Toybox

by Al Sarrantonio

  There the toybox loomed, a gaping rectangular mouth full of night.

  “Go on,“ the Toyman urged, as she bent her head over the box once more.

  Before she could reach in, something leapt out onto the floor beside her.

  Two somethings—miniature men: one furtive, drawing back within its own cape; the other stiff, awkward, dressed in rags as it stilt-stepped toward her....

  THE MAN WITH LEGS

  “I don't believe you.”

  “You must.”

  “I don't.”

  “You will.”

  The proof, Nellie said, was a bus trip away.

  “I have the fare,” said Willie, his eyes brightening, “and I'll pay our way, and I don't believe you, and I'll make you say he isn't there.”

  “He is.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Only one way.”

  “One way,” Willie sang. “One way,” he said again, rolling the words over his tongue, around his lips, breathing them moist into the air. Nellie's eyes were shadowed against his younger ones.

  “I'll prove it,” she said, unsmiling.

  “You will,” Willie echoed.

  “We have two hours,” Willie said, in a tone that hinted it made no difference how much time they had, their quest was so foolish.

  “Plenty of time,” Nellie answered.

  The Saturday bus was late. They waited at the second stop from the house so Mother or one of her friends wouldn't see them. Willie fingered the piggy bank in his pocket, turning open the tab that would release the money within, then turning it closed again. He stamped his feet in the cold. Nellie stood rigid, her shiny blue ski parka giving her the proportions of a snowman. Her eyes were squeezed to a squint by the hood, which she had tied tight around her Face, and she avoided Willie's eyes.

  “He's not there,” Willie said in a slow, irritating voice.

  “He is,” Nellie replied through clenched teeth.

  “It was only a dream.”

  “I saw him when we went by in the school bus yesterday,” Nellie replied sharply. “I saw him as plain as the lips on your mouth. He was standing on the porch of his house, and he looked at me as the bus went by.”

  “You dreamed it.”

  “Didn't.”

  “You'll never find the house.”

  “I marked it in my mind.”

  “'Nuff said.”

  She turned to hit him, but her bulky swing made her miss. That only made Willie grin.

  “Does. Not. Exist,” he said, waving his hands at her in a taunting way.

  She scooped up snow and heaved it awkwardly at him.

  “You'll see plenty.”

  They stood silent in the snow, waiting for the bus, slapping at their bodies. The temperature had dipped. The light was bright off the crusted snow; if they hadn't liked snow so much it would have hurt their eyes.

  “I don't believe you,” Willie said.

  At that moment the bus came.

  They climbed on huffing, and Willie broke open his bank, spilling the change into his palm. They had just enough. He held back a quarter a moment, scaring Nellie into thinking there wasn't enough, and then dropped it into the receptacle, smiling at the driver. The driver didn't smile back. They moved to the middle of the bus, choosing two seats on what Nellie said was the “right” side.

  “Why not the other side? We're not going to see the house anyway.”

  “Sit,” Nellie said.

  The bus was warm. They contented themselves by watching the patterns of snow outside. There were snow valleys and peaks and stiff, hard drifts of white that sloped up the sides of buildings and stayed there. Willie watched the passing houses, dreamlike in their frosting; he enjoyed especially the upside-down ice-cream-cone icicles that hung frozen from all corners, some dipping to just touch the drifts below.

  “Brrr,” Nellie said, looking at the same scene and at the ring of frost around the bus window itself

  “It's beautiful,” Willie sighed, turning to frown at her.

  “Brrr,” she said again, challenging him. “You're just too young to know how cold it is.”

  He shrugged and turned back, admiring the rainbow sheen of ice on a line of row houses. In his mind, all the world became a snowball, an ice shell four inches deep made of snowmen and newspaper delivery boys in parkas and ski boots.

  “There it is,” Nellie said suddenly, giving him a hard shove. “That's it.”

  Willie looked along her finger, out past the tip, through the ice-free hole in the window to the spot she indicated.

  “I still don't believe you,” he said, but his voice was a whisper and he knew he was lying.

  There lay a house different from the others, set alone on a small lot with space on either side. Though surrounded by row houses, it stood squarely out. It looked like a boarding house, blocklike and looming, its windows making a face and its porch, stretching from end to end, making a mouth. The house stood off the ground on stilts and, in the snow, looked like a brooding, sly white spider.

  “I'll make you believe me,” Nellie said. She was already reaching for the pull-cord to let them off the bus when Willie's hand reached for hers. He wanted to stop her. He wanted to stay on the warm bus and look at the frosty world outside and then take it around the circle of its route back to his own house and get off. Then he wanted to make a quick snow fort and get inside in time for supper.

  “I believe you, let's go home,” he said.

  Nellie stood, smiling a smirk down at him.

  “I told you it was real.”

  “You're older than me,” Willie said in answer.

  “I know,” she said, pulling the cord and beginning to walk up the aisle as the bus pulled to a puffing halt at the curb.

  He pulled on his mitten, which he had taken off to empty his bank and which had swung loose on its tie to his snowsuit cuff, and ran after her as her head bobbed out of sight down the steps of the exit.

  They stood alone at the corner as the bus coughed away.

  The afternoon was deathly still. Even the noise of a car with clanking chains on its wheels would have disturbed the Universe at this moment, and both of them knew in their hearts that no such car would come by. Even the frozen telephone wires stood still, the breeze that had whistled them all day quieting in respect.

