Matt Hill
The Fix-It Shop was uptown, the one my mom would take all the kitchen appliances to when they needed rewiring. It was off the main village street in an old barn with these huge doors hung from a sliding track. Dim lighting and the musty smells of old forgotten things greeted your senses as you crossed over the oily threshold.
Henry, the old Fix-It guy, wore grease laden overalls & a dirty Engineer’s cap, neither of which looked like they had ever been off his body. He would be banging on something, cigarette dangling from cracked lips, muttering away to the mynah bird he kept perched above the workbench. The crow-sized mynah, yellow talons alternately shifting on the perch, would be uttering one liners like “Rain’s coming in tonight” or “Goddamn this blasted thing!”
After looking at the toaster my mom had set down before him, Henry assured her that he could do the rewiring on it and it’d be ready in two days. No receipt involved, he just gave a nod based on small town trust. My mother took my hand, and as we walked back out the barn doors, I heard the mynah croak “Next time, bring the money.”
Residing in the southern part of Northern California, Matt Hill is a sculptor, poet, and fiction writer. His poetry, prose, fiction and reviews can be found in print and on many Internet venues, including BlazeVox Books, Gradient Books, Moria Press, Big Bridge, Chiron Review, Rain Taxi Review and Talisman. Yet Another Blunted Ascent and Tertium Quid are his latest books (Moria Press, 2017).