Gaffe

Gaffe watched the young couple that met every night across the way from his fry truck, in the gazebo near the poplar tree. They were sneaking around, he had seen enough to know that, the way the man looked over her shoulder and how she took his hand low and hidden. Children chased balloons and parents pushed strollers, sullen teenagers loped in groups loitering free and loose on a weeknight, so happy to not be home doing homework they were pleased to do nothing at all. The weather came up an opened over the fair, a sudden downpour falling from one end of the grounds to the other like a curtain, everyone ran and the ground was instantly roiling pebbles churning steam from the summer baked tar walks. Suddenly Gaffe had nothing but time.

The gray scraggle on his face crept down his neck like moss on a rock, his beat black cap was pulled down on his eyes, and the fat drops pinged off of the steel awning of the truck. In his twenties Gaffe wandered from place to place, they called him Richie before age thinned and bent his frame. He sheered sheep and picked vegetables, painted houses and cut lawns, always gravitating towards the transient work that would keep him moving, seasonal that would keep him changing, and never anyone who would ask you what he did with his paycheck. He couldn't find anything to satisfy him so he kept trying new things. These days he worked out of York for awhile, jumped over to Gainesville, or Knoxville and everyone who saw him called "Hey, Gaffe," he wasn't young Dickie anymore. He had nothing but time and wondered if anything could satisfy him.