Trip the Wight Fantastic

On the second Tuesday of March, Mrs. Mary McGraw opened her front door and found a white elephant sitting on her lawn.

Not a real elephant, of course. That would have been preposterous.

It was a marble statue about two feet in height, facing placidly towards her bay window. There was an air of capriciousness in its expression. Out of reflex, she followed its gaze, but there was nothing notable in the bay window whatsoever. The room hadn't been used in about six years, not since Mr. McGraw had gone to bed one night after a heavy meal and never stepped out of it again.

"Oh, dear," she said.

The words were rather tremulous.

( Oh, dear! )

[Continued from Kodama, Part I and Kodama, Part II.]

There was more to the story than I originally thought. As we sat underneath the shade of Old Hickory, Lyle Greengard quietly leaned up against its trunk and explained the circumstances under which his family had entrusted the property to the town.

Back before either of us were born, the Greengard estate had been approximately three times the size of its present holdings. In addition to the area now known as the town park, they had owned several parcels of undeveloped land in the most inconvenient of locations - smack dab in the middle of a housing block or sandwiched between the steel mill and the railroad tracks. For as long as anyone could remember, these miscellaneous bits and pieces had stayed within the family; the Greengards had always quietly resisted any and all efforts to purchase, develop, or otherwise alter their properties. When pressed, they claimed that the land was of priceless historical value. George Washington's left foot had once trod upon the soil or something else equally specious and impossible to verify. The fact of the matter was that they simply didn't want to relinquish the land.

( About fifteen odd years ago... )

His name was Lyle Greengard.  My first love and my first love lost.

Looking back, I think that particular sentiment was shared by half of our high school class: the girls wanted to be near him and the boys wanted to be him. He had never been unattractive, but puberty had been especially kind to his once lanky frame and slight build. Halfway through the 10th grade, we simply blinked and realized that we were friends and classmates with the most attractive 16-year-old boy on the planet. It took only a few weeks before rumors began to spread about modeling contracts and photo-shoots. The moment he graduated, he would be off to New York or San Francisco where he would spend most of his perfectly chiseled, blonde-haired, blue-eyed existence lounging about with scantily clad women on his own level. The more dedicated amongst us took this as a challenge to secure his love and affection before he left.

I would have been satisfied with his eye contact.

Lyle Greengard, of course, had been my personal crush since the 8th grade and at times, my sole reason for waking up in the morning. I had loved him before puberty. All things considered, I thought it was very generous of me to share him with the world.

Even so, I was unprepared the first time he acknowledged my existence.

"Hey."

It was 11:35 in the morning, April 11th, and U.S. History had just ended. I sat three seats behind him and one row over, where I had a good view of both the chalkboard and his perfectly tousled, golden blonde hair. My attention was usually focused on the latter. In summer, he sometimes wore T-shirts that exposed his lightly tanned arms.

"Hey."

It was 11:35 in the morning, and most of the classroom had already emptied out the door. I had misplaced my planner, and Lyle Greengard had stuck his head back in to say 'hey' in my general direction. I considered this a good omen for the rest of the day.

"...Um."

It was 11:36 before I realized he was speaking to me and another twenty seconds before I stopped gaping and forced my vocal cords to squeeze out sound.

"Hey!"

My friends told me later that my voice had registered at a pitch that was physically painful to the human ear. My friends were, at times, sad, insecure, small people, and I tried not to begrudge them their understandable jealousy.

After he finished rubbing at his ear, the melodic beauty of my voice having temporarily inspired him to breathless silence, he smiled. His teeth were white as snow and his jaw thick and strong. After years of waiting, I expected, he had finally recognized that his life was empty and meaningless in its current state, and he searched now for his soulmate and perfect companion. I was prepared to rise to the task.

"You're the president of the Environmental Club, right?"

Together, we would explore our mutual interests in saving the Earth and be married in the Amazon when we hit 21. Or possibly next to a panorama of the Amazon, where there weren't any real snakes or other extremely deadly animals.

"Yes."

