Little Doors

by Paul Di Filippo

  But then came a disturbing incident that awoke my human side.

  Out of my old house stepped Sparky Flint, my murderous wife.

  And with her was a man!

  Tall and impressively muscled, clad in a dark suit and crisp fedora, the fellow strolled alongside Sparky with a sober yet irrepressibly jaunty air. I instantly assessed him as ten times the physical specimen I had ever been (although of course he was pitiful compared to my current girth and strength), and I felt complete jealousy toward this new suitor.

  But then as the pair approached and I spotted the small mask guarding the stranger’s identity, I recognized him and my feelings flip-flopped instantly.

  This was the Shade! Central City’s daring crimefighter, champion of the oppressed and wronged, had come personally to investigate and avenge my murder!

  I focused my “hearing” on Sparky and the Shade, a small matter of forming a parabolic cone with certain of my leaves.

  “I wish I had returned from my affairs in China a day or two earlier,” said the Shade, “before Klink and his boys completely obliterated this lawn. Look at this mess! Those flatfoots might’ve been playing a duffer’s round of golf, the lawn’s so hacked up. Any clues to the identity of your husband’s killer are long gone.”

  For the first time I noted the terrible condition of the lawn. What the Shade had observed was true. I regretted I would not be able to roll out and reseed in my current state.

  Attired in widow’s weeds, a veil floating across her devilishly beautiful features, Sparky sniffled with touching, albeit insincere sympathy. “Poor Dottie! He was ever so prideful of his whole garden. Sometimes in fact I think he loved it more than me.…”

  Not so! I wanted to shout. Well, perhaps …, honesty instantly forced me to amend.

  The Shade regarded Sparky with a natural compassion, tempered, I thought, only by those common suspicions that attach to the spouse of any murdered husband. “There, there, Mrs. Dottle. I know it’s small comfort, but we’ll eventually catch the fiend who did this.”

  “That’s what I pray for each night before I climb into my lonely empty bed, Mister Shade, where I writhe and squirm feverishly until dawn.” Sparky gripped the Shade’s right bicep in an overfamiliar manner and fluttered her long lashes at him.

  The Shade appeared a trifle flustered. “Ahem, yes. Now, let me just have a look at this tree.”

  Crouching at my base, the Shade produced a magnifying lens and examined my bark. With one gloved finger he took up a few flakes of my rain-washed and sun-dried blood. He cogitated a moment, then stood.

  “I would’ve thought a man startled by an axe-bearing assailant might have made a dash for his life, or at least clawed at the tree where he kneeled in an attempt to scramble upright. Yet he died without a scuffle right where you earlier saw him working.”

  Unwisely perhaps, Sparky vented her residual hatred. “Dottie was a meek little shrimp!” Hastily, she recovered. “That is, my husband had a mild disposition. He must’ve fainted straight away when the awful thug came on him.”

  “Yes, that’s one explanation. Well, Mrs. Dottle, there’s not a lot I can do here. I’ll be going now.”

  “Oh, please, Mister Shade, just walk me back to the house. I can’t stand to be alone near this tree. There’s something creepy about it now, since my husband died.”

  As the Shade and Sparky retreated, she cast a dire look back at me, almost as if she could see her husband sheltering inside his oaken suit.

  Once the pair was out of sight, I found myself sinking down into blissful vegetal somnolence again. The happy sensations of being an oak completely wiped away any mortal cares left over from my prior life. Why should I trouble myself about human justice? My old life would never be restored through the courts. Let the fleshly ones squabble among themselves. Their little lives had no impact on mine.

  My arrogant invulnerability lasted for roughly a year. Through summer, fall and winter I gloried in the magnificence of my being, experiencing each turning season with new joy.

  But then in the spring came my comeuppance. I had been much too cavalier in dismissing Sparky’s ability to do me further harm.

  One day near the anniversary of my murder, a second set of killers arrived to slay me once again.

  I witnessed the truck from Resneis Arborists pass through the gates of my small estate and down the drive. Improbably and most uncivilly, it actually continued up onto my prize lawn, the turf now looking less than perfect due to lack of attention. Rough-handed workers tumbled out, and a foreman began to shout orders.

