Barely a man
A one page (ish) short story
I’ve been trying to write fiction for a long time now, but I can never seem to finish something. I’ve gotten close before and have projects that I think are valuable, but they need more time. Anyways, I just really wanted to push myself to actually complete a written story, so I challenged myself to try and keep it within one page. A couple of hours later, I do have a story, and one that I think was at least a fun project if nothing else.
Below is what I’ve titled, “Barely a man.” I do hope you enjoy, and I’m open to feedback. Stay warm, friends.
The TV went out before the rest. Luke Skywalker’s hand was only just lightsaber-ed off before pitch black permeated the house. The two young boys shrieked, unwilling to make peace with the fact that the county’s biggest ice storm in twenty years didn’t care much about an unresolved cliffhanger.
The children carried on, and though he couldn’t see it, Arthur could feel his wife’s quiet glance asking him to do something amidst the cacophony of impatient boyish hollering. He sighed defeatedly as they continued to yammer, angrily and fearfully, and his wife desperately tried to spin their emotions into some kind of excitement over being in the dark all together.
Arthur folded up the recliner and began fumbling around on an arduous journey to the bedroom to retrieve the flashlight. The six and eight-year-old boys were too enamored with intergalactic politics to notice that Arthur had been comfortably asleep for roughly the last half-hour.
He clumsily found his way to the bedroom, then the nightstand drawer, and eventually fished through the random assortment of stuff and things to the flashlight. He put on his coat, hat, boots, and gloves, moving not as slow as he felt but not as quick as he ought.
As he made his way to the front door, he turned towards the sound of his family, shone the flashlight up at himself, and made some grotesque contortion of a face. This made the older boy laugh, the younger boy cry, and though unseen once again, Arthur knew it made his wife roll her eyes. A gust of wind flew in as he stepped out, prompting another host of emotional reactions from the children.
He reached into his coat pocket and procured a lighter and a tin of mints, where he stored his cigarettes. He hung one on his lip, lit it, and took a good long drag, just standing on the porch for a while. He exhaled, watching the smoke mix with the snow. It was shockingly quiet. There were no traffic sounds. No voices. No headlights populating the streets. Just the faint whistle of the wind and a distant ambulance siren competing for who could pierce the silence with the least amount of noise.
After just a couple of puffs, Arthur was freezing, even for a Michigan tradesman with high-quality outerwear. He decided he wanted warmth more than he wanted five minutes alone with Mr. Marlboro. He walked around the back of the house, flashlight in hand, cigarette in mouth, taking a drag every here and there as he inspected the generator. It took a couple of times, but eventually, he got it running. If the mechanical sputter and hum hadn’t immediately notified him of his success, the light shining from the window and the muffled sounds of celebration would have. He smiled faintly and filled his lungs with more smoke.
He moved back toward the front porch, far quicker than he did in the bedroom, when just beyond the chainlink fence, he noticed a man. Barely a man; an animated silhouette in the hazy snow. He noticed that the figure was dragging a shopping cart down the ice-covered road. The cart was filled with… stuff. Arthur couldn’t discern what the contents were, but he thought he could observe the shape of a rolled-up sleeping bag. He took another drag of his cigarette and tried to call out to the traveller. But he only kept walking. To no clear destination.
Arthur flicked the rest of his cigarette into the snow-covered bush and took in one clear inhale of the cold air. He called out again. The man heard this time and looked back. The two stood deathly still, sharing a nonverbal, frozen exchange, separated by a good two hundred yards now. Arthur took another breath, and the man resumed his journey to no particular place before becoming obscured by the fog.
Arthur looked toward the bush and watched the last ember from his cigarette fade, turned, and approached the door. It swung open, operated by the younger boy.
“We waited for you, Daddy. Are you coming?”
I'm assuming the title can refer to Arthur as well as to the person pushing the shopping cart . . . in which case I'm interpreting the story as reflecting on questions about what it means to be a man in the current era. Petty troubles such as power outages seem to be the only time the contemporary male gets to perform the role of valiant protector of his children, his woman. Is Arthur really a man, then, if that's the closest he gets to being the ideal stalwart defender of hearth and home? Perhaps the shopping-cart wanderer is more a man than Arthur (good choice of name by the way; very symbolic!), braving the elements and refusing to be conquered by them, meeting the universe on its own terms armed with naught but his own iron will. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Arcade Fire's song "Modern Man" is a good accompaniment to Arthur's 21st-century male malaise.
I enjoyed this! Lovely, distinct scene with plenty to ponder. I recently had a moment at a Walgreens where a man walked in and out again with two jugs of laundry detergent—I was at the counter checking out and the woman behind they counter had been shouting at the man to leave, since apparently he stole from them this way frequently.
I had a bit of a crisis in that I did zero to intervene. Pragmatically, I don't think I did anything wrong, and my wife agrees, but I still couldn't help but agonize over whether I demonstrated cowardice in not stopping the man, or at least trying to...
This story feels connected in that still moment, that pause of potential action that then lapses into inaction. I am frankly terrified of inaction or negligence like that...something to reckon with.
Thanks for the story!