by Sergio Gomez
But just like in the clothing store, the one he wanted jumped out at him at once. It was a blond pompadour. Its hair was all over the place, probably from the kids playing around and throwing it on their heads to look at themselves in the mirror, but the wig was cut in a way that it retained the basic shape of the hairstyle. He’d have to comb it, make it neat, make it so his son was presentable, but it was the perfect one.
It was even the right size.
Roy was going off about the different types of wigs, who they were for and why they would be used. Raymond wasn’t listening to him though, because he was too busy imagining what his son would look like with the outfit from Clothing ‘N’ Things and this wig on his head, imagining what it would be like to finally have another soul in his home.
“I’ll take that one,” Raymond said, cutting Roy off from telling him about the shipment coming in tomorrow morning if none of them suited him.
Roy stopped, as abruptly as if he’d been punched in the gut.
“That one?” he asked.
“Yes,” Raymond grabbed it off the hook, not taking his eyes from it. “How much?”
“For you, Mr. Gibson, thirty dollars. Fair?”
“Done deal, young man,” Raymond said.
“That was quick and easy,” Roy said, and started waddling over to the front of the store.
“These creations pick things out for themselves sometimes, young man.”
Roy nodded as he rounded the counter and got behind the register. “I know how it is. I got a cousin who writes comic books. Says the Greeks were right, the muses are real.”
“Real indeed,” Raymond agreed, but he was hardly into the conversation. He was ready to get out of here and complete his son.
Roy put in the total, took the twenty and the ten Raymond was handing him and then put the wig into a brown paper bag with a logo of happy and sad theater masks inked on the side of it.
“You’re a good customer Mr. Gibson, you should come in more often,” Roy said, smiling as he handed him the bag over the counter.
“Maybe I will,” Raymond said.
After all, he would have a son soon. Perhaps the boy would want to dress up next Halloween.
Raymond took the bag from him and headed for the door, telling Roy to have a good night. He left the store with the enthusiasm of a boy with a new toy.
But in this case, it was an old man. And it wasn’t about a toy… though it was, in a way, but not in Raymond’s mind. In his, the excitement was about his son.
Chapter 5
“He’s a strange old man,” Twist said, as they watched Mr. Gibson walking home with shopping bags in both hands.
He was obscured by the darkness, but every ten steps or so he would be underneath the pale light of one of the streetlamps that lined Dudley Street. Besides that, the old man’s slanted posture was unmistakable.
“Why’s he so strange?”
“First off, who goes shopping at this hour?”
Jack couldn’t help but laugh.
Twist was leaning against the porch banister with his arms dangling over the railing, while Jack was sitting on the top of the steps. He looked over at Jack from where he stood. The porchlight—just a bare bulb hanging from the awning since Twist broke the cover (and got an ass whooping for)—showed the big smile on Jack’s face.
“What’re you laughing at?”
Jack shook his head. “Nothing, just funny that you don’t see people shopping at this hour around here. In the city people shop at all sorts of hours. I’ve been out with my mom past midnight a few times.”
“Huh,” Twist said, and looked back across the street to where Mr. Gibson was climbing the porch steps of his house, “the city sounds weird.”
Jack’s attention was back on the house as well, and he noticed all of the lights inside were off. Besides the porch light the old man had left on for himself, the house was all dark. It was kind of spooky.
“He lives by himself?”
“Yeah,” Twist said. “No wife or kids or anything.”
“Damn,” Jack said.
Twist looked over his shoulder. The front door was open, but the screen window was closed so he could peek into the living room. The glow from the television revealed Big Bob was half asleep on the couch, his eyelids fluttering shut and open as he fought sleep. Mom was sewing next to him in her rocking chair. Both of them were too distracted to have heard Jack curse.
Whew.
He knew if Dad heard, the punishment would have been transferred over to him.
In a low voice, and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb, Twist said, “Keep it down if you’re gonna talk like that with those two around.”
Jack felt his face grow hot. “Um, sorry.”
“Nah, it’s cool man,” Twist said. “My dad’s just a bit of an… A-S-S-H-O-L-E.”
Jack laughed, and Twist joined him after stealing another glance behind him to make sure Big Bob was still on the couch.
Across the street, they heard Mr. Gibson’s front door shut.
“You were telling me why he was strange,” Jack reminded him.
“Oh, yeah. Well, he makes these toys and displays them at the front of his window all the time—you can probably see them from here if you squint your eyes real hard.”
Jack knew he wouldn’t be able to see the toys from this far even if he squinted, and he was also pretty good at knowing when someone was yanking his chain to get him to do something silly. But, now that Twist told him about them, he noticed the vague blobs of colors sitting on the front window sill.
“He made this seesaw of some kids on giant pumpkins.”
“What the heck?”
“Yeah, and here’s the kicker: the pumpkins are colored hot pink.”
Jack looked at Twist to see if he was messing with him again, but his face was serious. They both laughed.
“Why?” Jack asked.
Twist shrugged. “I think he’s colorblind and can only see red. Like a dog or something.”