I managed to sound breathy and overexcited at the same time - what Cosmopolitan described as a flirty tone. My friends said I sounded high.

"Cool. ...I know this might sound weird, but I have something I want to ask you guys. Do you do this kind of thing? Requests?" Nothing Lyle Greengard did could ever be weird. By dint of it having been done by Lyle Greengard, it became mainstream and utterly desirable. As a matter of fact, I was prepared to sign an affidavit that he had singlehandedly revitalized the slang term 'cool', bringing new nuance and subtle depths of character to the word. "Maybe I could -- "

"Maybeyoushouldattendournextmeeting."

After looking momentarily stunned, he smiled again.

"Yeah. I was going to ask what time you guys did your thing."

It was about then that any and all knowledge I had pertaining to Environmental Club - the club that I had founded six months ago and in which I served as president and secretary and occasional sole attendee - vacated my mind. When did we do our thing? And why did it have to sound so much more interesting when he said it? My blank staring eventually gave way to the first answer that popped into my head.

"Tonight." He looked surprised. "I mean. This afternoon. ...3 o'clock after school." As I didn't actually have a room booked for the afternoon, I continued to improvise. "Sometimes we meet in the town park. You know. Closer to nature."

Surprisingly, he smiled even more broadly, showing off dimples that caused me to reconsider my commitment to chastity before the age of 18.

"That's perfect." I stopped breathing. Lyle Greengard had called me perfect. ...Well, Lyle Greengard had called something I said perfect, which practically amounted to the same thing. "The park's what I want to talk about, anyway. I'll see you then, Alex."

Lyle Greengard knew my name.

I, on the other hand, promptly forgot it as well as half of the answers to the pop quiz that happened two minutes later in English Literature. I couldn't complain, though. An F was a small price to pay for a conversation I never expected to have in my lifetime.

The rest of the day passed incredibly slowly, which, I expected, was the universe's way of telling me to savor my remaining few moments with Lyle Greengard. I hadn't any idea what sort of project he wanted to propose or what a high school Environmental Club could do on his behalf, but I assumed he would get bored of the matter soon enough. Someone like Lyle Greengard had better things to do than spend time with the president of the Environmental Club.

The town park was within walking distance of the school; I arrived 20 minutes early and briskly power-walked between all three entrances once I realized I had never improvised a meeting spot. This was less tedious than it seemed - calling it the 'town park' was analogous to calling an inflatable kiddie pool the town pool. The number of trees could be counted on one hand, and on first sight, most people assumed it was an unusually large backyard with a swingset stuck in the middle.

Most people assumed right. The park had been gifted by the Greengard family, whose estate lay directly adjacent. A wrought-iron fence separated the park from the small manor and accompanying grounds, and from time to time, the Greengard patriarch could be spotted taking a stroll in his gardens through the bars. On the whole, we were thankful - a small park was better than no park, and the Greengards had gifted a significant portion of their land to the town for no apparent reason ten years back with the stipulation that the trees be maintained exactly how they were.

Incidentally, Lyle Greengard was going to be incredibly rich when he turned 18.

"Alex?" The voice jolted me from my thoughts. "Hey! There you are. I couldn't find you." I suppressed my annoyance. Later that afternoon, I would learn that there were, of course, four entrances. "...Where's everyone else?"

The right thing to do would have been to tell the truth.

"Oh - they couldn't make it today. There's a... State Environmental Fair in... Topeka. I couldn't go because I had strep." He looked alarmed. "Two weeks ago. I had strep two weeks ago. I was too sick to sign up."

He frowned, anyway. Possibly because Topeka was several thousand miles away. Possibly because I had made up the concept of a State Environmental Fair.

"Oh. Sorry to take your time, then. We can do this another day if -- "

"No. Now's perfect. I've got nothing else to do! Cleared out my whole schedule."

The look on his face suggested that this was not a wholly appropriate thing to say. He paused for a moment before glancing towards the middle of the park.

"Well. I'll be quick. ...It's about that."

His meaning was clear.

