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    A Very Quiet Village
    A Very Quiet Village
    A Very Quiet Village
    Ebook66 pages51 minutes

    A Very Quiet Village

    By Kyler Doss

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A would-be lover boy can't tell the new boy how much he likes him - it's just easier to be unhappy. Sam skulks across the sidewalks of this hush-hush town, where he also holds out on his best friend - not a hint of the secret. The new boy flits around somewhere out there and Sam feels lost, unable to come clean - unless your best friend is the one that you're supposed to tell this stuff to.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKyler Doss
    Release dateApr 9, 2022
    ISBN9781938181023
    A Very Quiet Village
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    Author

    Kyler Doss

    Kyler Doss has got a pocketful of chocolate milk receipts from the bus depots he has gone through. His note on the reverse side of one of the receipts: Arizona rules. A graduate of the University of Arizona, Kyler writes fiction that is set in a lot of places - the coming-of-age stories boys in love would recognize on any map you can google or unfold.

    Read more from Kyler Doss

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      Book preview

      A Very Quiet Village - Kyler Doss

      1

      Nobody said hello

      A BLUE water tower watched over everything. It was just there, was all.

      And there I was in the valley, talking to Derek and a few other guys. We weren't talking about anything, or we were just some boys talking about how tall you would want to be if you could choose your height.

      I said 6 foot 5, but at 16 years old I had very little chance of reaching it.

      This boy came up to us and I had never seen him before. I figured he must have known somebody else even if I couldn't tell who. Nobody said hello.

      The boy was not 6 feet, but his eyes took the brown of the earth and his hair did what it wanted to do.

      All I knew when I saw him was, I wanted to take him to the water tower. Somehow or other I had to be with him. We would walk the earth to the water, was how I saw it. The tower was a mile or two on foot, but it was like the temple in the land of make-believe that keeps getting farther away as you get closer. I couldn't stop thinking about him standing there.

      Anybody wanna go to the water tower? I said.

      Everybody looked at me strange, including him, but he was the one who said yes. The tower didn't seem so far away anymore. The others made excuses for why they couldn't go and next thing I knew I was walking with him.

      What's at the tower? he said, his voice like the whistle of a train gone down the line, something I had to catch up to.

      I was going to lose him if I didn't say the right thing. This was my first time really talking to a guy when it meant so much. I took a short stride, then a longer one. I never went there before, I said.

      My answer was as stupid as talking about how tall you wanted to be, but his half smile cancelled it out.

      Me neither, he said.

      It's blue.

      He looked at me before he took his glasses off. Do you know all those guys? he said.

      Are you looking for somebody?

      For my sake, he needed to put the glasses back on. I wanted something artificial in the way, something I could see through but couldn't walk through. It was either that or I was gonna lose myself to him way too fast.

      He just held his glasses in his hand. They didn't introduce you, he said.

      Sam.

      Archie.

      I went to shake his hand but it wasn't free. He put the glasses on and then he laughed when we finally did shake hands. I couldn't laugh at all. Trying to make him like me was serious business.

      They painted it blue, I said, just to make sure he didn't forget how stupid I was.

      Summer gave you green in the valley and blue on the hill. We turned and the grade got really steep. Now we were mountain climbers if we could get to the top.

      I can see it's blue, he said. His remark sounded cold.

      That's when I knew the train was gone. The train that carried Archie away from me was so far gone that the only thing left was the whistle.

      It used to be silver, I said, and pointed at the tower, though we were starting to lose it to the angle of the hill.

      What are we going to do when we get there? he said.

      It's just there, is all.

      All my defenses were gone. All my hopes were gone. The sun was gone, too, over the hill, but we would find it again when we got to the crest. It still had a couple hours of drop to go before it finally rolled over the mountains beyond the sea. No, I had no idea what we were going to do at the water tower. I wasn't exactly experienced at this kind of thing.

      Let's stop here, he said.

      The streets cut thin terraces in the side of the hill. Long and flat, the lawns made an infinite parking strip.

      How come? I said.

      I gotta go home.

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