Sometimes I realize I write like crap...

I get only so far into these stories, and then i get lost some where. like this one...


It had been two weeks of hot weather. It was quite warm even for it being mid June. The air was nearly solid and tangible, and it assaulted you with its damp mugginess upon setting foot from your morning bed. Women's hair had been a puffy frizzed cowlick nightmare for days, and most of them accepted the air conditioned offices and stores they occupied as a welcomed reprieve from the heavy heat. The men seemed unfazed, glad to see girls out in all their bronzed skinned fury, while living vicariously through the teenaged bucks that chaperoned them around the towns. Few complained at the rapidity with which summer seemed to swell and fall across the area, since the past few years seemed devoid of any major summer activities due to long late Springs and short early Falls. This year the children were quick to have filled their wading pools, and litter the lawns with sprinklers. This year was going to be a welcome change in many ways.
The sky was so hazy that the small green mountains almost faded into the atmosphere and where they thinned billowing clouds seemed to triple their height with snow capped peaks. They rumbled and darkened throughout the afternoon, waiting for the evening breeze to push their moisture laden selves over the small towns where they could spill and blow and release their sun baked frustration in the ways that best suited any growing storm. They began mumbling to themselves with apparent discomfort as the sun slipped towards them on its night bound journey. The trees themselves seemed to be caught up in the argument, their leaves curled as the pressure dropped and they bent and waved their tops in what seemed an invitation. "Bring on the rain, bring on your wrath." They seemed to say in the silent ways that only old trees who had weathered so many storms before can say.
The forest air was saturated with the stink of pitch and ferns, it clung to ever tree and bush just as tangible as the moss that grew in their shade. Everything seemed to be stewing together in furnace of the day and its pleasing aroma was that of food simmering over a camp fire after a long days hike. The people and their salty sweat were the final flavor of the day, and they ached terribly to rinse themselves of the stickiness. Thus began the evening migration to the river, the only thing untouched by the sweltering haze. It wound its way across the state line, around and through the villages and along its long etched path to the mighty Hudson. This was were the people without the time or desire for chlorinated pools cooled themselves, their children, and their dogs. All it would take was a few minutes in the spring fed coolness of the water and back home they would tread refreshed and ready to face the blistering night.
Paul pulled into his driveway in the midst of the smalls town's water bound movement. It had been a terrible day of working in the sun holding a sign and directing traffic while the rest of his crew filled potholes and cleared the roads shoulder of brush. It was hot angry work that paid too well to leave. He rolled up the car windows in anticipation of the imminent rain on the horizon. Closing the last door and cursing his lack of power anything in this vehicle he was ready for his own exodus to the river.
"Paul!" his aging neighbor shouted from the other end of the block. He instinctively ducked his head and winced, wishing he had a door on the other side of the house so he could at least enter his house undetected by prying eyes.
"Yeah?" He said, pausing in the sun, longing to cross the threshold of his door to the silence of his sofa.
"This is some pretty hot weather we're having." The old woman cried, not moving from her lawn chair where she was perched under her porch roof, an ancient electric fan blowing on her tiredly.
"Why do old people always state the obvious?" He thought to himself, but then answered her with the last bit of kindness left at the end of a trying day, "Yes it is Mrs. Westing. You should take yourself down to the river, cool off a little."
"I haven't been down to that river since old Mr. Westing was living. I'll just wait here for the rain." She paused just long enough for him to formulate a response, but spoke again as always, before he could reply, "When are you going to bring yourself home a nice girl Pauley?"
Old coot. Stupid nosey neighbor always rubbing trivial nonsense in his face. He smiled and waved and quickly walked into the house. This was the end of every one of his conversations with Mrs. Westing. She felt, as if he were some how unaware of his lengthening bachelor situation, that it was her last true calling in life to prod and badger him into a lasting relationship. She rested at nothing to mention his lack of even a girlfriend at least once every time she saw him, even if it meant screaming it at the top of her wrinkled old voice across the entire block.
Old Mrs. Westing was obviously convinced that his was either gay or unable to woo a decent woman. Since she had known him since he was a small child this troubled her greatly, as did the affairs of most people in the town with whom she had been acquainted all her years. Some how she figured it was her matronly duty to advise these people who she felt she some how owned by sheer seniority. It was this way with most of the bored ladies in the village and more people than just Paul were convinced that they met secretly every day to discuss how they had already, and were still planning to handle the pressing matters of their neighbors lives.
Paul pulled down the shades in the living room and closed the curtains around them. His hand was on the last curtain and he stopped to rub it between his fingers, looking along the quickly sewn seam. He did not have inspiration enough himself to make covering for the two living room windows, and these now stained off white fabrics were the remnants of his last girlfriends frantic nesting instincts. He didn't care for them, they were made from bed clothes and since she was surely no seamstress they were crooked and the dark thread showed plainly against the light colored sheets. Paul only kept them because it was more work to take them down than he was willing to commit to anything in his house at this point, and plus they served a bonus feature of keeping out the sun and neighbors. He sat down on his mothers recycled sofa, pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it towards the kitchen.
A grey bundle of fir flew around the kitchen wall and attacked the shirt. It tangled and writhed inside the cloth and he watched amused for a few minutes until it realized it was trapped and panicking tried to release itself from the dirty material. After half a dozen unsuccessful attempts it grew still and quietly started mewing.
"No way, you got in there, now get yourself out."
He stood and walked over to the squirming pile on the floor, and waited as long as he could stand before finally stooping over and uncovering the kitten. It no sooner reached day light that it leapt straight into the air and flew off comically towards the couch. It's little white paws were seemingly equipped with Velcro hooks, because it crawled sideways and upside down along the sides and back of the tattered sofa, its grey color only reinforced the illusion that it might have been a squirrel. It ran helter-skelter for a few more seconds before leaping into the air and upon hitting the carpet fell into a ball, rolled over and fell straight to sleep.
He also didn't plan on adding a cat to his house, but the thing was dropped off wet and starving one night across the street. He had come out in the morning to sit on the porch and eat his breakfast of pop tarts when he noticed a cardboard box, soaked from the nights rain in the empty lot across from Mrs. Westing's old red house. His curiosity lead him to investigate, and he soon found one brown and one yellow lumps of matted fir laying inside the box. They were still in their wet confine, their tiny eyes half open. He touched them but they didn't respond. Paul walked back through the wet grass of his yard and grabbed a shovel from the shed in back. He slipped it into the moist ground a couple feet from the box of kittens, turned the earth over and started piling dirt beside the growing hole. The last shovel of dirt was being stamped on top of the shallow make-shift feline grave when he heard a faint sneezing from beside him. On hands and knees through the knee high grass he discovered the infant cat, soaked, hungry, with eyes imploring and helpless. He took it inside, dried it off and offered it the only thing he could find in the house, a small dish of milk. The kitten enjoyed his milk and took a few minutes to clean its face before strolling over to the living room rug where he squatted and then promptly shot off at a million miles and hour from the scene of the crime. Paul dubbed it Rocket and believed whole heartedly that the kitten was only feigning death to acquire a knew home, for had he known that it was possessed of the devil he would have passed on taking it in. Despite its agitation to him, the truth was that he enjoyed having another being in his empty home, even if it was obnoxious and messy.


Some how the thought of a grown man living alone with a kitten distresses me. But in truth I am building him up to the anti-climax of being a not so masculen charater.... not to mention that iam pretty close to the scene that gave me the idea for this story line in the first place.... if i ever get to that point. any thoughts?