Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

The message light was blinking by the phone, but he didn’t want to see who had called.

His plan was this: He would live in this house by himself. He would continue going to school as if nothing had happened. If he could get that insurance money, he would hire someone to cook and clean and look after the house while he was at school. He pictured a fat, cheerful woman who would bake lots of pies. Miss Prine would be impressed; she would see that he could get along without a mother and father.

But for now he had to keep quiet. He couldn’t open the curtains, and he was afraid even to turn on lights. The cops would burst in, thinking there was a burglary in progress. He brought a jar of peanut butter and some crackers into the living room and ate in front of the TV. For dessert he had a granola bar.

His parents had not brought him up to be religious, but he found, looking around at the empty chairs where his parents used to sit, with their books still open beside them, that he was thinking about God. What possible reason could God have to snatch his parents from this house, this town, this planet, and leave him behind? He would have to be a mean God. How would He explain it to his parents, wherever they might be now, who surely must be missing him too?

He woke up when the lights came on sometime later. Miss Prine stood over him, along with a policeman and an older man in a sober grey suit. He had an English accent just like his parents, and he looked a lot like the pictures of his grandfather.

“Owen?” Miss Prine said softly. “I think I have some good news for you. This is your great-uncle, Uncle Max.”

This jocular, highly verbal and theatrical tonnage of humanity managed to wade his way through the swamp of child welfare regulations, and to win over the support of Miss Prine in particular. It turned out he was the brother of Owen’s paternal grandfather, whom this strange apparition referred to as “Tommy.” He had a battered satchel full of family photographs that he showed Owen and Miss Prine during their first, supervised office visit. Many of them were the same images his parents had kept in musty old albums, but there were others he had never seen before: Max and Tommy as young men in cricket whites, Max and his father as a boy on a Brighton pier, Max in the crowd at Owen’s parents’ wedding in London. He told Owen a couple of amusing stories involving his father as a boy-the time he got stuck in the mulberry tree, the time he blew up his train set using his chemistry set, the time he ran away from home and asked to live with Uncle Max.

“Bit of a sticky situation, that one,” he said. “Tommy was quite miffed that I’d taken the boy in. But what could I do? He was on my front porch with a little suitcase. Anyway, it was only for a weekend. Tommy and I had a rather bitter falling-out eventually-not over that. This was much later. Real estate deal went bad and we ended up losing pots of money. Anyway, that’s why me and this handsome young lad have never met. Didn’t even realize I had family in the country until I read the terrible news.”

The DCF checked Max’s background. He had been the first of the family to move to the States, settling into Manhattan years previously, where he ran a thriving theatrical supply business with a specialty in wigs. Since there were two countries involved, the paperwork took a considerable amount of time.

A bargain was worked out whereby Owen would stay with the Tunkles while he got to know Max better through more visits. Max drove up regularly from New York. At first they were supervised by Miss Prine-lunches at coffee shops and the like. But then Max was allowed to take Owen on day trips to the city: the Central Park zoo, the boat pond, the Museum of Natural History, the Staten Island Ferry.

When Miss Prine saw how well he and the boy got along, she became Max’s champion at the agency and in court. Eventually Owen was placed with him as a temporary ward, taking up residence in the extra bedroom of his Stuyvesant Town apartment. The initial adjustment period was rocky but brief, and soon the boy began to thrive. He got used to Max and Manhattan both, and he loved the long trips Max took him on, which, as far as he knew to this day, were crime free.

After two years Max asked him if he would like to make their arrangement permanent. “You and me against the world, lad. Taking on all comers. Thick and thin. You don’t have to call me Dad, you can call me Max, Uncle Max, Sir Max, Lord High Max, whatever variation strikes your fancy, what say you, sir?”

Owen replied with an unhesitating and resounding yes.

So here they are years later in Sir Slots-a-Lot Kitchen in Las Vegas, Nevada, Owen trying to explain that he isn’t ungrateful, he just wants something different for his life than robbing dinner parties. Something his mother and father would have been proud of.

“Ten years old, both parents dead-tragic, heartbreaking, positively Dickensian. You were headed for a series of foster homes, maybe a group home, maybe a locked facility, who knows? You’d’ve probably got molested and beaten and crushed and ruined and ended up a serial killer or next thing to, drooling away your final years on death row.”

“Well, look at me now,” Owen said, stirring the melted puddle of his sundae. “I’m a criminal.”

“Tush, boy.” Max leaned across the table and gave his best stage whisper. “You are a gentle criminal, a saintly criminal, a Saint Francis of the highway. You lead a completely non-violent existence. You harm no one, just as I taught you. Your life is good, I engineered it for you, and now you repay me by deciding to take up the sorry occupation that tore me up and spat me out.” Max sat back. The banquette wobbled ominously.

“Max, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You gave me a home-sort of.”

“Sort of! I know not sort of! I put a roof over your head, made sure you got a good education, taught you right from wrong. No, no, let’s have no sort-ofs. Why can’t you study something useful? Locksmithing. Martial arts. Computer security.”

“Max, you loved acting. You still love acting.”

“The skill, not the profession. If you try to do it for a living, it will break your heart. I don’t want to see that happen.”

Owen spoke softly. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, or wondering where the next job is going to come from. And anyway, Max, I think it’s time for you to retire.”

Max shoved his dish forward and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Owen went on, “but this line of work, it isn’t for old-older guys. You’re getting tired, you’re forgetting things. Yesterday you forgot where you were, for Pete’s sake. Sooner or later you’re going to make some horrible mistake, and I don’t want to see you go back to jail. I don’t want to go to jail either.”

“ Pah . Seven years of hell, that was, seven years of hell. I will never go back inside. Never, never, never, never, never.” Max gripped Owen’s forearm as if he were taking his blood pressure. “Who are you to tell me my powers are in decline? Where are these glaring lapses, these colossal blunders? You’re only trying to justify running off to Juilliard so you can become a waiter, a cab driver.”

“Max, you’re not listening to me. It’s not just you’re getting too old. This life is getting to you. You’re not sleeping anymore.”

“I sleep like a baby.”

“You’re forgetting things, you’re having nightmares, half the time you’re not even all there. You’re a threat to your own safety.”

“Rubbish.”

“Max, please don’t be hurt. It’s just that I-”

Owen was saved from further speech by the arrival of a man wearing baggy shorts and a blinding Hawaiian shirt, carrying a mug of beer in both hands as if it were some kind of isotope.