I got a job at an aluminum window frame factory so I could buy nice clothes to impress a girl who didn’t really like me that much. She liked that I had a motorcycle and would take her to stores where she could steal albums. I liked it that without a word from me she knew to hold her hand behind her over my license plate when we burned away from the mall, in case store security had followed her out.

The factory job wasn’t too bad. I’m surprised they hired me, what with my long hair. I probably caught some slack because they figured I would be getting shot at in Vietnam soon anyway. I didn’t tell anybody that I was ready for that—that I was a good shot with a rifle and a pistol and figured I could come out looking good for saving people when they went jumpy.

The water fountain at the factory was in the room where scrap aluminum was re-melted, and there were big splotches of hardened metal on the wall above it—thrown there when forklifts dumped loads of scrap into the furnace trough. Workers tended to drink fast and move on. The big machine that squeezed frame pieces out through a die was in the room next to that one. It was the size of a locomotive and had miles of roller belts in front of it. I worked in shipping with a gray-haired man who smelled like a Christmas tree, where we wrapped bundles of aluminum pieces in brown paper and taped them up.

Suzy kissed in a real busy way but was easily distracted. Her mother sometimes walked in when we were on the couch in the living room, but she drank so much that by the time she could see what we were doing we weren’t doing it anymore. It always took a long time after that to build back up to where we had left off. I liked music fine but it was tops for Suzy and second for me. She was real smart. I mean, she could say things in French and she could tell you all about what great musicians owned.

I got my first two-week check and went to a clothing resale shop—nice stuff, not like a regular thrift store. I got a Nehru shirt and a gray-brown sports jacket, and some pointy black shoes with zippers on the sides.

It was strange, riding my motorcycle in those clothes, and when I walked up to her front door I almost didn’t knock. I liked the clothes all right, but part of me seemed to be standing to the side looking at them. I felt like some dumbass about to go to a jazz festival. But I knocked and Suzy opened up and said wow and I followed her to the couch. I could tell right away—I was good at seeing it way ahead—that she wanted to break up. I didn’t have much fight in me at that moment so I just sat there, waiting for it. She says, So what’s with the outfit? I shrugged. Told her that I had gotten a job so I could buy some nice clothes to wear when I’d earned enough to take her out to dinner and a movie. And then I threw in some stuff about almost getting killed at work, and about how the only thing keeping me going was the thought of building my own house someday and maybe having a family.

I couldn’t believe how just saying that turned everything around 360 degrees. Suzy put her hand on my cheek, looking all musical, and said, You did that for me? And all of a sudden I felt lucky, like I was in a whole new place.

Of course she came right back around to her original feeling. But it was worth it in the long run because I learned how useful a sad story can be when you’re not making any headway, and made-up things can work just as well as the other.

All the comforts of home in Nam, except at work. The music was good. We played it loud so maybe the enemy could hear what they were missing. If they cared about our sound though, it was only because it told them right where we were.

When I got back, everybody I knew seemed to have spread out all over the country.

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas with his wife, Cindy, whom he met 45 years ago.

Daryl is the author of a collection of flash literature, The Light I Want to Keep (MacQ, December 2024); The Scold’s Romance: A Story in Prose Poems (No. 3 in The Ravenna Triple Series; Ravenna Press, 2012); This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press, 2008); Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press, 2003); and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest).

His fictions, poems, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies around the country and abroad, including *82 Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blink-Ink, Carolina Quarterly, Chiron Review, Cutbank, Dime Show Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Egress, elimae, Fiction Southeast, Green Mountains Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Flash Fiction Review, New York Tyrant, Northwest Review, Portland Review, Quarter After Eight, The Quarterly, Quick Fiction, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Vigilance, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 25, September 2024); nominated by MacQ for The Pushcart Prize L

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol