Joytime Killbox

by Brian Wood

  “Warm beer on a hot day,” he said. “That’s realer than any of those reenactors who muster here.” He started to chuckle but ended up coughing instead. I thought to pat his back but he seemed to have a handle on his condition. “You know what they did with this place after the siege sputtered out?” He tilted his beer toward a rusted cannon that guarded the river.

  “Abandoned it,” I said. “Let nature take a turn at it.”

  “People slept in it for a while, inside the walls.” He drew a square with his finger. “Kept them safe, I guess, from animals, other people. Tecumseh’s ghost maybe.”

  “They ended up destroying it,” I said.

  “Something burned her down. But who knows?” He thought a moment and winced at the fort. “Not like it mattered much, old thing like that, its purpose all spent.” As he looked on, his face soured. I couldn’t tell if he was saying goodbye or good riddance.

  “You want another?” I said.

  He swirled his beer can. He took a long drink and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “That’s enough sentiment.” He slapped the hood and held out his hand. I didn’t see much reason in arguing with him. I wasn’t his orderly. And he was a man. He knew well enough.

  I gave him the keys but stayed where I was. I watched him splash gas on a corner of the fort. “Let’s see them build it back this time,” he said. “She’ll be burning bright by dusk.” He looked over his shoulder at me. A sweet and toothless grin had captured his face.

  I didn’t have it in me to tell him there was hardly enough gas in that little canister to make a difference. He had little to give. And even if, for some reason, a part of the palisades caught, the fire department down the road would surely snuff it out if the sprinklers on the knoll didn’t. Fort Meigs wasn’t going anywhere.

  The old man poured his righteous anger against the fence and it seemed to me as good a time as any to offer a toast. I turned my hand and let the beer spill. It fizzed as the ground drank it under. “To future fires,” I said. But by the time I opened another, the flames he had started were already whimpering, that sad pulse of a fire dying.

  II

  FRIENDS

  USS FLAGG

  The first time I went to Boyd’s house was the week after, to help his mom sell off his stuff. She had found my name in his cellphone and called me. “You keep half of whatever you make,” she had said. She exhaled long into the phone. That uncomfortable breath of quiet. “I can’t have it here anymore.”

  “Nonsense,” I told her.

  “I wouldn’t keep a thing.”

  When I came over she stood by the window, looking at the lawn. A rough pour of liquor sloshed in her glass and she held it loose at her side. She offered me one but I declined. I could tell she was good at drinking. And I didn’t want to embarrass myself trying to keep up with her. She stopped short of his bedroom and showed me in. The cleaning crew had removed the furniture and rolled up the carpet. They had tossed it by the side yard.

  With the bed and dresser gone, and the floor stripped down to the tack strips, his room felt like a museum. What remained, mostly comic books and toys still wrapped in the plastic, he had proudly displayed on the walls. There was a curve of track lighting that spotlit die-cast figurines. He had a whole shelf devoted to limited editions. And in the corner was a tarp, covering something else the size of a coffin. It was an impressive haul. In the right circle these childish trinkets were worth a considerable ransom. I picked up an action figure I knew would fetch a few months’ rent. “There anything off limits, something you want to keep?”

  “No,” she said without looking my way. “Nothing.”

  As I went to work taking inventory, I kept a running total. It had me kicking myself for not taking her original offer. And I hated myself even more just for thinking about it. Not even taking half, there’d be plenty to get a new car. Enough left over for a sofa, too. Thinking about it gave me a terrible urge to take something small, something Boyd would want me to have.

  While I cataloged his things I found myself glancing over my shoulder to see if she was watching me. But she never was. Each time I stopped to look at her, I caught her gazing out the bedroom window, her eyes unsearching. Vacant. It occurred to me that until the service I’d never met Boyd’s family. I had never been to his house. I didn’t even know he lived with his mom. And I guess it made sense why he would hide that. A grown adult with a salary, living in a roomful of toys. Not the kind of thing you want passed around at the office.

