The Bottom Drawer by Foster Trecost

The soft couch encouraged recollection. The locked door made it more difficult. A space heater ticked rhythmically in the corner. Lying prone, Johnson stared at the ceiling, and into his past.

“What’d you do next?” The question crept through a thick beard, grey to the tips.

Johnson tugged at the memory but it was stubborn, reluctant to be relived. “I can’t recall.”           

“You can’t,” asked the bearded man, “or you don’t want to?”  

It was both.

After a moment of silence, Johnson spoke: “We were just playing around. We took him to the woods behind the school. Made him hug a tree. Tied his hands together.”

“How many were there?”

“Five.”

“Five against one?”

“We didn’t see it that way. But yes. We had a slingshot. Nothing fancy. Just something we made.”

“And for ammunition?”

“Acorns. It was late fall and the ground was full of them. After each round we backed up—ten, maybe fifteen feet. Eventually, we got so far back everyone missed. Everyone but me. I was the winner.”

“Did you feel like a winner?”

A nostalgic smile tempted the corners of Johnson’s mouth but faded before taking shape. “Back then I did. But not anymore.”

“Well, that’s something,” said the bearded man. “That’s progress.” He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. The memories were difficult, also for him, because they were his memories, too. He folded his glasses and set them on a desk, his eyes drawn to the bottom drawer. But it wasn’t time for that. Not yet. “Do the ropes hurt your wrists?”

“Yes.”

“As much as they hurt his?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. Then what happened?”

“We walked up to him. He was bleeding. His back, his neck. But he wasn’t crying. It didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t he crying? I thought…I thought you were dead.”

“He,” snapped the bearded man. “You thought he was dead.”

“Yes, of course. He. I thought he was dead.”

The bearded man returned his attention to the bottom drawer, this time pulling it open. Inside was a slingshot. Not the same one, but close. He traced the Y-shaped weapon and coiled the band between his fingers. “Do you know what I’m holding?”

Johnson didn’t look. He didn’t need to. “Yes,” he said.

The bearded man reached back into the drawer and clawed out a cloth sack. It was filled with acorns. He loosened the drawstring and let them spill onto the desk. Some had caps. Some didn’t. The opening shot struck Johnson on his shoulder, announcing its arrival with a burst of sting. He flinched from the pain. The one after that pinged his cheek, and stung worse than the first. He flinched again, but this time, for different reasons. He wondered how many more were coming. How many more he could take. And while waiting for the next, he made sense of a lingering mystery: Frightened past the point of trembling, he also couldn’t cry—not even a single tear.

Foster Trecost

Image by 용한 배 from Pixabay – Acorns lying on the ground.