The Toymaker Read online

  “You’re welcome, darling.” she said.

  Bob kissed her one more time, and then rested his chin on her head. Meanwhile, he glared at Oliver with squinted eyes. “You make sure that boy finishes up his eggs, Wilma, you hear? I don’t want to see no eggs in the trash when I get home.”

  Oliver had glanced up when he felt his dad staring at him, then dropped his eyes back down to his plate. Big Bob was about to leave. Only a few more seconds until this would be over. He grabbed his orange juice, and in one motion gulped it without tasting it.

  “Be good, Oliver,” Bob said, grabbing his coat off the back of the chair he’d been sitting at and heading out of the kitchen.

  When they heard the door slam, Wilma and Oliver looked at one another.

  “Do I have to finish?” Oliver pleaded, both with his eyes and his voice.

  Wilma shook her head and winked at him. “I’ll feed it to Jasper. Your father will be none the wiser.”

  “You’re the best, Mom.”

  They both waited to hear Bob start up the truck and pull out of the driveway. The tow truck had a monster of an engine that was impossible to miss—both when it was near and when it was gone.

  “Go on now, go and catch the bus,” Wilma said.

  Oliver pushed away the plate of unfinished eggs and got up. For the first time that morning he smiled, walked over to his mom, and gave her a big hug before running upstairs to get his school stuff.

  Chapter 20

  Jack woke up with that strange sensation you get when you wake up in an unfamiliar place. That feeling of waking up in a friend’s guest bedroom or a hotel when on vacation.

  It took his mind a few minutes to unscramble and remember where he was.

  Dad’s new house. In Dutch County, duh.

  He was supposed to be in school this morning which only added to the out-of-place feeling. If his grandma hadn’t gotten sick, there’d be no way Mom would’ve let him have this extra time with his dad.

  Jack sat up on the bed, and looked around. The walls were bare except for the blue tape his dad had forgotten to take off after painting the room.

  There weren’t any decorations—unlike his room back at his mom’s house that had his Eagles and Super Mario Bros. posters—just a huge dresser sitting in a corner that looked like it’d cause hell if you stubbed your toe against in the middle of the night, boxes of his stuff stacked and lined up on the wall, and a lamp on a nightstand by his bedside.

  Dad and his fiancée had just moved in, of course there weren’t any decorations. Duh, again.

  Jack looked over at the boxes. They were all labeled with black marker in his dad’s handwriting: CLOTHES, COMICS, GAMES, etc. But the one that caught his eye was the one on the floor marked TOYS.

  Jack let out a short laugh when he saw it. Dad had moved his toys instead of chucking them in the trash even though he hadn’t played with them in two years. You’d think he would have noticed. Then again, he wasn’t around Dad much, which would explain that.

  He was starting to get down just thinking about that, but he didn’t let it get to him. Instead, he got out of the bed and crossed the room. He wasn’t sure what time it was because there was no clock in here, but it felt like early morning, so he tiptoed. He didn’t want to wake his dad up and get him mad again.

  Just as quietly, he moved the two boxes stacked on top of the toy box. No matter how lame it seemed, he was smiling as he opened the box. It was like reliving all of the Christmas’s when he asked for toys all at once. Like he was opening a super package—with some of the magic gone, of course, but still.

  Inside the box was a mishmash of plastic weapons, limbs, heads, and wheels. His old favorites popped out at him immediately. Hulk Hogan flexing his 24-inch pythons. A small Superman figure that wasn’t at all posable—which always made it harder to play with. Mario and Luigi and some of the other gang from Super Mario Bros in their go-carts. Jack imagined them revving their engines in the box, waiting for the signal for go. He laughed once more, remembering all the good times he’d had with these pieces of plastic.

  He reached in and grabbed something he didn’t recognize. When he pulled it out, it was a skeleton with an inexplicable purple pony tail wielding a sword. It was kind of creepy, and there was a dust caked inside the rib cage that made it stink, so he put it back. That was probably one of the toys his dad got him at a flea market that he never really played with. Not his style.

