Time to think-Austin Kinsey

Thursday was a rainy morning.  The church doors had just swung closed and the people inside wiped the water droplets off of their suits and dresses.  Andrew always enjoyed rainy mornings.  He found that he did his best writing with a steaming cup of coffee and the soft patter of the rain outside his window.  But he would not be able to do any writing today, or any day for that matter, for Thursday morning was his funeral.  For every cup of coffee he drank, he smoked two cigarettes, and he had finally taken his last drag.  Andrew’s daughter had found him slumped over his desk, Newport still burning in the ashtray.

Andrew had not made any arrangements for his funeral.  He had not made any song requests, no reading preferences, nor named any pallbearers.  In fact, his daughter had a hard time finding people to send out funeral announcements to. 

The preacher gave a generic eulogy, saying how caring, reserved, and thoughtful Andrew was.  He said how much Andrew would be missed by his friends and family, and although he was a man of few words, his family should know that he always cared about them.  People placed roses on his casket, only one person standing there for more than a few seconds.  As the organist played a hymn, Andrew sat in the back pew of the church, slowly shaking his head.

“I never liked church music, and I hate the organ,” he said to himself.  Nobody else seemed to hear him.

Andrew could see his daughter a few rows in front of him bouncing a gurgling baby on her knee.  The baby smiled up at his mother who invested all of her attention back at him. 

“He’s quite the looker,” a man standing behind Andrew said.

Andrew paid no attention to the man.  Nobody had looked at or spoken to Andrew since he walked into the church before the service.  The man took a seat beside Andrew.

“Maxwell Andrew Wilkes. She chose it for his middle name, if you were wondering,” the man said.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said, “are you speaking to me?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you, Andrew.”

“What is going on here?  What is happening?”

“Don’t be dense Andrew,” the man responded, “I’m sure you are aware by now.”

The preacher began his closing prayer. “Let me now offer you a time to think and reflect on the life of a friend, father, and son that we so dearly loved.”

Andrew shifted nervously in his seat.

“Do we have to be here?” Andrew asked the man, “Can we leave?”

“Of course.  We can go anywhere you like, any time you choose.  Do be creative though, Andrew,” He responded, “And quick.  We haven’t much time.”

Andrew took in a deep breath and looked at his shoes.  He wrung his hands together and made his request.

“My wife came home early from work and walked in on me with another woman.  After she finished packing her clothes into her trunk, she made a phone call in her car.  She wouldn’t tell me who it was.  Can we go there?”

“Certainly.  A good place to begin.”

Andrew felt a tight heat in his belly, like there was warm liquid sloshing around inside of him, spilling out down his stomach.  His vision began to blur and fade into a scorching white until he could no longer keep his eyes open.

When he did open his eyes, he found himself sitting next to the man in the backseat of his wife’s Acura.  The engine was softly humming and the wipers swept across the windshield.

“Hey,” Andrew’s wife said into the phone, “It’s me.”

“Does she know we are here?” Andrew whispered to the man.

“No, she does not.”

“I just finished packing everything,” she continued, “Yeah. He, um, got home sooner than I thought, so he caught me on the way out.  No, he doesn’t know about you.  I was careful.”

Andrew looked at the fraying steering wheel.  He had meant to fix it, but never got around to doing it.

“Twenty years.  This seems like last week,” Andrew told the man, “I had my suspicions, you know, but two decades is a lot of time to second guess yourself.”

“Yes, I know,” the man responded.

Andrew saw himself open the front door and hustle down the stairs toward the car.

“I have to go,” she said, “She’s there? Good, tell her that mommy will be home really soon.”

“Can we leave?” Andrew asked. “I am ready to go.”

“We still have time, yes.  Where are we going, Andrew?”

“3652 Washington St.  Seven, maybe eight years ago, I can’t remember—”

“I know the date.”

Andrew’s stomach began twisting again, as if something was being plunged into his abdomen, deeper and deeper until he began to run out of breath.  His fingers tingled and the familiar white submerged his brain.  The seats of the car melted and the last thing he heard was his own wheezing fading out into silence.

“Andrew,” the man said, “We’re here. Old Sky Publishers.”

It was a late weeknight, Tuesday or Wednesday—Andrew couldn’t remember.  The pair stepped through the revolving glass doors and into the dim building.  They walked down a hall lined with pictures of published authors and the company’s higher-ups.  Andrew’s legs were beginning to get heavy.  At the end of the hallway they reached a door with Andrew’s name etched into the glass panel.  Inside they found Andrew leaned over his desk, pen in hand, reading the final pages of a manuscript.

