Toybox

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Whatcha doing?” he asked. It was as if he had seen me yesterday. He put his hands in his pockets and bent down to look at the diorama. “Neat.” He uprighted the stegosaurus, set it down exactly where I would have, brushed some HO lichen from the spiked tail. He bent lower, bringing his eyes in line with the front view, sweeping them across the Jurassic landscape, up the slope of the volcano to the lava-rimmed caldera. “Good stuff “

  He stood up, tucked his hands deeper into his pockets, smiled. “So watcha been doing?”

  “Not much,” I answered, looking at the floor. “Been real busy.”

  “I bet.” His eyes roamed away from me, around the room, over the baseball trophies, the autographed Mets baseball, the posters. “Oh, neat!” he said, going to a new model I had finished the week before, a red '56 Chevy convertible. “Where'd you get it?”

  “My mother bought it for me,” I answered quietly. “Good report card.”

  “Want to go somewhere?” he said suddenly, turning to look at me.

  “No.”

  “You sure? Be a lot of fun.”

  “I've got too much to do. Got to finish this project.”

  “It's Saturday, for Pete's sake. You can do it tomorrow. Want me to ask your Mom if it's all right?” He made as if to go out into the hallway. “No. Don't. I...don't want to go with you.”

  I looked at him then, expecting to see feigned surprise, or hurt, on his face, but instead there was only his smile.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “Jesus, Hank, I don't want to!”

  We looked at each other for a few moments, and then my mother called up, “You boys behave, or I'll make you go outside!”

  Hank's smile didn't waver. His eyes held the smile and expanded it, expanded it like the ocean that leads to the horizon that never finds land—

  “Sure,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Okay.”

  “Awright!” Hank said, taking two long steps toward me, hugging his arm around me like a brother.

  We avoided my mother, going out through the garage. “Need your bike,” Hank said. I pulled my ten-speed from the wall and mounted it, riding out the open garage door into the full spring afternoon, waiting while Hank trotted up to the front porch to get his ten-speed and gear down beside me.

  The day outside was like that breath of flower-life had been in my room. The world was burst open with flowers, green lawns and leaves—the trees so laden they looked wet. I breathed it in, feeling the lushness fill my lungs, breathing out the scent of chlorophyll and freshly spread fertilizer and mowed lawn. I wanted to feel life around me, forget the ocean that rolled and swelled in my head.

  “Nice day,” Hank said.

  I just looked at him.

  I followed him in low gear up the hill away from my house, then coasted down the long hill into town. We timed the lights so that we didn't have to brake. Hank took his hand from the handlebars and sat up, letting the wind blow across his face. We went straight through town and out, toward the farmstands and woods.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Follow, Bwana,” he said, grinning.

  I knew then where we were going. When Hank had first moved in I had showed him a special place—a hollow of woods at the end of a trail in an old Boy Scout camp which had been abandoned twenty years before after a forest fire. What had grown back was small and stunted between the burnout. I had cleared out the hollow with a couple of other kids the summer before. We had made plans to sleep out overnight when our parents gave us permission.

  My mother never had.

  I had taken Hank there once, making plans to camp out with him the coming summer. The place had been overgrown with a year's worth of weeds then, but as we rounded off the road into the woods I saw that the trail had been cleared, the bushes pushed back, even cut in some spots where they were thick outcroppings. We passed the burned-out jamboree hall, a charred square of water-rotted timbers, and veered back into the forest.

  “Almost there!” Hank called back, and the same sob that had assaulted me back in my room rose once again to my throat and threatened to break out.

  We skirted a huddle of moss-grown picnic benches, then abruptly shot out into the mottled sunshine of the hollow.

  The dale had been brushed clean.

  It looked as if an overnight Boy Scout campout had taken place, followed by a good cleanup, grass raked almost to the dirt, old leaves, branches and twigs swept away.

  “Like it?” Hank said, dismounting his bike, leaning it in a smooth motion against the thick trunk of an oak. “Been working like a dog out here.”

  I got off my bike slowly and rested it on its kickstand.

