prompt: gem, title: lake woebegon on opposite day in misc. flash fiction

I don’t think she meant anything cruel when she said it, I had little doubt toward her sincerity.

“You should run for Alderman,” she said as I left the booth, “your grandfather and dad were both Alderman and they were both quite good at it. We need new blood from the South Side, it’s your family tradition.” I was nearly-certain that the sweet little old lady who checked if our signatures matched our registrations was being genuine, but that made it even worse. Had she seemed to be aiming for purposeful cruelty, I would’ve blurted something flippant or just ignored her and left. Telling her the simple truth of why I couldn’t do that, however, would have been twice the dick move as if her comments had been made with intentional malice.

How could I tell her even in private, let alone in the church gymnasium, how the cops had been stalking my mom, looking to nail her with traffic citations as an intimidation tactic? Or the way they seemed to always find a way to harass my brother and I whenever we were walking along the bike path? Just because Dad had the gall to ask why they were all getting new bulletproofed vests every year, when they hadn’t fired in the line of duty in a century. Just because he had the idealism and naivety to point out how the money from that and the stupid goddamn golf course that only served as a nucleation point for business douchebags might be off better going to the schools or the library or something.
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If she knew how they’d framed him for selling liquor to a minor, laid off from the rifle factory, working odd jobs so he could feed us. If she’d known they said they’d press charges if he didn’t agree to not run again, she would never have said that to my face. Let alone how his accuser was a bully from my very own class, who the constabulary had popped for running over tombstones in the city graveyard with a snowmobile. They told him he could get off scot-free if he accused my dad of a crime he didn’t commit. Don’t worry about that bully, though, he was later gunned down in Phoenix at the age of thirty-four. Probably crossed someone less forgiving than myself.

It only took a split-second to generate a softer response, even as I relived that whole traumatical stretch the same. Remembering why I’m so cynical about politics, about the idea of leadership at all, why I’ll never be that guy, even if I’d probably be good at it. “If you ever read the dirty jokes I write on Twitter, you’d know why I could never stand for public office.” It was only partially a falsehood, one of those lies you make by putting two truths together at a ninety-degree angle to each other. My last words to her were simply “There are some gems on there, let me tell you.”