Chance
a bit of micro-fiction
We faced each other by the railroad tracks outside town, each with a knapsack on his shoulder and each as stubborn as the other. “We can’t both go,” said Chet. “It’d break Ma’s heart.”
“I’ll just get drafted next year anyway.”
“The war’ll be over by next year.” We all believed that then.
“Ma’s used to us doing everything together.”
“She’s not used to doing without both of us. One of us has got to stay home.”
“Well, why should it be me? Why does it have to be you that goes just because you decided it that way?”
Chet pushed his cap back and looked at me for a minute in exasperation. “Look,” he said, pulling a nickel out of his pocket, “we’ll flip for it. Heads you go, tails I go. That way we’ll both have an even chance. Fair enough?”
I thought about it for a second, and nodded. “Fair enough.”
Chet tossed the coin in the air and it came down, and the buffalo side of the nickel shone up at me from the dust by my foot.
It was a year later, after the telegram had come, and I was going through the stuff Chet had left behind in our room with a lead weight at my heart, that I found a nickel with a buffalo on both sides. And I’ll always wonder whether the one he pulled out of his pocket that day by the tracks was the same way.
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The Last Loss
They say the way to know you love something is to realize you may lose it.
I was thirteen that hot summer afternoon when Trevor rolled onto his side in the long grass and looked at me and said, “I wish I could run away sometimes.”