4. Benji
BENJI
IF YOU CAN’T PUNCH THEM...
My thoughts were everywhere but on the street.
Not that it mattered much. When you live in a town as small as Red Creek, it's not like you need a degree to drive. Okay, you do need a license, but once you’ve got that, you're mostly just driving straight down the one street that makes up most of the town—aside from a few offshoots here and there, but let’s not get technical.
If it weren’t for the traffic lights leading to said offshoots, you could keep going until you ended up somewhere better than here.
But thanks to one of those lights being red, my eyes flicked to Mom, slumped in the passenger seat, kneading her palms. Not that it made me worry or anything. At least, that’s what I told myself.
“Everything’s gonna be fine,” I said. “It’s just a routine checkup, isn’t it?”
“It is, sweetie, it is,” she said, but her voice cracked a little too much. She pressed her hands into her faded blue dress, burying them in her lap. Her gaze drifted toward the empty sidewalk.
I didn’t need a fancy college degree to know something was off. Mom wasn’t the type to complain. She was the kind of woman who found her peace by accepting things as they were, even when they were bad. But every once in a while, when asked, she opened up.
“Are you afraid that they’ll find something else?” My right eyelid twitched as the words left my mouth, but it would’ve been worse not to ask. “You can tell me. I can handle it.”
“That’s not it. You know how things are. The doctors...” Mom stayed quiet a second too long. “...they know what they’re doing. I’m in good hands.”
I pressed my lips together to keep myself from snapping something back.
Every time, she brushed it off like everything was fine.
But it wasn’t. If it were, I wouldn’t have to be driving her to appointments every damn week.
If it were, Dad wouldn’t have pulled me aside four years ago and told me that from now on, we both had to take care of her—and asked me not to let her know we had that talk.
But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t force her to open up. All I could do was be there, offer to listen, although nothing made me feel more useless.
“Then...” I cleared my throat. “...what is it?”
“I’m actually a bit worried about you, Benji.”
“Me?”
The light turned green. I eased my foot off the brake, rolling forward into the intersection—just as a car shot forward from the cross street.
I slammed the brakes. Tires screeched. Both of us skidded, stopping with only a foot to spare.
My pulse raced. I spun my head toward Mom. Her right hand braced hard against the door armrest, but she seemed okay.
A blaring honk made my head snap around. Some semi-bald dude with chipmunk cheeks, like he’d stuffed both with cheeseburgers, was hanging out his window, flipping me off like I was the idiot here. Like I hadn’t had the green light. Like I wasn’t still blinking.
My left hand shot halfway up, ready to flip him off right back, but I stopped myself. I shouldn’t be doing this with Mom sitting right next to me.
Instead, I strangled the steering wheel with both hands and watched him speed off, still acting like I was the problem.
“Are you okay?” I asked, as I eased us back into motion.
“That bastard needs to learn how to drive!” Mom snapped, glaring after him.
For a minute, neither of us said anything. The shock needed to settle, and some old folk song babbled on the radio like background music for rolling credits. Mom shifted in her seat several times before letting out a deep sigh that shook her chest.
“So,” she said, “how is my son doing?”
“A little shock like that’s not gonna kill me,” I chuckled.
“And on the other fronts? How’s work?”
“Nothing exciting, as usual,” I said, giving her a side-eye. “Why? Did someone say something to you?”
“No. You just seem a little tense today, sweetie.”
I focused on the road—or tried to—knowing very well she wasn’t wrong.
Behind my eyes, the conversation with Sam replayed on a loop: his stupid smile, how I thought I might actually grow to like him until he revealed he was a rich snob, the ruined orange, how I stuffed it in my pocket instead of chucking it on the ground, squeezing it like a stress ball until nothing but a scrap of peel was left, and how I’d punched a hay bale in the barn for five minutes after our shift until my knuckles ached.
What stuck with me most, though, was how Sam thanked me for my helpful instructions at the end of the day. His voice was so soft, his smile... so damn oblivious. Almost as if he was mocking me.
And I couldn’t do anything about it.
I couldn’t yell at him. I couldn’t punch him.
All I could do was watch someone like him walk toward a future I’d never have.
