300-Word Story

Just Your Everyday Joe

Having a cracking start to the day

The empty right sleeve of Joe’s jacket had slipped out of the pocket and swayed gently in the pre-dawn breeze. He checked the tarnished pocket watch that hung from a chain around his neck. It was time to get to work.

Joe removed a dried pea from his scuffed leather satchel and popped it in his mouth before grabbing a long rubber tube, which he put to his lips. After forcing the pea into the end of it, he aimed the makeshift peashooter at the upper storey window and blew hard, ignoring the pain caused by his black lung disease.

The ping as the pea struck the pane of glass was music to his ears. He waited a few seconds for the window to open.

“Mornin’, Joe,” hollered the man upstairs.

“Mornin’, Tom.”

These people had been his co-workers, and he knew them all. It was a tight-knit community, and the families had chipped in as best they could when he’d been laid off — until he found a new job as the local knocker-upper.

The work was undemanding, but it didn’t pay much. It wasn’t the early mornings that bothered him — he was accustomed to that after 37 years working down the pits on the early shift — but the absence of camaraderie and the scrimping and saving to put food on the table.

At the last house on the street, he hesitated. Today was the first anniversary of the accident, which wasn’t his fault, that’d taken most of his right arm.

He was about to grab another pea from his bag when he stopped.

“No, screw him!” he muttered.

He bent down, picked up a stone from the gutter, and heaved it at the bedroom window, shattering it.

“Time to rise and shine, you careless bastard!”

This story is in response to this prompt.