  “Okay, you jokers, get a move on! We’ve got to take down every tree on this property plenty pronto, if we want that bonus. And the big oak goes first!”

  Horrified, I watched two men pull a huge saw from their truck and start toward me.

  I could feel the big sharp teeth placed harshly against my barky skin.

  The first rasping cut produced a dull agony. The second, deeper stroke sent fiery alarm signals down my every fiber.

  I could feel my consciousness pulling instinctively back from the pain. I had an impulse to gather myself into the deepest core of my being, to escape the torture.

  But before I lost touch with the outer world, I caught the arrival of Sparky and a brutish-looking stranger dressed in a suit with roguishly wide lapels. I forced myself to focus on their sotto voce dialogue, as they conversed in what they deemed utter secrecy.

  “I gotta hand it to ya, Sparky baby,” said the thug. “This land is gonna make a swell spot for Central City’s new casino. But ain’t’cha being a bit, well pre-ma-tour with the choppin’ an’ the bulldozin’ an’ all? The permits an’ licenses from City Hall ain’t exactly a shoe-in. Mayor Nolan ain’t too keen on gamblin’. And her copper daddy’ll bust a gasket if he finds out who your backers are.”

  “You just leave Commissioner Nolan and his brat in City Hall to me, big boy, and concentrate on what you do best.”

  “Lovin’ and killin’, right?”

  “Right, Jules.”

  The conniving pair went into a clinch that violated every element of the Hays Code, but I could spare no further attention for their reprehensible licentiousness.

  Loud creakings and groanings were issuing from my numb nether regions, which had self-protectively lost all sensation. With grave misgivings, I noticed that I was beginning to cant and tip.

  My ultimate downfall followed swiftly. The final fibers holding me upright parted, and I crashed toward the ground. The thundering impact was titanic, and I lost consciousness for some time. When I came to, I could feel my proud branches being lopped. In short time I was hoisted by a newly arrived crane onto an accompanying flatbed truck and carted off.

  Huddling deep inside myself, I realized then that my fate most likely involved a quick trip to the sawmill and a swift transition into planks.

  But such was not the case. Apparently I was destined for stranger ends.

  Whether subconsciously or not, Sparky had chosen a fate for my wooden corpse meant to humiliate. Even in death I would be denied utilitarian dignity.

  When I felt a cessation of motion, I pooled my dwindling organic energies and tried to apprehend my destination. I saw a sign that read CENTRAL CITY SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN, and quickly intuited my ignominous lot: to become practice billets for budding, ham-fisted sculptors. The best I could hope for was to grace a tobacco shop as a lopsided wooden Indian.

  Sure enough, I was trundled into the school’s carpentry shop and, once callously stripped of my bark, rapidly dismembered into several largish sections of trunk. With each cut I pulled my ectoplasmic bits of mental being out of the severed section, retreating and retreating, until finally, with the last slice, I found all my fading identity concentrated in one portion of trunk.

  For a long time I existed in a state of hibernation, as I cured in a storeroom. What became of my nonsentient bits I cannot tell. After an unguessable duration, the portion housing my ghostly self, roused by motion, eventual
ly rode a dolly to the atelier of a youth possessed of handsome Mediterranean looks and clad in leather apron and work gloves. I heard him addressed as “Gino” by the delivery men.

  Gino wrestled me upright into position on a platform, then stepped back to survey me. “Hmm, I see hidden in this dumb wood a straining heroic figure, fighting against injustice. Perhaps I’ll call this masterpiece Samson Rages against the Philistines.”

  Much as I appreciated Gino’s noble goals for my desiccated flesh, I still cringed to imagine the first blow of his chisel. Trying to avoid his blow, I concentrated my essence far away from his anticipated strike. But then, at the last moment, he shifted positions and cleaved off that very block of matter containing all my soul!

  I fell to the floor, ignored in the white heat of artistic creation.

  But at day’s end, to my surprise, Gino picked me up and carried me home.

  The young sculptor lived in an Italian slum on the far side of Central City. Apparently he shared his dismal cold-water flat only with his father, a cheerful old fellow with an aura of deep wisdom about him.

