A Walk Against The Grain

The bird pecked persistently at the roof of the van.

Couldn't sleep through that. He rubbed his burning eyes, yawned, and stretched out. His feet smacked into the cold steel of the truck's body and he frowned.

It was early enough to change into his suit without being seen by passersby.

His mother had bought it, at the insistence that no respectable comedian could be seen without proper clothing. He did her proud by wearing it, and by graduating from a decent community college before chasing his rainbow.

The old truck moaned it's displeasure as he opened up the door and wiggled onto the ground. He still wasn't used to being six feet tall, and out of scale with the vehicle. He brushed his fingers through the short brush of hair on his head and scratched his ear.

Comedy Soup was an old stage, one of the better ones in Los Cuarto. They liked the way he worked; he was a young, thinner, more cerebral Drew Carey. He was relieved that Mr. Carey hadn't discovered this routine, which a young prop comedian sort of looked like him. Certainly, no one could confuse him with Carrot Top.

He felt a stack of tickets still in his pocket; he could convince Connie to drive up from Houston, where she was in the last weeks of her first rotation. Joseph was muddling through the off-season; his father had exposited that the Eagles need him and would learn that when they missed the play-offs.

The truck had been his father's; a hand-me down. When he got a new truck, his son received it as a going-to-college present. Mildly, he remarked that she ran as good as she had when his son was a kid.

He locked the car firmly, with a jiggle to the handle, as his father always had.




The End