By Michael Horton
I sit on my lawn chair sipping a beer in the evening watching my shadow stretch out on the grass, wondering how I feel about myself. My father says I’m all squirt and no gun. He made it up. He makes up all kinds of sayings like that. It’s like he doesn’t realize everyone knows that they are just stupid knock-offs of real sayings.
I don’t think my father feels good about himself. Mom left us when I was eight. She went off with a bread truck driver. A routeman. Apparently, you can make good money with a bread route, and it must invest one with a yeasty kind of appeal. My father says he was all paper and no route. He says a lot of other things about him, and Mom. I tend to agree. I’m still surprised Mom left her sweet-good-boy. That’s what she called me. She cuddled me on her lap until she said I was too heavy. Being a sweet-good-boy wasn’t enough in the long run. Not against a man with his name embroidered on his shirt pocket, a bread route, and a Harley to ride on weekends. They’ve moved to Carolina, South, I think. Bread is all over. I haven’t heard from her in quite a while—years. I’m ok with it because I’ve learned how to make the best of things—like watching my shadow grow. Interesting thoughts pop in and out of my head all day long.
I don’t have a group of guys I hang with. I don’t have a girlfriend.
I could. I mean I could date some girl. A couple have been interested. But I have this idea I can’t shake that there is the right girl out there. Just for me. I’m waiting for her. It isn’t fun—waiting. Mostly it spoils fun I might be having. My dad says I’m picky. I suppose I am. You can pick your friends, he says, but you can’t pick your pain. Sometimes he surprises me.
I’m actively searching. I’m not sitting back waiting. There are no clubs nearby. I live an hour from a town that has clubs. This town has bars. One has a forty-two-inch flat screen and advertises itself as a big-screen sports bar. I met one woman there. She was nice. We were hitting it off. Four beers in she told me about her husband, Bobby, and Shirley and Haley, the twins.
I visited a couple different churches, thinking maybe. The donut and sharing things in the basement after the services were scary. Nearly everyone looked old and wanted to touch me, squeeze my shoulder.
I’ve tried the internet. Even said in my profile I’m looking for the one. All the women I met desperately wanted to be the one for me, wanted me to be the one for them. Neither of us ever were.
For now, I work at Agway, a feed store and garden center. We carry food for everything from horses to canaries. Not really canaries, but we sell wild bird seed by the forty-pound bag, sunflower seeds and dried corn. Spring time we sell chicks, the cutest little balls of fluff you can imagine. But all that cheeping—it can drive a person nuts. I don’t meet young single women at Agway. I’ve thought about getting a job where there are lots of young single women. The Gap, Old Navy—I’ve got the credentials for retail having worked the register for three years at Agway, as well as lugging 50-pound bags of dog food and cow manure. I’ve considered picking up an application.
I live over the garage at my dad’s house. Temporarily. I haven’t gone further than that. I’m nervous how he’d make out by himself if I left him too. We don’t do much together but he sets out two kinds of cereal and two bowls on Sundays. Friday nights he buys pizza, half with black olives and pepperoni, his half, and half with hamburger and mushrooms, my half. We watch any sports things that are on though neither of us are really into sports.
He tells me I’m better off without a steady woman in my life. A broad in hand is more trouble than two in the bush. He can’t help himself.
I have explained my idea to him. I say I don’t think Mom was the right one for him. Turns out she was the right one for Steve, the bread guy. He doesn’t want to hear it. I tell him, when I find her, the right one, I’ll be set. I’ll be important to someone. He says I’m important to him, scratches the side of his nose as he looks out the window. He definitely appreciates the wild bird seed I bring home for his feeders, that and the work I do on his car. Mechanically he’s clueless.
With her, the one, I’ll have so many new things to think about. Where to take her (not the big-screen sports bar, or the Unitarian) to show her a good time. Questions like what makes her happy? What kind of ice cream is her favorite? Does she like Karo Syrup on her pancakes? What doesn’t she like?
After enough time, but not too much time, we would tumble into bed together (not over the garage but at her place) and have mind-blowing sex until we totally forgot who we were and woke up full-to-the-brim crazy-in-love.
I’d think about the future, about plans, a savings account, maybe trading the ol’ Ford Ranger in for a nice car. I’d feel good about myself. My life full of meaning. She’d make me lunch and call me Studly and Honey-Bunch-O-Oats.
I take another sip of beer.
That’s who I’m waiting for. Someone like that. Someone whose feelings for me would never change.
Michael Horton has worked as a shift manager at McDonald’s, a factory worker in a rubber parts plant, prep cook and coffee shop manager, janitor in a men’s dorm, the Osceola bookmobile librarian, housekeeping supervisor, purchasing agent, and an IT guy but writing is what he does. His stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, Raleigh Review, Iron Horse Review, Porter House Review, and Whitefish Review among others. Stories have been nominated for “Best of the Net,” the Pushcart Prize, and his collection has been a finalist for the Hudson Prize and St. Lawrence Book Award.