Don’t Mean Nothin’ by Donald Ranard
*****FUBAR, the old man said. Guys still say that?
*****Oh, yeah. The young man chuckled. Fucked up beyond all recognition.
*****They were standing outside New Day, smoking. The mental health clinic was one of three downtown buildings still open for business since Maytag moved to Mexico. An army recruiting office and a liquor store, at opposite ends of the block, were the other two.
*****Guess that’s one that’ll never go out of date, the old man said. First heard it from my dad. He was at Normandy Beach.
*****Whoa, Normandy Beach. Your dad saw some shit.
*****The old man regarded the young man with mild surprise. You know about Normandy Beach, huh?
*****Some, the young man said. Heard about it from the gunny. Dude was a walking World War Two encyclopedia. The last good war, he called it. He spent evenings drinking Coors and watching Combat reruns.
*****How ’bout Don’t mean nothin’? the old man said. Ever hear that one?
*****In a movie I saw once.
*****Some godawful shit’d happen and we’d go, Don’t mean nothin’.
*****My granddad was in Nam.
*****The old man shook his head. Grandad. Damn. Guess that’d be about right though. When was he in Nam?
*****’68, ’69. Sometime around then.
*****Those were rough years. He saw some shit.
*****The young man nodded. Never talked about it though. Fact, the man hardly talked at all. ’Cept when he was shitfaced. Fucker had two moods: mad and mute. And you never know which one you were gonna get. When were you there?
*****Nam?
*****Yeah.
*****The old man took one last drag on his cigarette and stuck it in the sand bucket ash tray. Just last night, he said.
Donald A. Ranard’s work has previously appeared in Free Flash Fiction. His writing has also been published by The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Review, New World Writing Quarterly, The Best Travel Writing, and elsewhere. In 2022, his flash fiction story “5/25/22” was longlisted by Wigleaf as one of the year’s top 50 Very Short Fictions and his play, ELBOW. APPLE. CARPET. SADDLE. BUBBLE., placed second in a national playwriting contest. Before settling in Arlington, VA, he lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
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