The Late
The only thing worse than being late is having nobody notice
I wrote this in response to Crunch: The Moment Too Late by Scoot and only realized afterwards that a Crunch is supposed to be 250 words. Oh well. Once I had the idea of being “late,” I couldn’t get rid of it. I’m new to fiction writing, but I had fun with this one. Enjoy!
Walter Johnson woke with a start.
He scrabbled on the nightstand for his glasses and squinted through them at the alarm clock without putting them on.
6:02
He launched himself out of bed, or at least imagined he did. Thirty or forty years ago, he might have launched, but not today. Today it was more like a creaking heave, one ratty slipper at a time.
Today was an important one, and he didn’t want to be late, so he skipped the newspaper.
He made it to the bus stop just in time and squeezed through the doors as Sheryl nearly closed them on him.
“Morning, Sheryl,” he said.
She paid him no mind, as usual, and he shuffled back to his normal seat as the bus slid away.
He counted the stops and the number of letters on each.
S----, 12.
L----, 14.
M----, 10. His stop.
He stepped off and realized he hadn’t packed a lunch.
The door’s bell didn’t tinkle when he walked in. It hadn’t in a few years, ever since that one kid took the clapper. But nobody heard it anyway, even back when it worked.
He walked to the closet, put on his apron, and checked the bins out back. As he’d left yesterday evening, he’d seen someone drop off several boxes of books.
Today was important because books were Walter’s favorite.
Officially, his job was to simply sort. Torn or missing covers? Toss. A ton of marks inside? Toss. Look like it’s in good condition and someone might buy it? Keep it. Yellow sticker for hardcovers. Pink for soft. A blue one for books that look like they’re for kids. Pile them on the cart. Wheel them out. Put them on the shelves. Make them look nice.
Making them look nice wasn’t actually part of the job, but it was to Walter. He sometimes put one of the best-looking ones facing outwards on little metal stands to catch attention, and it always gave him a glow of satisfaction when someone picked one of those up, thumbed through it, and took it to the checkout.
Reading the books wasn’t really part of the job, so Walter didn’t. He did, however, like to flip through them and look at the pictures and think.
Today there was a book with a person on the cover in varying states of skinlessness. Skin here, muscles there. Nerves. A skeleton.
Walter took his time inspecting that book.
A few other employees cycled through the back room. Jayden was on summer break and was getting a few hours in, scatting along to the beats leaking out his headphones. He’d let Walter listen once, and laughed when Walter did a dance. After that he always gave Walter a fist bump when he saw him, but today he was focused on the music. He did look at the clock, once, and frown.
Walter looked at the clock, too, and realized he’d been inspecting books for a few hours. He stood up off the stool he’d found (another donation), and stretched. Without lunch, he might as well take a walk.
It was a gray day, with July thunderheads threatening, so Walter turned left. The museums and library and church were that way, all open and easy to duck into if it started raining, but it didn’t.
There was a funeral going on in the church, judging by the hearse out front. He thought of stopping in, in case it was someone he knew, but decided against it. Instead, he spent the better part of his lunch hour in the natural history museum, checking the Neanderthal exhibit against the book’s pictures he remembered. The foreheads were different.
Back at the thrift store, he finished sorting the book stack alongside Jayden, who was still absorbed in his music. Jayden did most of the work.
At five o’clock, Walter hung up his apron and headed back to the bus stop.
Someone was in his usual spot, so he sat somewhere else.
L----, 14.
S----, 12.
A----, 13. His stop.
There was an ambulance out front pulling away, but that wasn’t too unusual. When you live in a big apartment building with a lot of elderly in it, you even get to recognize some of the drivers. Its lights were off.
Walter was able to slip in behind a neighbor he recognized only by sight, so he didn’t have to use his front door code.
There wasn’t much beyond in his apartment beyond a bathroom, table, chair, and mattress. He thought about rummaging for dinner in the fridge, but he wasn’t hungry enough, which surprised him a little. He went through his usual nightly routine: watch the dusk settle outside the window with the lights off. Get undressed. Straighten the chair. Put his glasses on the nightstand. Get in bed. Go to sleep.
Walter Johnson awoke with a start.
He scrabbled on the nightstand for his glasses and squinted through them at the alarm clock without putting them on.
5:47
He relaxed, glad he’d have time for the newspaper this morning. It wasn’t much of one, but it was dropped off for free outside his door sometime in the wee hours, and he enjoyed sitting in the chair by the window and looking at the pictures as the sun rose.
He was surprised to see a picture of himself. It was in the O---- section, 10 letters. He carefully tore it out, along with the words underneath it. He’d ask Jayden later what it said.
He got dressed, folded up the rest of the newspaper, placed it back outside his door, and headed to the bus stop.
He didn’t want to be late.
Whoa! The O----, 10 letters was such an interesting quirk, I wondered why you did it that way. The reveal at the end was very clever. What a mind bender! This is a great story!
As a none native English speaker I had to look up the O word for what I expected it to be. Thought without that word I still suspected what was going on. To me the sentence: “Today was an important one” made this story. It places an expectation and kept me reading. ‘What is so important? When will it happen?’ This also “masked” what was really going on for me. This was a fun, puzzling and in a way confronting piece. Well done!