Welcome to the first installment of my novella, The Wheel. It’s a story about the heartbreak, paranoia, shocking mundanity, and moments of beauty that can follow an unspeakable tragedy. I’ll be posting it in a series of sixteen installments throughout the summer. Make sure to stick around and subscribe so you don’t miss a thing. Thank you so much for reading!
Art: Jenelle Thomas https://alovelygiraffe.com
For my wife, Jenelle, without whom—for better or for worse—no part of this story would have been possible.
Jack Colby
Jack Colby pulled out of his subdivision onto the main road and closed his window against the rushing air that began to blast him as he picked up speed. It wasn’t cold air—no, it was quite warm even for a morning in early July—but he wanted to prevent too much damage to his carefully combed black hair. Already, its tips, a few of which were grey, began to tickle his forehead, and he swept them back into place automatically.
Like every other day this week, there were more cars than usual on the road, and Jack wasn’t happy about it. He lived in Traverse City, Michigan, the Cherry Capital of the World, which had been holding its annual Cherry Festival since Saturday. The Festival would sweep out of town on the coming Sunday, leaving behind it a swath of trash, trampled yellow grass, and copious amounts of be-spitten cherry pits while pulling its white tents, carnival rides, and (hopefully) all its tourists along in its wake.
On this particular Thursday, Jack would finally be taking his family down to the Midway for some rides, over-priced prize-winning games, and cotton candy. He had rescheduled these plans three times already, and his wife Sheila had frankly but firmly let him know that his “dad reputation” was at risk of significant, albeit temporary, damage if he backed out again. It made him think of those Calvin and Hobbes strips where Calvin referred to the role of Dad as a political office, fraught with complications and populist misgivings. Jack argued that he had good reasons for his actions. He worked as a mid-level manager at a local bank that was about to become a lot less local. His employer was being bought out by Bank of America, and he had been putting in extra hours to help with the transition, hoping that doing so would make his career not so mid-level in the process. He thought this was important, but for his kids, Justin and Megan, there was only the Midway. Admittedly, a night at the Festival was important to him, too…but it also could wait a day or two.
“You will be home by four today, right?” Sheila had asked that morning while they got ready for the day. Her blonde hair was twisted up in a towel turban, and another was wrapped around her torso. She was leaning forward against the counter to peer into the mirror and apply a light dusting of makeup to her cheeks and already beautiful eyes.
Jack, standing behind her, had no trouble seeing over the top of her turban as he combed his hair into place. “Sheila, you know I don’t get done till four. It will be at least twenty after, with how bad the festival traffic has been.”
The mascara brush paused in mid-air as Sheila’s eyes flicked up from her own to look at him in the mirror. “Jack, you are salaried. You’ve left early before and can do it again. Hell, if you tell them why, your employees will probably even respect you for it after all the hours you’ve been putting in.” She resumed gently brushing her eyelashes.
Jack turned away to find a shirt. “You know, you and the kids are welcome to go—”
“To go what? By ourselves? Go early so the kids can blow all their excitement before you even get there?”
Jack returned from the closet, buttoning up his shirt to find Sheila staring up at him, mascara forgotten.
“If you think that’s the solution, you are denser than I thought,” she said with a shake of her head.
“No, you’re right, I want to go anyway. I’ll be as close to four as I can.”
She stood up on tip-toes to kiss him. “Thank you.”
Jack said bye to the kids and promised that tonight was the night. Their lack of enthusiasm proved that there already was some damage to ye ole Dad brand, but hopefully, it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be smoothed over by a surprise elephant ear later.
He worried about this a bit on the drive to work, but had mostly dismissed it by the time he took a seat at his desk.
Around two o’clock, Jack’s boss, Ryan Porter, invited him and a few other managers out for drinks along with the two reps from Bank of America who would be flying out of town that evening.
“Cheeso, no. The next rounds on me,” Steve said as he stood up to go to the bar.
