Three Tiny Men
by Tim Dicks

I'm out front planting sunflowers for Marie when a Volvo cuts to a stop in the intersection. We live at 63rd and Grand, a busy neighborhood, but still this kind of thing is unusual. The Volvo's windows are tinted but I can see the woman inside leaning over, and then I recognize her face. She's the bartender with the German accent, from the place where I was all electric on weed and pills and tequila shots last weekend. The passenger door falls open and there she is, bent over, grinning at me, smiling, and for a second I can see her eyes through the black lenses of her sunglasses. She pushes three little things out of the car, three little dogs it looks like, but then they hit the street and I realize they're not dogs or rats or ferrets but little men, a trio of them, maybe six inches tall and all dressed in fitted suits. They wear tiny skull caps and grimace with concentration or resolve or just confusion and they run toward me, through the street. I'm stunned in a way that makes me want my camera. I'm stunned in a way that makes me afraid a delivery truck or a cab or one of the idiot neighbors' pickups will bounce down Grand. The German woman keeps grinning and I wait for her to yell something or to laugh. The three men are quick for being so small and they cross the center line and then scramble up onto the curb and come for our little yard. They're unarmed but by the time they cross the sidewalk I can see they mean to do me harm. I've got a seed packet and a gardening spade that creaks when it's half-buried in loose soil, but I pull back anyway and when the first of them gets close enough I scoop him up and swing him high, back into the street. I want to watch him, to see if he'll land safely, but then the second one jumps to my shin and falls onto his ass. They're strangely familiar, these little men with perfect faces that, I have to admit, are a little attractive, with their lines and tiny freckles and sculpted goatees. There's a soft flumping noise from the street as the first one lands on top of the Volvo, and we all look his way. He doesn't move. The two little men look up at me, their arms held wide. "Go on," I say. "Get out of here." And they do. They go back to the car and climb up into the passenger seat and the woman almost closes the door on one of their tiny legs. She slaps around on the roof with one old hand and then the car jumps forward and she drives away, toward downtown. The body lands on the street and I go over, scoop it up. I wonder about old t-shirts I have inside, about which ones would be best to wrap him in before I bury him in the sunflowers.

Tim Dicks recently finished a master's degree at Iowa State University, where he was the fiction editor for Flyway. His most recent publication is in Thieves Jargon.

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