Glenn G. Coats

Last Week of the Fair

I worked with the boy for two years and saw him every day. Funeral was this morning.  I took the day off, it bothered me that much.  After the storms, we loaded up the truck with broken limbs, and sometimes it took all night. Put up barricades before the Heart of Virginia and filled most of the cracks on Main Street. He wasn’t afraid of work.

Good kid. Fine family.  He was a fireman and part of the river rescue. The boy played some decent baseball, quite an arm for a skinny fellow. Neighborhood children looked up to him, had respect.

He wasn’t thinking, not about his parents, not about his job, not about walking down to the river with his fishing pole. He forgot every single thing when she broke it off. It happened to me plenty of times. You get over it, not him. Yeah, it was his rifle. A friend found him. You don’t get over something like that. Not ever.

No, he did not go to my church. He was a white boy.

hot night
segregated cars
on the Ferris wheel