“It’s Jack Shannon’s story,” Andrew told the man. “I had the final decision on it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It was a good story,” Andrew paused, “No, it was a great story, there’s no way around it.  This would have made him huge, this was his breakthrough piece.”

The man nodded.

“It was better than what I was writing at the time,” Andrew continued, ”Better than what I could ever write.”

Andrew stared at himself at the desk, scribbling away at a rejection letter.

“I regret to inform you that your piece has not been selected for the Robert Clark Writing Award,” the Andrews said, “Thank you for your submission.” 

Andrew rubbed his eyes.

“That was his award,” he said.

“I have seen this already, Andrew.  We haven’t much time left.”

“Do you know where he is now? Jack?”

“Yes, but we must hurry.”

Andrew’s head constricted and throbbed so he sat down in an office chair in the corner of the room.  The veins in his temples began to swell and his teeth gnawed against each other like sandpaper.  The scratch of the pen grew louder and louder until it drowned out everything in his mind.  Andrew squeezed his eyes shut and strangled the arms of the chair and tried to let out a scream but his lungs collapsed.

When he opened his eyes he was in a wooden chair.  The scream of the pen on paper had been replaced with the clang and clatter of a child’s silverware.  The man sat in the chair across the table from him.

“Jack, honey, thank you so much for picking up Henry today,” the woman in the dining room said as she sat down at the table, “I had to stay late again, conferences are coming up and Principal Rhodes felt the need for a meeting.  I really appreciate it.”

Jack looked at the woman like a book he has read twenty times over, but keeps finding passages that he likes.

“Not a problem at all,” he said, “Henry and I had a nice little ride together, didn’t we buddy?”  The child giggled and plopped his applesauce on his plate.

“Tell me about your day?” she asked.

“Nothing groundbreaking really, we hired a new temp.  College kid, looks like he is going to do alright…”

Andrew tuned himself out of the conversation.  He looked down at the empty tablecloth and felt like smiling.  He felt like crying.

“Andrew, there isn’t time to go anywhere else.”

Andrew nodded.  He had sensed that to be the case.

“I can answer questions for you if you’d like.  You must be quick though, we are running out of time.”

Andrew pushed his chair back, stood up, and walked over to the couch.  He let himself fall into the cracked leather.

“I’m not sure what to ask,” he said.

“Anything you would like.  I will answer it for you.”

“Okay, Area 51 then,” Andrew said with a tired laugh.

“I think you can do better,” the man said.

Andrew felt his arms sink deeper into the couch.

“Does Maxwell get the packages I send him on his birthdays?”

“No. He does not,” the man said with a stolid face, “Your daughter gets them, but she does not give them to Maxwell.”

Andrew’s fingers began to relax and his breathing grew shallow.

“Did my wife come to my funeral?”

“She was there, yes,” the man answered, “Andrew, you must hurry, it is almost time.”

“The big one I guess,” Andrew sighed, “Is it just us here? You know, Earth?”

The man let out a low chuckle. “You aren’t the first one to ask, and you certainly won’t be the last.  I’m sure you will come to understand that,” the man said.

By now, Andrew’s eyes were completely closed.  He heard nothing but the soft fuzziness of the man’s voice growing quieter and quieter.  Andrew lost the feeling in his toes, the numbness trickling up through his feet, his ankles, his legs, like he was slowly stepping into a pool of water.  He was not hot and he was not cold.  It was silent.

Andrew opened his eyes and found himself lying flat on his back.  His head was comfortable on the soft fabric of a pillow.  The voices were not clear enough to understand, but Andrew could tell that there were two men speaking to each other above him. He went to reach his hand out, but he was unable to move at all.  Ahead of Andrew was darkness.  To his left, his right, and behind him, was darkness. 

The men had now left, spiking their shovels in the dirt above.  Andrew heard the crumple of soil next to him.  An inching earthworm, a stretching root—he couldn’t be sure.  A low rumble of thunder vibrated through his chest.  Andrew closed his eyes and listened to the rain.

...
Austin Kinsey is currently attending school at the University of Northern Iowa. His professional soccer career didn't pan out, so he spends his time making coffee, reading, and writing stories.