Happy Friday!
I hope November is treating you well and that all your turkeys are of the roasting (or frying) variety and not the family/friend/acquaintance variety.
Speaking of which, Fifty-Six Seconds — that story down there — isn’t all that happy, unless you happen to be Jake. But there’s plenty of turkey involved. I’ll let you judge which variety.
Thanks for reading, and take care.
—Hugh
P.S. — You can still get a PDF copy of my 8 Nights in October collection of tiny Halloween tales. Grab it here if you’re interested.
Fifty-Six Seconds
Fifty-six seconds.
That’s how long it takes to heat a large gas station coffee to the perfect temperature after you carry it a block to Jake Plant’s trailer.
At least, that’s what Jake’s deadbeat dad always said. What he always beat into Jake.
“Go get my coffee, boy,” Roy Slater would say. He wasn’t Jake’s real dad, but he was the only adult left. “And come straight home. If you don’t come straight home, I can’t know how long I need to heat the coffee.”
So Jake had always filled up a large Styrofoam cup from the fullest coffee pot at the Fuel & Food, paid with his coins, and high-tailed it home.
And then he would heat the coffee for fifty-six seconds – not a second more or less – and pour in exactly two ounces of buttermilk, plus seven Sweet & Lows. The gas station coffee was the bees knees, Roy said, but that creamer they used would kill you
Jake had sipped the concoction once when his dad was too drunk to notice. It was too cold for Jake’s liking, and it tasted like cheese-flavored hairspray. But Jake had been just a kid. What did he know about coffee?
Sometimes, when Jake’s dad was working – which wasn’t very often – or when Jake had football practice and the old man couldn’t wait, Roy would go to the gas station on his own.
That’s when Jake would come home to the lead-colored scratch-off wax from lottery tickets rubbed into the surface of the kitchen table, mixed with Roy’s cigarette ashes.
And the microwave always showed four seconds. Roy was too lazy to even clear the timer.
Then one day, when Jake was sixteen, he came home from school and the trailer was cold and quiet. Roy’s stuff was gone.
By then, Jake was already working at McDonald’s and already paying most of the bills. He didn’t need Roy, but it was strange being alone, even if the change was never official. Jake missed having the noise of another human in the house.
But he didn’t miss the whippings. And he didn’t miss the coffee.
Then came that day when Jake was twenty-three and impulse got the better of him. One minute, he had been looking in the mirror wondering how it was he hadn’t moved an inch since Roy walked out seven years before. The next, he was standing in line at the Fuel & Food, large coffee in hand.
And for some reason, when the clerk asked if that was all, Jake said, “Give me a pick-six.”
He forgot all about the lottery ticket until he heard the kid workers at McDonald's talking about how someone won big.
But hadn’t come forward yet.
And was from Jake’s neighborhood.
Jake almost laughed at himself when he sneaked a glance at the newspaper the kids were gawking at after they finished their break. When he wrote the winning numbers on his hand.
But he wasn’t laughing when he held the ticket – that he’d had to pull out of the trash – next to his hand that night.
The next few weeks were a blur of checking and double-checking, of lawyers, of accountants, of pictures and reporters. Jake was finally going to move out of the trailer. It was something he had always dreamed about, but something he’d given up on.
Now, not only could he move, but he knew he had to move. Even that probably wouldn’t be enough.
Jake felt the change as soon as he walked through the door on Tuesday night, four weeks after he fished his fortune out of the garbage.
It was only a little past six, but it was January in Indiana. The night was already pitch black, and so was the inside of the trailer.
Except for the microwave, the only clock in the place. Instead of showing the time, though, the green digital display said “0:04.”
Jake stood in the doorway for a second and listened.
Slurp. Very soft.
“I knew you’d come,” Jake said.
“Couldn’t stay away,” Roy said from the darkness of the kitchen.
“Did you get your coffee?”
“Yep.”
“Find the buttermilk and pink packets OK?”
“Yep, just where they were supposed to be. I taught you well.”
Jake nodded, even though he knew Roy couldn’t see him.
“Come on in here boy,” Roy said. “We need to talk through some things.”
As Jake walked toward his dad’s voice, he heard the man splash a little more buttermilk into his coffee. Jake smiled.
This batch of buttermilk had a little something extra. And the pink packets had an extra kick.
Jake pulled out a chair by memory and sat down across from Roy. He could feel the man burning holes in him through the darkness.
Fifty-six seconds.
“What’d you want to talk about?” Jake asked.
It would take longer than fifty-six seconds, he knew.
Roy belched and scratched out, “Oh, I think you know.” Then he groaned and shifted in his seat as his intestines rumbled through the trailer.
“Hmmm, not sure,” Jake said.
Gurgle.
Fifty-seven seconds. Two minutes, tops.