FAST FICTION #4: DOUBLE YELLOW

Ethan didn’t know what the little metal tube was at first. But the more he turned it over in his hands, the more he realized he knew about it. Every few moments he would dip it back into the stream where he had first seen it, gleaming, halfway-stuck in the sandy bottom. Each dip would wash more of the creek-grime from it, and he could feel himself coming to full realization as it came more and more clean.

It was one of Garry’s bullet casings. It must have fallen here while he was out on one of his target practicing sessions. All the kids at school knew that he had come somewhere near here, to a corner of fields just before the woods started, to practice his aim, and hone his reloading speed. The more he thought about it, the more it fascinated Ethan – had the bullet jacketed in this casing originally been part of the box that Garry stored in his pocket that day he had walked into town, strolling right down the double-yellow line that ran down Main Street?

Ethan’s mind kept reeling off questions, faster than he had ever realized he could think. What had Garry been aiming at when he fired this particular bullet? And beyond that, what had he been thinking about? Was he imagining the act he was going to commit later, seeing face after face among the distant trees? And what had the expression on his own face been when he pulled the trigger?

Ethan felt too close to it all of a sudden, acutely imagining he could smell the gunpowder as it hovered over the creek bed like a ghost, all these months later. He began to shiver – he told himself it was because of the coldness of the creek – and ran. But his fist still held onto the casing. It was his now, and he already knew he was going to put it on his shelf, where it would sit forever. He was still young enough to think that some things can stay where they are put forever, despite what Garry had obliquely taught him, in fact had taught them all.

He kept running all the way back into town, breathlessly following the same double-yellow line, and didn’t stop until he was sure he had gotten farther than Garry had.