Just Enough
by L.J. Stephens
Publisher L.J. Stephens
Text Copyright © 2012 L.J. Stephens
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.
Just Enough
by L.J. Stephens
I have always been what some might call a survivor. All of my life, even when things looked darkest, I’ve always managed to see my way through. I’ve never been very successful or had any money to speak of, but I always had just enough to get by. That seems to be the theme of my life, even now as I come to the end of it. Just enough. Just enough education, just enough food, just enough money for the light bill, or one of the kids’ birthdays. Even when unexpected things occurred, the car crapped out or there was a leak in the roof, something always happened. I don’t know how, but somehow, someway, something always happened and in the end we would find that we had just enough to survive whatever bump in the road it had been. Hell, even when I was in Iraq I had just enough luck not to get killed. Just enough to live but not enough to avoid a bullet in the leg, though.
Maybe it was my wife’s confidence. Anytime something came up she would remind me. “We’re survivor’s, remember?” she would say. “It’ll all work out.” And of course, it always did. The kid’s never went hungry, but dessert was a special treat. Second hand clothes, second hand toys. They didn’t know the difference, but Jenny and I did, and it pained us. She was a little more accepting of our lot than I was, though. I had gotten tired of just barely getting by. I know, I should have been thankful for what we had, and for a long time I was. In fact, I remember telling Jenny once that I thought it was strange that some of our happiest memories were made during the times when we had the least.
But my contentment had faded over the years. I began to wonder why it was that everyone around us —granted they had their ups and downs— were generally either okay or not. They had more than they needed to survive or they became homeless. This was especially true of all my old Army buddies. Of all the guys I kept in touch with, half had come back home, gotten good jobs and were living their happily ever after’s. The others were living in shelters if they were smart, under bridges if they weren’t. And then there was me, still barely getting by with just enough to see us through. Well, I was tired of it. Now, normally I like to think that I am a pretty good guy. I’m not perfect by any means, but I had, up until that night, tried to stay on the straight and narrow. To be a good American and all that.
It wasn’t a gradual change like you might think. Although being worn down by years of barely existing, my attitude toward life and the rest of the world changed in a single night. Some might say that it was losing my wife that finally made me snap, or go “Section 8” as we used to say, but it was actually the night before that was the beginning of the end. It was just a thought that popped into my head as I was taking out the trash that sent my mind down a path that it had never traveled before and brought me to a decision that I would’ve never thought myself capable of making.
We had just eaten dinner, another night of chicken and macaroni and cheese. There was enough macaroni for the kids to have a second helping, but Jenny and I only got one helping of the mac and cheese and we split one of the pieces of chicken. Not enough to fill us, but just enough so that we wouldn’t go to bed hungry. Just enough. We talked about how our days went and what Frank and Bobby were learning in school. (Bobby was learning his letters and numbers but, according to Frank, the fourth graders were learning nothing.) After we were finished, Jenny put Bobby in the tub and started Frank on the homework that he had previously informed us didn’t exist. I cleared off the table, put the dishes in the sink and took the trash out the back door.
I was walking down the side of the house to the trashcans when I heard the music coming from the neighbor’s house. I couldn’t hear enough to make out what song it was, but I could tell by the twang that it was something country.(Or western, I guess. I’m not really sure what the difference is.) The old man who lived next door was constantly playing music. Sometimes even at two or three o’clock in the morning, on the nights when I couldn’t sleep for one reason or another and went outside for a cigarette, I could always hear music of some sort coming from his house. Classical, country, blues, you name it. The only thing I had yet to hear was rap, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that, too.
He was a good enough neighbor, I suppose. Quiet for the most part. Except for the music, but even that wasn’t very loud, and sometimes I actually enjoyed it. He stayed to himself. I rarely even saw him outside except in the evening when he would take out his own trash and walk to the street to check his mailbox. I talked to him once, tried to anyway, one evening not too long after we moved in.
“Hi, there,” I said. “How are ya?”
He stopped, mid-stride, and turned to look at me. He didn’t say a word. Just looked at me then continued on his way to the mailbox. I told Jenny about it later and she laughed. “You probably just startled him,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Then again Maybe he’s just an asshole.” She slapped me playfully, told me to be nice, and laughed some more. God, how I loved to hear her laugh.
But that night I didn’t see him, just heard the music. What I did see, and what may have been the start of the avalanche of thoughts to follow, was his Mustang in the driveway. It was a beautiful car, fire-engine red with darkly tinted windows. I had never seen him drive it, or wash it, but it was always clean and shiny. Not like my piece of shit Ford truck which was, at that moment, covered in a thick layer of pine tree pollen.
I had seen plenty of guys like him, though. I hated to be behind some old geezer in a sports car doing 10 under the speed limit. You shouldn’t be allowed to own a sports car if you’re too old to drive it like it was built to be driven, I thought. I’ve never even seen him in it. He should just give it to someone who knew what to do with it, and I would have been more than glad to trade.