Fiction: Illumination

“The city’s swimming pools were full again today as we wind up our record-breaking third week of 100-plus-degree days,” the TV weatherman said over images of children splashing around. “My, doesn’t that look nice and cool! They’ll likely be there again tomorrow and the next day as there’s no relief in sight.”

Craig looked up from his tablet and scowled. He picked up the remote and muted the volume. It was bad enough to suffer the heat without listening to some idiot prattle on about it. Almost unheard over the window air conditioner, his children splashed happily in the horse tank he had filled for them to swim in. The nearest town with a swimming pool was ten miles away, and the water was too heavily chlorinated for Kathy to tolerate.

Jane glanced briefly at the now-quiet TV and her husband. She kept working to get the family’s dinner ready. The water for the spaghetti was about to boil. “It’s really too hot for this,” she said to herself. “Can’t live on sandwiches all summer.”

Continue reading “Fiction: Illumination”

Fiction: Blades Sharpened Wile You Wate

LaVon limped and trudged from his little house to his workshop after lunch. He hadn’t eaten much; it was too hot to care about food. He had made himself drink one glass of water, but even that had been an effort.

“Don’t rightly know why I’m botherin’,” he told himself as he wiped his brow. “Ain’t no one ’round here been needin’ any blades sharpened in a month of Sundays.” He grunted softly. “Folks ’cross the tracks have their own sharpenin’ man.”

But a man went to work; LaVon had been going to one kind of work or another since he was eight years old, and that had been more than six decades ago. Now his work, when he got any, was running a foot-powered grindstone to sharpen dull blades. He couldn’t lift and tote and bend like he had done in his younger days, and this was what was left to him to keep body and soul together.

Continue reading “Fiction: Blades Sharpened Wile You Wate”

Fiction: Keeping Cool

“OK, Mr. Avers,” said Detective Curtis. “Let me make sure I’ve got your story straight. You got here a little after 1 p.m. and had been working on the central air unit in the basement for about half an hour when you heard the shots.”

“That’s right,” Avers agreed.

“You waited several minutes and when you didn’t hear anything else, you came upstairs and looked around.”

“Yeah. Maybe I should have come up sooner, but I was afraid.”

“Afraid isn’t a bad thing when you hear gunshots, Mr. Avers,” the detective told him. “Then you looked around and found the bodies in the living room and you called the police on your cell phone.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Curtis tipped his head a bit as he looked at the clipboard. “Then you went back downstairs and completed your work on the central air unit, after which you gave an officer your statement.”

Avers nodded in agreement.

“Mr. Avers … I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why did you continue to work on the unit when the people who hired you were dead in the living room? I mean, you’re not likely to get paid for it.”

Avers shrugged. “I never leave a job unfinished. I’ve got my pride, y’know? And besides … isn’t it about 101 in the shade out there?”

“Yeah, it’s a scorcher, all right.”

Avers motioned toward the living room. Curtis looked around the corner where the bodies were lying in blood. It was about 75 degrees in the house.

“Aren’t you glad I kept working?” Avers asked.

“That’s all I need for now, Mr. Avers. Thank you for your help,” Curtis said. He extended a hand to the repairman. “And yes, thank you very much. I guess we’re both making the best of a bad job.”

“Life’s all about keeping cool, Detective,” Avers said. “You can see in there what happens when you don’t.”