  The bedroom door opening behind him made him pivot and stand up. It was Dad, with a sleepy face, still in his pajamas. “Unpacking this early?”

  Jack shook his head. “Nope. Just saw the label on the box and thought I’d look through them.”

  Scott nodded. “Your mom called this morning. Said your grandma’s surgery went well and she says hello.”

  Jack smiled at the news. “That’s great.”

  “When you’re ready bud,” his dad said, “come join us downstairs. Maria is cooking up some chorizo and eggs.”

  Jack couldn’t wait. He loved chorizo. “I’ll be right down.”

  Stick that one up your ass, Jenna. Scott thought. Now that he knew her mom was okay, he didn’t feel guilty about the harsh feelings he’d been harboring about her.

  He started turning away from the door, when Jack called to him.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Why didn’t you just throw these toys away? I don’t play with them anymore.”

  Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Felt bad, I guess. I kind of wish I had my toys from my childhood sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “To go down memory lane. Remember those days.” Scott shrugged again. He was careful not to call those days the good times, because they weren’t, but the good thing about memories was you only had to experience the good parts of the past if you wanted to.

  “I get it,” Jack laughed.

  But he wasn’t going to play with a toy anytime soon. There were more important things, nowadays. Like girls and sports.

  Toys were far from his mind, and that’s where they would stay.

  For a while, anyway.

  Chapter 21

  He stepped into his workshop, almost expecting the work he’d done last night to have been a dream. A figment of his imagination he’d thought up while half asleep on his recliner. His old kooky brain making things up. The first signs of senility hitting him, perhaps.

  But no, he was wrong. The dummy’s body was still sitting there in the chair. Surrounded by the mess of his workshop, but that was OK. It made the headless dummy appear more beautiful in contrast with everything else.

  Raymond picked up the body from the chair and slipped his hand into the hole at the back, where he would control the head once it was complete and on. It felt like a natural fit for his hand.

  He wondered why he hadn’t thought of building a ventriloquist dummy before. Maybe then he wouldn’t have felt so lonely all these years.

  “Just a few more hours, my boy,” Raymond said to the dummy. “A few more hours and you’ll come alive.”

  He winked at nothing, imagining the head as it would be. Perfect.

  Selecting a wooden block from his desk, and a pencil, he went to work.

  Chapter 22

  Walking home from the bus stop always felt different to Oliver than walking there in the morning. It was like going home was going the wrong way.

  He couldn’t wait until he was eighteen like his brother Jamie, and he could join the Army. Be away from all of this, see new things, meet new people. Most importantly, to be away from his dad.

  Big Bob wasn’t really his dad, but he called him that for the same reason his older brother took on the “Harper” last name after their real dad died: because it made their mother happy.

  Bob was a no-good fool, but he was the only father figure Oliver had ever known. His real dad’s name was Casper, and he’d been the best pool player in all of Dutch County. Or so Jamie told him. All he knew of his real father wa
s what his big brother told him. Since Mom couldn’t even think of him without starting to tear up, Twist never bothered to ask her.

  Their father had died before Twist was even born, and when Jamie was six years old. According to Jamie—and Twist was never sure what was the truth and what wasn’t with him—their father had gotten into trouble at one of the pool halls. He’d owed or stolen money from someone. Jamie wasn’t sure which one it was, and it changed each time he told the story, so Twist wasn’t sure either.

  The point was, the guy that their dad got into trouble with had come back with a pistol the next night and blown his head off.

  “Right there. In front of everyone in the pool hall. Pulled the trigger, and BLAMO.” This part of the story was usually accompanied by his brother making a gun with his index finger and his thumb pressing down at BLAMO. And then, of course, Jamie’s signature sly grin.

  “Dad’s blood and brains covered all of the balls,” he would add, after Oliver would close his eyes and press his palms to his ears.

