Butchblog

A Very Short Story

In The City

Paulie liked to stay out late—even though he knew it worried his parents. Still he didn’t stop his nightly wanderings. Everything looked different in the evening—gentler, softer. During the day the city block where he lived was always noisy, trolley cars clanging, cars racing up and down. And the people noise—kids playing tag, old people arguing. Voices raised, voices secretive, voices that made no sense at all. Paulie tried to look only at the tiny tended lawns, ones with green crabgrass and purple irises. Paulie liked those and the tall chestnut trees that somebody must have planted many years ago.

            “It’s all so peaceful at night,” he tried to explain to his parents.

            “It’s not safe,” his dad said and puffed on his ever-present cigar. “You’re still a kid.”

            “Nobody sees me. I hide in the shadows. I count the streetlights. Sometimes I climb up on the statue of Charles Dickens.”

            “It has to stop,” Paulie’s mom said.

            But they all knew that it wouldn’t.

            That last night it ended. He snuck down the staircase and out onto the street. “My street,” Paulie said out loud, though nobody was around to hear him. He wandered across Baltimore Avenue into the park. He liked it in there at night, among the trees and the bronze statue of Charles Dickens, Little Nell at his feet. Paulie was surprised, though not frightened, when he saw the group of silent boys standing around the base of the statue. He continued walking toward them, still unafraid. Only when one of them shouted at him did Paulie begin to worry, and turned in a different direction. But the boys now ran toward him, and so Paulie also ran. But not fast enough. It was only then that he realized his parents had been right.