Cricket Snares

Sebastian pressed his ear lightly against the stinging coolness of the stall door, clenching his eyelids together tightly as to squash the imagery of a thousand grimy fingerprints caressing his exposed lobes. He had slipped into the dingy restaurant bathroom nearly a half hour ago, mere moments after crumpling the thin sheet of paper sputtered from a barely-functioning receipt machine to record his unpaid break. “Unpaid”, of course, was the first word on the paper, inked in a lifeless yet subtly upbeat font which mocked the 19-year-old instantly after being momentarily released from his duties. He now realized it had been the unbearable horridness of the font which prompted his subconscious daily ritual of crumpling the paper, and not the stiff, low quality of the paper itself, which he had thought before.

The frenzied symphony of beeping fryers assured him that the strained chatter had died down, and the prominent figure he unreasonably feared meeting was nowhere to be found within the confines of the darkly stained burger joint walls. Heaving a light sigh which might have brought relief from stronger lungs, the employee watched his spindly fingers clumsily undo the stall latch. Once again, he leaned forward upon the metal door, stumbling out of the small bathroom, through the lobby, and into the fast food kitchen where his eyes rested upon the uncomfortable familiarity of his silent coworkers. They were a hapless, sleep-deprived crew of men and women with tattered uniforms and sloped backs; their collective lethargy and melancholy reflecting the lateness of the hour. At this particular time in Walsh’s Fried, as the doors locked and the bombardment of customers subsided, it was customary for the kitchen to be abuzz with conversation. Although typically dull and repetitive, the dialogue hastened the monotonous closing process, and Sebastian felt a reassuring feeling of acceptance when he was included.

On this night, however, the appearance of a familiar face had muzzled their mouths. It was the face of immeasurable success; the chiseled, flawless face of Brent Courier. After five years of portraying suave action heroes on the big screen, the celebrated actor had returned to his former place of employment, Walsh’s Fried, located at the center of his humble Missouri hometown. It was, uncoincidentally, for the purpose of humility that Brent selected the cheapest car in his luxurious garage for the spontaneous nostalgic trip. Despite his inescapable aura of confidence, he felt foolish almost immediately after he met the shameful gazes of his estranged friends and coworkers, who strained themselves to the point of combustion trying to generate small talk which didn’t call attention to their vastly different level of accomplishments. After an excruciating twenty-eight minutes of idle chit-chat promising to haunt Brent’s sleepless nights for eternity, he left the crew’s lives again, reopening the burning wounds of failure inflicted upon them a half-decade earlier.

It was in this state of quiet despair that Sebastian rejoined them. His tenure of three years freed him of the responsibility of engaging the actor, who was mere folklore to him until this day. Still, his youth did not shield him from sharing the same unbearable sense of underachievement and meaninglessness as his elders. Like them, he lived in the same dull Walsh’s polo shirts, watching their threads deteriorate and their kelly green hue slowly fade into a drab mossy gray, seemingly at the same pace of his now nameless ambitions.

After removing his exit break slip from its machine, the boy crumpled it with a firmness reinforced by the knowledge of why his hand reveled in the action. This moment of childish glee was trampled immediately upon seeing his manager, Steven, standing motionless before him, his painfully hunched back inches away from brushing Sebastian’s face as he rose from the front counter. The employee was stricken with terror, not eager to see how Steven’s tendency towards rage-fueled outbursts would be unleashed in the presence of overwhelming anxiety. Now, the ex-felon in his early thirties seemed incapable of such displays of emotion, his entire body muted by the whirlpool of thoughts in his mind.

Sebastian sputtered more weakly than the receipt machine had just seconds before, as he finally mustered the courage to ask the usual, “What station do you want me to close tonight, Steven?”

Steven slowly turned to face the adolescent, his eyes widened and his scraggly goatee quivering intensely. Sebastian noticed a black book about half the length of his forearm nestled in his manager’s palm.

“I don’t really care, Sebastian,” came the eventual gruff reply. “I trust you. Just do what you normally do.”

“Alright.”