He could still dream, while I could already see how my life would play out: Mom dying before I’d ever be ready to let her go; me working on that farm until my body gave out, paying off a debt for the next fourty years that wasn’t even mine—grateful for it anyway, because it bought me a little more time with the one person who’d ever really liked me.
“It’s nothing,” I finally said to answer her question. “I had to work with a new guy, and... he was slow as hell. I had to work twice as hard.” The whole truth wasn’t meant for her ears. She had enough to worry about. “That’s all.”
“Well, did the new guy at least try his best?”
Man, I hated that question and the answer to it even more. But there was no point in making him seem worse than he was.
“Yeah, he did,” I said. “It was still frustrating.”
“That’s a job for you,” Mom chuckled. Her almost silent laughter tried to be infectious, but I couldn’t join in.
“You’re right,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound more relaxed. “Tomorrow’s a new day.”
“That’s what I always say.” She laid her left hand on my knee, patting it three times.
I turned left into the parking lot of the clinic—a two-story building, painted a screaming shade of yellow, as if whoever built it thought the splash of a color could brighten the mood of bad news.
At first glance, there wasn’t a single parking spot open.
I circled for three minutes until I squeezed between a semi-truck and a pink sedan.
“Thank you for driving me, sweetie,” Mom said, reaching for the door handle.
“Always, Mom.”
“You still got that shopping list I gave you?”
My hands dove into my right pants pocket and pulled out a small, folded, white scrap of paper. Her smile softened, almost proud, as if running some errands was a gold-star achievement.
“I’ll still walk you inside, though,” I said, opening my door, “And when you’re done, you call me. I’ll come get you i nside, and we’ll walk back to the car together, okay?”
“I’ve never said no to walking arm in arm with a handsome young man,” she chuckled, “I’m not going to say no now.”
This time, I laughed, too.
The list Mom had given me wasn’t too long. Just some basic groceries: cereal, cream cheese, flour, milk, and whatever meat was on sale. It should have taken me ten minutes tops, but I dragged it out and took my sweet time looking at everything I wish I could afford.
Money was tight, yeah, but if I found something that caught my eye, I’d sometimes get it on the down low.
If Dad had taught me one valuable skill, it was how to stretch every dollar until it screamed.
Always check for sales—especially for stuff that can be frozen, because then the expiration date doesn’t matter.
Always check the price per ounce—sometimes the big packs are cheaper, sometimes they’re a rip-off.
This way, I managed to build a small secret stash of money—just a few hundred bucks—that I could use whenever I needed to treat myself a little something. If Dad could still buy beer, I could get myself something every once in a while, too.
So, whenever I was in a bad mood and not in a rush, I would walk every aisle, checking for what sparked my interest. Today’s hot contenders were a new beef jerky that was supposed to be the spiciest on the market or a small batch of pre-cut watermelon.
But I wasn’t going to decide until I had seen everything.
I turned into the next aisle, the one that housed all the cereals.
This usually was one of the faster ones.
I didn’t care much for cereal, as I was never hungry in the morning.
Dad, on the other hand, was useless without something sweet to shove in his mouth first thing.
But he only got what was within budget, so my focus shifted from how to treat myself to how to get the best deal.
A cartoon farmer grinned at me from one box with a silver tooth, a straw in his mouth.
Farmers' O’s. The natural alternative.
“Yeah, right,” I snorted. This was basically sugar-coated cardboard. No one who knows the first thing about fresh vegetables and fruit would touch this garbage.
I picked up the box, flipped it over, and searched for the ingredients list, when?—
“Benji! Hey,” a voice said behind me, sounding way too happy to see me.
My heart jumped straight into my throat. I knew that voice way too well after today. It was the last person I wanted to see tonight or, as a matter of fact, ever again.
I looked up, and there he was. Samuel. Beaming like an idiot.
Behind him stood a woman at least twice his age, dressed in a pair of perfect blue jeans and a wrinkle-free floral blouse. The way her eyes raked me head to toe, I half expected her to pull out a bottle of sanitizer.
“You guys know each other?” she asked Sam, side-eying me like I was something she’d scrape off her shoe.
“He’s the guy who taught me everything at work, Mom,” Sam said, still smiling.
Jesus Christ. Was this guy dense?