Just a Six Pack: Really

By Gene Thomas

Just a Six Pack – Really is a collection of short stories that take snapshots of the human condition in six different venues. Life and death, hardship and happiness make each story unique, but all touch on the same examination of what it takes to survive in the world they inhabit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gene Thomas
• Release date: Jul 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311755155

Gene Thomas

About the Author Gene Thomas has had several major careers. His first career was in air traffic control. Another was a Defense Contractor during the Reagan era. After a career in Education and extensive travels to different countries, Gene now devotes the majority of his time to pursuing his first love, writing. You will find that Gene’s writing style has always been characterized an easy read. His books in print (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) “Tales from the Tree House, 2010”, “Tree House to Palm Trees, 2011” mark the start of a prolific writing career that includes a collection of short stories, poems and novels already posted on sites like http://www.readwave.com/doceft/ . “Rock Hands” – a Depression Era saga reminiscent of John Steinbeck will be coming out later this year. The rights to that book are currently under contract with Quattro Media Publications. Gene has finished six 26 mile marathons and thousands of shorter races and still maintains an active exercise routine that includes walking no less than four miles a day. Gene currently lives in Belize, Central America, but was born in Brooklyn New York.

Book preview

Just a six pack... Really!

By

Gene Thomas

Copyright © Statement

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording, photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by

Gene Thomas -- Smashwords Edition

About 23,000 words

Address 3570 Grapefruit St., Belmopan, Belize, C.A.

Telephone [phone] Email: [e-mail]

Fiction Statement

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Introduction

The Little Girl

Drowning in the light

The last Straw

One trinket too many

In your Dreams

Gus

Prologue

About the Author

Back to Top

Introduction

Sometimes there is just a need to let out the voices of people and things you’ve never seen or will ever do. This is such a time, except many of these things did happen—to someone.

But that’s beside the point.

What is the point is I get to share them with whomever picks up this collection of things that escaped from my consciousness. Where my thoughts lead you and why is none of my business.

The Little Girl

Damn, it started raining. The one day I decide to take my bike to work and it rains. Here I go, down Waterford Street to eleventh.

Do I turn here? I never keep track of the turns when I drive, I just turn when I’m supposed to.

Shit… the patch of water on Kelly Street. I never knew it would flood, but I never kept track of those things in the car.

OK; here’s the turn off to the subway. I have to take that.

Down the stairs… Shit, it’s crowded.

Once inside the walk way to the trains, I see the greyish blond shape (more like a shadow) of a woman holding a child. Suddenly she puts the little girl down and rushes off into the crowd towards the trains—and vanishes.

Hey Lady, your kid!

The little girl rushes off in another direction, I guess trying to chase after her mother. I chase after the little girl and catch her, all the while looking, searching the crowd to see if the girl’s mother is coming back.

She’s nowhere to be seen.

Now I’m stuck with my bike under one arm and this little blond girl screaming around my legs as I’m trying to figure out what to do next.

That was seventeen years ago.

That’s my Kelly, I said to the couple standing next to me—really to no one in particular.

That little girl I found abandoned in a subway station clawing at my legs desperately trying to go after her mother; was walking across the stage graduating from High School.

Drowning in the light

Far down the beach Gabriel Green could see two figures arguing.

It was early morning and usually when Gabriel combed this end of the beach it was deserted, or the locals were just beginning to come out.

But even from this distance, the shapes of these two figures didn’t resemble any of the locals he knew.

The man seemed particularly agitated. The woman almost seemed to be trying to ignore whatever it was the man was trying to force her to deal with.

The closer Gabriel got the more he could make out some of what the man was saying—and it wasn’t pretty.

I’m telling you once and for all, Susan, if I catch that guy sniffin’ around our place one more time, both you AND him are dead meat! And don’t give me that—‘He’s just a friend bullshit’…that shit went out of style in High— Oh.

The man suddenly became aware of Gabriel’s presence and stopped his rant momentarily. The woman turned and looked at Gabriel almost in relief, then turned back and continued to walk down the beach towards the pier a few miles ahead.

The west coast of California is dotted with beaches adjacent to where small towns have sprung up, especially in the area near San Diego.

Over the years following the Great Depression, each town developed its own feel, its own personality complete with various casts of characters who wouldn’t set foot on another beach outside of their slightly isolated stomping grounds. That was particularly true for the denizens of Oceanside.

Oceanside California was a convenient gas stop for people traveling from Los Angeles to San Diego and further south to Mexico.

It was also one of the closest towns to Camp Pendleton, a tiny Marine outpost that would—in the run up to World War II— become the main post for Marine recruits training for amphibious beach assaults on islands in the South Pacific.

Most travelers never actually stopped in Oceanside or took the time to go to the beach there, which left the beach, pier and scattered boardwalk homes pretty much abandoned most of the time.

That was just the way the locals liked it.

So even with the little that Gabriel heard from the arguing couple, he surmised they must be recent residents to the area.

Why else would they be on the beach ambling along and arguing so early in the morning?

Gabriel quickened his pace, overtaking and passing the couple who now silently observed him. The man nodded in Gabriel’s direction, the woman simply stared at him.

Gabriel wondered if they were embarrassed at all by his presence and what he might have heard. No matter; Gabriel returned to his walk hoping he hadn’t lost too much time when he slowed down to avoid intruding on the couple’s privacy.

The overcast skies were a form of tonic to Gabriel in the early morning. The waves—especially at low tide—seemed to combine with the sky to welcome Gabriel’s various thoughts and musings into the world.

The four mile stroll Gabriel took every morning along the beach always helped him focus on the subjects that would later in the day become the stories he wrote for a new drug store publication called the Reader’s Digest.

Gabriel’s stories were never very long, but they always seemed to his readers as if he were sitting right next to them, pointing out things they hadn’t noticed.

At least, that’s the way many people would characterize his writing long after his death.

On the day when he came upon the arguing couple, Gabriel had actually been stumped for a subject to write about.

But once he was safely distant from them, Gabriel turned back, studied them more closely, then began to collect some ideas (threads really) for something he would write later in the day.

One of the things Gabriel noticed as he studied the couple was the huge