GUMBALL
Written and Copyrighted by Michael Rose

           “Stop it, Ben!”

            Ben’s mother snatched the big green gumball from his pudgy, seven year old

fingers, just before they deposited the sphere into his gaping mouth.

            “Break it in half, and share with your sister.”

            “Fine.”

            Fran aimed her eyes back at the road, as her son promptly placed the gumball back

on his tongue and sneered at his older sister, Mary, across the back seat.

            “Mom!” came Mary’s cry, “Ben’s not sharing!” Mary was ten, and assured of her

intellectual superiority.

            “Am so.” Ben burped.

            “Stop it, Ben! That’s disgusting! Now give half that gumball to your sister!”

            “I don’t want it anymore, mom. He spit all over it.”

            Fran rubbed her right temple with a temporarily free hand, and tried to figure out a

way to escape. She wasn’t used to being in a car with her children. It was like a prison

camp on balding tires. Usually, Mark, her husband of twelve years, picked up the children

from school in the afternoons, but today he had a company meeting that he had to attend.

Something about the price of beans in Brazil, she thought.

            “You know, one of these days, you’re going to choke on one of those damned

things, and then what are you going to do?” Fran asked her offspring.

            There was a moment of silence. Fran was excited about this not only for it’s

quality of relief, but also because she had apparently gotten her children to think about the

consequences of their actions. Perhaps this was a turning point!

            “Mommy said a bad word!” Mary and Ben whooped with righteous glee.

            As they repeated themselves in a duet of sing-song voices, many more expletives

came to her mind, but her teeth were aware of this, and conspired to bite her tongue. She

and Mark had decided long ago to curb their use of “vulgar” language in front of the

children. The last thing they thought they needed at thirty-something was to have one of

the children tell them in front of the grandparents that a “shitty day” had occurred.

Enough had been said about the fact that Ben and Mary were enrolled in public school.

            “There’s a lovely private school in Springfield that would be very good for the

children. It’s only half an hour away, and it would be so much better for them.” Her

mother’s words still echoed in her ears as if they were all in the car together. “You know,

your father and I saw a report on the TV about public schools, and they are simply dens of

sex and violence and dope these days. I don’t know what the world is coming to anymore.

It’s not safe, like it was when we were young.”

            “Sure it was, mom.” she said, to the voices in her head.

            Mary interrupted her thoughts. “Mom, Ben won’t stay on his side of the car!”

            “Ben, stay over on your side.”

            Ben grunted in reply, and Fran heard a slapping sound. Next, there was a soft

whimpering.

            “Oh, God, please no...” Fran thought to herself, but it was too late.

            The whimpering slowly built to a soft cry, and then for a moment, all seemed to

be quiet. She was reminded of a thunder storm breaking, when Ben’s bawling began to

reverberate off the interior of the car.

            “She hit me!” screamed Ben, as his mother tried to think of life before children.

            “Mommy has to stop at the grocery store to pick up supper,” said Fran, as she

pulled into the parking lot of the local Piggly Wiggly, “so I want you two to sit here and

be good, okay? Don’t open the doors for anybody, and don’t bother each other.”

            “Okay.” came the unenthusiastic reply from the rear of the car.

            “Can I have some pudding pops?” Ben inquired.

            Fran denied the request with a look, and unhitched the door keys from the ignition

key. She wouldn’t want to leave the kids in the car without any radio to occupy their

minds. Lack of radio would assure that one or both of them would probably be bleeding

from a fresh punch in the nose when she returned. Children, it seemed to her, had the

attention span of a mayfly on speed. She left the car with a small noise that was intended

to mean “I’ll be back soon” and quickly took off toward the supermarket.

            In the back seat of the car, the kids were already beginning to get antsy. Ben

decided that now would be the ideal time to pull out his second gumball. Ben was rarely

without some sort of confection. His pockets were stuck shut fifty percent of the time, but

he didn’t really care, as long as his stomach was happy, and his teeth had that lovely

stinging sensation.

            Sugar was his God.

            It was a beautiful green gumball. Ben’s friend Skip didn’t like the green ones.

Skip said they were alien poop, and they tasted like somebody barfed up a watermelon.

