A Boy and His Dragon

by Michael J. Bowler

  “Well,” Jack went on, “how about this weekend you and I go out and toss it around? I don’t claim to be any expert on the game, but I can give you a few pointers. Yeah, that’s what we’ll do.”

  The boy wasn’t even given the opportunity to reply - the matter was apparently settled. Oh, well, hopefully they could get it over with in the morning on Saturday, unless, of course, Bradley Wallace was given pool cleaning duty again. I guess that’s why parents have kids, he thought musingly, absently picking at the slippery chicken leg on his plate, so they won’t have to do all the chores they don’t like. Saturday afternoon, however, had been promised to Whilly, and Bradley Wallace wouldn’t let anything impinge on that commitment. Especially football!

  Late that night, after he’d completed his homework and waited patiently for everyone else to go to bed, Bradley Wallace slipped out from under his own bedcovers, fully clothed, of course, shrugged into his jacket, and slunk quietly outside with his flashlight. He was getting better at “prowling by stealth.”

  He found the youthful dragon restless and pacing distractedly on all fours, tracing a circular path through the rubble around the Masher. Bradley Wallace immediately sensed his friend’s disquiet and hurried to Whilly’s side.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously.

  There was nothing to do without you here, came the mental response.

  “I’m sorry,” the boy apologized, seeking the dragon’s red eyes in the darkness of the warehouse. “I just can’t spend any more time here than I do without being noticed. But don’t worry. We’ll have the whole weekend to spend together. No school or anything. Oh, except I have to play football with my dad.”

  The distasteful note in his voice was painfully evident. Whilly stopped his pacing and crouched down before the boy, questioning him with obvious interest.

  You do not like this “football,” do you?

  “No!” Bradley Wallace practically spat in the dragon’s face. He dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged beside his friend. “But my stupid father can’t get that through his head!” His own vehemence surprised him. It surprised Whilly, too. The boy flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” Bradley Wallace concluded sheepishly, “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  Your human feelings are very confusing to me, the dragon replied with a nervous shudder. That which you call anger is very powerful, and very disrupting. I do not like it.

  “I try to control it,” the boy responded passionately. “But sometimes I just get so mad

  It distorts my thought processes, Whilly explained uneasily. Please remember that I experience all that you do, and your emotions are not always very pleasant.

  “I wouldn’t talk,” Bradley Wallace tossed back, piqued at being criticized. “I’m not exactly real fond of the taste of raw meat, you know. It’s gross!”

  I guess being part of someone is not so easy, the dragon suggested thoughtfully.

  “I guess not,” Bradley Wallace agreed succinctly, lapsing into a moody silence. Neither addressed the other for several minutes, each contemplating the vagaries of their symbiotic relationship. After stewing in his own juices for a time, Bradley Wallace suddenly remembered what he wanted to ask the dragon. “Why did you ask me about John Wagner this afternoon?”

  You have strong feelings toward him, feelings that greatly unsettle me. I merely wanted to know why.

  “You mean why I hate him?” Bradley Wallace retorted tightly, the very thought of Wagner pumping anger like vitriol through his veins.

  “It probably has something to do with the fact he hates my guts and makes my life a living hell!” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.

  Even without being able to clearly make out the dragon in the darkness, Bradley Wallace could sense the creature’s puzzlement, could almost see the thousand questions mirrored in those luminous scarlet eyes.

  But why does he hate you? was what finally entered the boy’s mind, after a brief moment of silent consideration.

  “How should I know? He just does, that’s all. I’ve never done anything to him.”

  Whilly shuddered again, as though in fear of his life. This hate you humans have is very dangerous. I do not understand it.

  “That’s because I don’t understand it,” Bradley Wallace replied with a sigh, embarrassed by his display of anger in front of his friend. Wagner wasn’t worth it. “Didn’t you say you had all my thoughts and feelings?”

  In the beginning, they were all I had, Whilly agreed readily. But now I am thinking on my own, developing questions and answers by myself. And I do not understand hate.

