Harold’s Tuesday

300-word flash fiction.

When Harold stepped into the Corner Cup, the barista stopped steaming milk.

She covered her mouth and whispered, “Oh, you poor thing.”

She waved him to the front of the line.

Nobody complained. They looked at Harold and quietly stepped aside.

His coffee was free. So was a plate of biscuits and gravy.

A woman he’d never met slipped twenty dollars into his shirt pocket and gave him a hug. 

Outside, a stranger shrugged off his own coat and draped it over Harold’s shoulders.

“You’ll need this more than I do.”

At the feed store, someone carried his purchases to the truck.

The bank teller teared up and couldn’t look him in the eye as she handed him his receipt.

At lunch, someone paid his check before he could reach for his wallet.

By late afternoon Harold had collected a new coat, three casseroles, a pocket full of cash, and more hugs and handshakes than he’d received in the previous ten years.

Everywhere he went, people stared with aching sympathy. Everywhere he went, they insisted he go first.

Finally he asked the waitress at the Blue Plate.

“Would somebody please just tell me what’s going on?”

She froze.

“Oh…”

She reached across the counter and squeezed his hand, eyes brimming with tears.

“I just… I can’t.”

She hurried into the kitchen.

Harold asked his barber, his preacher, his brother, his mail carrier. Every one of them found an excuse not to answer.

That night Harold sat alone at his kitchen table, surrounded by casseroles he hadn’t asked for, wearing a stranger’s coat, counting the hundred and eighty-four dollars people had pressed into his hands. 

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had hugged him before that day, and he still had no idea why everyone had chosen compassion—or chosen him.

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