Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

“Of course he has a name,” Clarence said. “His name is Aaron.”

Aaron turned to look at Clarence. “Is that really his name?”

“Do you take me for a liar?”

“Maybe you’re teasing me,” Aaron said.

“I can assure you that I tease, to use your word, with far greater sophistication. Really, Aaron, what would be the purpose of such simple-minded game playing?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. He did not understand exactly what he was being asked, but a word came to him and he said, “I guess it’s a coincidence.”

“A coincidence indeed,” Clarence agreed, looking in no way surprised at his use of such a word. “Sister named him.”

Aaron turned back to the cat and tapped gently on its paw. It stretched and opened its eyes. Except there were no eyes, just two empty sockets where the eyes should have been.

“Oh!” Aaron cried, tipping backward onto his buttocks.

“Did I forget to mention that our feline friend is eyeless?” Clarence crowed.

“What happened to his eyes?” Aaron asked, his voice shaking. The empty sockets seemed to be staring at him.

“Sister found him in the barn several years ago. The ants had made a picnic, as it were, of his eyeballs.” Clarence laughed. “His mother had moved the rest of the litter elsewhere. He was a tiny, starving thing when Sister found him, but she nursed him back to health, and that was that. She’s quite devoted to him.”

“Doesn’t he get lost?” Aaron asked.

“Lost?” Clarence said. “There’s no opportunity for him to get lost. He’s not allowed outdoors except when Sister takes him on a leash, and then he just sniffs the geese droppings and eats a bit of grass. Otherwise, this room is his world, and though it’s small, I imagine he feels quite safe here. You know, there’s something to be said for the security of the familiar, in all its confining glory.”

* * *

Aaron did not think he could fall asleep again, not with the eyeless cat nearby, but he returned to the couch and soon he was sleeping. He awakened to the smell of food cooking and the soft whistle of Clarence’s breathing.

“Clarence,” he said, sitting up, “will you ever get bigger?”

“Bigger?” said Clarence. “What sort of dwarf would I be if I were bigger?”

“I don’t know,” said Aaron.

“Are you familiar with the expression ‘I’ve seen bigger dwarves’?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“Well, it’s a first-rate expression. You may be young for irony now, but I’ve no doubt you’ll grow into it nicely, so it’s an expression worth remembering. I daresay it will provide you with something on which to ruminate when you’re older and experiencing the proverbial rainy day. There are sure to be many in that hamlet of yours. What is it called? Mortonville?” He spoke as if Mortonville were a bitter herb he had been forced to sample.

“Have you been to Mortonville?” Aaron asked. He tried to picture Clarence there, peering through the plate-glass windows of Bildt Hardware, rolling past the Trout Café.

“Certainly not,” said Clarence. “Were I able to travel and inclined to do so, I can assure you that it is not to Mortonville I would go.” He added with an air of finality, “Indeed not.”

Neither did Aaron want to think of Clarence in Mortonville, where he imagined people staring, then looking away, putting their hands over their mouths to conceal their laughter each time he spoke because they would not be able to see Clarence as the author of humor, only as its object. In Mortonville, Clarence would not be Clarence at all.

“Of course, I cannot take credit for the expression,” Clarence went on. “It was submitted to me by a pen pal from Iowa.”

“What are pen pals?” Aaron asked.

“Pen pals are people with whom I correspond via the postal service.”

“You write letters?” Aaron said, by way of confirming his understanding.

“That is precisely what we do. I’ve numerous pen pals, almost all little people. It is thanks to them that I have managed to compile my archives.”

“And all of these people — the pen pals — are they your friends?” Aaron asked.

“Friends?” Clarence said. “If pressed to do so, I would place most of them firmly in the category of acquaintances.”

“ Pal means friend,” Aaron pointed out.

“They are most certainly not pals, for that is a word I despise. In fact, thanks to you, young Aaron, I shall refrain from using the term pen pals ever again. Dreadful,” Clarence muttered, raking his tongue loudly against his teeth.

“What will you call them?” Aaron asked.

Clarence thought for a moment. “I shall refer to them as my correspondents.”

“What do you and your correspondents write about?”

“Everything. I am compiling what I hope will be the definitive collection of artifacts and documents related to dwarves in our society. This is the archive of which Sister spoke earlier. I dare say it shall be my life’s work. Already I’ve been at it — informally, of course — for most of my adulthood, though my fascination truly began in adolescence. As a boy, you see, I was quite convinced I was an anomaly, and though my parents assured me that there were others of my stature — even shorter — I refused to believe it. I measured myself daily and took to hiding in places too small for anyone else in my family to fit. The big pot in which my mother melted lard and the valise that my grandfather carried when he came to live with us were my favorites. Finally, when I was fourteen, my parents resorted to desperate measures to prove me wrong.”

“What did they do?” Aaron asked.

“They hired a dwarf. They ran advertisements in several newspapers, and a man replied, an older gentleman, unrelentingly tedious. He arrived on a Friday dressed in what appeared to be a boy’s church suit and departed after dinner on Sunday. While I normally despise Sundays, I was never so relieved to see Sunday arrive and that fellow depart.”

“What was his name?” Aaron asked.

“Otto. He was a clerk in a grocery store in Winnipeg and had been for thirty-some years. The first night he described for us, in detail, the special stool he’d had fashioned so that he could reach the register. At meal times, as we discussed various trivial matters, he would shout out the prices of the food we were consuming—‘potatoes this or that much a pound’—his finger punching the air frantically. He was ringing up the meal, you see. As my sisters cleared the table the second night, I turned to him and asked, ‘Well, Otto, what is our grand total this evening?’ I was teasing, but his index finger shot out, tapped an imaginary total key, and he pulled himself up in his chair to better make out the figure. Of course, we leaned forward to hear it, at which point the silly man became quite flustered and tucked his hands beneath his buttocks. We laughed, both to ease the moment and because it was funny. He tried to be good-natured, but his job was really all he had and he wasn’t clever enough to be self-deprecating, so I think the visit upset him greatly.”

“Did he cry?” Aaron asked.

“He may have, though not in our presence.”

“What happened to Otto?” Aaron asked.

“Nothing happened to him. He went back to his stool at the grocery store in Winnipeg. I’ve received archival scraps from him over the years, nothing significant.”

“I wish I had correspondents,” Aaron said. “It must be wonderful.”

“It can be,” Clarence agreed. “Take Olga, my correspondent in Iowa. It was she who contributed the ‘bigger dwarves’ expression I mentioned earlier, after learning of my archives from Otto. That was nearly a decade ago. She told me nothing of herself in that first letter. Olga requires coaxing. Later she explained that she had been given Otto’s address by a well-intentioned cousin of her husband who knew Otto from the store.” Clarence coughed and spat delicately into a large handkerchief, inspected the contents, and folded the handkerchief around them. “ ‘He’s of your ilk,’ the cousin said when she presented Olga with Otto’s address. Isn’t that a delightful introduction?” He laughed. Aaron laughed also because he liked Clarence’s laugh, but he thought the word ilk sounded awful.