Lawnmower Toothpick

The old black man with big glasses mowing the lawn in the park is rounding a patch of grass he’s probably covered more than twenty times since he left his job at the computer parts factory down on Carlie Street in 04. A solitary toothpick now hangs from the crease of his mouth, his sticky lips graced with a rim of sweat that lingers on the tips of his mustache stubble like little vultures, ready to pounce on the juicy bottom lip that Cleo calls Juicy Fruit.

Lost in a daze of monotony, he stares blankly at the park-enthusiasts that swarm past him like soldiers with important personal missions; a couple walking briskly in track suits, a pudgy twelve-or-so boy on a scooter, a plain-looking college student on a bike. He was never much of an athlete himself, but now he chuckles with the grade-school memories of P.E. baseball and the time he hit Tommy Carter with the bat on the back-swing and the time he slid into home base so fast he caught even Sarah-Beth’s attention and she was the prettiest girl he knew.

Not so many years ago, he was riding his navy blue Oldsmobile down Grand and he thought he saw Sarah-Beth even though he knew in the pit of his gut she was off somewhere in Arizona with some other fellow and that was just okay. That was probably the same day he got rear-ended by the high-strung woman in the purple floral dress on Olive behind the grocery store. If it weren’t for the precariously placed street pole, or the yellow light or the fast-paced song on the radio, he would have skidded straight flat into the middle of the intersection, but as some greater power willed it he lost only a chip of bone in his right knee which gave birth to a humble limp which Cleo called Darling.

He sucks in a quick breath of air before turning back on the engine of his four-wheeled mower -- its deafening, cow-like groan now tumbling from the depths of its mechanical belly. Grass grazes the black footpath to his left and a man walking lets out a surprisingly-high-pitched sneeze. He gnaws more on his toothpick and gets lost again in the sounds of his memories and the thought of what’s for dinner and Cleo and the doctors appointment he's got on Thursday.