Handle With Care
A flash fiction super short story
He was standing at the edge of the baseball field, near the fence where the weeds grew taller than the benches. Barefoot. Skinny legs all knobby and scratched. The shirt hung off him like a curtain. Gray, with cracked letters across the chest — Top Shelf Auto, Est. 1982.
I’d come out to smoke. The kind of morning where the heat hadn’t set in yet but you could feel it crouching low, ready to pounce. I watched him for a minute. He wasn’t moving, just staring out toward second base like he was waiting for someone to slide in.
“You alright?” I said.
He looked over, slow. Like I’d pulled him out of something.
“You lost?”
“No,” he said. Then, after a beat, “Maybe.”
I walked closer. He didn’t flinch. Eyes like unwashed marbles.
“You live around here?”
He shook his head.
I nodded toward the shirt. “That yours?”
He looked down at it like he’d forgotten it was there. “It was my dad’s.”
I squatted to his level. The dirt was soft, still wet from the sprinklers. “Where’s your dad now?”
He blinked at me. “Gone.”
“Gone like… out for milk? Or gone like not coming back?”
He didn’t answer. Just reached down and pinched the hem of the shirt, twisting it between his fingers.
“I can call someone,” I said. “Police, if you want. Or we can sit a while.”
He sat. Cross-legged. Like he’d just been waiting for permission.
I sat too. Lit a cigarette and kept it angled away from him.
After a few minutes, he said, “When I wear it, I can see things.”
“What kind of things?”
He shrugged, but his mouth was tight. Like he was bracing for disbelief.
“Memories,” he said. “His. I can see what he saw.”
The smoke hung in my throat a second too long.
“Like what?”
He stared out again, to the spot between second and third.
“He worked in a garage. Same shirt. Same heat. Radio always on too loud.” He smiled, barely. “He used to hum along even when he didn’t know the words.”
I flicked ash into the dirt. “That a memory or a dream?”
He looked at me. “It smelled like grease and warm grape soda. The kind that’s been sitting in the cupholder too long. And he had this cut on his thumb that never healed right.”
I didn’t say anything. He went on.
“There’s one where he’s driving. Not far. Just down this old road with no lines. Windows down. He keeps tapping the steering wheel like he’s nervous.”
I took another drag. “You ever see him cry?”
He didn’t seem surprised by the question. “Once. In a church parking lot. Nobody was around.”
“And you think these are real?”
“I know they are,” he said.
We sat there. Wind picked up. Smelled like dust and distant rain.
He said, “He left before I was born. My mom said he wasn’t ready.”
“That’s how some men are.”
“She gave me the shirt last week. Said I was old enough to know.”
“To know what?”
He looked down again. “That he wasn’t coming back. Not even in the mail.”
There was a bench nearby. I motioned to it. He followed me over. Sat close, but not too close.
I said, “You see anything good? In the memories?”
“Sometimes. One time he was just eating fries in a truck bed, talking to someone I couldn’t see. He was laughing. I could feel it. Not the sound… just the feeling.”
I nodded. “That’s a good one.”
He looked up at me, sudden-like. “Do you think it’s weird?”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s sad. But not weird.”
We sat a while longer. The sun started to stretch. Light fell through the fence and made stripes on his arms.
“You want me to call anyone?” I asked again.
He thought about it. “Do you have a car?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you just drive me a little? I think it helps.”
I didn’t ask what “it” was.
We got in my truck. I let the engine idle for a bit before shifting into gear.
“Where to?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he pointed. “That way.”
We drove in silence. He held the shirt tight around him like it might dissolve if he let go.
After ten minutes he said, “He used to go fishing. Not for fish. Just to sit.”
I nodded. “I know the kind.”
He smiled again. This time it held.
At the edge of town, he told me to stop. There was a field, half-grown with wild grass and tire tracks that faded into nothing.
“This is it,” he said.
He got out and walked a few feet ahead. Stood there like he was listening.
I stayed in the truck.
After a while, he came back.
“You see something?” I asked.
He nodded. “He was here once. Sat on the hood and watched the sun go down.”
He looked back out.
“I think I just wanted to know he had moments like that.”
He got in, pulled the door shut soft.
We didn’t talk much on the way back.
I dropped him near the gas station on Miller, where he said his aunt worked. She wasn’t there, but the cashier knew her and promised to call.
Before he went inside, he turned back to me.
“You think memories can live in clothes?”
I shrugged. “Of course. They’re there when you’re making memories.”
He nodded, satisfied.
Then he was gone.
Next day I found the shirt in the truck bed, folded neat.
No note. Just that soft gray cotton, still warm from the sun.