The Weatherman (one-shot)

[Gavin Luper]

Gday. Just something I wrote for Uni that I thought I'd share on here. Even though I've gone horrendously over the word limit - it's meant to be under 1000 words I think. It's written as an altered setting, altered point-of-view response to Anton Chekhov's "Misery". Also, I don't know what the go is when you're listing letters of the alphabet in the plural. Logic tells me it would be "there were many ps and vs and ys in his name", but it kind of hurts to look at, so I went for a different format.

Anyway, all comments and criticisms and stuff are greatly appreciated.

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The Weatherman

‘I’ve been noticing trends in taxi drivers who don’t know what I want …’ – Taxi Driver, Killing Heidi.

The weatherman had lied to me. As I emerged from the little Italian coffee shop on Main Street, rucksack slung over my shoulder and cardboard cup of coffee clutched in hand, my eyes drifted skyward, and I cursed loud enough for the passers-by to hear. The clouds had appeared out of nowhere; enormous, pewter-grey sacks of misery stalking across the morning sky, swallowing up what had been promised to me: a calm day, a periwinkle-blue sky day, a sitting-on-the-grass-in-the-sun day. The weatherman had cheated me this one precious day. On the radio this morning he’d declared we were in for sun and warmth, maybe a light wind. “No rain today!” he’d said, in between lists of reliable temperatures. It was easy to forget that he rested on predictions, assumptions – guesses, really – assuming he could read the signs better than the average man; that he alone was able to understand the weather.

I stared up at my misfortune for maybe three seconds. You can’t stand still on Main Street at eight-thirty on a Monday morning without being jostled. Protecting my coffee, I allowed the current of pedestrians to gradually carry me toward the roadside. I felt out of place here, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. All around me were suited businessmen, power walking to the office – and all of a sudden, I felt jealous of them, with their slicked back hair and indifferent expressions. Maybe they were all heartless corporate stooges – real cold, arrogant bastards – but at least all they had to worry about were shares and money and conference calls. It wasn’t in their nature to feel.

The flow of the throng eventually brought me to the verge. Shiny, late model cars sped past barely a foot from where I stood, their drivers full of direction and purpose and haste. A massive part of me didn’t want to join them. Another part of me, the piece that felt cheated by the weatherman, knew that I had to.

It took me a moment to muster up the courage to act. I wanted to stick two fingers in my mouth and whistle, like those cocky American guys do in movies – but I couldn’t whistle. I thought about shouting, “TAXI!” but over the chaotic roar of car engines and horns blaring I could’ve yelled, “FIRE!” and still no one would’ve heard me. In the end, I just stuck a silent arm out into the path of the oncoming vehicles, and within a minute, a little, pale yellow cab rolled to a stop right in front of me.

“Where to?” demanded the bald, moustached driver as I reached for the door handle.

“Davor Grove,” I said, slinging my backpack onto the back seat beside me.

The taxi driver nodded dolefully and merged back into the traffic. I wondered why he hadn’t been more enthused about taking a passenger to Davor Grove. It was a long drive, and I’d probably be paying him a large fee. Yet there was nothing but an unpleasant grimace on his sallow, doughy face. He looked foreign, maybe Eastern European or something. Maybe he was too new to the city to comprehend how far he would be driving me – how much he would be getting paid.

“Some music?” he said, quite suddenly, as we pulled up at a set of traffic lights. His voice, I now noticed, was heavily accented; and as he fiddled with the dials on the car radio, I caught sight of his driver’s ID affixed to the dash. There were a lot of ‘k’s and ‘v’s and ‘y’s in his name.

The driver eventually found a radio channel that wasn’t incomprehensible static: an acoustic guitar played as a gentle female voice sang, “An old man turned ninety-eight …” – then, suddenly, the static resumed. Apparently the driver wasn’t a fan. He finally settled on a station he liked. It must have been AM radio, or a community channel; it was simply a loud conversation between two men in a foreign, harsh-sounding language.

We drove a long way, until the bustle of the inner city fell away to the sluggishness of suburbia. I finished my coffee and slumped in my seat, my face pressed against the seat belt strap as I gazed, unseeing, through the window. It had taken strength to get into the taxi; I felt that it would take some kind of stoic miracle to disembark at my destination. Part of me wanted to melt into the faded brown vinyl of the taxi’s back seat and never be seen again. But the part of me that felt cheated by the weatherman knew that, shortly, I would have to disembark.

We were about five minutes from Davor Grove when the driver turned the volume down on his ethnic broadcast, looked in his mirror at me and said, “You remind me of my son.”

It took me a moment to understand what he had said, his accent was so thick. I hesitated to reply. I could only imagine this man’s son as being some kind of swarthy, sulky bloke; a gormless youth with the same monobrow as his father. I was fair skinned and clean-shaven, and my hair was spiked and bleached.

“Really?” I eventually said.

The taxi driver reached over to the radio and turned it off completely. “He has no beard, like you,” he said in a garbled rush. “He is a good man … He works down at the wharf, you see, driving a tip truck. He is a great worker, never took a day off work until last week, when he got sick … He is in hospital, you see …”

I was listening to the driver, surprised and awkward, when I noticed he had just driven straight past the exit for Davor Grove.

“What are you doing, you old idiot?” I cried. “You missed the turn!”

He mumbled something rapid in his own language before adding, “I’m sorry, my friend. I will turn around for you, it is not a worry. But about my son, this is a great worry, you see … He is very sick … they say he might die …”

“We’ll all die in the end,” I snapped harshly. There was no way I’d make it on time now: it would take at least ten minutes for the driver to correct his mistake, and I was going to have to pay for it.

