HOW ROBBIE JUMPED A BUS

And as he was thinking of the morning his father made him eat Corn Flakes in all that extra milk, having to drink more than he actually ate, that by the time he made it to the flakes themselves they were all soggy and droopy and lifeless and no longer crunchy, just these useless slivers of flimsy processed hybrid foodstuffs that didn’t do anything but coagulate into a stomach substance that took forever to make its way out, the right lane ended and he had to get over so that eventually he was in a new right lane, headed west, headed in a direction he wasn’t accustomed to going, toward a destination he rarely visited. 

'Honey, are you okay?' said a female voice. It was that of his wife, Sharon Evans. She wore a pink and yellow ribbon in her hair. 

'Sure,' he said, re-gripping the steering wheel, making certain that his hands were on it. 'Yeah, I was just thinking back to the time I ran the streets with that Robbie Harrison guy. How we used to throw rocks at people’s windows and bash in their mailboxes after midnight.' 

Sharon Evans smiled. 'Yeah, you told me how those days were the real days and how much you miss them. What happened to Robbie again?' 

'I already told you that too.' 

'Yeah, but I want to hear it again. Tell me again,' she said. 'I want to hear it one more time.' 

So he told her. He told her again how Robbie jumped a bus and went to Chicago and was never heard from until about two years later, when he had taken up the saxophone and was trying to make it on street tips, how he never could get off the streets, how the streets were like his best friends and how he had names for them and all. Sharon listened with a slight, nearly imperceptible smile, kind of like the one the Mona Lisa wears, the kind of smile a person would wear when they weren’t sure if they should smile or not smile. 

'Yeah, that’s a great story,' Sharon said. 'That’s one of the best stories you ever tell.' 

He knew she wasn’t being completely honest. She was so used to hearing the story that it had become part of her subconscious and she believed that every time he told it it was like the very first time she had ever heard it, as if it were a new story, one reserved just for her and no one else. 

Just then they came upon a huge thing in the road. It looked like a heap of something, or a pile, or a large semi-vertical protrusion. He stopped the car as Sharon Evans looked at the heap, pile or protrusion. 

'What is it?' Sharon said, her hands fluttering near the pink and yellow ribbon in her hair. 

He shrugged as he got out of the car. 'I don’t know, let me go take a look.' 

As he approached the heap/pile/protrusion, something flickered in his mind. It was a flickering of a gigantic Corn Flakes box. The vision then replaced the thing in the road and he stood on the center line looking up at the Corn Flakes monolith. Sharon Evans only saw the heap/pile/protrusion, not anything to do with Corn Flakes.

After this they turned around and headed east. They never made it to the destination. Need anything more be stated?

© 2023 Jeffrey S. Callico