That was an incredibly large and tangled Southern live oak that shaded nearly a quarter of the park. With low, thick branches, it was a favorite for small children to climb and for mothers to stand underneath shouting unintelligibly. In lieu of a town mascot, we had Old Hickory instead, so named by someone who didn't know the first thing about dendrology. The name stuck because Old Southie conjured up uncomfortably political thoughts, and no one had the imagination to think of anything else.

"Old Hickory? What about it?"

He paused.

"I think it's dying."

This was tragic, but also probably unavoidable. No one called it Baby Hickory for a reason. As I looked vaguely confused, he continued on in a serious tone.

"I mean. I think it's being poisoned. I have evidence, but the police don't think it means anything. They don't care much about trees." He gave a shrug. "I thought maybe you might."

His voice was so deep and rich that I would have cared about anything he suggested.

"Of course I do!" I paused. "But what do you think the Environmental Club can do?"

"Stop them, of course." He smiled again, and I was startled by the expression in his dark eyes. There was something... intensely bitter that contrasted with his easy smile. "Stop them before it's too late."

There are a lot of 'firsts' in this story. My first love, my first conversation, my first eye contact...

But this... was the story of the first time I was frightened by Lyle Greengard.

"Er."

His face flushed. It was trying enough, he thought, to suffer grave misfortune without having to be defensive about it. Perhaps it was overly optimistic to expect sympathy, but some recognition of personal inconvenience wouldn't have been unreasonable. Possibly pity. Naturally, they had managed to skip past the warmer feelings altogether and had settled uncomfortably near scorn within the first 60 seconds of the conversation.

"Yes, I know it's the busiest day. I just can't; I'm sorry. ...Yes, a hole in the window."

A pause.

"Are you saying I should have made it easier to break in?"

The voice on the other end of the line eventually conceded that leaving a key out so burglars could bypass the window altogether was probably not in his best interests. After agreeing to work the next three Saturdays, he hung up feeling more irritated than he had when he'd first discovered the break-in.

It could have been worse.

That was what his mother had said, and he had agreed; he certainly could have been at home and some drug fiend could have stabbed him seventeen times in his sleep. Like as not, he would have survived and been in constant misery for the rest of his short, crippled life. On a whim, he had stayed with a friend who lived some twenty miles away, which, he expected, was also the number his BAC would have measured when placed behind a decimal point. His mother called it providence. Most other nights she called it sin.

It could also have been better, of course; nothing at all could have happened last night. Or, if someone really had to break in, they might have swept the floor after smashing his window and taking his rent money. He couldn't be bothered and hadn't been bothered to sweep for the last six months, which meant that he hadn't the least idea which spots of dirt might have been left by the burglar. The police hadn't been impressed.

At least they'd made a vague attempt at sympathy.

Ostensibly, he needed the day off to get someone to fix the window; in reality, he was at a loss as to where to find a window fixer. Whether or not 'window fixer' was an actual occupation was also a murky bit of knowledge in his mind.

After a few moments' contemplation, he picked up the phone.

--------

"Kid's out today. Says someone broke into his house."

"He has a house?"

"Apartment. Whatever. Who knows? Kasper's taking his shift."

She managed a few murmurs of sympathy before returning to her magazine. She wasn't particularly fond of the kid - then, she wasn't particularly fond of anyone. Off the clock, she preferred not to acknowledge her job and its various trappings; coworkers were relegated firmly to the zone of the casual acquaintance. She considered that she was required by law only to refrain from physically assaulting them, which she managed with aplomb on most days. No one had ever said anything about friendship.

Still, it was too bad. Less the burglary and more that she was stuck with Kasper, who had a talent for telling stories that no one but Kasper ever found interesting. He had talked for two hours straight once, beginning with a tale about his first day on the job and eventually tapering off with... well, she supposed it had probably been the third day of the job. She remembered very little of the lost time afterwards and wondered if perhaps he was secretly training to be a hypnotist.

Fifteen minutes left for lunch. She swallowed the last bite of her sandwich and briefly considered the possibility of escaping early - but she had already called out sick three days ago on account of a sudden acute attack of Apathy. She heaved a sigh. At the very least, she'd need caffeine to survive an afternoon with Kasper.

