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sixty-silver-wishes · 1 year

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Original short story- The Button

In a small town- well, I’m not sure you would call it a small town, as it may not be quite as small as you’d believe, depending on what your idea of a small town is- after all, there’s a sizeable population, and despite what you usually hear about small towns, not everybody knows each other. You always hear that people in small towns are always nice and wonderful and make you feel welcome- well, not everyone in this town is like that, especially Tommy Hopkins. God, I hate Tommy Hopkins.

Wait; where was I? I was telling a story. Okay; let me start over. Sorry.

In a small town, there was a house made of crooked slats of cypress wood all smushed together and, well, I’m not sure what color the house was- it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I think it was some shade of ash gray- this house was on the very edge of town, right on the water. There’s something sort of funny about the water in Florida, where you look out at a big stretch of pond and all you can see is the duckweed overtop the surface, which makes you think it’s a lot more shallow than it is, but if you stick your foot into the water expecting to be able to wade across from one bank to the other, you find yourself waist-deep in muck. One of these big duckweed ponds was right behind this house, and in that house was a tiny little room, filled with all sorts of globes and maps, and in the room with the globes and maps lived an old man with at least three or four teeth and long, spindly fingers with warts right under the nails.

When we were kids, Polly Brown said he came over with the Spanish way back in the old days, looking for the Fountain of Youth. At least, that’s the story she told visitors and passers-by, because it was so much more believable than the real story. You’ve never seen a girl like Polly Brown- real nice teeth and yellow galoshes on her feet and a crooked sort of smile. Only thing imperfect about her is the missing thumb on her left hand, which she lost when she stuck it in an anthill when she was five. I’ve been meaning to ask Polly Brown out- I’ve been in love with her since school days, you see- but I’ve never quite gotten the courage. But I hope Tommy Hopkins isn’t going to come along and pop the question first- after all, Polly Brown is one in a million, and you just don’t see girls every day with missing left thumbs that they lost to a colony of fire ants at the age of five. Tommy Hopkins is a real ass, he is, and if anyone deserves to lose a body part in an anthill, I’d say it’s him, although those ants had better take a part a bit more important to a man than his thumb, if you know what I mean.

I don’t quite remember what I was trying to say now- something about Tommy Brown and Polly Hopkins- no, no- mustn’t call her Polly Hopkins; Polly Brown’s her name, although my last name would suit her just as well- but I was saying something about them, and before that- right. The old man.

The real story as to what he was looking for, at least the story everyone else in town knows, is that with all his globes and maps, he spent his time planning for a journey to search the whole world over for a button that had fallen off his trouser-pockets when he was just a boy. He’d never once stepped outside his house, because he found planning the search to be of the utmost importance.

There was a clear memory of his head of a time when he was at the beach with his mother and father when he was just a little boy- certainly, he had been a little boy at some point, although with the wrinkles pruning up his face, it was very very hard to believe, but certainly, he had been a little boy at some point- and they were strolling along the shore, and when they came across an ice cream parlor, he reached into his pocket to see if he had any change for ice cream, but at some point the button on his pants had disappeared, and when he stuck his hand in his pocket, his pants slipped down his legs and fell into the sand, right in front of all the beachgoers and the sable palms and the fiddler crabs digging their burrows while the tide was in and even the seagulls, who were flocking around the ice cream parlor, as seagulls always do, and they all laughed at him. Even his parents, who, I am told, were very lovely people who would never in their lives laugh at their child, but the incident seemed so amusing that they just couldn’t help themselves. And of course, the boy felt quite mortified, especially since even the seagulls were laughing at him, although seagulls always sound like they’re laughing anyway, so perhaps he shouldn’t have taken that so seriously. But that day forward, he vowed he would find his missing button, but because he lost it in the ocean, there was a chance it could be just about anywhere.

