The Awful Possibilities by Christian TeBordo

Author:Christian TeBordo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Featherproof Books
Published: 2010-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

oh, little so-and-so

A man about my age sees a little girl standing in the middle of a busy intersection, blowing a whistle and flapping her arms like a marionette. He assumes she assumes she’s directing traffic. Traffic is flowing smoothly. No accidents are happening.

It isn’t a matter of whether he wants to move toward her, to help her. He moves toward her to help her whether he wants to or not, as though there are strings attached to each of his limbs, strings so fine that they can’t be seen by the eye that doesn’t mean to see them, unless they catch the glare of the sun just so, and even then the eye that doesn’t mean to see them doesn’t know what it’s seen.

The little girl doesn’t see them, doesn’t mean to see them, or just doesn’t care. She’s got other things on her mind. Something to do with the traffic. Standing before her in the middle of the intersection, strings slack, the man still thinks she thinks she’s directing traffic.

She blows her whistle. She flaps her arms. Traffic continues flowing smoothly, though now that he’s in the middle of the street, the man can see that the cars that make up the traffic are slowing as they approach the intersection, the drivers trying to avoid hitting the little girl, and now the man, or to see what they can see.

“Directing traffic?” the man says.

The girl points a finger at him. She blows her whistle at him. She keeps on directing traffic, or whatever it is she’s doing, with the arm that isn’t pointing its finger.

“What?” he says.

The little girl opens her mouth. For a moment, the whistle sticks to her upper lip. Then it falls downward and dangles from the string around her neck. The girl takes a step forward and her finger pokes the man in the chest.

“You’re in my way,” she says.

“I’m in your way,” he says.

He wants to get out of her way, to turn around, get out of the middle of the street, go back to whatever he was going about, but something—let’s say the strings—won’t let him.

“Directing traffic,” he says.

She drops her finger-pointing arm to its side. She stops flapping the other arm, and lets it fall to the other side. There is no noticeable change in the flow of traffic. Still the same slowing at the intersection for the same reasons.

“I’m hitching a ride,” she says.

The man would really like to leave.

“That’s not how you hitch a ride,” he says. “You hitch a ride like this.”

The man stretches out an arm, stretches out the thumb at the end of it, but he’s standing in the middle of an intersection, and even if a driver were inclined to pick up a hitchhiker while driving smoothly if slowly through, the driver wouldn’t know which direction the man hoped to go, and probably wouldn’t take the trouble to find out.

Who knows what their inclinations are. No one is taking the trouble to find out.

“That’s not how I hitch a ride,” says the little girl.

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