I have something on my chest, and it has been there for years.
As I sit in this diner, I sip this swill they call coffee. He is sitting at the booth in the back, reading the Courier while he also sips on a coffee. I wonder to myself what this stranger in the black-tie thinks of the roast. Does he find it as lackluster as I? He’s a curious man, and I feel a kinship to him. He too looks as if he does not belong here. His neat gray suit tells me he did not buy it from Mr. Lewis, who dares to call himself a tailor.
As I sit in this diner, I sip my this swill they call coffee. He is sitting at the boot in the back, reading Cullman Courier while he also sips on a coffee. I wonder to myself what this stranger in the black-tie thinks of it. He occasionally will look over, and he knows I am watching him. He wants me to make the first move, I can tell by his sly grin. He knows I have something on my chest.
And I do, I know that for sure.
I will get to that eventually, but I want to talk about something else first. I know what it’s like to stick out in a small town. This town is nothing but a trash pile of dumb men arguing football and boring women attending book clubs. I don’t know which of the two is worse. Maybe, you can answer that for me.
The smell of cheap stale beer fills the air when I think about the men of this town. As I can hear the arguments over the high school football team, their praises for the coach when he wins, and their blame when he loses. They hail their own young as champions, but those boys will graduate one day. Their glory days will fade as they occupy the same dead-end jobs their fathers do. The men of this town can’t see past the goals post at Cullman High. They could never comprehend it.
The town’s women make me think of a cheap box wine, and trash novels you buy at markets. They wish that their romantic heroes would come to take them away from this town. He will never come leaving them with regret. When the book with flat characters bore them, the women will carry their tales. The pains they go to spread rumors on others. Anything to make up for their miserable lives, I suppose.
What I find worse in this town than these two groups is when they fuck in this cesspool is the spawn they create.
The boys drive their lifted trucks around town as their fathers did. The girls chase after these boys, always the one with the loudest truck. Some are brave enough to say they will leave Cullman, but most of them never will. They will stay here to repeat the cycle once more. God had to have a cruel sense of humor when he created this town.
That’s why I have something on my chest.
When he looks over, I notice his dark black pupils. He is dropping hints again that he wants me to come over. I take a heavy breath working up the nerve to talk to this man. Grabbing my cup of coffee, I make my way to his booth. The nicely dressed man nods at me as I slide across from him.
He folds his newspaper, “I have been waiting for you to stop by.”
“You have?” I ask curiously.
“Yes, I can tell you are the type,” he replies, “the type that is mistreated in a town like this.”
I knew I felt a kinship to this man; it feels like he already knows me. He lifts his mug as he waves down a waitress as she brings the pot refilling both our mugs. She gazes at the stranger, feeling unsure of him. The town of Cullman does not like outsiders. I can feel all the eyes in this diner glaring at the booth, the outsider and the outcast sitting together. My new friend can sense it too.
He chuckles, “Such uninteresting things in this town.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I reply.
"So how did they hurt you?" He inquires.
I sigh, “They’ve hurt me in a lot of ways, but there is one thing they have done that I can’t forgive. It’s left me with a fiery feeling of rage, and no matter how much I try I can’t seem to let it go.”
I notice as he grabs his wallet from his back pocket as he drops ten dollars on the table. He folds his newspaper carefully as he grabs it with his hand. The stranger motions his other hand for me to follow him. As I stand up nervously watching him walk outside. The two of us walk to a black vintage car sitting behind the diner.
“I want you to show me what they did.”
I feel tears come to my eyes as this man wants me to show him the thing that has been on my chest.
It happened three years ago when I was still in high school. The Senior’s keg party, a town tradition for decades, and I got invited. The weird art kid, who loves William Faulkner, somehow found himself invited to the party. I should have known better. People like me aren’t usually allowed to be around the most popular kids. I paced my room debating whether to go; I thought maybe for once they would accept me. I sat in my car for thirty minutes trying to work up the nerve to grab a beer.
When I finally worked up the courage to grab a drink, they attacked me and dragged me away. They took me far away from the party, pinning me down in the woods. They ripped off my shirt and took a knife to my chest slicing it down. The feeling of dirt under my fingernails, as I grabbed the ground below. The boys laughed as I cried, they kicked me when I screamed. They left me with scars.
I drove myself to the emergency room as the blood poured from the deep lines in my chest. They covered in crooked lines and left one word deeply carved. The dumb hicks could not even spell it right, and I found that even more insulting. The word Pariah misspelled still lays on my chest as I show the stranger.
He closes his eyes and touches my chest, "Is it vengeance you seek?"
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