Chrome Bits Were Gleaming

Cheta could have walked back the whole day, folded it into bed with him and rested on the many pillows he did not need but he would have missed so much. All the waves he caught at the beach that morning. The warmth of the old woman at the coffee shop who always added a free snack to his order even though he never asks for it. “Well, you are like my son”, she would simply say as though that was explanation enough. In turn, he would fold some cash and push it into the tip jar, ignoring her protests when she was there to protest. This was the game they played. It was a lesson for him too, learning how to love in this way, where the competition was about who could outdo who. The love he had known… He would not miss that. Fama was another person he had grown fond of.  Everyone called him Fama because he would not tell anyone his name. The man’s green thumbs were the stuff of magic. He could grow anything and he did. Lush fruit, big vegetables that he sold for half the price. “It costs a lot to live”, Fama would say. “I’m just helping out, it helps me too.” The 4ft man whose age was anyone’s guess did make life a lot easier. Then there was his personal alarm clock, the boy who delivered the newspapers, “Uncle Cheta! You need to read what is happening in the country”. Cheta had long stopped asking why Daily read his papers first. The news did sound a lot more dramatic when a 14-year-old screams it into your bedroom window first thing in the morning. The people on this island were just like that. Moving here a year ago, he wasn’t expecting to find family, driving along the coastline about to crash into a truck, he wasn’t expecting to leave them so soon.