Tracy, one of the out-of-town reps, turned to Steve with a snort. “Cheeso?” She was a severe yet handsome woman, looking smart and business-like in a pantsuit and matching black hair. The confused smile that broke across her face made her look considerably warmer.
Jack rolled his eyes, but Steve just smirked and said, “Yeah, I’ll tell you the story when I get back.”
Steve was stuck on that nickname, and Jack knew he would never give it up. He and Steve had been friends for a while and somehow landed jobs at the same branch only a couple of years apart. At first, Steve was as respectful as his class-clown nature allowed and would only use the nickname when other employees weren’t within earshot. About four months into his career at the bank, he either couldn’t help himself anymore or unwittingly fell into old habits because he had started using it openly around the office. This turned out to be quite the morale builder amongst the team, and Jack knew he was stuck with it now more than ever.
When Steve returned with a bucket of beers, he began to regale them with the tale before he even sat down. Somewhere in the middle, unable to help himself, Jack took over. It was a pretty funny story, after all, and if legends are to be believed, it goes something like this:
Martha and Fred, the nicest, but maybe not the brightest, young couple in the whole town, had struggled to have children for some years. For a while, things simply weren’t working. Either Fred was shooting blanks or Martha wasn’t tossing the clay. They tried everything and eventually accepted that it wasn’t going to happen.
Martha was thirty-five when she first conceived, and by that point, it came as a total surprise. They discovered the gender weeks later, only for it to result in a miscarriage. Several more of these followed, and they were considering officially pulling the plug on further attempts when one finally stuck. Martha was thirty-nine, and Fred was just over forty-one. They would be older parents, but parents they would be.
Martha loved her grandfather deeply and loved his memory even more. She had dreamed since high school of naming her firstborn son after him, certain she would have girls instead—it would just be her luck. With this final pregnancy, she refused to discover the gender prematurely, a decision that was the result of an already mild sense of superstition being honed and sharpened by years of failure.
Then Jack was born and named thus as soon as his tiny shriveled penis was spied. Before he felt his mother’s skin, before his umbilical cord was cut, before he had his first bath, he was Jack Colby.
The name went on the birth certificate, and his parents adored him. Any and all visitors beamed at him, and if any had the thought, they didn’t mention it.
It wasn’t until their fifth day home with Jack, when they ran out of lovingly donated food, that Fred made himself a sandwich and had the thought himself. He laughed so hard and so long that Martha was sure that fatherhood had cracked him. Sitting there, watching him howl, she slowly froze with terror, thinking that this was some last evil trick of pregnancy. Finally got the baby; lost the husband.
Noticing her shock and confusion, Fred tossed her the packet of sliced deli cheese. She jumped as if attacked, and Jack fell off her breast. He soon began to cry, but his cries went unheard; she had seen the label: “COLBY JACK.”
Martha began to cackle, truly cackle, Jack cried all the harder, and Fred positively lost his shit.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve—”
“He’s been Cheeso since that day,” Steve said, finishing Jack’s sentence. Their audience, who had been chuckling throughout, now erupted in laughter. Steve joined them, but Jack just shook his head with a smirk and took another swig of beer.
As the laughter died down and conversations moved on from this epic, beer-fueled rendition of Cheeso, Jack checked his watch to find it was already three-thirty—the time when he had hoped to head home from the office—yet here he was, several blocks away from his car with half of a beer in hand. He took another gulp and got up to pay his bill at the bar.
When he sat back down, Ryan glanced at his phone, then said, “You going somewhere? Looks to me that you owe Bank of America another thirty minutes of debauchery.” He winked at their new parent company’s reps, and they laughed politely in return.
“Yeah, I was planning to be gone by now. Gotta take the fam down to the Midway tonight.”
Steve chimed in. “Can’t you do that tomorrow? Or Saturday?”
“That’s what I said, but I’ve already cancelled on them multiple times, and it hasn’t gone over well. So…tonight’s the night.” Jack chugged down the last third of his beer and offered his hand to the reps. “Tracy, Kyle, it’s good working with you. Travel safe.”
Tracy and Kyle returned the pleasantries. Jack took his leave and headed for the door.