  “Poppa, look,” Gino called out as soon as he entered. “Some raw material for your hobby.”

  Gino’s father took me in his rough hands. How humiliating, I thought. From Hiram P. Dottle, bookkeeper, botanist and husband, to mighty oak to hunk of kindling. The old man turned me over and over, examining me with a keen eye before finally speaking.

  “It’s-a not fine Algerian brier, Gino, like-a what-a we had back in Napoli. But the grain, she’s a-fine. Maybe Mario Deodati can make-a one nice pipe out of this scrap.”

  “Thataboy, Pop! Go to it!”

  Thus began my final metamorphosis, under the magically skilled hands of Mario Deodati. Pared away with patient cunning, the block revealed the shape hiding within it. And amazingly, as Mario lavished attention and craft and even love on me, I felt my identity taking renewed strength.

  At one point, holding my still-chunky form, Mario spoke to me. “I see a face in-a you, Mister Pipe. I’m a-make your bowl into a smiling head.”

  Good as his word, Mario carved facial features into his creation. I had no mirror to observe myself in, but I could feel from inside that my new visage was perhaps overly jolly and gleeful in the manner of a Toby jug. Mario’s sensitivity to my true nature extended only so far.

  One day in late winter, when the winds rattled the loose, rag-stuffed windows in the apartment, Mario and Gino had a terse, painful discussion which I observed and listened to from my perch on a shelf.

  “It’s no use, Pop. I’m going to have to quit school. We don’t even have the money for coal and groceries, never mind my tuition.”

  Mario banged the table with the hand that had birthed me. “Did me and your sainted Momma teach-a you to be a quitter! You gonna stay in school, boy!” He struggled to his feet and snatched me down off the shelf. “Go sell this! And get-a the best price you can!”

  Wrapped in an old piece of flannel, I left my latest home.

  I surmised that it was now nearly a year since I had been felled, and my fate once more loomed obscure.

  Five stores later, a deal was consummated. I changed hands for the princely sum of one hundred dollars, enough to keep the Deodatis afloat for several months, and I silently bade farewell to Gino.

  My new owner was a portly, bearded, punctilious gentleman in vest and suit. The tip of his tongue protruding absentmindedly from the corner of his compressed lips, he inked a price tag in the amount of two hundred dollars, tied it to my stem with string, and placed me on a velvet cushion in a display case. That night, when the shop lights clicked off and only stray glints from street lamps illuminated my new home, I tried to communicate with my new neighbors. But they failed to respond to the most vigorous of my psychic efforts, and I realized I was the only sensate pipe amongst them. Internally, I shed a self-pitying tear or two as I contemplated my sad lot.

  The next few weeks established a boring routine of shop-opening, commercial traffic, shop-closing and a long night of despair. I was handled and admired several times, but never purchased.

  But one day my salvation arrived, in the form of two famous customers.

  The well-dressed and decorously glamorous woman with her twin rolls of blonde hair pinned high atop her head appeared first in my field of vision. Lowering her half-familiar happy face to the glass separating us, she spoke. “Oh, Shade, look! Isn’t that model with the carved face just darling?”

  The masked visage of the Shade appeared next to the woman’s. In context, I recognized her now as Mayor Ellen Nolan. The Shade did not seem to share all of Ellen Nolan s enthusiasm. His manly features wrinkled in quizzical bemusement.

  “Gee, Ellen, I’ve seen better mugs on plug-uglies from the Gasworks Gang! And two hundred dollars! Do you realize how many orphans we could feed with that money?”

  “Don’t be such a wet blanket, Shade. Spending a little more of my personal money on Daddy’s birthday won’t send any orphans to bed hungry.”

  The Shade lifted his hat and scratched his scalp. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Ellen? How are you going to get Nolan to give up his favorite old stinkpot in favor of this one, anyhow?”

  “Simple. I’ll hide it.”

  A whistle of admiration escaped the Shade’s lips. “And the newspapers say I’ve got guts! Well, I leave it all up to you.”

  “A wise decision. Sir, we’ll take this one. And wrap it nicely, please.”

