Falling by the Wayside

Falling by the Wayside

by Steven Hunley


It was late afternoon by the time Malcolm stopped near the fence at the crossroads and looked down at his feet. To the east was his ex-lover’s house, to the west was Wanborough, a small hamlet in Surrey stuffed with fine milk-fed women.

Something irritating was in his shoe. He sat down to fix it.

He was on his way to her house to talk it over, thrash it out, make amends.

A fool’s errand.

The affair was going wrong. He knew it, and she’d made it quite clear. Her wants could never be met. Not by him.

He unlaced the shoe and took it off. A meadow lark sang but he took no notice. White puffy clouds drifted against an azure sky like fat wooly sheep. The distance was painted with green rolling hills that ran on forever. He saw nothing of this either.

He was too busy thinking.

He wanted a conclusion to the affair. Some kind of full stop. Something to mark the ending, something solid so he could have a clear sense of a new beginning. This being suspended between now and then was unlike him, and unsuited to his type. The fellow never was much of an acrobat; it wasn’t his style or his forte. He’d never had any balance.

Something black or white was more to his taste.

Instead, it looked as if he was doomed to live his life in various shades of grey. He’d forgotten who he was, that is, what he was like before he met her. Now she was slipping away, subtracting herself from his equation, cutting herself out like a housewife coring an apple, and he was afraid and unsure of what would be left.

Most of all, he’d completely forgotten his English poets and the lessons he’d once memorized in school.

He should have remembered.

Sometimes great affairs don’t go out with a bang. They go out like the world in T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

He tapped the shoe against the fence post.

TAP TAP TAP.

Out fell a fragment of her. A toenail fragment caught between his sock and sole. It was sharp and ragged, much like her words. Unfeeling, ridged and calcified, dull and flavorless toenail, poking and irritating his every move and step.

What was it Archimedes said?

"If I had a lever big enough I could move the world."

Actually, a more accurate translation would be:

“If I had a firm enough place to stand, I could move the world.”

“A pivot point is what he was talking about,” mused Malcolm. “Something narrow and sharp.”

Malcolm brushed off his sock and put on his shoe. He tied the laces in a bow and brushed off the seat of his pants and got up. His shadow revealed a man of substance.

Malcolm continued walking off into the distance, and with each step the shadow behind him grew longer and finer and more delineated.

The shadow of an ordinary man.

A man who just turned his earth on a toenail.



©Steven Hunley2011


http://youtu.be/WbqMP8oDnzE

In this piece was was trying to be subtle. I don't do subtle well! Hit you over the head with a sledge hammer is my version of subtle. Therefore, I am questioning what happened in this piece. I'm not sure if it flew or what.

My question is: Do you know for sure which direction he headed when he continued walking? And if so, why?

Hi Steven,

I don't think there's anything wrong with this piece at all. It might be a bit unexpected to the majority of readers who are familiar with your other work though :) It's very short and compact for one thing. I think the subtleties are well presented but I'm not sure about the internally semantic dialectic of the Archemedes translation. Why not just get it right first time? I wonder if this pivot point in a story that is all pivot point might be better presented by comparing the toenail to a fulcrum before quoting Archemedes. Just a suggestion though. To be honest I think it works pretty well as it is. I think it's perfectly clear that the character walked away to pastures new after quite literally brushing the dust off his feet.

Cheers, H

Hi Steven,
I think your story is quite subtle, in way describe man feeling to the woman. For example the toenail to me represent the woman, who is now being brush away from his life and choose to carrying with his life also remember the good days of scholarship and lessons it taught him.

I like the subtlety of the ending, and I feel the reader should understand what direction he is moving towards. Also, I like your use of metaphor and simile to describe situations and characters. But I am not a fan of the word "like" in these types of sentences. Overall, I enjoyed this short piece.

I was experimenting with trying to be subtle and I thank all of you for contributing your comments. What I was attempting was indicating his direction by his thought process, but at the same time, indicating his direction with a compass, so to speak. If it's late afternoon, and the sun sets in the west, and his shadow falls behind him, then he's heading west to the hamlet of fine milk-fed women.

It's those Conan Doyle stories, I've read too many! I wanna give out clues!

I saw a man who had a moment of enlightenment in his life and he was just walking away a taller better man. I think you are successful on several levels, including the sun's placement and the man's transformation.