It was well after nine-thirty when we pulled in at my destination. I paid the driver his money and, while he was fishing for change in his ashtray, he said, “What is your name?”

“Jeremy,” I said, holding my hand out to collect the change.

“My son’s name is Anton,” said the taxi driver.

I shrugged indifferently as I took the change and got out of the taxi. It rolled quietly down the narrow road that led away from the Davor Grove Cemetery. I watched it go and then, rucksack on my back, walked quickly to where my mother was buried. Her headstone was covered in dead autumn leaves. I brushed them off as I spoke to her.

“Hi Mum. Sorry I’m late,” I said softly, sweeping a golden-brown leaf off the stone with the side of my hand. “I wanted to be here at the same time that – that it happened. But the taxi driver who brought me here was selfish. He took a wrong turn and got lost, and it took an extra fifteen minutes to get here – all because he was trying to talk to me about his son. Not once did he ask why I was going to the cemetery. Some people don’t understand grief.”

There was a loud crack of thunder from the dark sky above, and I remembered how the weatherman had cheated me of my pleasant day with my mother. I withdrew a thin jacket from my rucksack and furled it around me as the cold rain began to fall. From the same bag I removed the small bouquet I’d purchased earlier and lay it gently before my mother. Before long, I was lost in conversation and prayer, asking my mother the usual questions and lamenting how it had now been a whole year. I didn’t even notice the rain falling all around me, all over those beautiful autumn leaves.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

Yes, well, I haven't heard of 'Misery' before, so I can't compare. But I do feel that the change of scenes - between the taxi drive and the cemetery - came sudden. But I think it may have been the purpose, to suddenly drop the fact that Davor Grove's a cemetary. Anyway, short as it is, it's a good story in its own right. I could really imagine the busy yuppies on the sidewalk bumping into the ill-tempered protagonist, and the beautiful autumn leaves. Well done.

As for the 'k's issue... I think you may have been right that it's supposed to be ks.

[mistysakura]

... this is the third time I'm typing this. The first time the whole street blacked out and the second time the browser shut down.

I enjoyed this. Hehe, I'm probably not supposed to interpret it this way, but I felt really sorry for the taxi driver. So Jeremy thinks some people don't udnerstand grief? Well, some people don't understand fatherly worry. I think they're even. I thought the imagery worked well; like Mike said, I could picture the rain falling on the autumn leaves and the indifference of the men in business suits. However, I thought Jeremy's stereotyping of the businessmen didn't feel reasonable enough for me to be able to relate to him. Also, some bits like the taxi driver tuning the radio seemed to have little significance. Another thing is, the stress over wanting to be there 'when it happened' seems a bit... self-indulgent. It seems like something I'd do -- just because I'm feeling sorry for myself.

Good job overall though. Although I couldn't really relate to Jeremy it's good to see a different perspective on things. Nice Killing Heidi plug too.

[Sike Saner]

Under the weight of grief, it can indeed be very easy to lose sight of the fact that grief happens to other people, too. It's also easy to forget that the tunnel-vision that comes with that kind of sorrow exists and fail to recognize it and its effects on a person. Case in point: I was rather pissed off at Jeremy for his insensitivity towards the taxi driver, and then when I found out why he was so fixed on reaching Davor Grove, I felt like kind of a heel for thinking so harshly about him. XD; Just as it didn't occur to him that there might be an understandable reason why the driver was preoccupied, it didn't occur to me that maybe Jeremy had an understandable reason for being so rude. ^^;

The preoccupation that grief (as well as the weight of the knowledge that someone is about to be lost) can cause is captured brilliantly here, and through a writing style that really brings the characters and setting to life. The ending was a great surprise--again, it didn't even remotely occur to me that Jeremy might be going to a cemetary.

Highlights and et cetera:

The clouds had appeared out of nowhere; enormous, pewter-grey sacks of misery stalking across the morning sky, swallowing up what had been promised to me: a calm day, a periwinkle-blue sky day, a sitting-on-the-grass-in-the-sun day.

I always like to see that sort of thing in text. ^^

The flow of the throng eventually brought me to the verge. Shiny, late model cars sped past barely a foot from where I stood, their drivers full of direction and purpose and haste. A massive part of me didn’t want to join them. Another part of me, the piece that felt cheated by the weatherman, knew that I had to.

I'm citing that there as an example of how awesome this writing style is due to the way that the surroundings and events are described--the way Jeremy's observations and thoughts intertwine. First-person seems to lend itself to that sort of thing very well, and you've definitely made use of that fact to great effect in this story.

The driver eventually found a radio channel that wasn’t incomprehensible static: an acoustic guitar played as a gentle female voice sang, “An old man turned ninety-eight …”

And now I have Alanis singing that in a continuous loop in my mind. XD Good thing I like that song.

“Hi Mum. Sorry I’m late,” I said softly, sweeping a golden-brown leaf off the stone with the side of my hand. “I wanted to be here at the same time that – that it happened. But the taxi driver who brought me here was selfish. He took a wrong turn and got lost, and it took an extra fifteen minutes to get here – all because he was trying to talk to me about his son. Not once did he ask why I was going to the cemetery. Some people don’t understand grief.”

I love the irony in what he's saying there...

[Lady Vulpix]

Painfully ironic, yes. And nicely written too.

It is true, many people tend to think they're the only ones who suffer... or the only ones who have feelings at all, and get mad when they receive the same treatment they give others. Like how he said "we'll all die in the end" but he felt in a completely different way when that applied to someone he loved.

Sad... but good point.