RONNY RACER

PART ONE.

TESTING MY DRAFT

WROTE THIS STORY YEARS AGO, BUT OVER 4500 WORDS SO AM TYPING IT INTO A FEW PARTS. HERE GOES.

Ronny Racer was a town oddity.She observed him in the coffee shop once in a while.He was peculiar but Norma liked him.He was sweet and thoughtful. A big kid really, bringing his own provisions to the cafe. He made people stop and stare as he stirred white powdered creamer into his coffee.That stuff, even the lawyers at Osgoode Hall wouldn’t touch, she’d overheard one day.

Ronny lived alone with his all gray cat cat call Rocky. At least it was another heartbeat in the place he guffawed to Norma as she served coffee to him in his beat up silver mug.

Christmas loomed.

She had seen Ronny a few days before, wondering if he would get a turkey dinner. He wasn’t interested in the local church dinners, besides he had an invite from his brother who lived on a farm outside of town.

Norma tucked this in the back of her mind curious what other singles were doing. She dropped into a new place that served cheap food to homeless people, asking if the woman who survived by fundraising, if she might need help during the season.

While she would have liked to put on a free dinner, unless someone donated a turkey, that would not happen. Many of the townspeople did not care for the venture so near the new expensive theatre area. Local churches wouldn’t help. Not their mandate. Not their ministry.

Ronny would drop in for a bagel. He usually paid, avoided food banks, surviving on his disability, refusing cat food handouts from the Humane Society. He managed.

The morning before he left, Norma saw him in the cafe. He planned to go on his ten speed, his brother would bring him back in the truck. Norma was a little concerned, while it wasn’t snowing the temperature had dropped to minus four over night. He seemed confident to make the twenty the twenty mile trip. After all he’d been in a hundred mile race years before.

Norma looked at him. He was top heavy, an enormous man. Rambo style headband shoved over shoulder length unruly blonde, grey root hair. Funny grin revealing missing back teeth. He waved goodbye, as Norma ran up a prayer, watching him unchain his ten speed racer.

Suddenly, Dan a very pleasant looking man wearing tan slacks and a doeskin jacket entered. He brought his breakfast to the table beside hers. She always sat in the quiet corner and teasingly said,

“You know if you sit here, you have to do the dishes. This is the staff corner.”

This struck Dan funny and they immediatly fell into deep conversation. He surprised her when he said he drove transport. He didn’t fit the profile. Too well educated, too sophisticated, wearing soft soled Hush Puppies.

Must be some kind of courier, she thought. He lived in Peterborough. His runs where from the states, east from Michigan. He was on a layover. He’d sleep all day, then drive to Montreal. He made her laugh when he asked if she thought if people from Michigan where called Michuginas.TO BE CONTINUED…