A short piece I wrote for a college class centered around the development of character. Even if the character in this story is a bit shallow and undeveloped, I liked the tone that this piece ended up having, and I might revisit it in the future.
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You can probably count all of the roads in Lebanon, Kansas on a single hand – and the people that travel them, too. That, of course, is an exaggeration – but people have a habit of only really understanding a thing when it is told to them in a manner consistent with absurdity. And there are a handful of roads, too, that bleed into Lebanon, almost as an afterthought – but only one is marked with a rickety wooden post from which a swinging sign dangles, creaking woefully: “Welcome to Lebanon – Center of the 48 States”. Nothing much ever happens here, as might be expected in a town composed of about two-hundred shuffling souls. Some towns have personality – a thin layer of character that even a stranger can almost peel off the gravel if they happen to be walking through. Not here, though – you might say the charisma of Lebanon lies in their seasons: dormant in the spring, lethargic in the summer and fall, and grumpy in the wintertime. And unless you count that tornado back in 1913 – which somehow the locals always seem to do – it is the winters here that are heartless. The cold slashes like a shave that is much too close – callously wearing down even the thickest of skins that tend to thrive with small-town mentalities.
It is winter now, and the small expanse of vein-like roads that flower out from the center of Main Street are all empty. There is no snow yet, but the promise of it is always there, with the indelible tint of the streets from years of salt and sand. Morning in Lebanon, Kansas is always quiet – but with the bite of snow heavy in the air, everything seems a bit thicker on this particular morning. From its place on the side of the street, a mail car yawns to life, and a resentful postal worker begins to persuade a relentless blanket of frost from its place on the windows. If he is aware that people are watching him, it does not show – but directly across the street is a diner. It is a diner in the very middle of America, where anyone at all can go to see every person that ever lived. And if Lebanon had any sort of pulse during the winter months, it would be here that you might find a heartbeat.
A window the length of the diner was set parallel to Main Street – and the booths alongside were always the first to fill. The life of this place could always been seen from the street, as patrons filtered in for breakfast. The seats alongside this window were always the first to fill – and they were the last to be vacant as meal hours came to a close. The thin layer of light fighting to wheeze through the dense winter clouds was barely enough to light the street – but the faces alongside the window seats all stared out, vacantly, as the sole figure in the streets fought the prequel to a storm they all knew was coming. From his seat on the opposite side of the establishment, a lone man sat alone, also staring in the direction of the window.
But Adam Morris was not looking through the wall of faces at the man struggling with the emptiness on Main Street – he was, instead, studying the room, and the side-profiles of his present company, all numbly intrigued by a mail car and its helpless operator. He was, admittedly, in a lonesome stage of life – early thirties, wearing every mark of a man who misplaced his youth in a whirlwind of manual-labor and minimum wage. He bore callouses on his hands, which he wrung together mindlessly, a tired pair of gloves momentarily forgotten on the counter. No, he did not care for the generic example of machine-like functionality shivering in the street. He was much more – or perhaps less – interested in the wall of people that had lived, and would probably die, in a town where something like the mailman merits something worth staring at. Every morning he would come to this diner, desperate to surround himself with the sort of people he really tried to make himself believe he felt bad for. He would sit in his spot at the counter, at the very back of the cramped room, away from anyone else – and he would simply watch them. Often he would wring his hands, as he did now, without realizing it – if it weren’t for all the lifting he did at the farm, he might blame the callouses on these moments when his hands seemed to do all the talking.
His line of sight over the horizon of heads was abruptly obstructed by Kelly Tomlin, materializing before the line of booths in a soiled apron and a new pot of coffee. Not a moment after he was distracted the observant waitress, he became very critical of himself. His brow furrowed in contempt, as he spun back to his plate of cold eggs and sausage, wondering how his attention could be won by movement – just like the wall of people still staring, as the frostbitten mailman struggled with the mail-truck door, which was just then beginning to succumb to his efforts. And as he heard the truck pulling away, he negotiated by lifting his head, and watching the faces move shamelessly with the object of their attention as it disappeared around a corner.
As if the world had snapped its fingers, a staggered and dull grumble of conversation reluctantly struck up – an out of tune orchestra all producing the same, monotonous drawl. Adam Morris, somewhat disappointed the moment was over, again dropped his gaze back to his plate, shuffling the contents with no intention of ever eating it. He felt a brief wave of motion behind him, and he had been at this very seat enough days out of the year to know Kelly was now back behind the counter. Sensing it was safe to look up again, he returned his focus to the train of people who suddenly had some animation to them. This, he thought,is my favorite part.