  That’s how it was with us. I guess Boyd and I were friends the way most people are. We looked forward to our time together. And although we wouldn’t share it, our attitudes changed when we saw each other. We’d buy each other gag gifts every now and then. And around Christmas we’d put a card in the mail. But when it came down to it, we really didn’t know each other. Sure, we rolled dice together on Wednesdays after the comic shop had closed. I knew he liked playing a rogue, and wasted way too many ability points of charisma. Once a week we’d play trivia at the bar. His wheelhouse was American history. And if there was a dumb movie at the midnight theatre, we’d meet there before wasting the night over burnt diner coffee. I knew Boyd’s Mount Rushmore of cinematic nude scenes, which superpower he’d pick if granted just one, how he’d order his hash browns at a Waffle House and how much ketchup he used. But as I stared at this cache of toys, I realized I didn’t know a thing about him. Nothing that could explain why.

  “Marcus,” his mother said. “What was he like with you?” She took a drink and sneered at the lawn. “I never saw him smile much.”

  “If happiness was on the menu, Boyd would have ordered a salad.”

  She covered her mouth with her drink. A surge of laughter shook her chest. It quickly turned into a sob. “That kid hated everything.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s what I liked best about him.” She started to laugh again and I had to blow the air from my lungs to keep myself from welling over. I looked at a framed comic book on the shelf, Fantastic Four #48, The Coming of Galactus!, and felt like crying even more. “Are you sure?” I said. “This stuff is worth some serious money.” But his mother didn’t answer. She had already left to sulk in the kitchen. I was standing there alone.

  Of course I wanted to honor Boyd. Like most of the shit he had neatly displayed in his room, he was a rare find. For guys like us, making friends wasn’t easy. And the friends we had didn’t get out much. But I kept having this rotten urge to keep some of his things. I wanted to take his stuff home by the armful. The more I looked through the shelves the worse it got. A vinyl cape Jawa with original packaging. The Incredible Hulk #180, #181. My God—a mint-in-box Storm Shadow. These couldn’t be sold. They deserved better than that. Boyd had treated them right. They were curated, set apart. And now they’d be passed off, rolled out the door with the ruined carpet.

  An anger I had buried roiled up to my throat. He had all of this, and he had me as a friend. But it still wasn’t good enough for him. I could feel myself wanting to cry and I didn’t know what to do to stop it. I flipped through a binder of Magic: The Gathering cards. I tried to guess how much a Birds of Paradise card could get. About $500, worn as it was. And it made me think about the time Boyd won us a gift card for chicken wings because we were the only team to get the final trivia question. “McKinley,” he’d said. “Boom.”

  “You sure it’s not Salmon P. Chase?” I said.

  “Nope. That’s the 10,000 dollar bill. It’s William Mother Fuckin’ McKinley. Book it.” And after writing down the answer he flipped his golf pencil in the air like he’d just hit a walk-off. That might have been the happiest I’d ever seen him. And picturing it now, I knew I couldn’t remember that moment as clear as I should. The sudden thought made me cry. Right there in the center of his room. A big fat nerd blubbering in a room full of toys. Boyd’s mom must have heard me, because after wiping my face, I found her in the doorway again, another glass in hand. She held it out for me.

  It
struck me that I hadn’t said anything to her at the service. “I’m sorry,” I said. I took the glass. “I—I don’t get it. He never said anything about this to me.” I winced as I drank it down.

  “His father got him most of this.” She gestured loosely at the room. “After he left. He’d send them on his birthday, always with one of those expensive cards, the thick ones. He’d write ‘Do not open’ or ‘This is not a toy.’ Said they wouldn’t be worth as much.”

  “He wasn’t wrong. The box alone is worth a few hundred on that one.”

  She seemed to interrogate the wall but couldn’t find what she wanted. “What’s the point? Hanging on to something you can’t even hold.” She picked up a comic and scoffed at the cover. “Books you can’t open. Can’t even read. What’s the use in that?”

