Into a Ten Gallon Hat (Short Story)

"No!" he said, running after the woman.

But she was gone.

The damage was done.

The banana peel she let slip so easily from her potassium-filled monkey fruit lay there on the sidewalk, filling the sidewalk with danger in every direction.

He clutched scratchily at his short, razored hair which grew at several lengths. As long as they were short lengths. He could feel the impending slippage and scraping of flesh on concrete as he stooped to stare at the banana peel just...sitting...there. It looked like the tee-pee in the Indian Village on the side of Highway 20 his parents had taken him to as a child in their Vista Cruiser. The Vista Cruiser always seemed like the largest car in the world for a family of three people and he tended to roll across the back seat when he father took a corner particularly sharp.

The whole Indian Village had smelled of urine. In fact, the sidewalk, today, in the hot sun, smelled the same way but now the tee-pee was smaller. He scritched and scratched at his hair which had the look of a badly mown lawn and thought about how this little yellow fruit tee-pee was no less menacing than its Highway 20 counterpart.

His parents had struck up a conversation with the chapped and cracking man at the gift shop who owned the place and wore a ten gallon cowboy hat.

"A ten gallon hat, boy," the man had said and smiled like a bat cave with teeth that almost flapped. He had stared at the tee-pee for hours, thinking how it wasn't real and how many people came through here thinking this was what a tee-pee was: a large, yellow, urine-soaked cone of lies. He turned, leaving size six Chuck Taylor All-Star high top foot prints in the fine sand and went back inside the gift shop. The man waggled his teeth at him, making him wonder about gallons of hats and why someoone would think you could liquid measure them. Well, you couldn't. Just like that wasn't a real tee-pee.

"You could probably pee ten gallons in that hat," he'd said and shoved the door back open, tinkling a cow bell on the handle, succinctly making his exit and his point.

Who would it be? he thought as he stared at the banana peel and then up and around at the foot traffic. Most of the people were just a blur in their suits and $200 haircuts and jumpsuits and small children with safety pops jutting out of their sticky mouths. It wouldn't be a child. Too low to the ground. Too alert.

It would be someone with slick shoes. Broken in. He stood up and practiced sliding his foot, trying to get a feel for the fall, maybe trying to make it easier to spot the person and warn them. He could certainly relate. His shoes had great potential for such a fall. It was lucky he was the one who actually saw the banana peel dropped. He was automatically on alert.

He kept making sliding motions on the sidewalk, then thought he would put his hands on his hips and swivel them as though to alert the persons with the same types of shoes who would slip on a banana peel.

"Danger!" his arms and feet seemed to cry to all the slick-heeled, wing-tippe, thrift store bought shoes passing by at top speed. He added a bit of a turn to his swivel, a bit of something he saw his ridiculous neighbor do on the lawn every morning as part of his equally ridiculous excercise routine.

Glide left and swivel and turn.
Glide right and turn and swivel.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Glide, left and swivel and turn
and-

"Oh Fuck."

His hands went up in the air as his right wing tip glided too far to the right and collided with the peel of radiating danger.

The scent of urine became more pungent as his humiliation, all ten gallons of it warmed the crotch of his pants.

A pair of black Mary Janes clicked to a stop next to him and his eyes swiveled to the goose-pimpled legs rising out of them.

"Did you just slip on that banana peel?" the shoes said.

He reached back and felt his head where his hair was smoothly matted with a bit of blood.

"No. I peed in a ten gallon hat, " he replied and lightly touched one of the legs with his index finger.