Short Stories By a Short Guy in Shorts: Musings, Meanderings and Mindfullness (Sort Of)

By Les Clark

My book is 17 easy-read stories of fiction, 67,000+ words. All are from events of real life. You may think you know the people, places and things I write about. But no--there are lefts and rights leaving you, I hope, with an "Ah. Okay!" I take notes on dreams, "what could happen if" scenarios, the sane, bizarre and heartfelt things everyday people utter. You'll read about disastrous home projects, list makers, love taking off and love going south, bacon, pickles and the police. It's an expansive but oddball buffet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543979480

Book preview

mine.

A DON’T-DO-IT-YOURSELFER

Herman H. Howard stood pensively in the foyer of his home as the sun’s early rays flickered through the sidewalk plantings of red maples. I need to do some repairs today, he softly suggested to himself, since alarming his still slumbering family was a familial quicksand pit he was eager to avoid.

However, his thought was what do-it-yourselfers say when they need to do something, but don’t want to. Secretly, they’d like to be talked out of it because, looking back, if only his wife had suggested they take a morning walk.

It’s all her fault.

"That front door is scraping on the sill. I’m gonna take a little off the bottom." Howard thought it was a good idea. Unfortunately, familiarity with past home improvement debacles had caused his family to forego Saturday morning sleep so they could spy, establish counter measures, plan escape routes. The man of the house wasn’t the only one watching CIA- and FBI-themed programs.

He heard the scuffing of slippers and the whisper of socks as his  family ran and hid. They knew about his projects. Their little had no resemblance to his. Today, if a local charity was kidnapping people for ransom, his family would have him hogtied and waiting out on the curb keeping company with the green recycle tubs.

Save us. Take him for the day! We’ll pay you!

With hands on hips, his head bobbing like a robin searching for worms, Howard’s one-way conversation was presented and seconded. "The door is an easy project—I’ll be done in an hour. Now where’s that toolbox? I could use some assistance from the next in line to the throne.

Anthony! I need help with the front door.

From far away, I’m in the bathroom, Dad. Sorry.

He’s not, the lying bagger. He’s in his closet with both hands over his mouth. His sleep-over friends are stacked like cordwood behind his dresser. They won’t think this is such a hoot when I buy a tarantula at the pet store and slip it under his door. Well, after I’ve knocked this easy project over the Green Monster.

Honey, I need help with the front door. She must be up by now. Howard heard the back door click shut. How did she get by me?

It was in your vows to help me, He yelled, his voice echoing impotently to the back of the house. Drat! She’s made a successful escape. A maximum security prison would be ice cream to her. I’ll remember that. Okay, I suspect I’ll relent when I get the occasional bedroom wink. But other than that, she’s on my list.

Without further ado, Triple H (Hermie, to his firepit friends) set two sawhorses in the front hall about four feet apart. Howard unscrewed the door lock and dead bolt, dutifully putting all the parts in a coffee can (sans coffee) he used to make sure he wouldn’t lose any parts. He learned that from those HGTV renovation shows.

Father, I have sinned. While I’ve been less than diligent about this in the past, I’ve been more careful with the last few projects. Pretty much. It’s a good thing Home Depot and Lowes stay open late.

There is hope for you, my son. Do five hours of community service and three Hail Ace Hardwares.

Howard tapped out the three hinge pins and dropped them in the coffee can. However, and not surprisingly, it immediately tipped from its precarious bottom stair-edge perch, scattering an assortment of doorknob parts, one of which was a critical piece rolling with dead aim towards a hole in the floor where the copper pipe for the baseboard heater jutted up. I saw this coming, right?

Howard babbled a few obscure R-rated things he’d learned from a tour in Iraq. Star Trek fans would think they sounded like Klingon. Fortunately, the traitorous wife and marooned grandson-in-hiding were out of earshot. But he pressed on, gently separating the mating hinge parts; the door was now free. Wait, why didn’t I think to unscrew the hinges on the door side? I’d only have the slab of this cumbersome, heavy, solid wood door, stripped of hardware, ready to deal with. In my memoirs, I think I’ll write that in red.

Then, stretching across, he grabbed the door with one hand and with the other on his near-side, eased the door onto the sawhorses. Finally, one success. His back thought, uh, not so fast. On a dare years earlier, a private in his Marine platoon suggested WD-40 had a therapeutic effect on back pain. After all, didn’t Windex work wonders in the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Ah, that’s the rub.