Skip was a doofus. Ben placed the ball between his teeth, savoring the moment. He bit

through only the tiniest fraction of the coating, and the flavor began to seep into his

mouth, mixing with his saliva. Only seconds until green heaven. He felt a sharp crack on

the back of his head.

            “Mom said to share, Ben!” his sister screeched as her hand retreated from the back

of his head. “That would teach him to be a selfish little poop eater.” Mary thought to

herself. She noticed Ben wasn’t saying anything in reply. He was just sort of staring into

thin air.

            “I swallowed the gumball?” Ben’s mind echoed with the words. “I swallowed my

gumball! The magnificent green gumball that I paid twenty-five hard earned cents for? I

swallowed it?”

            No, not quite. It was sort of halfway in between. Right about where his adam’s

apple was, was a second lump, about the size of a gumball. The next thing he knew, he

realized that he wasn’t drawing much air into his lungs. It felt sort of tight, and he began

to perspire a bit. Mary noticed that her little brother was turning slightly redder than

usual.

            “Are you okay, dork?” she inquired of her now uncomfortably shifting brother.

This was the nicest way she could bring herself to phrase the question, so she was a little

irked when he didn’t answer her. “I asked are you okay?”

            Ben’s face began to turn a bit bluish and he started to make little gasping noises.

He began to flail wildly around.

            “Stop it! Stop it!” Mary screamed as Ben’s arms swung around the back seat. “I’m

going to tell mom!”

            Ben looked at his sister, his eyes beginning to well up with tears. He pointed to his

throat with a plump finger and made a sort of barking noise.

            “Are you choking, Ben?” Mary felt the first inkling of concern come into her

mind as she tried to decide what course of action to pursue. Ben was now turning a very

noticeable shade of blue, eyes open wide with the first shades of panic.

            “Gllllfff!” shrieked Ben, as he flailed desperately hoping to dislodge the gumball.

            Mary stretched back her hand, and hesitating only a moment, did what she had to

do to save her brother.

            The punch sounded like a bass drum in the small car. She hit Ben in the chest with

all her might. At that moment, the gumball came shooting from Ben’s gullet like a bullet,

smashing into the front windshield with a sharp crack. Throwing open the door, Ben

breathed in a huge gulp of air, and promptly fell out of the car. He lay there on the

parking lot pavement on his back, panting heavily, dizzy with strain. As the heat receded

from his face, he looked up and saw that his sister was peering over the edge of the back

seat, looking down at him. The clouds floating far above her face were regaining their

normal colors.

            “Are you okay?” Mary asked, a hint of distress in her voice.

            Ben nodded the affirmative and grunted in response.

            “Stupid. You had me worried. You should’ve listened to mom.”

            Ben picked himself up off the pavement and slowly crawled back into the car.

Looking around the lot, he saw that nobody had seen his blue-faced plunge from the

automobile. Thank heaven for small miracles.

            “I want my gumball back.”

            “Well, go get it you little turd.”

            Obviously his sister was going to be of no help.

            Ben began crawling over the gap in the front seats, looking toward the floor for

his beloved green globe of sweetness. No choking episode was going to keep him from

the sugary goodness that he had been anticipating. Besides, a quarter was not that easy to

come by, in his experience, and he was going to get his money’s worth.

            He looked over his shoulder, and saw his sister staring out the side window. She

looked angry, and he thought that perhaps now was not the best time to mention that his

throat hurt. As he rotated his head back toward the front of the car, his vision passed over

something odd. Ben looked up quickly, to see if it had been a spider. Ben hated spiders.

His eyes focused on the anomaly, exactly where it had been when he first spied it. Well, it

hadn’t moved, so it surely wasn’t a spider. He peered closer, nearly losing his balance.

            It was much worse than a spider.

            Mary looked up from her world watching to hear the howl of a banshee. Ben was

crying again. “That’s all little brothers are good for.” she thought to herself. “What’s the

matter with you?” She followed his gaze to rest her vision upon a fractured portion of the

front windshield about an inch in diameter. Tiny bits of green candy coating were etched

into the crack in the windshield, and lines were radiating out from the central dent. Her

stomach made a nervous sound.

            Ben was wailing, gibbering something about being in trouble. Mary wouldn’t be

able to console him anyway, so she kept her mouth shut. They both instinctively looked

toward the store to see if Fran was coming back yet, but there was no sign of her.

