Colin Rowe lives in Santa Fe, NM and has been published by
Cracked.com, The Boston Literary Magazine, The Eunoia Review, and a
dozen other flash fiction zines. He tweets under the handle @lowericon and
can also be found on WriteOn and Scribophile. Colin's Write On Profile
Peppered Eggs
I
wore a small fringed vest over a t-shirt with a dinosaur on it. Between the
bottom of my denim shorts and the tops of my cowboy boots there were about two
inches of chubby, pale, hairless leg. I donned my suede cowboy hat and strapped
a plastic cap gun into the holster on my belt. I was ready.
I
took the first half of the steps on foot, descending to the landing where they
turned abruptly. The second half I slid downwards on my belly like a sled. This
dislodged my gun and I had to go halfway back up to get it, jumping back down
in a single thump. Grandma was in the kitchen, making scrambled eggs.
“Do
I look good or what?” I said, posturing proudly in my western getup.
“What.”
She replied.
“I
said do I look good or what?”
“What.”
“I
SAID,” I raised my voice so the poor old woman could hear me, “DO I LOOK GOOD
OR WHAT?”
“What.”
She said again.
I gave up. She was
hopeless. I pulled myself up into one of the kitchen chairs where toast and
butter were already laid out. Mom never cooked like this. Grandma brought me a
half-full glass of milk and a plastic plate with scrambled eggs and…something.
“What’s the black
stuff?” I asked, squishing up my face in trepidation.
“Pepper.”
“I don’t like
pepper.”
“Oh, but it’s no
good without the pepper. Try it.”
I did.
Twenty years
later, I had conned the grown-ups into accepting me as one of their own.
Grandma was long dead and they were talking about her around brunch. I sat and
listened, sipping sparkling white wine and orange juice.
“I think she was
probably depressed,” says Aunt Roberta.
“We couldn’t have
known,” says Mom, “depression wasn’t a real disease back then.”
“She wasn’t
unhappy,” says Dad, “she was just…truculent. She had a snap to her. A little
fight.”
“Maybe I’m
remembering differently,” says Aunt Roberta, “or maybe she just talked to me
differently because I’m a girl.”
I looked down at
my scrambled eggs. I had peppered them just moments before, and I tried to
recall any other memory I could use to join in the conversation. She put pepper
on eggs and she was hard of hearing. That was all I knew. Wait. WAIT…She wasn’t hard of hearing…THAT WAS A
JOKE!
The full impact of
a punchline simmering for two decades finally boiled over and spilled out of my
mouth in screaming guffaws. The grown-ups jerked their heads and stared
bewildered while I held my ribs and sprayed mimosa out of my nose.
~Colin Rowe
