The Rap Devil Went Up to Ohio

Plucky

The Rap Devil Went Up to Ohio
by Colson B.
(contains strong language)

Plucky. Plucky. The word grew more and more alien each time the shirtless man repeated it in his head. He figured saying it out loud might bring some familiarity back within his grasp.

"Plucky."

Didn't work. It wouldn't stop pinging around his brain until he came up with a way to work it into one of his rhymes. Only then would the restless phonetic construct close its eyes and finally settle down.

Having or showing determined courage in the face of difficulties.

He remembered the definition after running across the word in a graphic novel he was reading a few years ago. No one would peg him for a reader at first glance, but it was something he had always enjoyed almost as much as writing. Maybe his tatts inscribed on a narrow frame that screamed meth addict more than book worm were enough to throw them off his trail.

The tall, wiry man took a hard drag off the menthol as he sat on the porch of his summer home. Looking out across the green, tinged by the orange of a setting sun, he admired the expanse of this singular piece of fruit nurtured by his labor. The highway in front of his property was so distant, trucks rolled by in silence.

Drinking from a bottle of tequila, the man noticed a bright light falling from the sky. It was as bright as an electrical arc. It rapidly descended into a small grove of trees on his land. There was no crashing sound or explosion, so the incident was curious, to say the least. He decided to walk to the grove, bottle in hand. It took a few minutes to cover the distance of about three football fields.