Enjoy this brief excerpt from the short story, “Double B Coming and Going”
Who gives a boy a name like that growing up in a teeny, tiny river town of less than a thousand residents in Jefferson County, Missouri? With most boys running around the softball field with names like Jimmy and Johnny and Timmy and Tommy, Boyce Brady didn’t have half a chance but to stand out as different.
But different would finally be OK where he was heading in a few days. At 19, Boyce Brady would break away from his grandmother’s clutches, board a bus and become who he was always meant to be, though he wasn’t even sure yet what that was. “Gamma.” he’d said to his grandma Ronnie, “I’m a misfit in this town and I’ve got places to go, new people to meet. People who will understand me and like me for me. I’m not gonna be no ‘Double B Coming and Going’ no more!”
He had made that declaration at Christmas just before his last semester at Festus Senior High. His mom had wanted her unusual son to attend St. Pius X High School, but she’d passed away just after his fourteenth birthday and there was no money for such things in Grandma Ronnie’s estimation. Public school would be good enough for Boyce, she decided, maybe even straighten up his quirks. Toughen him up.
. . .
© 2020, Mary Corbin. No reprints without permission.
“Double B Coming and Going” is part of the Life Lines, Volume I short story collection, available for purchase on Amazon. An abbreviated version of this story was published in Written Tales, January 2021.
Featured painting by Mary Corbin: “Eye on the Ball #1.”
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