Dusty Item

The boy dragged a push-mower and trashcan from the garage, struggling with his small hands around piles of useless junk. Tripping over boxes some filled with bills, doctrines, and tickets that would never be paid and some empty once holding a sort of consumable. The items all may have been different if not for one thing, the particles of dust that sat on each, screeching negligence. He made way to the lawn and started the machine, a jerk of its cord, a routine he knew too well. He pushed through the dying, khaki colored grass with the screams echoing inside his head. Some yelling and a lift of a hand were enough motives to do this senseless demand. The sagging, greasy old man stood crossing his flabby arms, gazing out the window and its jail cell bars at the small boy. He waited for the boy to lodge the mower in the mound which didn’t take too long considering the mower was twice his size. The door swung open, slammed against the wall, deepening the divot that seemed to always be there. Fear suddenly grasped the boy as the old man stormed towards him fists clenched just like before every time he’d received a beating. Without any remark, sound, or hesitation the old man’s knuckles sliced through the silent thin air connecting with the boy’s eye. Immediately swollen, blood wasn’t the only thing to protrude from his eye as did tears. Grumbling under his breath, the old man picked the mower from its trap, dropped it on the boy’s toes and scurried back inside signifying to finish the job of mowing nothing. To the old man the boy was nothing but a dusty item in his garage. The boy hoisted himself off the ground, wiping his face across the sleeve of his one and only shirt. A smile crept across his face as he proceeded to his task. He was not sad or depressed upon his situation that at time indeed felt never-ending. Instead, he felt anticipation, ambition, and relief. Not because the old man was now inside, away but because the old man would be away from him forever. This was true, because tonight would be the night he would escape.

He patiently lay on the floor that was his bed, listening attentively for the first sound of the old man’s snoring. Like the daily senseless jobs the boy was forced to attend to the old man’s habit of drinking to a stupor and eventually a deep sleep was routine as well that began upon awakening. His body draped over the sunken, stinking coach that suffered each minute under his grotesque self. Empty boxes and wrappers of food never once shared with the starving boy were scattered across the room providing families of roaches and rats homes. Among this were the empty bottles of the cheap alcohol that now bubbled in the old man’s stomach and attacked the few brain cells he still had. He would not wake ‘till hours after sunrise.
After the boy had mowed the lawn he purposefully left the garage open. This would be his way to freedom. As he inched by the drunk he couldn’t help succumb to placing his hand over his nostrils to shield the horrid aroma steaming off the man and couch. He took a quick glance at his face as he could not bear looking at it a second longer. It was a face that permanently scowled. Not even free alcohol could lift his spirit from its death. With this, dark memories instantly stabbed the boy and flashed like flashes a Cold War could produce. He would throw whatever was near him; bottles, the remote, dirty plates or silverware, rocks specifically the sharked ones as they ensured drawn blood and sometimes he would not throw something at the boy but minister to just throwing the boy. He slightly opened and edged himself through the door and into the dim-lighted garage. But before his departure he remembered to take his one possession that now rested atop a tower of boxes. The basketball was given to him by some random stranger years ago. The same ball the old man out-rightly despised and had used as one of his throwing objects. The fingertips of the boy’s mini hands now desperately attempted to rip the ball he could never leave without. The boxes shifted, the boy held his breath, and the ball safely rolled into his palms. He cautiously set himself back onto his heels but before he could allow his little lungs to contract and release the gas that was bursting inside, his sweaty hands failed and the ball slipped to the ground, bouncing louder than ever before. The old man’s frightening face materialized in the light of the door. And with this sight, he ran. Leaped over and maneuvered around all the boxes like a race horse and ran into the night. He ran from the old man, the house, the items that would forever remain untouched and dusty, the pointless jobs, the harassing, the blood, the tears, and the hell. He did not care for his legs burned or his heart that throbbed and instead kept pumping his legs, pushing for every muscle. He kept running miles, more than one can count even though the old man would merely make it to the foot of his driveway where he would collapse. Fall to the pavement, his grave, with one last thud, dead. He could not bear being dusty any longer and for that he was a fighter, a survivor. He outlived hell and hell’s keeper. He was indeed a successful contender, a warrior. But more importantly what he was, was a runner.