Pangs of Conscience
A Story (part 2)
The thirty-foot office trailer occupied the northeast part of the five thousand square foot lot Benny Musgrove purchased in January of that year. It was old, but sturdy. Inexpensive. It would get the job done until the job was done. The trailer had a bathroom, kitchen, and break room that Benny converted into a half living room, half bedroom type of deal. Since it was only temporary, he didn’t need much space, and he shared the bed with his son. There was just enough room to eat, sleep, shit, and watch The Braves. They would spend most of their time outside, anyway. Even if those pesky summer Florida rains showed up, unless there was lightning, they worked. Hell, even if there was, well… shit happens, or good luck.
The lot was purchased during a time of sorrow, that was indeed a fact. The suffering this man went through — still goes through — was thought by many to be clouding his judgement, making him impulsive, and though tragedy ran through him like an undertow of electricity, Benny had always been a pragmatic man, the opposite of self-indulgent. He didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeves. No, not those emotions. Anger and despair are not like joy or trust, they can be laid in caskets and buried six feet deep, but if you looked careful enough, behind those two graying tombstones in Benny’s head, you would see the cemetery of his soul. And with Benny, as is with us all, what we feel the most can be buried for only so long, until one day these caskets are uprooted like the flooding of graves after a violent thunderstorm.
Dawn seemed to break a little earlier that morning. By the time Michael realized he’d fallen asleep during the game last night, his father had been working for nearly two hours. He sat up in bed, scratched the crust from the corners of his eyes and yawned. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands, and then went to the kitchen where he poured himself a bowl of plain bran cereal, generously helping himself to a spoonful of sugar (or two). He flipped through the T.V., turning the dial slowly, hoping to get a score of the game. He settled for Guess Our Past, a game show where fallen-off celebrities try to figure out the backgrounds of normal, everyday people. The show was lackluster in the ratings until a few years back when one of the contestants ended up on the nightly news, accused of strangling nine college co-eds and having sex with their dead bodies. Since then, Guess Our Past was a smash hit with half the country tuning in weekly, finger pointing and fingers crossed at who they think is The Next Big Thing. Morbid people, Michael thought to himself. He finished his breakfast, placed his bowl in the sink. His “workin’ blues” were draped over the bathtub. He slipped them on, working his legs one at a time through the stiffness of his jeans. He wore the same shirt from the day before. He grabbed his Braves cap, yawned one more time, and stepped out into the day’s open arms.