"I'm running next door for a coffee. Catch you later."

--------

What an asshole.

He glared silently at the man who had cut in front of him in line. That was about all his tepid personality could really manage; he held an intense fear of confrontation owing to what amounted to cowardice but consoled himself with the thought that he simply preferred to take the high road. The silent epithets that accompanied him onto this road were, of course, all the more justified.

It had been twenty minutes since he'd stepped into line, and he still didn't have his coffee and cake. He would have complained, but the kids who worked in these place were always, he felt, abominably rude. That was the problem these days: nobody had any respect. The clothing and the cursing and the attitude - repulsive to behave that way in public. He muttered general ill wishes upon the establishment and the collective group of all human beings under the age of twenty-five.

It was another seven minutes before he got his cake, largely due to the five minutes he spent abusing the cashier for her poor service. He was sorely late. He would have to eat while walking. Incredible inconvenience.

He was two steps out the door with the coffee to his lips when he walked straight into a girl leaving the shop next door.

The coffee exploded.

Assholes everywhere.

--------

"Oh my god, what happened?"

She gasped as he hobbled in, hopping on one foot. He offered a bashful sort of smile.

"It's so dumb. ...You'll laugh."

"I would never."

Sometimes she did.

"...Some dick left a puddle of coffee all over the sidewalk. I twisted my ankle; it's not really a big deal."

The injured limb in question was bright purple. She arched an eyebrow, to which he responded with a shrug.

"Look, it's fine."

"It'll be more fine at the hospital. You can't just leave that. Come on - we're going."

She was occasionally inclined to think that she was betrothed to an idiot. A cute idiot, to be fair; it helped her forgive a lot.

"What about your thing?"

"It's Saturday. I don't have a thing."

Strictly speaking, this statement wasn't true. It was, in fact, almost never true, given that she had 'things' lined up for every waking hour of every day. As a matter of course, alternate Saturday afternoons were spent on private swimming lessons. He didn't know about them, of course, but their wedding was happening in Hawaii in four months, and she was determined to scuba dive amongst the reefs and look for Nemo. Apart from the whole marriage bit, it was the only reason to go to Hawaii at all.

"Up!"

She grabbed his arm and pulled; he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

--------

"Leaving so soon?"

"Yeah. Three o'clock canceled, and I've got nothing else the rest of the day. I'm gonna do some late Christmas shopping."

A medical emergency, she had explained over the phone, and though he didn't usually allow last minute cancellations, he had generously agreed to reschedule for the next day. Holiday spirit, he had called it. 'Because you're hot' probably wouldn't have gone over so well.

It was too bad she was getting married. He had enough shame to refrain from seducing anyone on the eve of their wedding, but not enough that he didn't allow himself to exercise a healthy admiration from afar. ...Occasionally up close.

She always flirted back, anyway.

He showered and changed and made it to the mall in a half hour. It was three days before Christmas, and he hadn't yet bought a single present. In his college years, he had been in the habit of buying gift cards; this was, for some reason, no longer socially acceptable in his mid-twenties. He couldn't say why. From his point of view, gift cards and wads of cash were much preferred to ties and scarves and sweaters; he had already managed to accumulate eight ties over the course of his adult life, none of which he ever wore.

He sometimes wondered if his family realized that swimming usually entailed being 95% naked.

He preferred that, anyway. It showed off his better side.

The mall teemed with throngs of people; he pushed through without much issue, mildly pleased to see that he had not procrastinated alone. He mentally tallied the loved ones in his life who deserved a present. Family. Roommates. ...Probably coworkers. Two or three girls he had a shot at inviting over for New Year's. His other friends, he considered, would be satisfied with a case of beer and a declaration of eternal masculine love eased by said beer.

He ran into a cardboard cutout before he could get much further.

Amazing deals, it read. The numbers $399 and $349 were struck out with a flourish, with $319 printed in extra large blue font below. It was the new game system - a holiday deal, complete with two games and two controllers. He recalled he had vaguely considered picking one up for the past few months.

