D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

“So? The two of us together might do a better job.” My voice was pitifully unconvincing, and it trailed off at the end. Andy picked up on this instantly, and he could have used it to attack, to break me down, to force me to see things his way. It’s exactly what I would have done. Instead, he seemed to carefully consider the idea, and even if he was just humoring me, I felt better.

“Maybe we could. If we came up with some kind of plan to keep it out. Changing the locks or something.”

“That won’t do it,” I told him. “I saw him pick the lock on my desk. It took him all of two seconds. He’s got all these little tools… I bet that’s what he does, just going from house to house, taking things while people are sleeping. You can’t hear him. He moves so fast you can barely see him. I mean, this thing could have been walking on our faces while we slept and we wouldn’t know it.”

He shuddered and scratched at his back.

“Then we tell Dad.”

Again, the years between us from kid to teen began to shine.

“No,” I said bluntly.

“Why not? I mean, he could help us. Give us an idea of what to do.”

“You really think he would believe us?” I asked.

“No,” he replied as he cast his eyes down on the floor. “I barely believe it and I saw the thing.”

I was corralling him now, leading him down the only path I knew to take. I was already there; I just needed him to get on board, and the only way he ever would was if he got there himself.

“So what’s left?” he asked.

“I think you know.”

“Offense,” he replied softly.

“Offense.”

There was a sudden change in him. I saw it in his eyes as he raised them to meet my own. They were gray eyes, like my mother’s. They could be, in his younger days, wonderfully sweet, but there was also an icy coldness to them, a frozen glare that spoke of the ability to go much farther than I would ever dream of. My gaze was fire that burned on the surface, hot but not nearly as dangerous as it looked. His was an ember, hidden inside, boiling, hot enough to melt the world.

“Then we kill it,” he said plainly. “No traps. No tricks. Just dead.”

I think I must have shuddered when he said it, but I didn’t disagree, not when he had me locked in those frozen eyes.

“But first,” he added, “we have to find it.”

As I thumb through this, I realize I’ve probably been a little too hard on Dad. I’m not the most mature person in the world, even knocking on the door of thirty, and I feel like I’ve only just started to really look at myself in an honest way. Writing all this down, even if no one ever reads it, is part of that. Dad might not have been the perfect guy to be stuck with two kids by himself, but he did the best he could, and he did teach us a lot of things I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise.

Some families went skiing.

Some families played sports.

We went camping.

First off, I don’t want to make it sound any grander than it really is. We didn’t own a camper. We didn’t know anyone who had a cabin. What we did own was a tent, just big enough for the three of us. Dad had to lie in the middle, because the sides were too narrow for him to squeeze up against without bringing the roof down on us.

No matter what time of year we went, the first part of the first day was usually the same. Andy and I would stroll around, gathering whatever sticks we could find, working our way up from small to large, with plenty of dry kindling like Dad had shown us. Meanwhile, back at our campsite, Dad would spend an hour, sometimes two, cussing and kicking at the dirt as he fought to get the tent assembled and up in one piece. Before night started drifting down on us, we would gather around the pit and take turns trying to start the fire. Dad smoked in those days, but he never let us use his lighter. He had a long rectangle of steel, and he’d pick up chunks of flint from military supply stores. It wasn’t that he was some kind of survivalist. Hell, we had a cooler full of Yoo-Hoos sitting three feet away. It was just that he wanted to teach us something.

Sometimes, we’d bring rods and reels and take them down to the lake. Whatever we caught, we’d lop its head off then and there and take turns slitting open the belly and sliding a finger through the hole. I can still remember the slightly gaggy feeling I got whenever I glanced down at the string of entrails, but I did it all the same. Andy didn’t seem to mind at all, and it was clear that he was simply better at this outdoors stuff than me. More in tune, you might say. Regardless of whether it was bluegill, catfish, even the occasional bass, we would take it back to the fire and roast it on a spit. Usually, there wasn’t enough for more than a few bites, but everyone got to taste it whether they really wanted to or not. A bite or two of half-burned fish, followed by a premade bologna sandwich. Something like heaven.

Sometimes we stayed out there for one night, sometimes for two. We never bathed, because where would you bathe? We pissed and shit in the woods and brushed our teeth with water from Igloo coolers. When it rained, we wore ponchos and didn’t mind when our feet began peeling in our tennis shoes. We ate out of coolers or bits of whatever we found, skinned, cleaned. It wasn’t surviving, not exactly, but it was closer than most of my friends ever got. We grew to understand that being dirty, being grungy, was part of being human.

Usually we went to the public state park, but from time to time a friend with land would let us camp out there. In those cases, we’d shoot the handful of guns that Dad owned. Sometimes we’d set up aluminum cans and pick them off with .22s, easing into the tiny kick, the sharp report, our eyes learning not to close as soon as we touched the triggers. Once in a while, Dad would buy a box of clay pigeons and we’d move up to shotguns. A twelve-gauge was a fast teacher. Keep the butt tight to your shoulder, or wear the bruise for a week. Hold it just so, careful to glance down the barrel, or get a black eye. I never did get comfy with a shotgun like Andy did, but I might have, given enough time.

I shot a squirrel when I was eight. I wasn’t crazy about the feel of it, knowing that, in an instant, it was dead because of me. I didn’t have one of those movie moments where I leaned over it, crying my eyes out. I just stared at the little hole under its eye, wondering how bad it hurt. It flailed for about half a minute, and that was that. Dad made me help skin it, clean it. He had a grill grate that he sat over the fire, propped up on a few rocks. Over and over, he kept turning each half of the squirrel, basting it with packets of barbecue sauce from McDonald’s. It was, without question, the best thing we ever ate out there.

In those days, Andy liked to stalk through the woods, gun in hand, and search for tracks, trails, signs of where a buck had bedded down the night before. He never actually shot a deer, but he did get really good at tracking them. We were, in a sense, learning about what the world might have been like before the power went on, and for both of us, it was a powerful lesson. Andy especially. As much as he lived for video games, he really seemed to find himself out there, to tap into some dormant, forgotten part of his humanity.

“I went through there,” I said.

Andy stood next to me, an old, rusted machete in his hand. He had found it behind our shed, buried under a stack of cordwood. I can still remember him swearing up and down that the red marks weren’t rust, but blood. Otherwise, why would anyone hide it? It was a pitiful weapon, likely to split in half the moment you hit anything with it, but it made him feel better just the same. I had dragged him out to the Trails, promising to retrace my steps with him, and even though it was the middle of the day, I felt the need to bring my pocketknife.