  He looked at me and laughed. “What's the matter? You look like you've seen the boogeyman.”

  I lowered myself to the ground, holding my stomach. I suddenly wanted to vomit. I closed my eyes, the ocean appearing before me, an ocean of thick red, thin clusters of veins, the bob of a gray organ in the swell, a hand reaching up out of the sickly-sweet-smelling sea to turn over and fall, disattached

  “Whoa, buster,” I heard close-by. I looked up to see Hank standing over me. His face was blank. I smelled vomit, looked down to see my pants covered, my sneakers, my hands.

  “You okay, pard?” Hank said.

  “No.”

  “Take a minute. Clean yourself up.” He stepped back away from me, from the smell. He'd left a handkerchief at my feet. I mopped myself, feeling my stomach turn over again, then keel to steadiness.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “Good.”

  He began to whistle, thinly, through his teeth, as he worked something away from the backpack at the rear of his bicycle seat. It was a crinkled paper bag. Inside was a sandwich. He sat down Indian fashion next to his bicycle and began to eat. The vague smell of bologna and mustard came to me.

  “Didn't get to eat lunch,” he said. “Let me know when you're ready, bub.”

  He ate one half of the sandwich and then the other, watching the trees around us. Dappled sunlight brushed his face, making him squint.

  Suddenly, he pointed excitedly into the underbrush, his words muffled by food. “Look, a fox!”

  My stomach tightened. I waited for him to jump up and chase after it, draw a knife from his belt and hack at the fox's face until all resemblance with nature was gone. But Hank didn't move. The fox was there, a red flash of tail with a white tip, and then it was gone.

  “Neat-o!”

  My stomach churned again, steadied.

  “Tummy okay?” Hank said, giving his attention to me again.

  I nodded weakly.

  He put the remaining crust of his sandwich into the paper bag, crumpled it up, stood, dusted crumbs from his pants and put the paper bag into his bike's knapsack. “Good,” he said. “Then let's get to it.”

  To the right of his bicycle was a thin trail, and Hank abruptly slipped into it. I heard him thrashing around in the bushes. I heard his voice, low. At first I thought he was talking to himself, but with repetition his words became audible. “Here, fellas,” he coaxed, over and over.

  Movement stopped in the underbrush, and Hank stopped talking. Then I heard him say, “Shit! Oh, shit!“ He moved through the woods again, reappearing with a large, high cardboard box in his arms, his face reddened with anger.

  He set the box down in the middle of the clearing. “I thought it was high enough,” he said, anger receding with embarrassment. “But one of them got out. Sorry.” He looked at me with genuine contrition spread across his features.

  I said nothing.

  “Well,” he expanded, “we'll just have to wing it.”

  He turned his attention to the box, lifting back the flaps. His features lit up.

  “Hey, boy!” he said brightly to something down inside. He put his hands down into the depth of the box and brought something small, soft and brown up.

  A puppy. A mutt, mostly cocker spaniel, with ears hung flat dow
n and huge brown eyes. Its paws were overlarge. Its tongue panted out expectantly, its attention riveted to Hank.

  Hank laughed. “All right, boy, okay.” He cradled the dog tightly with one hand, reaching into his jacket pocket to dig out a dog biscuit. The puppy snapped at it, taking it into its mouth with a grunt of pleasure, holding it with its paws over the top of the box.

  “Good fella,” Hank said, putting the dog down and spreading a few more biscuits at its feet. “You won't run away, huh? Nah, you'll stay, right?”

  The dog looked up at him adoringly. Hank laughed again. “Good boy.”

  Hank looked at me. “There were two,” he said, “the other was bigger. He must have got his paws over the top of the box.”

  We both looked at the brown puppy, whose tail wagged happily as he growled away at the dog biscuits.

  Hank suddenly rubbed his hands together and said, “It's showtime.”

  With a short laugh at the dog, he scooped it up and handed it to me.