“How do you figure that?”
“He always gets the Santa Claus outfits right for his Christmas toys.” Twist nodded, to assure Jack he was telling the truth. Jack laughed again.
“Has he always lived here?”
“Yeah, I heard he’s been here before the town was even built.”
“What?”
Twist grinned. “I heard they built the town around him.”
Again, they both laughed.
Their laughter died down, and they sat in the silence of Dudley Street. The murmur of the television set from the living room and some crickets chirping in the bushes surrounding the yard were the only sounds that filled the air until Jack got up. The floorboards creaked as the pressure of his weight came off them.
“Well, I better head back to my Dad’s house to get a shower before bed.”
“Alright,” Twist said, moving away from the railing and stepping closer to Jack. “Hey, want to ride bikes tomorrow? I’ve got a half day at school.”
“I don’t have any school,” Jack bragged.
“Show off,” Twist grumbled. “Whatever. One more day and then it’s Thanksgiving vacation.”
Jack wondered at the tone of those words. “You don’t sound too thrilled about it.”
“I am. I mean, of course I am, it’s just… Sometimes being home is worse, you know?”
Not really, Jack thought to himself. What he wouldn’t give to be home with his mom and his dad again, or even here with Dad and Maria all the time. Anywhere besides school, really.
“Yeah, I guess,” he finally said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“So, bikes tomorrow?” Twist asked again.
“Yeah,” Jack said eagerly. “I’ll ask my dad if he brought my bike with him when I get home.”
“If not, I have a pink scooter in the shed you can use,” Twist said, grinning again.
“Why do you have a pink scooter if you don’t have a sister?” Jack asked, smiling at knowing he’d
just gotten one over Twist.
Twist’s smug look disappeared from his face. “Drats. Guess I didn’t think that one through.”
They both laughed. Twist stuck his fist out and Jack bumped it.
“Okay, see ya tomorrow friendo,” Twist said, starting back into the house.
“Yeah, man, later.” Jack said as he went down the stairs.
Twist stopped before opening the door, and thought about how Jack referred to his dad’s house as “his dad’s place”. Same deal with “his mom’s place”, but neither one he’d called his home.
City folk sure are strange. He thought, then went inside.
Chapter 6
Raymond Gibson’s coffeemaker poured out a piping hot stream of coffee, filling the kitchen with the scent of the beans. There would be no sleep for Raymond tonight, at least, not until his son was completed.
He grabbed the whole pot of coffee, not even bothering to pour it into one of his big mugs, and took it into his workshop.
His son’s eyes stared back at him in their wooden sockets from the darkened room.
“Hello there, my boy,” Raymond said, flicking on the light.
There he was, sitting just where he’d left him. A good boy.
“Do I have some goodies for you.” He put the coffee pot and shopping bags on his work desk. Then he picked up the dummy and put his hand in the hole.
“Goodies? Oh, thank you, Father. What are they?” Raymond said through the dummy, swiveling the bar around in the hole to make his son look at him as he talked.
“I’ll show you. You’re going to like this.” He set the dummy back on the desk and took out the merchandise from the bags. “Clothes and hair.”
In the voice he used when he talked through the dummy he said, “Clothes and hair? What are those for?”
“These, my boy, will make you look more human.” He put the clothes back in the bag, and then plugged in his hot glue gun. “First, we’ll fix the hair on your head, then we’ll get the clothes on you.”
“Oh boy, I can’t wait.”
Raymond put the wig down on the desk and grabbed a brush sitting on a plastic chair in the corner of the room.
“You will be neat and perfect,” Raymond said, combing the pompadour while the hot glue gun heated up. “The best son any father could ask for.”
Bob got up out of the couch as Twist came into the house. He saw the boy flinch—a subtle twitch that an untrained eye would have missed—but he wasn’t going to whoop him for the comment at dinner tonight. He was too darn tired.
“Boy, go to bed,” he said to him.
Oliver nodded. “I’m going to shower first.”
He grumbled something, then rubbed the streak of drool on the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Your mother’s in the bath.”
“That’s alright, I’ll wait.”
“Do what you will, boy,” Bob said, brushing past him and leaving Oliver to himself.
Twist watched him go up the stairs, his heavy footsteps thudding against the wooden steps. When he was up them and out of earshot’s distance, Twist said: “I will, asshole.”
“We had some good laughs, and we’re going to ride bikes tomorrow,” Jack said, taking some popcorn from the bowl on his dad’s lap.
“Gonna make your stay here better, huh?” Scott asked.
“I’d have fun with just you and my video game, but yeah. He’s cool.”
“Good. I’m glad you made a friend.” Scott grabbed the remote and one of the movies he’d rented for the weekend. “Now, how about we scare the pants off Maria with a zombie movie?”
“I heard that!” Maria said, descending the stairs with a towel on her head from her shower. “Don’t you dare put on a horror movie.”
“Two against one,” Scott grinned.
“One and a half,” she said, jumping onto the seat next to Scott and curling against him, mindful of where her damp head touched.