Through the window of the store, he could see a small crowd composed primarily of young males aged 18-30 enveloping the few offerings left on the shelves.

He paused for a moment before shrugging and walking in. It wasn't as if he didn't have the money. Besides, he had gotten off work early today - that almost never happened. If that wasn't a divine sign for him to splurge, he didn't know what was.

-------

One hundred. Two hundred. Two fifty. Two seventy. Two ninety. Three ten. Three thirty. Three fifty.

Three hundred and fifty dollars in cash.

He had counted it and recounted it and counted it again. He hadn't slept all night. He had considered skipping school, but arousing suspicion was the last thing he wanted to do.

It wasn't his fault his football had gone straight through that crappy glass window.

His hands trembled slightly as he hurried down the path. He had been sure he would be caught - he had frozen in place for what felt like hours. But no neighbors had screamed, no police had come, and there was nothing at all, he had realized, stopping him from retrieving the ball and running.

So he had done that.

It wasn't his fault some fool had left an enormous amount of cash sitting on a table.

He couldn't remember if he had seen the money first. He didn't think he had. It was an accident. He just wanted to test his reflexes. Wallball. Wallball with a football. Maybe he should have paid more attention - maybe he shouldn't have gotten so close to the glass. How was he supposed to know it was so fragile?

And then some damn fool had just left three hundred and fifty dollars sitting there where anyone could see.

He wanted it - he needed it - he desperately had to have it. They didn't have any money, but they should have had the money. He would have had it. But his brother had busted his arm fooling around two weeks ago and that was that.

No Christmas presents.

He hadn't taken it. Not at first. He had turned around - gone back to the window. But it was right there and if God didn't want him to have the money, the window wouldn't have broken and some dumbass wouldn't have left three hundred and fifty dollars out.

It was for him.

It was for him to buy what he had wanted for six long months.

He had taken the bus straight to the mall after school and sprinted through the parking lot. Halfway through, he had stopped, looked around to see if anyone had seen him running like a crazy kid, and casually sauntered the rest of the way.

Three hundred and nineteen. That was all he needed. Maybe he'd even put the rest of the money back when he was done.

He wasn't a bad kid.

It wasn't a burglary. He hadn't meant to break in. It was an accident... and the rest had been so easy.

When he was grown and made money of his own, he would pay it back.

Through the revolving doors now, and he quickened his pace. Lots of people were walking briskly through the mall. They had places to be, things to buy. He did, too. The store in question wasn't far from the entrance; he could already see the big cardboard sign from here. He had passed it so many times in the last two weeks, and it had rekindled his burning desire every single time.

Everyone else in school had one... It was only fair.

Closer now.

He knew what the sign said. The sales price had dropped each week; it had become more and more affordable - for people who had money, anyway. But he had money now. He had the most money he'd ever had in his life, and Christmas was only three days away.

And there it was. The sign. This was it. Finally, finally... He imagined himself going home. Switching it on. Playing for hours until his mom came home from the late shift. When she asked, he would say he had entered an online raffle hosted by a gaming blog.

He had, of course. ...Not that he had won.

He turned towards the door.

"Oh. ...'Scuse me, kid."

An employee in a black cap squeezed out the door with a thick marker. Through the door, he could see one of the packages being handed to a man in his mid-twenties.

His face turned white as the employee stooped over and scribbled over the sign.

Sold Out.

[Inspired by someone breaking into my house on Christmas.]

He is bored.

It is Sunday afternoon, and he has spent the majority of it doing nothing whatsoever, which is how he prefers to spend his afternoons. Three hours ago, he had discovered a comic strip about a German Shepherd that engaged in superheroics under the cover of moonlight. He clicks now to comic six hundred and seventy four and entertains a vague desire to adopt a German Shepherd.

Something knocks at his window.

He does not recognize the sound at first. He lives on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise. He has never heard it before, has never expected to hear it, and has never bothered to consider what it might sound like, hypothetically. In the realm of non-hypotheticals, he decides it sounds rather like the glass might shatter.