  “Yeah, well, neither do I,” the boy replied sadly. “Why would someone hate me for no reason?” The question could not be answered, he knew, at least not by himself or the young dragon. But somehow it felt better to have actually verbalized it, as though the words would float throughout the world until someone could provide an answer, and that answer would somehow be relayed back to Bradley Wallace. It was a silly notion, he knew, but then most of his notions were silly.

  The boy tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn, but finally gave in. These late night excursions were becoming more and more debilitating, he realized. Leaving another bag of food, again raided from the refrigerator (he’d told his mother that evening that he must be growing fast, to explain his increase in appetite), Bradley Wallace yawned an exhausted goodnight to his friend.

  Before departing, he remembered that both his mother and Katie would be out when he returned home from school the next day, and proposed the possibility of Whilly sneaking over to the house and seeing his bedroom. After all, he pointed out, the way the dragon ate, he’d soon grow too big to fit through the front door.

  Whilly responded to the suggestion with a fiery snort, which apparently meant he approved. A look into the dragon’s mind confirmed the boy’s hypothesis. Bidding the eating creature (it never took Whilly long to dig into whatever food was provided) a sleepy goodnight, Bradley Wallace left the warehouse for home. On the way he began to worry just how hot the dragon’s breath would become. Whilly might be asleep some day and inadvertently set the entire Gully aflame. Terrific. One more thing to worry about. As with the past few nights, the boy tumbled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately, his dreams mercifully untouched by strife.

  On Friday, Sister Mary returned to the class short stories they’d written the week before. Fortunately the duck-like nun seemed to have forgotten about that poem, Bradley Wallace was relieved to note, because he still didn’t know what it meant and hadn’t studied it, anyway. This particular assignment had been to take an Old Testament story and rewrite it in a modern setting, retaining the same moral and theme, of course. Bradley Wallace had chosen the Flood story from Genesis and re-titled it “Tarzan and the Flood.” In his version, an infestation of evil poachers threatens to decimate the animal population of Kenya, Africa, leading the authorities to desperate measures. They lure all the poachers into a deep valley surrounded by mountains, and then Tarzan belts out his famous yodel to call every animal out of that valley and through the only pass in the mountain range. The pass is then sealed with dynamite, a dam is blown sky high, and the entire valley is flooded, drowning the evil men. Bradley Wallace received an “A” and “Very Imaginative” on his effort, and that made him feel good.

  The only curious note was when he spotted John Wagner off in a secluded corner of study hall actually reading a book, in fact, buried in its pages. Usually Wagner terrorized the study hall moderator, Sister Madeline, a meek, timid, mousy little woman who had the backbone of a jellyfish and allowed all the kids to walk on her like a doormat.

  Wagner was the biggest thorn in her side, always shooting spitballs at the ceiling above her head (using a straw) which, when they dried, would drop down on her. He was also big on throwing paper airplanes at the hapless nun when the latter wasn’t looking.

  Today, however, Wagner completely ignored the obviously relieved Sister in favor of reading and, as though his
inactivity was a signal to the rest of the class, everyone else remained quiescent, too. Bradley Wallace strained from his desk several rows away to catch a glimpse of the book Wagner seemed so intent upon. Finally making out the title, he gasped aloud, drawing curious looks from those around him. It was a book on witchcraft.

  Because his mother and sister were to be out, Bradley Wallace was given the key to the front door, and that gave him an opportunity to let his imagination take over for a time when he returned home from school. The Murphy house had big, double front doors, but usually only one of them was ever used (unless something big had to be brought inside, like a Christmas tree).

  Whenever no one was home, Bradley Wallace liked to unlatch the other and swing both open simultaneously, pretending he was entering the somber halls of the ancient Collinwood (the family home in “Dark Shadows”.)

  In his mind’s eye, the Murphy front hall became the Collins family foyer with the drawing room directly ahead, entrance to servants’ quarters beneath a shadowy staircase ascending to the many upstairs wings and rooms (Collinwood had forty all together).