Crap on a stick! I forgot to measure the length of the door to the opening, subtracting the gaps top and bottom so I know the amount of door material to remove. Where’s my tape measure? Right! It’s in the cellar with that ^%$&^ door part but this ><$#@* door is in the way, so I’ve got to crawl under it to get to the cellar entrance in the kitchen. Shut up back!

With smart bomb accuracy, Howard’s kneecap landed on a doorknob screw. Right on the head of the screw. Man does that hurt. I’ll never walk again. Who sells tarantulas anyhow?

A bulls-eye red stain spread like a target on Howard’s pants leg. My life’s blood is dripping away. A torrent, me thinks. Wait, I guess it’s not too bad. I may not have to fashion a tourniquet. I only need a band aid. Shit! They’re upstairs, but that ^%$&#@& door is blocking the staircase. Whoa! I didn’t think of the kitchen junk drawer. I should turn all that crap in for salvage. Make some money. Wait, what was I doing?

Howard headed downstairs to retrieve his self-locking tape measure. What a beauty, he mused to a gaggle of daddy-longlegs, scurrying away like circus clowns on stilts. It goes straight out to 25 feet, doesn’t twist but retracts like a mindless guillotine. You could slice bread, fingers, my mother’s attempt at steak when zipping back in. Now, where was I?

(Because he had a dull blade on his circular saw, Howard opted to use his heavy duty sabre saw. For the tool novice, a circular saw has a round blade while a sabre saw uses a thin straight blade like a bayonet. For a gift card to your local coffee shop, guess which saw he should have used. A better question and easier, which saw should he have avoided. Both is not an answer. Should be, though.)

"Okay, I’ve taken my measurements. What a snap. I only have a quarter inch to remove from the door bottom. Right, the bottom of the door. Ah, crap, with all the hardware off, I don’t know which, or where, the bottom is anymore. Oh, wait, the doorknob hole is lower. I’ve seen that carpenter guy just run his pencil along with his finger as a guide. Where’s my pencil? Where’s any pencil?"

Howard thought he needed a break, a search to find something to write with and a solution to anxiety cramps rumbling in his lower GI tract. I do some of my best thinking in the bathroom. All guys do. You know, genes. It’s a convenient time to call a halt to what is turning out to be a fiasco. He didn’t know the half of it since the best, no, the worst was yet to happen.

His business finished, with a happy solution to a nagging 43 across (The state you were born in. 7 letters. Ends in Y), Howard, pencil in hand, wandered back to his allegedly easy door project. It was a simple measurement from the top of the door frame to the first hinge, same on the door, so he knew top from bottom.

I figured it out, he yelled upstairs to the cowering horde.  There were mutterings—nothing distinctive. The sniggering was a clue it may have been sarcasm. Or doubt. He turned back to the door. His brain, and lower digestive tract clear, he had an idea. I could snap a line, plane the bottom. On the plus side, it’ll be more accurate with greater control. Hmm, it’ll take a long time. I’ll sweat. What a foolish notion.

Foolish would have been smarter. Had things gone well, Howard’s sabre saw would reestablish his manhood status in the home, securing a hot meal of his choosing. And possible alpha male boudoir pleasures. In reality, when the smoke and sawdust settled, those upstairs ghouls wanted to play the real-life game of Operation on their dear husband and father, and his possessed sabre saw.

With the door secured, Howard started his saw. In an alternate universe, high-pitched organ music splintered the dusty foyer air. God took back his order of light. On the project compass, the only direction was south.

As the cut started, the storm door swung open from a gust of wind, hitting the bottom leg of the front sawhorse and jarring the angrily buzzing saw from Howard’s hand. As his finger slammed against the trigger lock, it jammed shut, racing around the cut line like a velociraptor after a cow. Panicked, Howard traced the cord to the wall outlet, but it had pulled taut as the saw madly consumed a heart-shaped piece. Howard’s once trusty tool had morphed into an electrical piranha. As he yanked it free, a five-pound piece of door hit the floor.

What was that? the horde called from above. They sounded sincere. Are you okay? He heard snorting.

I hadn’t planned for this makeshift cat door. Maybe Shelley, my cat might, but I didn’t. Quick, man, there’s a solution here. Elmer’s glue. It fixes everything. Well, no disrespect to the Elmer’s company but my repair looks worse than sewing Frankenstein’s head back on  his body. It’s time for Plan B.