  My hands felt heavy as stones. The dog must have sensed my feelings, because it began to whine, trying to squirm its way out of my loose grip. Hank put his hands on top of it and held it down. “Whoa, boy, whoa, take it easy.” He dipped back into his pocket and came up with a biscuit that had broken in half. He gave the half to the dog and rubbed its head. The dog whined, then began to pant and growl playfully, working at the food.

  “You can't freak `em out,” Hank said to me. He grinned down at the dog, rubbed the slick fur on its head. “Right, fella?”

  The dog whined excitedly, looking for another biscuit.

  “Sorry, no more food,” Hank said, and then he took his hands away from the dog, leaving it in my grip.

  “Go ahead,” he said, turning his smile to me.

  “I can't,” I got out. I held the dog close to my body; it had warmed my hands, but my fingers trembled and threatened to pull apart, throwing the dog into the woods to join its escaped sibling.

  “Wish that other sucker hadn't gotten away,” Hank said ruefully. “It would have made things a lot easier.” He rubbed the puppy's head then stepped back. “Sorry, but you have to do it yourself.”

  “But I can't.”

  “No?”

  And then I did it. I turned the dog in my hands, belly up, cupping it so that I could see its face. I took its tiny head between my palms, its huge brown eyes looking up at me, and I squeezed, letting my mind be a vise that spread down my arms and into my hands. The puppy gasped once and then opened its mouth wide, trying to turn and bite me, but my grip was too tight. Its eyes grew wider, staring into my eyes, and then a bright light, the end of life, filled the eyes and then they blinked out as if a shade had been drawn down them as the dog's head imploded in my hands. My palms nearly met, and the dog's head spread out away from my hands, colors of red mingling with brown fur and bone. I kept squeezing. My hands nearly met. I wanted to feel my own live flesh against itself.

  I heard a buzzing sound from far off that grew like a swarm of hornets and threatened to overwhelm me. Then I realized that it was my own mouth, screaming. I screamed and screamed and then someone's hands were upon me. A voice was trying to cut through the screams. The hands shook me and I let go of the dog, my arms flying wide, my eyes burning like hot coals. I threw the hands that held me away and screamed. The hands took hold of me again. My burning eyes saw Hank looking at me, smiling happily, and I reached out to take his face in my hands, but instead I put my hands to my own head, screaming “I don't want to! I don't want to!” and then I sank to the ground and the hornets went away and I cried and cried and finally slept....

  ~ * ~

  When I woke up the sun was going down. Hank was gone. He'd taken his bike, but not before he had cleaned up. The hollow was antiseptically brushed and raked as it had been when we arrived.

  I sat up. I looked at my hands. Only when I looked under the nails could I see dried blood. Hank had cleaned me, too. My pants and shirt had been rubbed with soil. Most of the stains were gone. Those that remained were pale and indistinguishable.

  I crawled to a tree and sat with my back against it for a few minutes. Then I got up and rode my bike slowly out of the camp, through town and back to my house. When I got home it was suppertime. My mother didn't say anything to me about where I'd been. I ate dinner and then I went up to my room and closed the door. I put on my pajamas and got into bed, and slept.

  I dreamed about the extinguishing light in the puppy's eyes, and about Hank's expectant, happy smile.

  All night I dreamed.

  The next day I woke up and didn't get out of bed, and my mother didn't notice because it was Sunday and she got up late. When it was time for breakfast she came to my room, and I told her I didn't feel well and stayed in bed. I stayed in bed all day. The next day my science project was due, but I stayed in bed the whole day, the dinosaur diorama passing through morning light and afternoon shadow to night again. At suppertime my mother came in with her worried look on.

  “I don't like the way you look,” she said. “Are you sure it's just a cold?”

  I nodded; I'd been warming the thermometer up to 102° all day with a match and drinking all the orange juice and chicken broth she'd brought. The Panadol she'd given me I'd flushed down the toilet.

  She continued to study me. “If you don't get better by tomorrow I'm calling the doctor. There's a lot of mononucleosis around. If you've got that you could miss the last month of school. And you wouldn't be able to see Hank for weeks. You don't want that, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  She produced another glass of orange juice. “Try to rest now I'll be back in later to see if you need anything.”

