Small Packages

Fading light ran away from my neighborhood quickly, as if sensing the danger that lurked in the alleys and street corners. Daddy said if I picked him up a pack of smokes at the market up the block, he would let me stay up and watch Creature Features, my favorite show. He gave me the note for Mister Crandall and told me to hurry home. Daddy knew it wasn't safe out here, but he was shit-faced drunk and figured I would be home before dark if I ran fast enough.

Things were like that now. It was just me and Daddy since Momma had up and left us last year. After she lost the baby she wasn't the same. Stayed in bed all day and got high on whatever she could get her hands on, usually some cheap wine and maybe something stronger if she could sniff it out. She took to cutting on herself and one day I came home from school and Momma wasn't there, and neither was any of her stuff. No note or goodbye, just the heavy feeling that things would never be the same.

Running past the hypes and junkies that littered our block, I rounded the corner and closed in on Crandall's Market. I was a fast little shit for being only eleven, could beat any of the older kids in a footrace. Probably got so quick running from Daddy when he was drunk, belt in hand, face red, telling me, "I'm gonna fuck you up, you little piece of shit!"

Just as I was about to get to the front door of old man Crandall's shop, I tripped. Falling headfirst, I would have cracked open my noggin had I not the cat-like reflexes present in young boys of our area. We got that way by instinct, the urge to self-protect in a place that would swallow you up whole if you didn't beat it to the punch.

Pulling myself up quickly, palms burning, I noticed the small package I that had grabbed my foot and pulled me down. It was brown and wrinkled and held together loosely with fraying twine. It whispered a secret only I could hear, and I picked it up gingerly, with reverence.

There was something about the heft of it, the promise that it held. I forgot all about Daddy's smokes, and ducked down the alley so I could open my prize and discover what mystery lived inside. The rot of my family and the hollow evil of my ghetto now receded as I focused on the rectangular parcel in my hands.

Opening greedily, I saw what lived inside. An old pistol, wrapped inside some yellowed plastic wrap like a forgotten promise. Daddy told me that he would tan my hide If I didn’t get back home before dark, but somehow there was no terror in my heart at the notion of being late tonight.

It was a revelation, a chance to make things right. The epilogue to the dream that I had dreamed a hundred times since Momma left us. It was a chance to clear out of this shitty life and find that thing inside of me that was festering and prodding at me every night. An answer to an unformed question suddenly revealed itself inside my head.

As I popped the chamber open and saw the six bullets, I knew that it was time to go home. The dark was closing in and Daddy was waiting. I had found what I'd been looking for. Then the humming in my head receded, and I knew what time it was. No need to run this time, I walked.