“Ha-ha, real funny Maria,” Jack said.
Maria took the remote from Scott. “Maybe when you’re sixteen or seventeen you’ll get equal say as the adults.”
“Let’s let her win this one, okay, bud?” Scott suggested to Jack. “She’s had a rough day at work.”
Jack shrugged. It didn’t actually make much of a difference to him, all that mattered was that he was spending time with his dad, and his dad was with the woman he loved.
Each day, it got a little easier to accept that the woman his father loved wasn’t his mother. Eventually, he hoped, it wouldn’t be something he had to actively accept. It would just be.
The clock hand struck 3am behind him. Not that Raymond had seen it, or was even paying attention. He was too immersed in finishing up the last touches on his son’s face. He’d painted the peach, flesh colored paint on the dummy’s limbs, face, and neck. Now he was just touching up the eyebrows. They were blond, to match his pompadour, but the paint had been too light, so he kept adding layers until they were dark enough.
Funny, how the colors seemed so vibrant with this endeavor, when they always seemed so dull on all his other toys. They jumped out at him now. They came to life, same as they brought life.
The urge to talk to his completed son was burning, but moving the dummy around now to work the controls would ruin the paintjob. It’d have to wait until morning for them to speak.
But here he was. Bright faced, sitting before him, patiently waiting to speak for the first time after being finished. The blond pompadour on his head was neat and tidy again. Raymond had combed it over and over while he waited for the first coats of paint to dry, so he knew his son’s hair was perfect.
He knew everything about his son was perfect.
“All you need is a name,” Raymond said. “What is your name, I wonder?”
He stood there for a minute, thinking about it. Maybe he should sleep on it, maybe something would come to him in the morning.
Maybe his son would pick out his own name.
“Oh, boy, that would be grand, wouldn’t it?” Raymond said. “If you picked out your own name? How would you like that?”
Of course, without his hand in the hole, the dummy just sat there staring at him with its black pupils. Raymond’s own eyes were blue, far removed from his son’s, but that didn’t matter. His son, or whatever force had guided his hand into crafting him, had chosen the boy’s features. He wasn’t about to get caught up in minute details.
“Well, I suppose in the morning we’ll figure out your name. Until then, these old bones need some rest.”
He crossed the room and flicked out the light in the workshop. “Good night.”
Raymond closed the door, but a second before it clicked he thought he heard something. Thought he heard his son say, “Good night, Father.”
There was no possible way he’d heard that, though. Was there?
The question would sit on his mind until he fell asleep.
Chapter 7
Sometimes half days had a way of feeling longer than full days. It was because he couldn’t stop himself from watching the clock count down. That had to be it.
Or maybe there was an evil wizard that messed with time to torment the kids stuck in school. If that were true, Twist would like to find some sort of magical sword to go and take down that no-good wizard. Better yet, he wished his parents were cool enough to let him stay home like Jack’s were.
These were the things that raced through his mind while Mrs. Templeton lectured about Where the Red Fern Grows.
Good grief, who cares? Twist thought.
All he wanted was to ride his bike down to Lake Myers and throw a frisbee around with his friends, instead he was stuck inside for another forty-five minutes.
“Psst,” someone said from behind him.
Twist turned to see who it was. It was Victor, risking the wrath of their teacher to talk to him.
“What?” Twist hissed back at him.
“What are you doing after school?”
“Going home.”
“I mean after you get home.”
“I don’t—”
From the front of the room, Mrs. Templeton cleared her throat. “Is there something important you two would like to share with the rest of us?”
Twist whipped around in his seat with his best deer-caught-in-headlights impression. He didn’t actually care about getting into trouble at school when vacation started in less than an hour, but he wanted to lay low. The less trouble he got into at school, the less likely his dad was to hear about it, and the less likely he was to feel the sting of whatever punishment Big Bob thought up this time.
“Sorry Mrs. Templeton,” Twist said, “just that my pencil broke and I was asking Victor if he had an extra for me to use.”
Of course, that was a lie. Twist hadn’t even taken a pencil out the whole school day so far.
“Well, Victor? Do you have an extra for him?” Mrs. Templeton asked.
Victor had his blue pencil in his hand—his favorite one—and handed it over to Twist so the lie wouldn’t fall apart. Twist snatched it out of his hand, and shot him a dirty glare.
“Thanks, Vic.” He said.
“Okay, well. That was nice of you, Victor. Let’s get on with the lecture.”
After Mrs. Templeton hit her stride again, Victor whispered to Twist, “I want that pencil back.”
Twist had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from smirking.
After what seemed like an eternity to Twist, the bell finally rang. Mrs. Templeton wasn’t done her spiel, but none of the students cared. It was Fall Break, and they were ready to get home and play video games with their friends and drink hot cocoa.
In unison, all the students picked their book bags up and strapped them onto their backs, then headed for the classroom door. Mrs. Templeton gave up to the inevitable and slumped down into her chair.
“Have a good break, children,” she called after them. Her heart sank with each one that went past her.