He wanted to set out at once for the button, but was suddenly seized by a terrible fear of the notion that, perhaps, while he was searching, someone would ask him what he was looking for, and out of obligation, or perhaps because he was never a very good liar, even as a child, he would end up telling the entire terrible story of the day he found he had lost his button to them. So he figured the best thing to do was to sit at home with all his globes and maps, tracing the currents of the oceans and considering every possible location until he found one he thought would be just right- clearly, when he stumbled across the right possibility, he would just know- and would go straight there and retrieve his button. And so he holed up in his house and, day after day, he pondered every possible location on earth, but would never get the feeling that any of them was quite right. And so it went, until he was a very old man.

One of these days, probably a Thursday or so, although other people will tell you it may have been a Friday, and Polly Brown swears up and down that it was a Monday, the old man finally decided to leave his house. He found a spot on his map- the only spot that wasn’t crossed out by a red X- and said to himself, “this is it. This is where my button is.”

So he stood up out of his chair- real slow, so his brittle old bones wouldn’t break, you know, because he was very old and he’d been sitting in that chair for so long, so when he did sit up, the legs in his bones made this awful creaking noise- and started walking, all wobbly like, towards the door. I don’t know the last time that door had been open, but finally, it was swinging slowly forward on its hinges, creaking even louder than his leg-bones had.

The people of the town looked to see the door swinging open and the old man coming out, his map in one hand and an enormous backpack on his shoulders. None of them had ever seen his door open, not even the oldest people there, and all gathered around to look inside his house, or at him, or at the enormous pack of supplies he was carrying. With all these people surrounding him, the old man grew very nervous, more nervous than I was when Tommy Hopkins asked Polly Brown to the dance back in high school and she said yes, and wanted to turn right back around and hole himself up right back in his house. But he couldn’t- not when he finally determined he would go and set out for his button.

As they surrounded him, some people cheered. Others, especially the small children, stared in horror and surprise, as to them it was very likely they were witnessing the manifestation of a phantom. And it was true- with his warty hands and beard that trailed along the ground, he certainly looked the part. The townsfolk declared a local holiday- a parade and a feast to commemorate the day the old man, whom few had seen, if they looked through his window at just the right time at just the right angle, had at last left the rickety old house and set off down the road in search of his missing button. In fact, we celebrate Button Day, as it’s known around these parts, every year. Tommy Hopkins invited Polly Brown to the Button Day parade last year, but she said no. I was very thrilled about this and thought it meant she would ask me instead, but as it turned out, she’d refused because she was out of town for the week to attend her grandmother’s funeral.

So, the old man left town in his faded old boots and set off down the path, all his pots and pans clanking on his pack behind him. You could hear him from miles away, I’m sure, with all his clanking pots and pans and the creaking of his bones and the swishing of his beard as it dragged along the ground.

When people from up north come to Florida, they come for the theme parks and the beaches. They might come for the orange juice or the nice weather that they’re promised, before they learn what hurricane season is. Or they might be old and retired and come here to have somewhere pleasant to die. People come for all sorts of reasons. But nobody comes for the swamps, although they’re everywhere. Reason being, Florida swamps can be some of the nastiest, boggiest, muggiest, mosquito-iest spots in the state, maybe even the country. And that’s not even mentioning the alligators. I’ve seen five, ten, fifteen-footers in my day. Sure, most of the time they’re lazing in the water and not doing much, but when they’re hungry, they become enormous, scaly bullets with snapping teeth and jaws of death. Every kid in Florida learns three things in elementary school- who Ponce de Leon was, how to identify different types of mangrove trees, and how to outrun an alligator. Don’t run in zig-zags, like you do to escape most predatory animals, even though some may tell you to. And don’t even think about trying to climb a tree. Run as fast as you can for at least fifteen feet and hope you lose it. If it catches you, go for its nostrils. Maybe it’ll let you go.

All that being said, the old man was now traversing through the dark, dripping bowels of the Florida swampland. He wasn’t seeing any gators, at least, of course, for the time being, but the pots and pans on his back were clinking and clanking and his beard was swishing through the mud and his bones were creaking, creaking, creaking. If any gators were asleep in the water, it was possible they could hear him. In the air, mosquitoes, gnats, no-see-ums, and other unpleasant insects buzzed in clouds, biting at any uncovered skin they could find, even the old man’s warts. He could have easily turned back, but he wanted that button, and had been wanting it for years, and wouldn’t stop until it was his. The ground squelched under his feet, water seeping muckishly into his worn-out boots. And the sun was hot overhead.

