Ding – Niles Reddick

At the stoplight, I glanced down at the flattened drink containers, hundreds of cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and two feet high weeds. If and when the city crew came through to mow, the lawn mower blades would cut them into smaller pieces and fling them into the traffic, maybe with a rock dinging a car or two.

When I pulled into the garage, I noticed Sandy’s car had a new ding on the door.

“Did a rock hit your door?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Could’ve been a car at the grocery store.”

“I guess you know the deductible is a thousand dollars. Probably ought to get a hold of your friend Misty and see if she still has that guy’s contact info, the guy that fixes dents and stuff.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll text her.”

“Good.”

When the phone dinged from the text, Sandy read it and said, “He only does it after 5:00 when he gets off the city mowing crew. I’ll give him a call tomorrow.”

“Mowing crew?”

“Yeah, that’s what her text said.”

“So he’s out there drumming up a side business. Just like that building contractor throws out nails to help his brother who owns the tire store. From local all the way to Washington where they help themselves. What a damned world.”
About the contributor: Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies/collections and in over two hundred literary magazines all over the world including PIF, Forth Magazine, Spelk, Cheap Pop, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, With Painted Words, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds was recently released. Checkout his web .