“Later, Cheeso! Have fun with the fam,” Steve called across the bar.
Another wave of laughter rolled across the table behind Jack, and he simply laughed to himself, waving dismissively back over his shoulder. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the blistering heat hit him like an open oven. He checked his watch again to find almost fifteen minutes had passed and swore under his breath. He wouldn’t be home by four, but he would be home, and he would be taking his family to the Midway.
He sighed and hoped that would be good enough.
Had Jack’s dad been alive to join them at the Midway, he would have said, “It’s not the heat that gets ya, it’s the humidity,” but he would have been wrong. Jack was quite certain it was the heat and the humidity in this case. The sun was still high in the midsummer sky, and no breeze was coming off nearby West Bay. Jack’s shirt clung to his sweat-covered back, and his testicles felt as if they were trapped in the mosh pit at a Metallica concert. The kids complained about the heat, too, and Jack noticed that while they did smile and enjoy themselves on the rides, they didn’t light up with the same unbridled joy as they would have even a year prior.
Jack said, “I miss watching them when they were a little younger.”
Sheila stood next to him, watching the kids ride in a slow circle on mini 4-wheelers. “Especially the race car one,” she said.
Jack looked down at her and could see the line of perspiration along her hairline. He agreed that the race cars were his favorite and thought of how big they would smile and laugh when they whipped around the curves. How would they react next year? The year after? The feeling of innocence lost crashed into his gut like a poorly caught medicine ball, heavy and unwieldy. He struggled to shake it off as the ride stopped spinning and his kids climbed off.
“How was the ride?” he asked.
Megan was already running towards the nearby fish-catching game, and Justin’s gaze followed. “It was fun,” he said matter-of-factly before turning to join her.
Jack marveled at how much more independent they were this year, and again, that sinking feeling of sad nostalgia was back. He and Sheila followed the kids and paid eight dollars to afford them the grand opportunity to drag stationary plastic sharks out of the water with fishing tackle made out of coat hooks. The whole thing seemed a little ridiculous, but, on the plus side, it was nearly impossible not to win a prize. In the end, that was all the kids cared about.
A couple of rides and silly games later, the heat began to get the best of them. Megan, in particular, had truly had enough. Her blonde bangs stuck to her sweaty forehead as she looked up at her father. “I want to go home.”
“I know, honey,” Jack said as he slicked her hair back and off her forehead.
“We have to ride the Ferris Wheel as a family before we go!” Sheila protested. That was her favorite part of the night, and she wasn’t going to let it go. Jack knew that.
“But I’m so hot,” Justin said. He didn’t have bangs, but the hair at his temples was similarly wet with perspiration.
Jack looked at his son with a disappointed frown. “I think you could survive a ride on the Ferris Wheel, pal.”
Justin harrumphed and looked away while Megan began complaining. Jack closed his eyes with a sigh and raised his face skyward. When he opened them, it was the Ferris Wheel that dominated his vision, towering over the festival like a vengeful god. It occurred to Jack in that moment that if the thing were to topple sideways, like the last unsupported book on a shelf, he wasn’t sure if he could get his whole family out of the way before it came crashing down.
Shaking this vision away, Jack said, “Ok, how about this: let’s walk up to Front Street to get some food inside someplace with AC. We’re all hot and hungry. I’m sure we will feel a lot better after that, and then we can come back for the Ferris Wheel and some snacks. Sound good?”
“Can we get ice cream?” Justin exclaimed.
“You know what? That’s probably better than a warm elephant ear. Let’s do it.”
Jack turned and led the way back into town.
When they reached the corner of the nearest building, Jack stole a backward glance. The wheel stood tall over the Midway, not turning, not falling.
He had the distinct impression that it was waiting.
Read Part 2 now! Are you enjoying the story so far? Leave a comment below!
Well done! It hits on a whole new level after just surviving Cherry Fest!
Great opening, great vibes. The way the wheel gets described at the end packs such a foreboding punch, and I feel like I'm already rooting for this family
I want more!