  I wasn’t sure she wanted a response from me. And it wouldn’t have mattered because I didn’t have an answer. I just knew I didn’t want his things belonging to some stranger. I didn’t want the burden of knowing I shipped it all off to some poor fool trying to regain his past. I set the empty glass on the windowsill. The day had started to cloud and it looked like a rain might come. “I’ve got most of it written out,” I said. “I’ll come back to take photos. But it might be a few months for it all to go. Takes a special kind of buyer for this stuff.” I pointed to the tarp in the corner. It still concealed some part of him from me. “Did Boyd keep it like that?” I said his name without weight, as though I expected him to come back from an errand.

  “Cleaners left it that way. Feel free,” she said. “You can look.”

  What I would find I wasn’t sure. I might have been better off not knowing. But in remembrance of my friend Boyd, I looked under the tarp anyway. I took care folding it back, holding my breath as if peeling gauze off a skinned knee. Hiding under the tarp, coming into light in all its splendid glory, Boyd had the mother of them all, the USS Flagg aircraft carrier play set. In 1985 it was the biggest, best toy a kid could ever wish for. I had never seen one in person. Nobody in my neighborhood could afford one. And seeing it now made me feel like I had just encountered a celebrity. I wanted to take a picture with it to prove it was real.

  Boyd had it displayed atop a long folding table. Stern to keel she was seven and a half feet. The deck housed a few dozen soldiers, three Skystriker Combat Jets, and a Dragonfly Assault Copter. There were movable gun turrets and a fully operational winch off the back. The paint was perfect, all the decals flawless. Under the table he even had the pristine original packaging. And on the observation deck he had the Admiral Keel Haul action figure. There he was in his maroon bomber jacket, a thick mustache painted on his lip.

  I picked up the admiral by the waist. “This is incredible. This guy here, version one, you couldn’t buy him. You only got him if you bought the Flagg.” I held him out for her to see.

  She didn’t seem to care, glancing at him only briefly. “Looks like Freddie Mercury in a sailor hat.”

  I started to laugh again. Boyd and I had joked about how most of the action figures of our childhood looked like pedophiles. With his sky blue shirt only half buttoned beneath his jacket, the admiral was no exception. And that made me feel like I might bawl again if I didn’t get a handle on things. “When did he get this?” I said. “It’s so big. I mean look at the size of the box.” She was twisting the ends of her hair as she watched the clouds bundle together outside. She stopped only to fan her hand at the Flagg.

  “A month, maybe. Had to throw out a nightstand and put his computer on the floor just to make room.”

  I couldn’t understand why Boyd wouldn’t have said something about this. He had a near mint Flagg with all the pieces. It seemed significant.

  “Tell me,” she said. I was still looking the Flagg over, making sure all the radar antennas spun correctly. “What’s a grown man need something like that for?” As she spoke I found myself putting the admiral into my coat pocket to free both my hands.

  “I—I don’t know,” I said. “Why does anybody keep anything?”

  “Don’t take it with you.”

  An icy weight calved down my spine. I could feel her looking at me, but I was too ashamed to turn. I stood straight and slowly removed the admiral from my pocket. I perched him back up on the observation deck.

  “You can keep it,” she said. “If you want. It doesn’t matter, really.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I wasn’t going to take it. I just needed both hands to flip this hatch open.” I was still afraid to face her. “I mean, you really shouldn’t separate him from the ship anyway. Kind of kills the value of it.”

  “No. I mean the whole thing. The captain. The ship. You can have it.”

  I looked over my shoulder. She was still looking out the window, watching the rain soak into the rolled-up carpet. She never saw me put the toy in my pocket. “I couldn’t, really,” I said. “Even if I could, I came here in a hatchback.”

  “It comes apart. You could take it with you.”

  “And I’m kind of in a studio right now. I’m not sure where I could put it.”

  “It’s fine. Here.” She walked across the room and began clearing off the deck of the Flagg, tossing things into the large box under the table.

  “Careful,” I said. “Please. Just—don’t scratch the stickers.”

  But she began throwing the vehicles harder. Pulling off the moving parts. She picked up a mint comic book and frisbeed it in with the G.I. Joes.

  I stepped back and waited for her to finish. When she was done we both stood there and stared at the blank deck of the Flagg. Not saying a word until she broke the silence. “You want it or not?”