The Florida sun is very rarely pleasant. It may be the Sunshine State, but as anyone who lives in Florida knows, even Tommy Hopkins, who failed the first grade twice, the sun can be dangerous. Many people consider sunscreen essential, as the sun is known to cause skin cancer. Or it can easily dehydrate you, sucking all the moisture out of your skin until you’re nothing more than a crumpled-up paper bag, or at least that’s how you look and feel. And as of now, the sun was high in the sky. Sweat was dripping out of every pore on the old man’s face, into his beard and soaking into his clothing. And, you know, the insects loved it. They swarmed to him all the more, guzzling themselves drunk on the sweat that gathered on his wrinkled old forehead, under his nose, and around his eyes and everywhere they could land their bristling legs.

As he clanked and creaked through the swamp, the old man wondered if he’d be better off returning home. After all, what was so special about a button? He wasn’t even sure if he remembered what the button looked like- the shape and size, what color it was, even whether it was a plastic button, a metal button, a felt button, or a button of some other material. What if he found a button, but it wasn’t the button? Would he even recognize it when he saw it?

“Of course I would,” he attempted to convince himself. He would recognize that button in the same way a mother would recognize her lost children, even after they had grown up. He was sure his map was leading him in the right direction, or at least, it felt right, for some reason he couldn’t explain, and at this point, he’d gone too far to turn back. And besides, if he returned to town without his button, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to show his face to anyone, ever again. Yes, he needed to find his button, especially as he had hardly done anything but ponder over its whereabouts for the past several decades, and now that he was actively on the search for it, it was of utmost importance that he find it at last.

He checked the map. He was getting closer to the space that he had left uncovered- where he knew his button must be. Ahead of him stretched a flooded expanse of water- he had no choice but to cross. The old man removed the pack from his back and began rifling through it, until he came across a roll of rubber yellow material. He promptly unrolled it, and an inflatable river raft stretched out before him. With his gnarled hands, he searched for the plastic tube he could breathe through in order to inflate it.

As he blew as hard as he could into the inflatable raft, his breath whistled through his few teeth, very high and very sharp. Three pairs of black eyes rose out of the water.

If you grow up in Florida, you’ll know that alligators have a filmy third eyelid, called the nictitating membrane, which allows them to see underwater. “Like built-in swimming goggles,” your kindergarten teacher may have said. It was now that these nictitating membranes were flashing over the black eyes, like shadows over a new moon, as they sank into the water, where alligators are much faster than on land. You may have a chance at outrunning an alligator. Outswimming one, however, is much harder. The old man, unsuspecting, climbed into the raft as soon as he was done blowing it up.

The raft wobbled with his weight, and the weight of his pack, but it managed to stay afloat. Birds called through the trees, and the insects continued to buzz, hot and suffocating and sweat-drunk as ever. Behind the raft, three trails cut slowly, lazily, but stealthily, through the water.

You may be thinking, “Here are three alligators, pursuing the old man. Here are three terrifying beasts, waiting to snap their jaws over his pruny old face. And that will be the end of that. And then I can go home and have my toaster strudel and think about how the narrator of the story will end up with Polly Brown and Tommy Hopkins will not, because Tommy Hopkins is boring and has knees like a cow’s and can’t even grow a proper goatee.” And you would be right, at least about that last part. But the old man did not get eaten by alligators, because the story has just begun.

