Drabble

He can’t believe how alone he can feel in his old bedroom. The peeling wallpaper, the little wooden toys scattered around the room, the musty sheets under his back, the bit of plywood propping the window open to air out the dusty smell of a lifetime of neglect. Just the way he left it, it never changed, and at the same time it felt dead and empty. Why did everything have to change? What had he done to deserve this?

His wife, his boy, his high paying job as a slave to the man… it was absolute bosh, what he was living. His wife was the man. Realizing that he couldn’t help but laugh. The last bit might have just been a sob for all he knew, for all it made him feel, for what it was worth. His dreams, everything he’d ever held sacred he’d left in the trail dust as he rode off into the sunset; sunset and city lights, that’s what his life was about now. Regret and walls. Memories and abortive attempts to relive his glory days, if you could even call getting tossed from bulls and herding sheep glory. All those years trying to convince himself he was more than an alfalfa desperado… lie or not they’d sure been sweet.

He sighed and buried his nose in the shirt he held in his hands. It smelled of blood, sweat, and god only knew what kinda fur. Those blood spots… he never had washed the damned thing, not that it was his anyway. He liked the smell. Twenty fucking years and it still smelled the same, or maybe the memory was just so strong that even the scent persisted in his mind.

Sometimes he had to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to find someone else... His wife and that man, both of ‘em were putting him out of his mind. Maybe he’d move on out to Mexico, make a living buckin’ the tiger in some little bodega, some old world place that’d still pass for a saloon with a couple of drinks under your belt and yours eyes squinted real tight, spend the winnings on booze, get full as a tick and buy himself a few buttons off the street. Spend his time as a no count nancy, who’d care anyway? Couldn’t make it as a driver but he wasn’t a bad cowboy. Another cynical scoff and an unconscious snuggling of the shirt. Maybe that dumb pilgrim would take some notice of him then, damn him and his bull shit threats. It could pan out, it could be real nice out there; out there without him.

Shit, it wasn’t like neither of them would notice him missing. His wife would, when she looked in the books and realized they hadn’t sold nothing without his ballyhoo backing it all up. As for that old cuss, he wouldn’t notice a damned thing for a year or so, and maybe not even then. Hell, maybe they’d both be better off for it. Maybe he wouldn’t have to be ‘nothing and nowhere’. God knew he didn’t want to hold him back, bilk him out of that dream life he deserved with those couple of weeks they spent together every year. Barking at knots; that’s all they were doing anyway, useless shit, neither of them would ever drop their own business to be with the other.

Hell, he’d brought that little fag he’d met last summer out to meet his parents, started talking about shaking up together, and for what? To get that jackass to think about them again. It was stupid, he had hoped he’d try to get ahold of him, maybe his wife’d tell him where he was… but nothing, bastard didn’t even write all summer.

Fuck it, fuck all of it. Mexico, he’d do it, and it’d be good as gold. No more beating the devil ‘round the rock, it was time to do something for him. It was time to give up on pipe dreams; time to pull the reigns and break the bronc. Living for ‘love’, it wasn’t all it was trumped up to be and he’d be damned if he was going to let it break him.

With one last sigh he got up and hung the shirt back in the closet under his jacket where it wouldn’t be noticed and his mother wouldn’t wash it. He didn’t care anymore, he assured himself of that, but… he’d be back for it, soon; he just needed to get this out of his system again. He’d come back, he always did…