  And, of course, displayed prominently on one of the foyer walls was the nearly-two-hundred-year-old oil portrait of Barnabas Collins. So lost was the boy in his imaginary world that, when he distantly heard the tinkling sound of Josette’s music box, it seemed perfectly natural. Josette’s theme was light and delicate, like the lady who inspired it. He wondered if she was the one who’d activated her music box. He fervently hoped so.

  Then, like a veil lifted from in front of his eyes, he was once more standing within the arched, white-tiled front hall of the Murphy home in San Rafael, California. Gone were all traces of that magnificent mansion near the cliffs at Widow’s Hill on the coast of Maine. He shook his head in befuddlement, wondering how long he’d buzzed out this time. Closing the double doors, he slipped the bolt back into place on the one side, and dropped his book bag beside the oriental chest. As he turned toward the kitchen, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, breath on stand-by. Not all traces of Collinwood had vanished after all - wafting down the long hall from the back of the house as though on a summer breeze came the haunting, delicate tinkling of Josette’s music box. His music box. Someone was in his room.

  He knew the house should be empty, but Katie probably came home early and was poking around his room again. It’d happened before. Despite the plausibility of this theory, Bradley Wallace’s progress down the seemingly endless hall was slow and deliberate. He wasn’t about to take any chances. Passing his parent’s bedroom, he spotted his mother’s flowered, red-handled umbrella leaning against the wall just inside the door. He plucked it from its resting place, gripping the flimsy umbrella like a club. Just in case.

  The repeating melody grew louder as the boy drew closer to the open doorway of his room. He stopped just outside and charily peered inside.

  Crouched beside his bed, the small (six-inch high), oval-shaped, filigreed music box with its lid propped open held gently and carefully in his outstretched arms, clearly entranced by its haunting strains, was Whilly.

  Bradley Wallace let out an audible sigh of relief, quickly lowered the flowery umbrella, realizing he must look pretty dumb holding it up.

  Then anger suddenly took over, and the boy stormed into the room, slamming the door loudly behind him. The dragon didn’t even notice, so mesmerized was he by the slowly winding down music box.

  “What are you doing here?” Bradley Wallace demanded heatedly. “And how did you get here without anyone seeing you? Or did anyone see you?” It was a problem he’d mulled over all day - how to get Whilly to the house from the Gully unobserved.

  Still no response from the dragon. His wings were vibrating, and a faint, but audible, trilling escaped the creature’s mouth. In addition, the boy heard the now-familiar raspy breathing which always reminded him of a blast furnace.

  Bradley Wallace flung both hands to his hips demonstratively and glared sourly at the heedless dragon. “Are you listening to me?” he nearly shouted. “I’m talking to you!” Furious at being so pointedly ignored, he stamped one foot on the floor and threw his arms across his chest indignantly. Whilly suddenly snapped out of his trance as the music box ground to a halt, and glanced innocently over at the angry child.

  This machine makes beautiful sounds, he trilled happily, oblivious to the boy’s pouting consternation.

  “It’s called a music box,” Bradley Wallace explained stuffily, fighting to quell his anger, which he knew to be silly and childish. But he really hated being ignored. “It plays ‘Josette’s Theme’ from ‘Dark Shadows.”’

  Yes. I know of this “Dark Shadows” from your thoughts. It is special to you, and I would like to experience it. May I?

  The dragon’s eyes twirled with eagerness and genuine interest, melting the boy’s anger completely. Bradley Wallace reached out and carefully removed the music box from his friend’s grasp.

  “Sure,” he replied, feeling a surge of excitement building within him. “It comes on in fifteen minutes. While we wait I’ll rewind the music box.” Turning the tiny key at the base, Bradley Wallace carefully handed the treasured object back to the dragon. Whilly’s eyes seemed to dance in time to the music. “It’s one of my favorite songs,” the boy went on, caught up in the lilting melody. “But I like ‘Quentin’s Theme’ a little better. I have that one on a record. I’ll play it for you sometime.”

