That Sort of Man

Flash fiction

As a little boy, he smiled a lot. He laughed a lot too. A bit too much. He was easy to make fun of, and they made fun of him a lot. He didn’t seem to mind.

As he got older, about the age when children threw themselves on gushing water pipes, he stopped laughing. He still smiled, but the belt marks across his stomach and chest caused the laughing to cease. He wouldn’t laugh again for many years.

He wasn’t a teenager yet when he dropped out of school. He worked as a mechanic’s apprentice for a while, got slapped a lot, got wet a lot because it rained a lot and his employer worked outside in the rain a lot.

Family was all over the village. There was always someone over. He was eleven when something inside him came alive. All the silent lamentations of his mother roared inside his head like a speeding locomotive.

He washed cars on the street. He sold trinkets for money that clinked. He once got a job at a hotel washing guest’s cars. He got the job at the recommendation of a distant but wealthy relative. He did a rotten job of it and got fired within a week. He was fourteen then.