Nostalgia
Billy’s fingers stroke feathers, baby blue, and he lets his lips sing a little ditty about lady love. It isn’t what he wanted exactly, but it’s what he grew up with and if it wouldn’t do, he doesn’t know what will. The cottage is small and the mountains big, and in the summer, the hills burst with fireweed blossoms and buttercups and everything is just calm.
Sometime, though, he’ll get a craving to eat real food or he’ll need to sell some pups Bessie had over the spring, small, little things, mewling like cats, ears down and eyes wide, fit for begging, and he’ll have to go to town on in his beat-up pickup. All the town folk knows him, knows his truck, rust stain red and making a sound like hell itself, and they’ll all say hey in that friendly way that people are sometimes wont to do. When he gives away all the pups or maybe not even then, when he has no pups, he’ll go to the old Transit Diner. Sometimes Jim’ll be there, chewing on some devil’s weed, and jawing about how it ain’t suppose ta rain til the fifth ‘cause wildfire season has come early this year. He’ll look up when he sees him, and nod, breaking his stride to say, “How’s it goin’, Billy? Those birds still give you hell?” He’ll laugh right then, like it was the funniest thing, and it always made him regret telling Jim about the farm and its birdie problem that really wasn’t.
He’ll smile though, and Jim will look as if solid gold had fallen from the sky. His grin would be that wide, and he’ll order two beers and a stack of pancakes, flirting with the counter girl Susan to give him a discount. She’s been sweet on him for years, always wilting under his “honey”s and “darlin’”s, and Jim knows it. Billy doesn’t think it’s really right though, swindling a girl like that, ‘cause Susan was such a nice gal, but when he tells Jim, all he’ll does is laugh and say, “Is it so wrong ta play the cards the Lord has dealt?”
A yes-no grunt later, the best answer a man can give, and hours will pass, filled with inane chatter of the young and restless stuck in old, jaded bodies until the sun starts to set. Billy’ll be off then. The drive’s long as it is. He doesn’t need the buzzing of crickets and the croaks of bullfrogs to stir the impatience in his bones, and his rust stained red truck will bump along until the next time he has a hankering for beer and fresh pancakes or has to get rid of a cart full pups. Whichever comes first.
So imagine his surprise when he goes to the diner, pickup a-roaring, and Jim isn’t there since he’d made a habit of always being there when Billy rolls into town. He talks to Susan, asks her where Jim is, and the look she gives him freezes his bones, making them brittle. He asks again, more sharply this time, and Susan just sighs. “You knew that this was coming, Bill.” She says lightly. “Jim was always too big for this town. It didn’t suit him.” Her face is nothing but sympathy, and he can’t look at her anymore. Yeah, he knew, but he’d always thought that he’d take him too. Bust out of the town together like they’d planned back when they were sixteen with eyes clouded with stars. But they weren’t sixteen anymore and things had changed.
He goes back home to his birds and the loss finally settles, weighing everything down. That night he dreams a dream of worms that had sprouted in his heart, bursting from arteries and ventricles like macabre party streamers, until he clawed the whole thing out, laying it raw on the white white floor.
He wakes to cold sweat and lies shaking until the sun rises again, wondering if it’s too late. But there’s no point in wondering because he knows it is. It’s been too late for years.