"You can do this" chapter two

Chapter two is done.  I'll have chapter three ready to go in a couple of days!!

Chapter Two

“You can do this!”

John took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the bird dropping from his forehead.  He was contemplating shooting the seagull with the gun in his pocket, but remembering that if he did he would most likely be arrested and well, that wouldn’t be good and besides he had never fired a gun before and his chances of hitting the bird circling above him were somewhere between zero, and well, zero.

“Do you have something personally against me?” he asked, again looking up.  Only this time he was prepared to move should the seagull do the same trick all over again.  As the bird circled it seemed to John that it was looking directly down at him.  He began to wonder just who that seagull was working for.  Just so that there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding he added, “I’m not talking to you bird, I’m talking to God.

“What did I do to deserve this?  Tell me, why is this happening to me?  Are you doing this to me on purpose or is it just my fate to be a looser?  Come on, you can tell me!  Give me some kind of sign or something!  Oh yeah, I forgot, you don’t do that sort of thing.  We’re just supposed to have faith!  What a crock!”

John felt the anger rising up inside of him.  It felt good.  It was at least something different from the self-pity that he had been wallowing in for what seemed like forever.  Yeah, it felt good, and it was building up with each second that passed until he opened his mouth and let it all spill out.

“I’m wasting my time talking to you!” he shouted as loud as he could.  If God was up there he wanted Him to hear what he had to say. 

“I don't believe in you!  I used to believe in you!  I don't anymore.  You're not up there.  There's no God for this world, money, money that's the god down here.  You hear me!”

John got up from the bench he was sitting on and moved to the one that had the pile of newspapers behind it.  He watched the seagull that still circled above him as it made a one of those seagull noises that you hear at the beach and began to fly away.  Maybe it was time for his coffee break.

John leapt up onto the bench and pulled the gun from his pocket.  He quickly looked around to make sure that there wasn’t anyone nearby to stop him.  He waved the gun at the sky.

“Come on, show yourself!” he was shouting at the top of his lungs.  And then as suddenly as it had come the anger left him.  He felt empty.  He felt exhausted.  He jumped off the bench and slammed his butt down on the bright green wooden bench.  The impact was hard enough to send pain shooting up through the bones in his rear end.

“If you’re not up there what am I doing talking to you?  Besides, all of this talking is just a waste of time.  It’s over!”

John looked up at the sky and then at the gun in his hand.  There was a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach.  All of a sudden it came to him.  The hunk of steel he was holding in his hand was the only solution to all of his troubles.

“It ends now!” John yelled as loud as he could manage.  Putting the gun to his head he closed his eyes and whispered, “come on, you can do this”.

The sudden sound of crackling newspaper from behind the bench he was sitting on startled him.  He jumped up and began franticly backing away from where he had just the instant before been sitting.   The pistol in his hand was no longer pointed at his temple it was now trained in the direction of the crackling sound.  A shaggy head of gray hair wrapped in newspaper slowly rose above the back of the bench.

“What the heck is wrong with you?” the shaggy head of gray hair asked.  “You are making enough noise to wake the dead!”

The old man that had been lying behind the park bench, under the pile of newspapers, painfully got to his feet.  He pulled the newspaper page that was stuck to his face free and wadded it up into a tight ball, which he tossed with unerring accuracy into the garbage can some twenty-four feet away.  John would have been impressed with the three pointer had he not been so startled by the old man’s sudden appearance. 

The old man’s clothes were ragged and thread bare and his face was smudged with dirt.  It didn’t take a detective to figure out that he was one of the homeless bums that sometimes lived in the city parks.  All that flew right over John’s head just as the balled up newspaper had.  All he saw was someone that scarred him half out of his wits.

“Who are you?” John demanded not able to keep the tremor under control in the hand that held the gun he now pointed at the old man.  “Stay where you are!  I've got a gun!  Take one more step and I'll shoot!”  

“Hold on there!  You ain't afraid of an old man are ya?  Anyway, do I look dangerous?  You seem just a little bit confused, aren't ya pointin that the wrong way?”

“What?”

“I don't know a whole lot about guns mister, but I don't think that one's big enough to shoot clear around the world.”

“What are you talking about you crazy old man?”

“Me crazy?” the old man said with a burst of laughter.  “Huh!  I didn't come into your livin room makin a ruckus and tryin to shoot myself.  You're calling me crazy?  Look, I'm tryin to tell ya if you shoot in this direction the only way you'll be able to kill yerself, which I assume is your goal, is if the bullet goes clear around the world.  You're pointin that thing in the wrong direction!  Ya got ta turn it around.”

John lowered the pistol until it was pointed at the ground.  Maybe the old man was right, maybe he was crazy.  One minute he was determined to shoot himself and the next minute he was afraid of what an old man might do to him.  This was absurd.

“I'm sorry.  You startled me.  I thought I was alone.” 

“Well, you ain't alone.  I live here!  If you have to go and shoot yourself, do me a favor and do it over there by the garbage can.  I don't want blood all over my bench.  They just painted it last week!”

“What?”

“Ya know for a young fella you sure are hard a hearin!  Go over there by the garbage can.  And hurry it up, I need my rest.”

John began to move toward the garbage can.  He looked back at the old man who stood there watching him.  John wasn’t quite sure he should take his eyes off of him.  The old man could, well, just what could he do?  After all the old man didn’t have the gun, he had the gun.

“Come on, get on with it,” the old man said waving his hand around motioning John to move along.  This was a bit confusing.  He had never expected anyone to actually encourage him.

The closer he got to the garbage can the louder the noise of flies buzzing around it became.  For a terrifying instant he envisioned those same flies clustered around his dead body, drinking his blood and laying their eggs in… hell this wasn’t helping any.

“You can do this,” he again whispered to himself.  He closed his eyes and put the gun to his head.  It seemed like such a simple task, but it was so hard to do, especially with the knowledge that he had an audience.  That kind of gave him the creeps and up until this very moment he hadn’t known what “the creeps” were.

Opening his eyes back up John looked back at the old man.   There he sat on the bench intently watching.  If the old man had a bag of popcorn and a soda he could have been watching a ball game.  Of course it would have been difficult for him to eat the popcorn or drink the soda because he had both his index fingers stuck in his ears.  Presumably that was to block out the sound of the gun going off.  He looked completely ridiculous. If it weren’t such a serious matter John would have laughed at the sight of it.

“Would you mind not watching me?  This is hard enough without an audience.  Could you turn around or something?”

“What did you say?” the old man asked pulling his fingers out of his ears.

“I said, would you mind not watching me?”

Without saying another word the old man squeezed his eyes shut.  His fingers went right back into his ears in his anticipation of the noise to come.  And that noise, John figured, was only a heartbeat away.

“You can do this,” he again whispered trying to muster up the courage to pull the trigger.

“Gee,” the old man shouted opening his eyes and pulling the fingers out of his ears.  “I hope you have better luck than that other guy!”

That does it for chapter two!!!!  Please feel free to comment or give me a call!! 

Please note that I am donating 50% of the royalties from my novel to "Soldier On".  They provide housing for homeless veterans.  Please help me help those who have given so much to provide the freedom we all enjoy.

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