The family wallet took a beating when the new insulated steel door was installed, with sparklingly new shiny brass locks, knobs and hinges, all done by a professional. The sabre saw was surreptitiously disassembled, the pieces scattered in every neighbor’s recycle bin before the sun rose the next morning. Where is the videotape of the perps when you need it?

Howard was celibate for a month. He wrote, submitted and had published in the local free monthly newspaper the tale of his day-long disaster. He ended the piece with sage advice:

Except for a business phone book tabbed to the Handyman section, make sure your toolbox is empty. Or filled with cold beer. Take my word for it!

AN HOUR IN THE BACK YARD

Ogden Bizzell, cruising past his eleventh birthday, five feet of dirty, scabby knees and scraped elbows, stumbled into an irregular pyramid of mucky garden rocks, trying on his own to get over to his snoozing father. His cargo shorts and Red Sox T would be issuing a challenge to an upcoming joust with an extended washing machine cycle. He reached over, tugging at his father’s untucked shirt.

Dad, do you hear the racket that bird is making? Dad, do you hear him? Is he in the bushes?

Burton Bizzell, forty, portly and stretching the rainbow plastic tubes of his newly cleaned chaise to their limit, and slowly drifting off in the warmth of a mid-July Saturday noon, opened one eye to see his son gesturing randomly at the edge of the yard where a stand of evergreens bordered the freshly mown yard. The sweet, fresh smell of cut grass hung in the air. Several families of sparrows were already scouring the clippings for insects disturbed by the elder Bizzell’s electric mower.

He had read it was better for the cuttings to remain, refeeding the lawn, and that subsequent raking would not cut into his nap. Both father and son loved to walk through them, letting the feather lightness glide over their bare moist feet. The elder Bizzell had once remarked his son’s verdant feet was a good start on becoming a smaller version of the Jolly Green Giant. There’ll be a green ring in the tub tonight, Dad. Good luck with that.

Yes, Oggie, I hear it. You think it’s a boy bird and not a girl bird? Oggie cocked his head as the bird squawked again.

Boys have deeper voices than girls, Dad, so I think it’s a boy bird. Can you see where he is? Is it a mockingbird?

Shhhh. He’s in an upper branch of the last evergreen. What a fatty. The branch is bending. It’s a good thing he can fly otherwise he’d fall down, go boom.

Oggie muffled a laugh at the same funny thing his dad had said so many previous times when his son wanted to sleep in the top bunk or, helmet securely in place, ride the laundry basket down three steps from the upper level of their split ranch.

"Do you hear those sparrows, Oggie? They’re so tiny, you can hardly see them. I see two different kinds. One guy has a white ring around his neck, like a collar, and the others have brown heads like yours. I’m naming that one Ogden Birdzell."

Oggie, skinny and lanky, found the space to stretch out beside his father on the chaise and rested his elbows on his dad’s stomach. The cheeping is awfully loud, huh? Do you think they’re talking to each other? I think those must be the girl sparrows.

Oh, boy! Oggie, remember that other talk we had? You know, the guy talk. Well, there’s another talk I have to bring you up to speed on. Bizzell rubbed his son’s mop of unruly brown hair.

Dad, is this talk going to be as scary as the first one? The elder Bizzell laughed so hard, a cloud of brown feathers flew into the air, fluttering immediately back to the tangled greenery.

When you get back to school on Monday, listen to the talk in the cafeteria. You’ll find the boys are yapping as much as the girls. And you’ll know the difference because the boys are scared to death to be sitting with the girls. At least for now. Am I right?

It was Oggie’s turn to silence his father. The youngster turned his head to the sky and reached for his father’s face. What’s that call, dad? His father surveyed the cloudless blue. A flash of muted red brown feathers disappeared over a tall group of pines, circling back in a loop, continuing into another arc. Wow, that’s a red-tailed hawk. I think he’s looking for a meal. I’m sorry, Oggie, I misspoke. She could be looking for a snack.

This boy’s and girl’s thing sure is confusing, huh?

"You don’t know the half of it. Wait until you discover girls, Oggie. Bizzell hesitated. Well, son, there’s a sound you can’t mistake."

Aristotle, the overweight brown-striped family cat, sat mewling on the patio of herringboned crimson brick. He let everyone know he was not happy the newly cut grass was wet, preventing a stealthy approach to the sparrows.

He’s doing that funny growling thing, huh, Dad?

Maybe I should carry him over there. What do you think?