  She helped me lug the pieces out to my tiny car. And I was honest when I said I didn’t have a place to put it. The boxed soldiers piled to the ceiling until I could barely see out the back. The keel of it scratched against my window and the edge of the stern hit my elbow when I put the car into gear. As I went down the driveway it made me uneasy the way it all clattered. Each bump in the road, the value tanking a little more. At the end of the driveway I stopped and tried to readjust the Flagg. And I saw her looking at me from the house. She was standing next to the carpet, her drink held to her face. I was too far away to tell if she was sad or happy. And not knowing hit me in the stomach. I felt like I should have taken her someplace. Gone for coffee so we could talk about it. But it didn’t matter even if I wanted to. With his things piled up and moored around me there just wasn’t any room. For her or anybody.

  BEASTS OF FLIGHT

  The Birthday Gift

  For his eleventh birthday, Christoph’s mother took him go-karting.

  He’d never driven anything before. And Christoph found himself exhilarated by the rush of speed. He liked how the ground zoomed beneath him, slowly if he looked straight, and blurring fast if he looked to his side. He smiled at how he commanded the wind with the weight of his foot. As his courage grew he pushed the accelerator harder. The engine whined and he felt like he might fly away. And although he was firmly in last place, he couldn’t hide his joy as he rounded the track.

  On his final lap, grinning with the intensity of a birthday boy, Christoph wrecked. After careening into a hay bale, he spun out. As he began to correct himself another driver collided into his side, rolling Christoph’s go-kart. The tumbling made his arms flail. His head whipped from one shoulder to the other. Once the terrible motion ended, his left arm lay pinned, crushed under the searing weight of the machine.

  Even after a regimen of surgeries, grafts, and therapy, the arm remained a shameful creature. Patches of skin looked like wet paper towel. Grooves of lost muscle eroded down to the bone, forcing his hand to hook in on itself. It cradled toward his chest. Below the elbow the arm was useless.

  An executive from Super Kart Family Speedway mailed Christoph a formal letter. It was printed on luxurious cotton fiber paper, a fetching signature plumed at the bottom. The letter explained how Christoph’s experience was unique. According to the executive, most ch
ildren did not leave Super Kart Family Speedway with gnarled limbs. In fact, he included a pie chart showing how statistically children were more likely to be mauled by bears than suffer horrific life-altering trauma from go-karts. To show his endearing appreciation, the executive included a badge naming Christoph a lifetime MVP. As an MVP he was entitled to: unlimited laps and track time, a priority parking pass, and a commemorative drink cup (with complimentary soda fountain refills). For good measure he also included a coupon redeemable for 1,000 game tokens. He finished his letter with a postscript: “And a little secret between an executive and an MVP, use these tokens on the Skee-Ball machine. They have the highest token to ticket ratio!” Despite the executive’s grand gestures of kindness, the pie charts and the parking pass and the cup and the tokens, Christoph was still angry.

  He stood shirtless before his bedroom mirror. He followed the length of his healthy arm. Then he stared at his other limb. How incongruent he looked. Incomplete. He was ashamed of his body. He looked at the claw of what was his hand and remembered how it once held a steering wheel. How it once made the ground obey. Christoph stared at his frozen fingers. He told them to move. They would not obey.

  A Christmas Miracle

  At sixteen Christoph refused to go outside. He was tired of the stares, the way people glanced at his arm and whispered to one another when they thought he wasn’t looking.

  His mother decided to buy him a pet for Christmas. She thought it would help if Christoph had something to love, something living, to distract him from his handicap, from people.

  In the pet store she was greeted by the distinctive smell of bird feed and hamster shavings. Walls were stacked with rodents in clear boxes, lizards bathing under heat lamps, a wilderness of dazzling fish. The animals seemed forlorn to her. They looked like forgotten trophies. She perused a shelf lined with ferret cages. She was amazed that such a slender thing could produce such a sharp odor. The store owner inquired about her visit. After detailing the particulars of her son’s situation, repeating several times his loneliness, she added: “It’s important he has a companion.”