  But that wasn’t enough, because he’d still hear Jamie cackling with laughter. His laugh had that high-pitched, shrill effect that struck the eardrums like gunfire.

  Jamie loved telling that story, not just to Twist, but to all his friends. It was like their dad getting involved with that stuff made him a badass by association. For anyone else, it may have been a sad story, but to Jamie it was like he was telling the tale of an action hero who hung out around tough guys, stealing their money with his unmatched pool prowess, and then died a heroic death.

  The thoughts of his father, and Jamie, were broken by the sound of death metal music blasting through speakers that kept popping, and a shitty car that sounded like it was about to rattle into pieces. The noise was even louder in the quietness of Durden Road, a bushy, tree-lined street that hardly ever saw any traffic.

  The car, a black Ford sedan that was two decades old, pulled up next to Twist. The redheaded kid in the driver’s seat stuck half his body out the window and shouted at him. “Yo, fuckface!”

  There was a peanut gallery stuffed in the backseat of his car that consisted of two dirtbags plus one of the dirtbag’s girlfriend. Twist saw a glass bottle in one of the kid’s hands in the back, which explained why the passenger seat was empty. They were trying to avoid being seen by the cops.

  They’re probably stoned, too he thought.

  Twist couldn’t help but stop, as much as he didn’t want to. It was easier to give in to Jarod’s stupid games than to try to fight them. He knew that from experience.

  “What do you want, Jarod?” Twist asked him, grabbing the straps of his bookbag and squeezing them. Please make him go away, God. Please.

  “Heard your faggot brother’s coming back home soon,” Jarod said, and when he didn’t get a reply he said, “Is that true or what?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Tell him when he gets back, I’m going to fuck him up.”

  “Okay, Jarod. I will,” Twist said, hoping this would end sooner if he played along well enough.

  “Good boy. Oh yeah, send him this message too.”

  Jarod hacked up a loogie and spit it at Oliver’s shoe.

  The peanut gallery in the car laughed like it was the joke of the century. The car peeled off.

  Twist grabbed some leaves by the roadside and wiped the loogie off the front of his shoe. It was green, but there were chunks of red mixed in like Jarod had had a nosebleed recently. It made Oliver’s stomach tie into knots and he almost threw up as he wiped his shoe clean.

  The bass of drums was all he could hear as the car rounded the bend up ahead. A few seconds later the quiet of the road was back.

  “Man, fuck that guy,” Twist whispered to himself now that he felt safe again. Then continued on home.

  Big Bob was on the wicker chair on his front porch, waiting for Oliver to get home. In one hand he had the daily newspaper, and in the other he had a glass of iced tea.

  “Hey, Dad,” Oliver said as he came up the driveway, “anything interesting?”

  Bob Harper shook his head. “Nope, not really. Just crazy loony rednecks breaking into people’s cars again.”

  “Yikes,” Twist said.

  Bob closed the newspaper and put it on his lap. “Good job coming straight home like I told ya, boy.”

  Twist nodded.

  “Go on inside and get changed. We’re gonna do a little yard work before dinner. I’ll show you how to use the weedwhacker.”

  “Okay, sounds great.” Oliver grinned at him, then ran into the house.

  Bob got up out of the chair with intentions of going inside himself, but stopped when he saw the neighbors across the street coming out of their house. It was the guy and his boy—What were their names? Sean and Jake, or something?

  Yeah, that was it.

  “Howdy, neighbors,” Bob called to them.

  The two of them stopped and turned to wave at him.

  “Hey there, Mr. Harper,” the guy said.

  “You still comin’ over for dinner tonight, right?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “Alright, good. Looking forward to it.” Bob rolled up the newspaper, then waved it to let them know he wasn’t going to keep them from their business.

  “See you tonight,” the guy said to him before both of them jumped into the car.

  Bob went inside, but then watched from the window as the car pulled out of the driveway and down the street.

