COWBOY
MICRO STORY
Into the shadows walked a cowboy. He carried a set of crutches in his left hand and a jumbo bottle of soda in the right. Three liters at least. Car after car rumbled overhead as he ambled under the 93 overpass. They mocked his old-fashioned hat and his just-off-a-horse way of walking. The crutches though, they gave him away, insinuating that their had been no horse under him today. The fact that he carried them suggested he was at the end of his recovery, or perhaps he was faking. Maybe the fall from the terrible horse never happened. The gasping crowd, the crunch of bone as he landed hard - all a convenient fiction. Maybe he just wanted to be left alone to drink his soda and the crutches made that possible. Normally, a cowboy would never be seen with that much soda. A single can, sure but only after many, many beers. In the crutches was a freedom to be who he imagined himself to be, not who the wide-brimmed hat demanded he be. Not whom the crowds cheered for if there ever were any crowds at all.