Page 63 - Cha Cha Cha PDF.pdf

from the tall vents on the top of the buildings. The distant clanking, groaning, and hissing of machinery leaked from the black windows and into the graveyard.
The boy started tapping the leather holster on his hip. He spoke, “When you think he’ll come?”
“Don’t know.” “Think he’ll go easy?” “Don’t know.”
“Do you ever think?” “Not for you.”
The boy scratched the
stubble on his chin, smirking. The soft, glowing red still
hung at the man’s lips.
“You must forgive me for
trying to start a conversation with you, old man; I was only trying to pass the time.”
“Thought you said you liked the time to think.”
“Yeah, but you don’t.”
The man breathed slow. He lifted his eyes to the sky dangling over them. Starless.
The words fell from him: “I’ve been ridin’ with our boys for over twenty years now, ‘nd of all the things that I’ve had to do, it’s this waitin’ that gets the most under my skin. Don’t like the uncertainty.”
He pulled the cigarette from his lips and let it hang loose in his hand at his side. “It’s in these quiet moments where all hell can break loose. The man we’re here for could have us
in his sights right now; he could be sneakin’ on up behind us, and we wouldn’ know unless the silence broke. There ain’t nothin’ more dangerous than waitin’.”
The boy blinked his clear eyes at the man, then chuckled under his breath. “That’s gotta be the most I’ve ever heard you speak in one conversation.”
The man’s cheeks crinkled for half a second. He relaxed his fingers slightly, and the cigarette slid through them, engulfed by the fog. He readjusted the rifle hanging from his shoulder.
“Then you best savor it.”
The boy chuckled again. “Alright, old man, alright.”
The wind yawned loud and whipped the fog into small tornadoes. It carried a wet and warm air.
The remote echoing of machinery gradually slowed into silence as the last worker left the building. The wind calmed, and the fog remained still. A tired moon held high. The boy sniffed. The man looked forward. The night quiet and eternal.