  After a few more minutes during which Whilly gazed longingly at the tiny mechanism, his expression harking back to some other era the boy could only guess at, the music box wound down a second time. Bradley Wallace dropped the lid in place, then gently retrieved the cherished object from the dragon’s forepaws and returned it to its customary resting place atop the ledge of his roll top desk.

  “How did you get in here, anyway?” he asked.

  Whilly answered matter-of-factly, The large door from what you call the backyard was not locked. I sensed no humans present within, so I entered.

  Bradley Wallace nodded approvingly, though he did wonder who left the door unlocked. Probably him. Then he turned to indicate the entire room with a sweeping gesture. “Well, how do you like my room?” he asked, as though presenting his private domain to a new kid on the block.

  Whilly gazed about him with intense curiosity. Keenly aware of the damage his sweeping, snake-like tail might cause, the dragon made a concerted effort to keep it in check as he carefully craned his long neck around the small room examining everything.

  He looked over the boy’s collection of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazines, his series of “Dark Shadows” novels and rather extensive book collection (Hardy Boys, Perry Mason, Sherlock Holmes, Black Stallion, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, and many others, mostly fantasy or horror), and his glow-in-the-dark models of Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, Dracula, the Wolfman, and the Starship Enterprise.

  The dragon became especially fascinated with the rectangular world time clock hung on the wall above the boy’s bed. It consisted of a brightly hued map of the world on which was displayed the time in major cities all over the globe.

  Bradley Wallace pointed out California to the interested dragon, and then named off all the continents and oceans. Whilly absorbed every detail like a sponge absorbs water. My teachers’d love a student like him, Bradley Wallace thought with amusement.

  And then, it was time for “Dark Shadows.” Bradley Wallace rolled lithely over the bed and reached underneath the counter for the small television set. Whilly watched as the boy set the TV on the counter and tuned in channel 7. As the picture sprang into focus, Bradley Wallace glanced nervously at Whilly and silently hoped the dragon wouldn’t poop on his floor. How would he ever explain dragon droppings to his mother? Whilly set the boy’s mind at easy by assuring him he’d already “pooped” in the Gully before coming over here. Bradley Wallace turned red with embarrassment and tried concentrating on the television. This mind link sure was awkward.

  But then the imag
e on screen faded into the dark, mist-enshrouded “great house of Collinwood,” and all such thoughts and fears vanished. And from that first moment, through the final closing credits, Whilly’s eyes never left those flickering images, and Bradley Wallace knew the dragon was hooked, just as he had become similarly hooked several years before.

  During commercials, the boy filled his friend in on past plot points to clear up the dragon’s multitude of questions. When the show finally ended, Whilly let out a howl of protest and demanded more. Bradley Wallace laughed.

  “I’m afraid that’s all for today,” he explained to the disappointed dragon. “They always end it like that so you’ll keep watching.”

  I want to watch tomorrow, Whilly insisted emphatically, almost like a child demanding a privilege from his parents.

  “Sorry,” Bradley Wallace apologized, hoping the dragon wouldn’t throw a fit, “but it’s not on Saturday or Sunday. Only during the week.”

  Whilly settled into a pout, or at least a darned good imitation. The boy eyed him curiously.

  “Well don’t get mad at me,” he chided good-naturedly. “I didn’t plan it that way.”

  Whilly remained silent for another few moments, studying the now-blank TV screen and thinking. Bradley Wallace seemed to have more difficulty reading the dragon’s thoughts than vice versa, and couldn’t really pick out specifics very well. Hopefully, he would get better at it eventually. Finally Whilly asked, How do those humans get inside this little box?

  Bradley Wallace threw back his head and laughed. “They aren’t really inside it. They’re just . . . “ He trailed off uncertainly, realizing suddenly that he was laughing at the dragon’s ignorance and he, himself, didn’t actually know how television worked either. He’d always just taken it for granted, like breathing. Some teacher he was. “Well,” he concluded lamely, “I don’t know exactly how it works, but those are just pictures we see. There aren’t any real live people in there.”