect.

Like the time he loaded the wrong labels into the capping machine at the bottling factory and 12 gross of lager went out labeled as rootbeer or the time he followed the instructions in the work order to the letter and carpeted the ceiling in the library when they were trying to improve the sound proofing.

Raymond held the traffic control lollypop at his side and watched calmly as a jar of marischino cherries rolled to a stop against the toe of his boot while most of the rest of the truck’s load rolled down the hill toward the chocolate bar factory’s loading dock.