The two stood in silence for a minute, the older man’s gaze drifting past the younger man, his eyes searching in some far-off dimension, ruptured and abandoned. “He gave me this book,” Steven growled suddenly, thrusting the book into Sebastian’s face. “After all we did together, after all he’s done, all he gave me was this book.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

“Here,” Steven said, tossing the book dismissively at his subordinate. “You’re in college. Use it for notes or something, I don’t care.”

Steven stormed off to his dingy manager’s office, leaving the book as thoughtlessly as Brent had left him five years ago. Sebastian stared at it for a few seconds, assaulted by the disgustingly small fraction of wealth the actor was willing to assign to his past. Nonetheless, his repulsion somewhat subsided as he admired the notebook’s quality. Its jet black surface soothed his perspiring palms as they brushed wistfully across it, and he had the sensation of being teleported to Brent Courier’s Hollywood estate, drifting lazily across an endless pool overlooking dusty hills warmed by the ever-present sun. With this sudden feeling of tranquility, the teenager slid his thumb inside the notebook’s cover and was greeted by a hurriedly-scratched message on the first page:

“ Dear Steven,

I couldn’t bring myself to tell you this in person. Maybe it’s because I hate to be thanked for gifts not easily accepted. Maybe it’s just because I am a coward. Behind the dumpster, I’ve left a suitcase hidden underneath a cardboard box. In the suitcase you’ll find $20,000. Distribute it equally among your employees, or keep it for yourself for all I care. You’ve earned more of it than you’ll ever know.

Your friend,

Brent Courier.”

The exact moment Sebastian laid eyes on the sum, his peaceful trance was gone. His glands stopped emitting the usual stream of anxious sweat, his own body incapable of reacting to this unprecedented event, trembling and jerking his scrawny elbows violently through the stale, grease-heavy air. In another mere instant, a thick rush of blood rebooted his body into a primal state. He felt his uniform cling to the upright hair on his back, drenched in a tidal wave of sweat, his entire head flushing and turning pale as he began to dash as unsuspiciously as possible to the back door of the restaurant. He had not gone far before he was halted by his stoutest coworker, Jared, whose most notable characteristic was stinking of ash.

“Hey, hold up, buddy,” Jared exclaimed, failing to imitate his usual chipper tone. “I’ll run out the trash with you. I need the smoke, anyways.”

Before Sebastian could protest, he found himself instinctively hauling the several heavy trash bags of Walsh’s Fried, which were always torn and leaking watery cola, into the old, rusted trash cart complete with crudely tied yarn to prevent its handles from falling off yet again. Jared set off first, shoving the back door open with a force that startled the already jumpy Sebastian. A cool summer breeze greeted the pair, along with a charming woodwind section of owls supported by a multitude of cricket percussionists keeping tempo. As the boy trailed nervously behind Jared, his mind in a conflicted spin, he was chilled by the insect’s inevitability. While owls and racoons could be shooed easily by the terrors of the night, crickets sat and beat their snares in harsh judgement of any and all human behavior. They cannot be silenced by reason or force. ‘Jared, however,’ thought Sebastian as he slowly lifted the gate’s wooden latch, ‘is not a cricket.’

The employees began to tiredly hurl each trash bag individually into the hulking garbage container while Sebastian tried desperately to pry his gaze from the lone cardboard box resting upside-down in the back corner of the wooden gated area. Jared didn’t seem to notice until the trash cart was fully emptied.

“Of course,” he said finally. “Day shift left their trash for us.” He trudged toward the box in an irritated manner.

“NO!” Sebastian shouted, surprising even himself. Seeing Jared’s shocked expression, he shifted his composure slightly in an attempt to inject his voice with a casual tone. “I’m coming back out later. I’ll just get it then.”

The stout man was equally annoyed and confused. “Why would you come back? I can just grab it now.” After he received no reply, Jared exhaled heavily, shaking his head as he stooped to pick up the oil-crusted cardboard box, revealing the elegant midnight blue suitcase hidden underneath.

“What in the…”

Jared’s reaction was cut short as he was knocked unconscious by the trash cart’s metal handle, ripped from their cuffs of yarn by Sebastian without a second thought. The huffing boy stood over his felled coworker, tears of hysteria streaming over his cheeks as he snatched up the suitcase and bolted to his car, whimpering senselessly to drown out the incessant noise of crickets continuing their tune.