His eyes stopped on a booth closest to the entrance – an ancient door who’s tasseled bell announced a new wave of cold for those seated nearest to it. A rough looking woman still bundled up in her coat sat with her son – a pale kid of about 5 or 6. Her rugged motions suggested something about her – maybe that she worked far too many hours than one person should in a week. Her expression had a waxen feel to it, as if it were usually more unrelenting and it had recently melted a bit, as she cut up a very short stack of chocolate-chip pancakes for the kid. It was generally a stirring sight for Adam to see – he did not see the two in the diner very often, but when he did, he felt like this woman knew something about the world that he was still trying to work out. He imagined her as a younger woman – with ambition and aspirations fueling a fire within her that burned much too intense for any Lebanon winter to put out. He saw her working as a doctor, or maybe an artist – two very different worlds, but both a matter of reaching into her pocket and picking the one that was most comfortable in her fist. Now, she probably worked the nightshift as a parking attendant in a hospital 25-miles away from here. She probably hadn’t seen that boy’s father since she told him she was keeping it, and that is just the way life worked out for her. And in an instant – though she probably never realized it then – that great big world she saw coming was leveled flat.
Adam stared for a while at the woman with the melted smile, as she watched her son eat chocolate-chip pancakes – she wasn’t eating anything, though, just watching – when the familiar jingle of a bell froze her expression up again. The cold might have stiffened her up, but Adam liked to think it was the sound that did it – that the distraction made the muscles in her face tense up, like they were used to, and it would take a while for it to thaw back out into that waxen face that, for her, might even betray a moment of comfort.
A loud grunt, and a sloppy shuffling at the counter across from him, again, broke Adam away from his moment of detachment. He was jolted back to the present – his own present – when he noticed Doug Pearman in his broad police uniform audibly squeezing into a seat. Annoyed at first at the additional interruption, Adam found his interest in the woman in the booth waning. Though Doug’s patronage at the diner was more consistent, there seemed to be something a little off about him this morning. Maybe it was the change in weather, or the fact that today Adam had been even more concerned with people this morning than usual – but he imagined that, had he been a little closer to Doug on this morning, he might have picked up the scent of whiskey or, perhaps, gin.
Doug had once been a staple of power in Lebanon – he had been decorated with a variety of made-up buttons and awards for his service to the community. But age had not been kind to him, and the fact remained that there just was not that much work for a cop in a town like Lebanon. It was as if he were simply a mascot – a name and a face that everyone knew that would return a wave or a handshake. It occurred to Adam that he had never cared much to know anything about Doug – and as much as he hated to admit any overlapping qualities about himself and the surrounding diners, he had to admit that they probably could say the same. It was as if he were a permanent material of the town – as disposable and important as the individual grains of rubble in the roads, or the paint that was anointed on the chipped exterior of the chapel every spring.
Adam watched Doug as he breathed – every inhale seemed to be a conscious effort, and though his eyes were barely opened and his shoulders drooped and swayed, no one else seemed to take any notice of him. Adam wondered, somewhat guiltily, why it had never been apparent to him that this man was falling to pieces – purposeless and utterly corroding from the inside out. And he was suddenly overcome with a very vivid image of Doug, alone in room lit by the light of a television: a half-empty bottle of spirits in one hand, and pointing a standard issue 9mm in his mouth using the other.
For the first time in a long time, Adam felt an overpowering anxiety – he was frozen in his seat near the back of the diner, and quite oblivious to the fact that he was staring directly at Doug Pearman. For a few seconds, Doug did not notice either – he was struggling to read a menu that had not changed even once in thirty years. But soon enough, he did – and the two men were locking eyes from across the counter of a diner in the center of America. It only took Adam a few seconds to notice the sadness in the policeman’s eyes – and in those few seconds Adam had made up his mind.
The door to Lebanon, Kansas’ only diner jingled, but no one ever heard anything but the slam – Adam Morris was running down Main Street with a gust that rivaled that of some tornado folks talked about back in 1913. He was running faster than he ever did in his life – and as he ran, he did not even notice the cold, despite the fact that it had started snowing.