A part of him hopes it is a German Shepherd with a cape.

The rest of him hopes it is not a dead bird or a dead anything. He does not know the correct procedure to clean blood from the outside of a fourteenth story window, but none of the options that leap to mind seem very appealing.

He is disappointed to see that it is neither a dead anything nor a German Shepherd with a cape.

It is a frisbee. White, cheap plastic, scuffed about the edges, and perched precariously on the point of the half-height iron window grate. Some university insignia is emblazoned upon it - perhaps the University of Sketchy Calligraphy, as the last letter is stylized to the point that it could be any number of things. The University of Superhuman Catapulting comes to mind as well, as he cannot imagine how else the object might have reached his window. He stares in incredulity. He considers the possibility that he is about to be the subject of a reality television prank.

As he has made strict plans for several more hours of being bored, he hopes he is not.

He opens the window with some effort, sending a cloud of dust and specks of what he hopes is paint into the air. He is skeptical of the frisbee's reality. It does not seem as if this can be a real object, and so he examines it under the premise that it might be just about anything in disguise. He is not sure what exactly it might be in disguise, but he is certain there is a non-zero chance that this is true.

Perhaps it is a very small UFO.

Squinting at it fails to reveal its true identity. Closer observation does not prove helpful, either, and he decides that his life has become annoyingly more complicated than it was five minutes ago.

This is a statement that is usually true.

He sets the disc down and returns to his computer.

On page six hundred and seventy five, he pushes his chair back impatiently and reaches for the disc again. A frisbee has smashed into his fourteenth floor window, and he cannot concentrate. There are any number of possibilities. Perhaps a fan of competitive frisbee is clinging to the fifteenth floor at this very moment waiting to burgle his above-floor neighbor and has made a crucial mistake in dropping his favorite frisbee onto the floor below. Perhaps a psychologist is conducting an experiment to determine if random stimuli can successfully perturb someone's day. Perhaps the powers that be would like him to exercise more and has taken to dropping unsubtle hints.

He leans out the window and glances up towards the fifteenth floor. He surveys the cityscape to see if anyone might be looking his way with binoculars. He invokes every deity he can think of and promises that he will do fifteen push-ups next Sunday.

These avenues do not prove very fruitful.

He returns to the cityscape. He has lived in this room for two and a half years and has never bothered to take in the view. There has never been anything worth seeing.

There still isn't anything worth seeing.

On a moment's whim, he tosses the frisbee out the window, closes it, and draws his curtains shut. He hopes it does not land on anyone. It is Sunday afternoon, and his life is now less complicated than it was five minutes ago.

A German Shepherd in a cape dives down and carefully snatches it in its jaws before it descends too far.

"Buster!"

It drifts back up carefully to the fifteenth floor.

"You've got to be more careful. You were almost caught!"

Buster whines softly.

Seven days later on the fourteenth floor, he reaches comic page twelve hundred and ninety four, posted earlier that day. It features a particularly attractive cartoon of the German Shepherd with a cape playing frisbee outside a high-rise, framed by the amber rays of the sun. He smiles.

He will follow the comic for about four more days before he becomes impatient with the slow update schedule and moves on to newer things.

Later that night, he does five half-hearted push-ups and stops.

He is bored.

[Continued from here]

I know what you’re thinking. This is an old cliché story, the tried and true tale about how two kids from different worlds end up becoming best friends. Saint would be the innocent Christian choir boy raised by perfect loving parents who just needed someone a little more worldly-wise to be his friend and defender. Me, I’d get C grades and ditch school and start drinking when I was 16, and people would call me… I dunno, Scamp. Something lame. We’d be Saint and Scamp and we’d have this whole alliteration thing going on, and I’d be headed down the wrong path until his tragic untimely death inspired me to go to college to study theology or something else I hated.

The problem is that there are too many tragic untimely deaths in this story.

Saint’s mom died from smoke inhalation that night in the hospital. I didn’t see him again for a year.

( I heard later... )