The old man was aware of the alligators, you know. It was very hard for him not to be. After all, when three alligators are following very closely behind your raft, you can’t not be aware of their tails swishing through the water. But he was questioning something, something I’m sure you may have questioned at some point in your life, and that I definitely have. What truly was the point of living? He’d spent all his life pondering the whereabouts of a button, which had fallen off of his pants when he was just a child, and the laughter of everyone around him had never left his mind, although I do not know if anyone in the town was aware. They all regarded him as an oddity, an outcast. He was nearing the end of his life. To live in wait, to die unfulfilled, and if to be fulfilled, for what? Say he had found the button- then he would have his life’s goal achieved, but then what next? He’d spent his teenage, middle, elderly years, all ruminating over a button. Not taking action, only thinking, thinking, thinking of something he wanted, until the time was just right- but so much time had been wasted in the process. You may think, “what a strange old man,” but, you know, there are many, many people in this world, who spend all their time thinking about how they’ll shoot their shot, so to say, and but never do, or otherwise wait to try until it’s too late.

Man, I’m glad I’m not like that.

In any case, here was the old man, sitting there on his raft, contemplating his life and being pursued by alligators. I’m sure we’ve all been in that position. As he sat there wondering whether it would be worth it to continue his journey at all, a branch from an overhead cypress tree creaked, falling onto the nearest gator’s head.

This, of course, only made the alligator angry. It thrashed its tail about, propelling itself even faster through the water. It opened its jaws as it neared the raft, revealing all of its teeth. If you grow up in Florida, you learn how to tell an alligator from a crocodile. One of the easiest ways is to look at the teeth- alligator teeth do not protrude from their closed mouths, while a crocodile’s do. But now that its teeth were on full display, wickedly sharp and glinting in the blazing sunlight, the old man suddenly realized that this was not how he wanted to die. He had spent quite a bit of time before pondering all the best possible ways to die, and being eaten by an alligator certainly wasn’t one of them.

He picked up the oars and began to paddle the raft as fast as he could, although his arms were weak and the weeds in the water slowed him down. Still, pure adrenaline caused him to put at least some distance between himself and the gator, although it glided ever closer. One alligator swam under his raft, throwing it forward. The old man hung on for dear life as the raft was hurled through the mucky water, and he only barely managed to stay onboard. As he paddled, the shore began to grow closer and closer in sight. If he could make it, perhaps he could have a chance. He neared the shore and leapt out of the raft, just as one of the alligators grabbed his long beard in its mouth. He was pulled backwards, but managed to escape. “Perhaps we will find something easier to hunt,” the alligator said to itself as it slid back into the water with a mouth full of beard-hair.

The old man watched the alligators give up the chase with triumph, and watched his raft drift away with considerably less triumph. Yes, his supplies were still on that raft, which was being carried away with the current. There was no way he’d be able to make his way to where he was sure the button was without his pack. Furthermore, the raft was leaking, and it was beginning to sink. The old man panicked, biting his barely-there fingernails (he had a habit of biting them when he was nervous, I believe, which was presumably very often) until they were worn down to less than stubs. His creaky leg-bones burned from all the energy it took to escape the alligators, but he couldn’t let his supplies go down, lest he be stranded in the middle of the swamp with nowhere to go and no way to survive.

And so, despite having just escaped it seconds ago, he waded back into the water, hoping to drag out his raft onto the shore. Mud oozed into that spot between his overgrown toenails and his toes, making every slow step squelch and pop. While there was no longer any sight of the alligators, as they had gone and swam away elsewhere, small fish darted around him, picking at his skin- perhaps sampling to make sure they would like the taste of him if he were to drop dead and sink into the water. The old man reached the raft, dragging it laboriously through the water and back to shore, where he lay, exhausted, drying out the contents of his pack. The mosquitoes had returned and began to buzz around his emaciated, heaving body. He was so hungry he caught some out of the air and ate them. The old man did not much like the taste of mosquitoes, a sentiment I’m sure is probably shared by most people, except for maybe Tommy Hopkins, but after escaping three hungry alligators and dragging his supplies out of the water, he felt like a stronger, braver version of himself- someone who was willing to be adventurous and take risks. And if taking risks meant eating swarms of mosquitoes out of the air, then so be it.

When he had eaten his fill, the old man dragged his supplies deeper and deeper into the swamp. The sun was beginning to set, so he pitched a tent right under a gnarled old tree and went to sleep, right there, snoring very loudly, so loudly he woke the roosting birds and they all started to squawk in unison and he woke up all over again. And so the cycle would continue.

