Dairy Queen (1907 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.81 on 10 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Rumpleforeskin (View user info) at 2006-07-12 11:03:42 EDT
The five o'clock whistle blares as Billy packs up his tools. Today is a day that is like any other, only with a date of remembrance. Fifteen years to the day was when he became an outsider in a town that could hear a neighbor cough.
It was a dimly lit afternoon in July, warm enough to not go shirtless if you choose. Gliding over the tumbling countryside on a Saturday afternoon Billy decided to crack his first beer. This beer would accompany sixteen more.
Most of the consumption came when he was at the local Dairy Queen. It was not out of the norm for people to partake in these types of festivities. Billy was also a deputy sheriff so he knew that breaking the law was in his jurisdiction.
Town folk came and went this afternoon until dusk started to fall. People's orders transformed from "burger with a side of fries" to the prototypical "Reese Cup Blizzard" through the window.
Billy could hide his actual state of being. He was drunk, but kept a collected demeanor whenever approached by a fellow townsperson. They saw him drinking, but they didn't take notice of the collection of empties lying in the floorboard of his Oldsmobile.
Beatrice cut her knee today. It was a scrape that would scar and would remain for the rest of her life. Volleyball. It is a sport that would beat the toughest of women but kept them coming back for more punishment.
Beatrice was the next hope of making it out of this town on a scholarship. The last was Bruce "Captain" Peters who went to Kent State on a scholarship to compete on the tennis squad. Everyone hoped she would go further than Bruce. Unfortunately he was an innocent bystander in the events that took place after Nixon's disbursement of the National Guard.
Beatrice had a world of fortune ahead of her. She was young, beautiful, and tenacious. She was a smart girl to boot. It can be said that she was definitely the favorite for the prom queen ballot.
She already had her choices as to where she would attend school. Harvard, Yale, Penn were some of the few. She kept hearing from her family to go to a bigger school to express her athletic ability. She didn't care about that. She wanted to just use sports as a means to get her education paid for. She had aspirations to move her family out of the small town and take her mother to the big city of New York where she had always dreamed of visiting.
It didn't matter that Beatrice had to help out around the farm. She looked at her early rise to tend to the cows as a life testament of hard work. It prepped her for prosperity.
After practice on this July afternoon, she decided to swing by the local Dairy Queen for a Misty Float.
Billy puts his tools in the back of his Oldsmobile. With the same sigh that strikes at 5:05 he moves the steering column down to a comfortable position. He knows that he has to perform his normal detour on the way home, the reason being that he can't take riding the quickest route to his house. He has to avoid that spot, that changed a town, that changed lives, which changed him.
The same temptation to drink a beer after a hard day is followed with a nauseating feeling a vomiting. It was this day in July, fifteen years ago he make a grave mistake. Instead of killing himself in a bath of alcoholism he stole a precious life. The Dairy Queen will remain the spot of torment. Billy never faced one day of imprisonment. After all, he was the deputy.
He did, however, face a reoccurring life of nightmares. The day he made that mistake to drive six miles to his home, sixteen beers deep.
Beatrice will be solidified in memory as a talent that could have fled this small town and possibly bring reporters one day to ask of the childhood of such a wonderful person. It is a similar memory that was left for "Captain" Peters several years ago. No one knows what would have happened for Beatrice, they only know what did.
Billy pulled out of that Dairy Queen and never looked back. Made it home and passed out from the alcohol. The next day he wondered why the Dairy Queen was closed, he wondered why people were gathered. He wondered why there were flowers and he wondered why he was receiving the glares that he did as he drove by.
He looked at the front page of the paper as he sipped his first cup of coffee at his job. The cup proceeded to allow the coffee to slash on the floor as he read, "Beatrice Murphy Killed in Dairy Queen Parking Lot By Drunk Driver".
User Reviews
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-07-25 13:00:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Pure, unadulterated crap.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-07-13 12:30:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm trying to figure out how this has so many hits but then I just figured it was fat fucking America looking for the menu.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2006-07-13 12:26:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Not very good, but better than your usual verbal diarrhea.
Submitted by mles76 (user info) at 2006-07-13 12:19:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Pretty good read
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2006-07-12 12:20:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-07-12 12:14:02 (#)
Ranking: 1
way better than your normal shit. work on the grammar and this'd be great.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-07-12 12:14:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
way better than your normal shit. work on the grammar and this'd be great.
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-07-12 11:51:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
+1 for fat, drunk cops getting what's owed.
Submitted by corn_nugget (user info) at 2006-07-12 11:27:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
pretty cliche.
Submitted by BobLobla (user info) at 2006-07-12 11:10:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
an improvement on your usual shit.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-07-12 11:09:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good change of pace for you. There was one or two small errors, but it didn't detract from the story too much. Good work.