Michael Hearst

02:30 pm

A.D.D.

by Michael Hearst

             My grades were slipping.  Chemistry and English didn’t interest me.  I ignored the teacher’s lectures and spent the majority of class doodling in my notebooks.  My mother was concerned about my poor performance in school and sent me to a therapist.  Dr. Rubin immediately diagnosed me with Attention Deficit Disorder and prescribed Ritalin.  He said by taking twenty milligrams a day, my focus would come back and my grades would, most likely, improve.  Within a couple days, the Ritalin kicked in, and my doodling became much more elaborate.

02:20 pm

Bullseye

by Michael Hearst

            My father and I sat in the living room watching Family Ties.  A fly sporadically buzzed by our heads.  Eventually it stopped moving and clung to the wall behind the television. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my dad remove the rubber band from his newspaper.  I watched as he stretched the rubber band from the tip of his index finger and pointed toward the fly.  At lightning speed, the rubber band shot across the room.  The fly’s lifeless body dropped with the rubber band to the brick ledge in front of the fireplace.
            “Did you see that!” my dad said.
            “Holy crap!” I exclaimed at the same time.
            Then we turned our attention back to the television.

01:59 pm

Question

by Michael Hearst

             One day while I was shopping at the Park Slope Food Coop, a young man with thick glasses and long, curly side locks approached me and asked if I was Jewish.  I could tell he was on the verge of handing me a printed piece of paper—most likely propaganda for a nearby synagogue.

            I asked, “Why do you want to know if I’m Jewish?”

            He said, “Ah, now I know you’re Jewish.  You just answered a question with a question.” 

            He dropped the flyer into my shopping cart and walked away.

01:59 pm

Stick Pile

by Michael Hearst

             I stopped working on my yard and watched a white car pull up in the alley behind my house.  A young man wearing a uniform got out and walked toward me with a piece of paper.
            “What’s this?” I asked.
            “It’s a court summons,” he said with authority.
            “A court summons?”
            “Yes, sir.”
            “For what?”
            “You see that pile of sticks over there,” he said pointing to a small mound of entangled branches lying on the ground—the debris from a recent apple tree pruning.  “You can’t leave that stuff in your yard like that.”
            “What do you mean?  It’s my yard.”
        “It don’t matter.  You leave piles of sticks around like that and it becomes a nuisance for everyone.” His voice had quickly become defensive and louder.
            “A nuisance for everyone?”
            “That’s right.  It’s a perfect nesting ground for all kinds of critters.  Soon enough, rats will come and lay eggs in there.  And then it’s a problem for all your neighbors too.”

01:57 pm

Library

by Michael Hearst

       When I was a child my mother would take me to the Virginia Beach public library.  Not only were books available for check-out, but so were puzzles, board games, and small statues.  On one particular visit, my mother let me check out a small ceramic statue of a cat.  At home, I placed the cat above the television in the den.  Two weeks later, we returned the ceramic cat to the library.

01:56 pm

Brooklyn Diner

by Michael Hearst

             When I first moved to Brooklyn, I had breakfast one morning at a Greek diner in Park Slope.  Hand written on a paper plate, taped to a wall, was the following item: 

SKITAS $3.50

              I asked the waitress, “What’s a skita?” 

            She looked confused, so I pointed at the paper plate taped to the wall.  The waitress then said, “Lemme check,” and disappeared into the kitchen.  A different waitress came to my table and took my order.

              Two weeks later, I went back to the same diner.  The paper plate had been removed from the wall.

01:56 pm

Nick's Backyard

by Michael Hearst

             Nick was waiting for me in the cul-de-sac when I got off the school bus.
            “How come you didn’t go to school today?” I asked.
            “You gotta check this out!” he said ignoring my question.
            “What is it?”
            “Just come see this.  I promise you’ve never seen nothin’ like it before.”
            I followed him to his house, and together we walked around to his backyard.
            All the grass was charred black like a giant piece of burnt toast.  The remnants of a garden hose snaked around the yard like a baked worm.  A blackened rake handle still attached to a melted blob of green plastic rested against the side of the house.
            “What the hell happened?”  I asked.
            “I made a torch out of a stick and a rag, and was swinging it around the yard.  Somehow the grass caught and it just started spreading.  I couldn’t stop it.  I had to call the fire department and everything.”
            “Holy shit!” I said.  “Do your parents know?”
            “Not yet.  They don’t even know I skipped school.”
            “Holy shit!” I said again.

01:55 pm

Saturday Mornings

by Michael Hearst

             On Wednesday evenings, I would call each house on my list and take orders.  Six onion, two pumpernickel, two raisin, and three plain—a typical order—a baker’s dozen.  On Saturday morning at eight a.m., my mother would drive me to Mr. Hanwit’s bagel shop on Virginia Beach Boulevard where I would pick up the orders and place them in the back of our Chevy Citation.  My mother would then drive me from house to house and wait in the car while I ran up and delivered the brown paper bags full of steaming bagels.  My friends all had regular jobs—mowing neighbor’s yards, cleaning gutters, and delivering newspapers.  I had a bagel route. 

01:54 pm

Greyhound

by Michael Hearst

            The fat lady sitting next to me smelled like stale cigarettes.  For three hours she bobbed her head to heavy metal music that leaked through her Panasonic headphones.  When the bus finally got to downtown Washington, D.C. and came to a stop at an intersection, the fat lady turned off her CD player and spoke out loud for all of the passengers to hear.  She pointed out the window and said in a thick rural North Carolina accent, “Look!  Thayat sign says ‘No Standin!’”  I refused to look, not wanting to encourage her further.  The woman spastically laughed and coughed at the same time—phlegm gurgled in her chest.  She continued without clearing her throat, “Aye guess they have a lotta homeless people who just stayand around or somein!” 

01:49 pm

Halloween

by Michael Hearst

             The kids came to my porch in ones, twos, fours, fives and sevens.  As they approached, I spoke into my Radio Shack microphone with a deep, gruff, demonic voice which was then layered with reverb and delay by an effects processor and blasted through a guitar amplifier with the volume knob turned to six.  The kids would laugh and scream, some trying to figure out how I was making the horrifying voice, some simply taking their candy and running off to the next house, others too scared to even approach.  As the night continued, at some point, a young mother escorting her small boy stood in front of me.

            “Go ahead,” the mother said in a gentle whisper.

            As the boy nervously took steps toward me, I spoke into my microphone.

            “WHAT DO YOU SAY!” my voice blasted from the obnoxious PA system.

            The child froze.  His eyes grew enormous.  His entire body shook.

            He mumbled, “I love you?”