  Into a dark box I went. The crinkle of folding gift-paper and the zip of cellotape from a dispenser was followed by careful placement into what I presume was a shopping bag. I could tell by the long stride I then shared that the Shade carried me home to Ellen’s house. I heard the smack of a kiss upon a cheek, then felt further lifting movements, ending up, I supposed, hidden in a closet.

  The routine of the house for the next day or so quickly became aurally familiar. The gruff yet loving Commissioner Nolan arrived home and left at odd hours of the day, while the perky but forceful Mayor Nolan held to a more regular schedule. The Shade popped up unpredictably.

  Finally one special morning, muffled in my closet, I could hear Ellen’s father ranting, turning the air blue with his curses.

  “Where could that dangblasted, consarned pipe of mine have gotten to! Ellen! Ellen! ELLEN!”

  “Yes, Daddy, whatever’s the matter?”

  “My favorite pipe! I can’t find it! I’m certain I left it on the bed stand when I went to sleep, but now it’s missing! How can I go to work without it?”

  Footsteps approached me, a door creaked open, and I was lifted down in my package. Ellen’s sweet voice soothed her father. “Well, I haven’t the foggiest notion of where you’ve mislaid that awful thing. But luckily enough, I have this little gift right here. Happy birthdav, Daddy!”

  My wrapping began to rip. “Grmph. Hmph. Frazzleblast it!”

  “Let me give you a hand, Daddy dear.”

  The light of day made me metaphysically squint. I found myself face to face with a choleric, jaw-grinding Commissioner Nolan. The three patches of white hair on his otherwise bald head were mussed and flyaway.

  He scowled at me, and I knew we had not hit it off.

  “Is this a kid’s bubblepipe? What am I supposed to pack it with—cornsilk?”

  Ellen began to tenderly stroke her father’s hair into better order. “Come on now, don’t be a gruff old bear. This pipe has a hundred times more class than your old one. Won’t you at least try it, please—for me?”

  Nolan turned me around so I faced away from him. Then for the first time I felt the curiously intimate sensation of his blunt teeth biting down on my stem. His irritation caused me to waggle furiously up and down almost in time to his thumping, agitated pulse, so much so that I feared for his dangerously high blood pressure.

  “Feels strange,” Nolan said. “Not like my old one.”

  “New things take some getting used to. Here’s your tobacco pouch. Smoke up a bowl or two and you’
ll see how lovely it is.”

  Nolan stuffed my wooden head full of pungent weed, tamping the plug down with a blunt, nicotine-stained thumb. Then I heard a match scrape and felt the small flame singe my crown. The pain was less than if I had tested my human flesh with a match, and I resolved to be stoic in my new role.

  Puffing furiously, Nolan seemed to relax a trifle. “Draws well enough,” he cautiously admitted. “But that simpering little face on the bowl—”

  “Shush now! Off to work with you!”

  Nolan snatched up a battered old leather satchel and exited. A police car and driver awaited him outside, and we set off.

  Well, I cannot begin to describe the tremendous excitement of the subsequent several weeks. I experienced firsthand the glamorous crimefighting life of the Shade and Nolan in a way no one else ever had, not even the Shade’s loyal Negro sidekick, Busta! Never absent from Nolan’s pit bull-like mandibular embrace, I found myself swept up in innumerable thrilling confrontations with the forces of evil. Shootouts, chases, last-minute rescues! Threats, torture, mysterious clues, exotic locales! Villains, henchmen, mad scientists, femmes fatales! Why, once I remember we slipped quietly through the slimy, drip-plopping sewers on the trail of the Crustacean, only to discover the archfiend in his lair with—

  But I ramble. I’ll never reach the end of my personal tale if I recount all the wild adventures I experienced. Suffice it to say that out of my three existences to date, being Commissioner Nolan’s trusty pipe has proved by far the most invigorating!

  Of course, I had to endure many boring meetings as well. Politics played a part in crimefighting, as it did in everything connected with the civic life of Central City. Whenever one of these tedious events was scheduled, I fell into an absentminded reverie. I confess to being in one such fugue at the start of that fatal evening.

  The clock in the mayor’s shadowy office struck midnight when the Shade and Ellen walked in, causing my owner to hastily remove his feet from his daughter’s desk and leap up from her ornate office chair.