It was a very peaceful arrangement, sleeping under an old tree under the stars- much different than falling asleep at his desk after staring at books and maps all day. He was closer to his button than he had ever been, he knew, and tomorrow, he would wake up and go searching for it once again. He had brought all sorts of gadgets- a metal detector and a fishing rod and a butterfly net and even an old French rapier. I don’t remember when or where he got this, but as the story goes, it was right there in his pack, alongside all his other supplies. He didn’t use it against the alligators, as alligators do not know the rules of fencing, and it’s terribly rude to challenge an alligator to a fencing duel when the alligator does not know how to fence. Certainly all people know this.

The old man woke up the next morning to find his tent completely destroyed. A rainstorm had brewed up overnight, and the swamp flooded, leaving him quite soaked. He hurriedly gathered his things as they floated about him, although many of his food supplies had been carried off, stolen, or otherwise devoured by the surrounding birds, opossums, raccoons, fish, bugs, turtles- anything nearby. So much for all his labor recovering his things from the swamp! He shook his head miserably and sighed.

Still, as I always say whenever Tommy Hopkins tells me he gets an e-mail from what’s obviously a multi-level marketing scam, there was nothing to do but press forward. And so the old man gathered what was left of his supplies, creaked until he was standing all the way up, and took down the shreds of his tent. He must have looked a monstrous sight- all skin and bones and mosquito bites, walking about with his gator-torn beard. His shoes had come off in the mud when he went to recover his raft, and the dirt clung to his long, gnarled toes, so his feet were covered in clogs of clods that plodded over the soggy bog.

And so, the old man headed ever deeper into the swamp, onto higher ground, where the water did not rise up to his ankles. Here, he could see that the land had a sort of beauty to it- a sort of beauty that every Floridian knows, and that every tourist in Florida often misses because they’re too busy looking for things like sandy beaches and El Castillo de San Marcos and how to pay as little money as possible to take a picture with a man in an oversized rodent suit. This was the sort of beauty that can only be found in the swamps, with the orange and white mushrooms climbing over the mossy logs and the great blue herons stalking through the swaying reeds and the sun filtering down through the trees, onto the ground where it makes the most unique dappled shapes that shift and change with the wind. The old man was looking at all of these things and sighing to himself and thinking of how he had missed out on them- missed out on all this natural beauty, you know, of course, because he had been sitting in his house all those years, looking at his books and maps and pondering over what-ifs and perhapses and maybes. I’ll never understand people like that. Such fools, working themselves into a tizzy and not bothering to take action and do something with their lives.

But now that the dawn was scintillating in all its glory over the grove, and the birds were singing, and even the raccoons were on their most charming behavior, the old man began to cry- great tears as big as tarantulas, weeping snottily for all he had lost. It was really quite a touching scene, I’d imagine- him in the grove there, thinking about all the time he would never get back, all for a button and his damaged pride. He sat there sniveling for a good long time, all through the day and into the next, and into the next day after that, until all his tears had dried. And then, with a loud noise like a vacuum cleaner, he blew his nose and continued on his way.

And so it was, as he continued through the swamp, which soon gave way to a forest, that he made his way to a bubbling stream. He went to wash his feet, which, of course, were caked in mud, and stepped eagerly into the water, letting it wash over and under his old toenails, sweeping away the sediment and dust and grime that had been lodged there for who knows how long.

As the old man was washing his feet, he began to sing an old nonsense song from his childhood. He’d forgotten all the words, and I don’t think there’s anyone alive who still remembers them, but nonetheless, there he was, half-singing-half-humming a tune that he must have been the only one around to know. It brought back some happy memories, and some sad ones, and memories he wasn’t even sure he knew how to feel about.

He scrubbed the dirt from his feet, dirt from his floorboards that had been there for ages, perhaps even before Florida became one of the United States of America, and as he did so, the sand in the bottom of the stream began to shift, creating clouds and miniature underwater dust-storms. When it settled, he saw that something was sticking out of the water.

