James A. Tweedie

FICTION

Marty

I was fly fishing high mountain streams and lakes on the east side of the Sierra Nevada.

When I’m camping, I get lonely because there’s not much to do by myself when it gets dark. So if there’s a café or bar nearby, I’ll usually spend a few hours nursing a beer and shooting the bull with whoever’s willing to talk.

This particular night I headed over to an old way station called Dick’s Place. The bar was dimly lit and nearly empty, but even that was going to be better than staring at the inside of a tent for four hours waiting to fall asleep.

Other than the bartender, the only other person in the place was a young man with a few wispy strands of whiskers on his chin and a tangled snarl of blonde hair frizzing down the back of his head. His long-sleeved wool shirt seemed a bit much given that the outside temperature had been in the mid-eighties all afternoon.

Since I was looking for a conversation, I took a chance and sat down on the stool next to his.

“Hey,” I said.

He did not acknowledge the greeting.

Whatever, I thought to myself as I ordered a draft.

For a moment, the man buried his face into his arms.

When he raised his head, he looked at me with two sad eyes and said, “Hey.”

“What are you doing out here?” I asked, hoping he’d open up and have something interesting to share.

“I’m stringing high-power electric lines across Nevada,” he said. “Or I was …”

He paused as if trying to decide whether to go on or not.

“My partner touched a hot wire three days ago,” he said with his ice-blue eyes fixed on mine. “He was three feet away from me, and he just shriveled up like an old dried-up banana peel and hung there, swaying in the breeze with his safety harness still clipped to the tower.”

Sometimes people need to talk things out, so I gave a nod to let him know that if he wanted to keep talking, I was willing to listen.

“So,” he added, “I’m on paid leave until the power company sends me a new partner.”

“Can I buy you a beer?” I asked, noticing his glass was empty.

Instead of giving an answer, his face brightened with the hint of a smile.

“Have you ever spent an entire night lying on your back watching the stars drift across the sky?” he asked.

“No,” I answered honestly. “I’ve never done that.”

“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s do it for Marty.”

So we did. We spent the night silently watching the stars until the dawn hid them from our eyes.

“Thank you,” was all he said, as he rose to his feet and walked away.

I had never thought of the night sky as being alive until that night. And ever since, whenever I look up at the stars, I remember Marty.

James A. Tweedie has lived in California, Utah, Scotland, Australia, Hawaii, and (presently) Long Beach, Washington. He has published six novels, four collections of poetry, and one collection of short stories with Dunecrest Press. His award-winning stories and poetry have appeared nationally and internationally in both online and print media.

Next (Emily Babbitt) >
< Previous (Tom Funk)

Photo by Hristo Fidanov on Pexels.com.