  New neighbors… He’d only experienced this one other time since living in Dutch County. Back when he was a kid. People didn’t exactly move out here very often, on account of there wasn’t much around here. But for some reason these people had, and this experience of new people being in their neighborhood made him feel funny. Like there were bees flying in his stomach.

  He didn’t like it, but he hoped having them over for dinner would resolve it.

  But maybe not.

  Chapter 23

  Raymond let the tools and the toy do the work when he was creating something. He always felt like some external force was guiding his mind, eye, and hand when he was focused on a project.

  This one, however, felt different.

  The force wasn’t external, the force was right in front of him. Right inside the dummy, encased in the wood.

  He felt a little bit like the hippies from college, the ones who talked about things like trees and plants and flowers having “souls like us.” He’d always dismissed them as people who’d smoked themselves into another reality, but now he wasn’t so sure that was the truth. Maybe they’d been onto something, because he could feel the energy from the wood guiding his hand, choosing where he moved the carving knife to depict the cheekbones, the jawline, and the eye sockets of his soon-to-be-son. It wasn’t him doing it. He was a mere conduit in this process.

  The pipeline funneling life from somewhere else, to here.

  The dummy—no, scratch that, the boy he was creating—was alive already. Raymond just had to uncover the life within.

  He worked the knife faster and faster, each second getting him closer to his son, and getting him further from the loneliness.

  “Come alive, come alive…” he kept muttering to himself. He didn’t even realize he was saying it until he tried to figure out what the sudden noise in the room was.

  Now that he knew it was him, he added to it, and chanted it like a mantra. “Come alive, my son, come alive…”

  PART TWO

  HE LIVES

  Chapter 1

  “So, you all moved in from Philadelphia?” Bob Harper said, passing the sauerkraut around.

  For dinner, Wilma had made hotdogs in a spicy sauce, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes (the crappy boxed stuff), and boiled corn. A feast at the Harper house, intended only for the most special of guests.

  “Yep, all three of us,” Scott said, shaking some salt into the plainest mashed potatoes he’d ever eaten. He could feel Mrs. Harper eyeing him up as he shook the seasoning into them. Like it
was a passive-aggressive insult. “Though Jack is only here to visit.”

  Bob looked over at the boy. “What do you mean?”

  “His mother still lives in Philly—Philadelphia. He’s just visiting until Thanksgiving.”

  Bob nodded. “I see.”

  “So, you won’t be in school until after Thanksgiving?” Twist spoke for the first time all dinner. Surprised that someone’s parents would let them take off from school for so long, he couldn’t help but blurt the question out.

  Jack nodded to him and said, “Yup.”

  “Lucky,” Twist muttered under his breath.

  Big Bob looked his way, and Twist’s eyes darted back to his food.

  “Jack’s mother had a family emergency,” Scott explained.

  “So then,” Bob Harper asked, obviously confused, “Maria here isn’t Jack’s mother?”

  “Yep, I’m just the evil stepmother,” Maria joked, with a nervous laugh.

  Scott and Mr. and Mrs. Harper smiled, but that was all the reaction the joke received.

  Jack and Oliver exchanged a look across the table. Oliver winked at him, and Jack grinned back.

  “I’m sure,” Bob said, completely serious, “I’m sure that Jacky-boy knows you’re not evil, Miss Rodriguez.”

  “Please, Mr. Harper, you can call me Maria.”

  Bob nodded slowly. “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.”

  “You’ve lived in Dutch County your whole lives?” Scott asked, taking the sauerkraut from Maria and dumping a small helping onto his plate.

  “Yessir, both of us born and raised here,” Bob said. “Same with our boys. Ain’t that right, Ollie?”

  Oliver perked up, and almost laughed at his dad using that nickname. “Yes, sir.”

  “Boys? You have more than Oliver?” Maria asked.

  “Yes. His older brother Jamie,” Bob explained. “He’s in the military. Army. Gonna be back for a visit around Thanksgiving, actually. Ain’t that right, Wilma?”