Dad, you take his back paws and I’ll take the front because he’s a load. When Ari sleeps with me at night, I can hardly breathe.

If we have to carry him, I’m getting my welding gloves and the car jack.

The boy giggled.

There he goes, Oggie. He’s doing that shake-the-leg thing. He thinks the birds can’t see him. He’s like a walking mountain. And moving as slow.

I’ll bet you a dollar from my allowance it takes him all afternoon to sneak over there. Where’s that pile of fur now, Dad? Bizzell shook his head as Aristotle stopped, still as a statue, the only give-away was a bushy tail swishing side-to-side.

Oggie, the grass is growing faster than Aristotle is moving so what say we go inside for some lunch? He’ll still be there when we finish.

A call from across the street both broke and spoiled the mood. Hey, Bizzell, come on over! I need to show you something.

Oh, crap, Oggie, it’s Mister Greenstein. Double crap. He’s walking over. Bizzell’s son suddenly became animated and swung his legs over the opposite side of the chaise, away from the uninvited neighbor. His father noted Oggie’s anxiety.

Hi, Bob, what’s so busy on a quiet Saturday? That’s a hint, Bob.

Hi, yourself, Burt. Hello young Bizzell. Oggie didn’t turn around. Bob Greenstein was the community computer whiz, local complainer and author of myriad letters to the local DPW. His single-spaced, double-sided missives, highlighted by exclamation marks, were always accompanied by 8x10 color photos of his guillotined mailbox post, flattened trash containers and gouged, tire-tracked lawn. Greenstein stuck out his beefy right paw for a cursory shake.

Burt, you have to see what I found in my backyard. I never saw anything like it. I need your advice on what to do.

Bob, we were about to have lunch so if we can make this fast, okay? He turned back to his son. Oggie, are you fine for a few minutes?

Sure, but Mom made hot dogs and beans and fries and has my favorite pickles. I need food, Dad!

Burton Bizzell turned back to his neighbor, already walking a few feet ahead. Greenstein had never been one for idle chit chat, never had a party at his house but always managed to corral the conversation at the few local house get-togethers. Block parties were held in other neighborhoods without his knowledge. His backyard, the curse of Vincent Road, was a mass of weeds, wild thorny roses and impenetrable to even the most aggressive of mowers.

The pair made their way around the right side of Greenstein’s neat cape-style home which he shared with his aged mother, now suffering from onset dementia. Sadly, Burton Bizzell often thought the lady was lucky.

It’s over here, Burt. See?

In a flattened ringlet of weeds, the pair looked on a writhing mass of black snakes, entwined in their mating dance. Greenstein was perplexed. What am I going to do about them? That’s a problem, right? They’re dangerous, right?

Bizzell, patient as ever, knew his unhappy, even fearful neighbor (but not friend) was borderline petrified. The sideways rocking was annoying.

"Bob, they’re garter snakes making more garter snakes. Leave them alone. They eat bugs and worms. It’s what they do. They don’t even care about people. (Especially you, Bizzell thought.) Listen, I’ve got a hungry kid over there. Can you leave these guys and gals alone? They’ll go on their way. You okay with that?"

Greenstein, distracted by the wriggling mass, raised a hand in a wave Bizzell felt was too casual. Bizzell thought Greenstein was almost hypnotized so he finally turned his back and crossed the street. Marshall Roby, his next door neighbor, watering a flourishing group of tomato plants, hooked a thumb towards Greenstein’s house.

Him again?

Marsh, add it to the list. Talk to you after I feed my kid.

Hey, Dad, I’m starving. I’m going to die if we don’t eat soon. You’ll be sorry if I do.

Hold on, now. Where did your appetite come from? I seem to remember I hauled this chair out of the cellar. I hauled you out over my shoulders. You like the fireman’s carry, don’t you?

I love when you do that, Dad. I’m so high I need oxygen. But right now, I need food. I’m a kid.

And, his father went on, I seem to remember I pushed that mower around this yard which, as I’ve told you, is as big as Texas so I’m hungrier than you which entitles me to half your hot dog, but I can’t wait until lunch is ready so I’m going to start with that skinny arm of yours. The clean part.

Oggie buckled over with laughter as his father nuzzled his right arm.

From the patio came the voice of wife and mother. Angela Bizzell, standing in the noon day sun, called out to her husband and son. Hey, when you two little kids stop fooling around out there, lunch is ready. I’m sending Lady out for Oggie.

Behind her, Lady, Oggie’s