            “We’ve got to fix it!” Mary attempted to scream over Ben’s constant sobbing. She

shoved her younger brother out of the way and dove toward the glove box, hitting her

head on the dash. It didn’t register in her nervousness. There were better times to have a

nervous breakdown because of a bump on the head. Opening the glove box sent maps and

envelopes flying all over, and before she had a chance to worry about it, she was lying

over the front seat, knocked out cold.

            Ben had seen his sister hit the dash, but he hadn’t expected this. He stopped crying

immediately. What was the good if nobody was there to feel sorry for you? There were

more important matters at hand. There was a crack in mommy’s windshield, the contents

of the glove compartment were spread liberally about the vehicle, his throat still hurt from

his choking episode, and his older sister, Mary, was passed out over the passenger seat,

drooling on the roadmaps. Worst of all, that had been his last gumball.

            Ben thought very hard about what he was going to do. He could run away, but his

mom had a car, and he figured she’d probably be more likely to run him over than usual

in the state she would be in when she saw the crack. He tried to think of a way to fix the

fractured glass, but the only substance he could think of was bubble gum, and he was

tired of bubble gum at this point. He thought about blaming it on a stranger, but...

actually, that might work. What would he tell his mother? That a stranger had come up to

the car and tried to get in? That would do it! In her state of panic over her children’s

safety, Fran wouldn’t even notice the green candy dust around the crack’s edges! Then he

looked back at his sister.

            Her chest was still moving, so he assumed she wasn’t dead or anything. Perhaps if

he could lift her back into her seat, she would wake up before their mother got back from

her shopping trip. As he struggled to move Mary, Ben realized that his time spent on the

couch eating candy and watching cartoons should have been scheduled around a healthy

exercise regime. He could just barely pick her up before she slumped back into the front

seat. Thinking as quickly as possible, he jammed himself into the small floorspace

underneath his sisters head, and began to push.

            Mary was dreaming. In her dream she was crossing a beautiful river. The current

was gently lapping about her hips, and she felt the warm sand at the bottom of the stream

between her toes. Some small, singing birds flew over her head, and she waved at them. It

was a perfect world. Well, maybe there was one thing wrong with it. Something was

shoving the back of her head. She felt short bursts of dull pressure that seemed to be

pushing her forward. And she smelled something weird. The river smelled kind of like

her little brother’s shoes.

            “You’re awake!” Ben exclaimed, as his sister’s eyes rolled open.

            “Get your stupid feet off my head you little retard!” Mary yelled out.

            “What are we going to do?” cried Ben.

            Mary righted herself into a decent thinking position. Her brother’s puffy, red eyes

stared up at her hopefully.

            “I thought about telling mom that a stranger came up to the car and hit it with

something when he was trying to get in, but I don’t know, and then you fell asleep when

you hit your head, and I couldn’t move you, because you’re so fat, and...”

            Mary cut him off sharply with a hard smack. Before he could cry, she blurted out

the only idea she could think of. Ben quickly agreed, in desperation.

            “God, I hope nothing happened.” Fran muttered to herself as she exited the

grocery store. She walked to where she had parked, and was a bit disturbed to notice that

the car she had parked was conspicuously missing. “Oh, Christ.”

            A teenage employee was nearby sluggishly collecting carts, obviously trying to

enjoy the outside of the store as long as possible before going back to whatever stock

duties or similar jobs were in store for him.

            “Excuse me,” Fran said, jogging up to the boy, “Did you see a green car here?”

            “Yeah, I guess so.”

            “Well, did you see what happened to it?”

            “A little green car, right here?”

            Fran nodded the affirmative.

            “Yeah, there were a couple of kids in it, right?”

            Nervously, Fran told him that was correct.

            “Yeah, they took off.” Fran stared in disbelief. The teenager continued. “I saw

them pull out of the parking lot about a minute ago. Are they old enough to drive? My old

man won’t even let me have a car, and I’m sixteen. Jesus, lucky kids.”

            Fran had stopped listening, and was going to her “happy place.”

(Gumball by Michael Rose)

(3rd Prize, N.D. State Fair Writing Contest 2001 Class C)