It was a stick.

But next to the stick was something round and faded- maybe metal, maybe plastic, maybe even fabric. It was worn and weathered and old, old, old, so it was impossible to tell anyway. Not that the material it was made of mattered, of course. As for what color it was, this was not easily discernible, as when the water rippled over it one way, it appeared gray, and when the clouds passed over it, it seemed black, and when the sun hit it on a very specific angle it seemed as if it could easily be almost red, and perhaps even brown or blue or yellow or a very odd and not at all fetching combination of indigo and chartreuse. The old man knew what it was immediately, and began to weep his tarantula-tears all over again, falling to his knees in the water and breathing very heavily and clutching his heart, which pounded so hard it threatened to burst from his chest and take off slipping and sliding down the stream.

It was the button- his button, there in this stream all this time after having fallen from his pants all those years ago, when he was just a child, and it had at last come to him, when he wasn’t even searching for it, but instead simply washing away the dirt from his feet in the stream. He would take it home with him, and burn all his old books and maps, and maybe even his house, and find somewhere else to live, and display the button on a silver mount on his wall, where all who wanted to could come round and admire it and ooh and ahh in hushed, astonished whispers. Certainly nobody would ever laugh at him again- it was his, finally his, and he would live out the rest of his days absolved and content and happy, happy to finally be reunited with the one thing he had spent his life dreaming about searching for.

And that would have happened, that is, if a catfish hadn’t come along and, with its great big mouth, swallowed the button up. The old man reached for the catfish with his warty old fingers, but it thrashed its great tail and wiggled its whiskers most threateningly- whiskers, that, as everyone knows, could cause great harm should they come into contact with human skin. But the old man was desperate. He fumbled about for the catfish, hoping and praying that it would at last cough up the button, but the catfish would not. At last, it wriggled and writhed away, breathing through its great old gills, and took off speeding down the stream. And it was there, at the banks of the stream, that the old man’s heart gave out from the exhaustion of his journey, and he promptly snuffed it.

The catfish, meanwhile, kept swimming, until it was snatched up in the talons of an osprey. The osprey carried it away from the stream, higher and higher, to its nest, where its screaming chicks awaited. And when the great bird fed the catfish to its chicks, they tore into it, but when they came upon the button, they found it inedible, and so tossed it into the air and down the tree, where it hit every branch on the way down, before it was picked up by a gust of wind and blown across the ground, until it was pawed by a panther, which sent it rolling along the ground for a very long time, until it landed right back in the town the old man had come from. And the fact that it happened was so miraculous that even today, we still celebrate Button Day.

If only that old man had not been such a fool! If only he had started his journey when he was much younger, and stronger, and unafraid to take risks! Then, who knows what may have happened.

Perhaps things would have gone far better for him- perhaps far better than things had gone for me this morning, when Polly Brown had texted me and asked if I wanted to go to the Button Day parade. I didn’t know how I could respond to such a smart, beautiful, funny, attractive girl like Polly Brown, and so just didn’t. And she said she would ask someone else instead, since I wasn’t responding, and because I didn’t know what to say, I still didn’t answer.

And so it was at the Button Day parade this afternoon, I saw Polly Brown and Tommy Hopkins holding hands as they waved at the rows of dancers in catfish suits and the mayor, who sat atop a giant alligator float and tossed out buttons to the crowd. Tommy Hopkins went to pick up a button off the ground, and his own pants slipped down as he did so. The people around him laughed, and Polly Brown looked away, although I swear I saw a bemused smile on her face.

What a laugh Tommy Hopkins was! What an idiot! Losing his pants, just as the old man did! What a joke he made of himself, right in front of everyone! What a spectacle he was, as the crowd clapped and cheered for him, he gave them a blushing smile and a wave as he pulled up his pants, and Polly Brown gave him a kiss on the cheek!

Some people, you know, never learn from the past.

#writing #original writing #creative writing #short story #fiction #fantasy #comedy #skaz #florida #story #long post

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