From a Dead Sleep by John A. Daly

want to know what happened?”
    Sean glanced over the boy’s shoulder to look for his uncle. What was taking him so long?
    “Sure,” said Sean out of nothing more than morbid curiosity and a need to pass the time.
    “Mr. Kenny was coming out of French’s Pharmacy and walked right onto the sidewalk without looking both ways,” the boy relayed. “I couldn’t stop my bike in time and my forward progress was just too much to prevent a head-on collision. I’ve needed new brakes for some time now, you know. His mailbag of letters dropped all over the sidewalk. I tried to help him pick them up, but he wouldn’t let me. He had a few colorful words for me, though—none of which my mom would want me repeating. I told him he should have looked both ways, because he really should have. I also asked him if he had updated his glasses prescription within the last year. People should have their eyes checked on an annual basis, you know. Do you know what he told me?”
    “What?”
    “To mind my own business.”
    As awkward and as bothersome as Toby often was to Sean, the boy every once in a while found a way to unintentionally amuse him.
    “You’re a wild man, Toby,” Sean said with a slight smirk.
    Toby smiled, his eyes aligned directly with Sean’s.
    The tap of a car horn caused both of their heads to turn.
    “There’s my man!” greeted a friendly, elderly male voice over the roar of a loud truck engine. “How’s it going, Toby?”
    “Hi, Mr. Hansen!” replied the boy, retaining his smile and gazing out along the hood of the light-blue Ford pickup as it pulled up to the street corner perpendicular to the parking lot.
    An older but distinguished-looking gentleman proudly wearing a tall, straw cowboy hat flashed a charming smile at the boy through the open window. Well-kept, long silver sideburns trailed down both sides of his face. A matching goatee added a certain dignified element to his appearance—like a redneck Sean Connery. His license plate, surrounded by a shiny chrome frame below the grill, read MRGUARD —a cheap plug for Sean’s uncle’s security service.
    With a long toothpick angled out of the side of his mouth and a cunning shift of his eyes, he warned, “Don’t let that bum borrow your bike, Toby! He looks a bit cagey!”
    Toby’s high-pitched laughter resembled more of a cackle as the boy’s cheeks turned red and he glanced at Sean for a reaction. Sean displayed none.
    Sean lifted himself upright with a loud grunt and slapped dust from his pant legs. Without so much as a farewell to the young boy, he scurried out along the front of the truck, tracing his hand along the hood, and made his way around to the passenger door.
    “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he muttered to his uncle as the right side of the truck lowered from his weight as he got in.
    The car door slammed shut.
    Toby stood up on his tiptoes, straddling his bike and grasping the handlebars in front of him. “Goodbye, Sean!” he yelled.
    Sean’s only acknowledgment was the raise of a brow. It wasn’t visible through the glaze of the dusty windshield.
    Toby’s hand waved feverishly and enthusiastically. Zed rolled up his window and returned the gesture with a wink. He then turned to Sean with a disapproving scowl.
    “What?” Sean said in reply before turning his head away from the judging pair of eyes.
    As the large truck left the curb with a roar, Toby Parker’s bell rang out diligently through the air, as if it was signaling that dinner was ready. Zed watched him through his rearview mirror, observing the boy continuing to excitedly wave and ring. Toby kept up the salute all the way until the truck turned the corner and he had drifted from sight.
    “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to be a little friendlier to that boy,” Zed suggested, arching a brow. “He idolizes you.”
    “No one asked him to.”
    After a quick glance at his uncle, Sean leaned forward and twisted a brass knob on the dashboard’s A.M. radio.