Promise

Arlo was glad to have gotten his regular spot for his weekend booth. This consisted of a folding table where he displayed his handmade jewelry, a camping stool, and a pop-up shade tent. He’d arranged the table on the grass along a popular walkway that skirted the edge of La Jolla Cove. Arlo had been the lone crafts seller when he’d first started coming here, but several others had since sprung up nearby.  

An early marine layer had burned off and the morning had become sun-splashed, brushed through with a cool, pleasant breeze. The passers-by along the pathway were mostly tourists who’d come to see the turquoise and white-foamed waves pounding the rocks along the curving shore, the seals with their pups on Children’s Beach at the far end, and the divers and swimmers entering the teardrop inlet at the other. They ambled along slowly, stopping from time to time to take photos and point into the distance. Arlo’s spot was roughly in the middle of the half-mile walkway, close to where the waves made a particularly big crash.  

It had been a slow morning for him so far: only five sales. He perched on his stool, tapping his fingertips to the beat of the reggae music playing softly on a tiny Bluetooth speaker under his seat. He was dressed in his regular garb: sandals, worn jeans, and a poncho he’d purchased years earlier at a flea market in Tijuana. Arlo adjusted the knot of dreadlocks he kept settled in the dangling hood of his poncho. He was twenty-six and hadn’t cut them since he’d dropped out of high school. Like the tuft of hair under his lower lip, they were the same creamed-coffee color as his skin—an unusual hue born of his Scandinavian mother and Jamaican father.  

As the sun rose higher, the mid-May morning warmed a bit. People stopped by the booth every so often, most lingering only a few moments to glance over his neatly arranged wares before exchanging polite smiles and sauntering off. The exception was a gangly young man who came by shortly before noon. He was dressed in a crisply ironed khaki military shirt and pressed black trousers, studying each piece of jewelry, one after another, with intense concentration. Between inspections, he’d squint at Arlo behind black plastic glasses in a way that made Arlo think it was likely he was a band geek or played Dungeons and Dragons. Arlo couldn’t fathom how the young man’s pill-boy cap stayed in place over his crew cut as he lifted and lowered his head.

After a few minutes, Arlo said, “You don’t look old enough to be in the service.”

“I’m not.”  The young man fixed him with an awkward gaze. “I’m NJROTC. N for Naval.”

“Okay.” Arlo cocked his head. “You enlisting after high school?”

“Not sure yet.”

“Why the get-up on a Saturday morning?”

“Heading to a drill competition.” He gestured with his chin. “Up at Camp Pendleton.”

“That right? What do you compete in?”

“Color guard. My girlfriend is our flag bearer. I carry a rifle.”

Arlo felt his eyebrows raise. “You spin it around, snatch it back and forth, all that shit?”

The young man nodded and smiled. 

“So, why’d you stop at my booth?”

“Well,” the young man said, “I passed by a couple of weeks ago and saw your jewelry. Thought I might buy something for my girlfriend. I’m a junior, she’s a senior. She’s graduating in a few weeks, then going away to college.” He paused. “Thought maybe I could find a promise ring to give her.”

“A promise ring?”

A blush had crept up the young man’s neck into his acne-sprinkled cheeks. He shrugged. Arlo had only given one piece of his jewelry to his girlfriend in all the time they’d lived together, a necklace she’d taken with her when she left him a few months earlier.

“A promise ring,” he repeated. “All right.” He sifted through his pieces and selected a wooden ring with a blue inlay. “How about something like this?”

The young man examined it, turning it over, then shook his head. “I was actually hoping to find something with jade in it. She likes jade.” He pointed. “Like that silver one.”

Arlo lifted the thin silver halo surrounding a pale green stone. He set it on the young man’s palm and said, “That’s Guatemalan jade. Good stuff. Mayan symbol for life, fertility, and strength.”

“Wow.” The young man’s voice was almost a whisper. He turned it over in his palm, then held it up where the light glinted off the silver. “It’s beautiful. How much?”

“Not cheap.” Arlo thought of the assurances he and his girlfriend had given each other, the curt note she’d left for him, and reduced the original price by a quarter in his mind. “Seventy-five bucks.”

The young man frowned. “Shucks. I only have forty. Saved that mowing lawns.”

Arlo frowned too. Forty dollars wouldn’t even cover the cost of the ring’s materials. The two of them looked at each other until Arlo asked, “What’s the promise for?”

“To stay true to each other. Even after she’s gone.”

Arlo regarded the young man’s earnest expression, a certain warmth prickling through him. A huge wave broke across the rocks just over the edge of the walkway, and a mist settled around them. “What the hell,” Arlo finally said. “Give me the forty bucks. Go get your promise.”

The young man grinned, took out two twenty-dollar bills from his pocket, and handed them to Arlo. “Thanks, man,” he said. “She’s going to love it.”

Arlo watched the young man march away toward Children’s Beach, a fist closed around the ring. He shook his head. If he didn’t get a dozen more decent sales that afternoon, he wouldn’t be able to make his rent due that night. But at that moment, he didn’t care. At that moment, it seemed like something as far away as the moon.  

William Cass has had over 350 short stories appear in literary magazines and anthologies. A nominee for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net, he’s also had six Pushcart nominations. He's won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal and had two short story collections published by Wising Up Press.