  I drank the juice, and feigned rest, and thought about mononucleosis, and when she came in later to check on me I feigned sleep. After she was gone I stared at the ceiling as long as I could keep sleep away, and when it finally came the dreams came with it and hounded me till morning.

  The next day I didn't use the match, lowering my temperature to normal. My mother pronounced me cured. As she bore away the last of my orange juice she stopped in the doorway. “I forgot to tell you, Rudy. Your friend Hank called. He said he'll either see you in school tomorrow, or come by in the afternoon. He said he had something 'neat-o’ as he put it, to show you.” She looked at me, shaking her head as she closed the door behind her. “Still don't like the way you look....”

  The rest of that day and all night, the dreams came with my eyes open.

  The next day I went to school. Hank was late for homeroom, but he passed me a note during Math class that read, 'See you after school?' I wrote back, 'Yes.' He didn't try to talk to me after class, and I didn't see him the rest of the school day.

  After the last bell he appeared, falling into step beside me as I headed for home. “Can you come now?” he asked.

  “I don't have my bike.”

  His grin widened. “You don't need it.”

  “I should tell my Mom.”

  “Are you kidding?” he laughed. “Come on.”

  We walked two blocks to the county bus depot. Hank motioned me onto a bench while he went to the window. I saw him pull a wad of bills from his pocket and count them out, sliding them under the glass cutout. He came back with two tickets, handing me one. “Here,” he said, “it's a round trip.”

  I looked at the ticket, and it had the name of a town forty miles away on it. “What the—”

  “Trust me,” he grinned. He pointed to an open garbage bin next to the bench. “Throw your schoolbooks in there,” he said. “You won't need them anymore.”

  I did as he said, and then we boarded our bus. The doors hissed closed, and the bus groaned away from the station.

  From our seats behind the driver we watched the scenery. It was quickly dominated by farmland. We passed through a few small towns, the bus braking to a halt in front of a dusty station before pulling out onto the road again. Soon it was all farmland we watched.

  In an hour and fifteen minutes we
had reached our stop, a mere sign on the highway. Hank urged me off the bus ahead of him. As he stepped off, he turned to the driver. “Last bus through at eight?” he asked. The driver nodded with boredom. Hank jumped off beside me.

  We walked for two miles. It was a warm afternoon, the kind we would have played baseball on, but today we walked through a rutted farm field, ranked with cut feed-corn stalks, toward a near line of hills. “My foster parents built a summer house up there,” Hank explained. “There's a cabin, a lake nearby.” Smiling, he said, “no fish or frogs.”

  We climbed, the hill quickly shading itself with pine and spruce. There was no trail, but Hank used the sun, and soon we broke out onto a dirt road.

  “Won't be long,” Hank announced.

  In another fifteen minutes we stood before the summer cabin, an A-frame with a wrap-around deck. It looked brand new. In confirmation, Hank said, “They finished it a month ago. My foster parents said we'd spend all of August up here.”

  He bounded up the steps onto the deck. He produced a key from his pocket and opened the front door. He held it open for me like a bellhop, letting me pass through first.

  I entered a sparsely furnished room with sawdust still wedged in the corners, sunlight streaming through the glass-walled A of the front. The back of the A was high stone with an unused fireplace cut into the bottom.

  “Neat, eh?”

  I looked around at Hank.

  He had settled into one of two bean bag chairs in the center of the room. He crossed his outstretched legs at the ankles. “Hungry?” he asked. “I brought up some stuff yesterday, bologna and mustard and bread; some devil dogs, too.”

  “I'm not hungry.”

  He shrugged, settling his hands behind his head.

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Why are we here?”

  I had begun to get that nauseous feeling again, a fever-like roiling that burned up from my stomach into the back of my eyes. “Sit down,” Hank suggested.

  “I don't want to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My stomach was boiling, pushing bile into the back of my throat. I swallowed it down. I did want to sit down all of a sudden, and dropped into the second bean bag chair across from Hank.