Breaker Boys
by Avitus B. Carle
We hear Timmy cry for his mommy which makes us laugh until it doesn't. Until the conveyor belt sputters and the coal starts jumping and all that's left of Timmy is the sole of his shoe. Some of us will remember the sound of his bones being shuffled and sorted and rejected like the tobacco our fathers chew. Some of us will know who Timmy is while others will pretend to have never forgotten. He was the boy with blonde hair after you cleaned the coal from him. The boy missing his thumb from his right hand. The boy who skipped out back when he really had to pee. The mama's boy. The shortest boy. The weirdest, simplest, dough body, doe-eyed boy.
After the whistle blows and we count how many of our fingers have survived the day, we agree that Timmy will be the last boy. We scale the rooftops of the people who can afford chimneys and whistle to their sweepers. We tell them about Timmy. They tell us about Martin who, one day, just quit breathing. About Elliot and Aaron and their Timmy who all have fallen from rooftops. We spit into the palms of our hands and shake and agree that they will be the last boys before asking the chimney sweeps how we climb down.
We wake before we are supposed to and witness the paper boys gathering. Listen to them mispronounce “extra” and how their voices climb to say “read all about it” though we know that most of them can’t. We tell them about Timmy, ask if anyone will read about him? The tallest of them, wearing a hat made from newspaper, steps forward and tells us no. He tells us about Lewis, who was hit by a car, wandering the streets after too many early mornings and too little sleep. About Henry, poisoned by ink. About Lonny who they teased about his long legs until the boss caught him and beat him for being late too many times in a row. Lewis would wake him because he couldn’t tell time, he says. Hardly any of us can.
We live by whistles and bosses and the fathers we never want to become.
We want to be boys. Just boys. Boys who scream. Boys who fight, who bruise and scar and control how we bruise and scar. Boys who tease. Boys who steal. Boys who apologize while our mothers twist our ears. We spit into the palms of our hands and shake and agree that they will be the last.
We hear the call of our work whistle summon us and we enter the streets howling and growling. We show off our hands and all the fingers we’ve lost. We tear off our shirts and reveal our scars. Our bruises. Our pain.
The chimney sweeps gallop on rooftops, sprouting like flowers, their footsteps like rain.
The paper boys turn their papers into planes, striking the eyes of our bosses.
We will be fired. We will be punished. We will be hated and ignored by our fathers. But, unlike Elliot and Aaron and Martin and Henry and Lewis and Lonny and chimney Timmy and our Timmy, tomorrow, we will still be boys.
Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as K.B. Carle, her flash has been published in a variety of places including Five South, F(r)iction, Okay Donkey Magazine, Lost Balloon, CHEAP POP, and elsewhere. Avitus's flash, "Black Bottom Swamp Bottle Woman," was recently selected as one of Wigleaf's 2023 Top 50, and her experimental flash, "Abernathy_Resume.docx," was included in the 2022 Best of the Net anthology. Her story, "A Lethal Woman," will be included in the 2022 Best Small Fictions anthology. She can be found online at avitusbcarle.com or on Twitter @avitusbcarle.