  “Let's go,” Nellie said, stepping into the street. Her foot made an agreeable crunch.

  Willie stepped hesitantly after her.

  They crossed the street hand in hand, and only then, when they stood on the opposite curb in front of the white spider house, did the world begin to turn again.

  A car with chains on its wheels churned by.

  “I told you I believe you,” Willie said, trying to put his hand back into hers.

  She wouldn't take it.

  “But I don't know if I believe myself,” she said tentatively.

  They crunched up the porch steps, which creaked woodenly, even under their coating of ice. Someone had salted the steps liberally, and their boots gripped so well on them that Willie imagined that hands had grown up out of the wood and were pulling his boots up, plank by plank.

  When they reached the top step Nellie pointed.

  “That was where I saw him,” she said, “right in front of that window next to the door.”

  “I ... don't know,” Willie aid.

  She reached for the bell, and this time his found hers first and held it tight.

  “Please.”

  She turned her eyes on him, and her eyes said, Tell me the reason, the only reason, why I should stop.

  “Because I don't want to know,” Willie said in a small sob.

  “You do want to know,” she said evenly. “And I have to.”

  Her hand slipped through his and hit the bell solidly.

  Somewhere deep within the house a deep, deep chime sounded.

  Dong. Dong.

  Silence.

  Nellie hit the bell again, longer this time, keeping her mitten on it.
>
  Dong. Dong. Dong. Dong.

  Deep within, footsteps.

  Hesitating at first, the steps of someone unsure, and then firmer and more resolute.

  They took a long time to reach the door, but Nellie and Willie waited.

  Dong. Dong.

  Nellie pulled her hand away from the bell.

  The door, a narrow tooth in the house-spider's mouth, opened. Someone stared out at them and said, “Yes?”

  Nellie stumbled back, her eyes wide.

  “Fa-” she began, faltering.

  “-ther,” Willie finished, his mouth hanging open.

  ~ * ~

  Before them stood a young man with black tousled hair and a boyish expression on his open face. His mouth was half-smiling, ready for anything. There was a faint tobacco smell about him and about his flannel shirt. He wore suspenders.

  “Pardon me?” he said, a look of bemusement crossing his features.

  “I, you—” Willie began.

  “Father, “Nellie stated simply.

  The man's eyebrows went up, but the smile did not leave his lips.

  “What she means is, we thought you were our father,” Willie said.

  He took his sister's hand, started to pull her back down the porch steps. Nellie's feet resisted in the snow.

  “No,” she said. “I was right.” She turned back to the man in the doorway. “You're our Father.”

  “Oh? Can that be possible?” The man was staring down past their faces, at their rubber boots.

  “Can it?” Nellie said, faltering. She stood with her hands at her side, suddenly becoming conscious that they were hands and that she must do something with them. She put them into her pockets.

  “Mother told us you died,” Willie blurted out.

  The man considered for a moment, then opened the door wider. “Come in out of the cold,” he said.

  Nellie began to tramp her feet on the mat, but Willie held back.

  “I really didn't think it could be you,” Willie said, mostly to himself.

  “Come in,” the man said softly.

  There was the sound of him closing the door behind them with a chilly whoosh, and then the warm of the house began to seep in. It was almost too warm.

  “Into the living room,” he said, moving in front of them.

  It was now that Willie saw his limp. He moved stiffly, like a man on stilts, and though the expression on his Face didn't seem to change, Willie could sense an effort behind it, a grunt held back at each step.

  “Sit down,” the man offered. They settled into a huge green sofa that gobbled them up halfway in oversoft cushions. “Take your coats off.” The man sat on a stiff-back chair, pulling it up opposite them across the polished floor. He lowered himself onto it with strain. A fire, a large fire, burned off to their right, and the room was dark but for its amber light and the hint of blue snow-illumination that seeped in from the wide window by the front door.

  Neither moved to take off their coats.

  “We have to get back on the bus soon,” Nellie explained. She wouldn't take her eyes off him. “She told us you died.”

  “Did she,” the man said, meeting her eyes and holding them. “That's interesting.” The smile softened around his mouth, making him look even more like a boy.

  “Were you hurt in a train wreck,” Willie said tactlessly. “Is that why you limp?”

  The man's eyes darted to the floor before rising to meet his.

  “No,” he said simply. His eyes lingered on Willie's legs before moving back to Nellie.

  “He was too young to remember when it happened,” she explained. “But I remember. They all said you were killed when the train you were on missed a signal and hit the back of another train. They . . . said your legs had been cut off.”

  “Is that what they said?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose they were wrong then.”

  “Father,” Nellie breathed, trying the word on.

  The man nodded slowly in answer.

  “How long have you been hiding?” said Willie. He was beginning to grow uncomfortable on the couch, and unzipped his parka halfway. He still looked sullen.

  “We can't stay long,” Nellie scolded, “at least not this time.”

  The man smiled.

  “How long hiding?” Willie insisted.

  The man drew his breath in and considered. “Let me see,” he said. “It must be . . .” He counted on his fingers. “Five years.”

  As he said this his fingers tapped lightly on his legs.

  “Why?” Nellie said. “Why did you have to hide?”

  “I had to go away.” He suddenly slapped his knees, making as if to get up. “Why don't I get us some hot chocolate at least? You must still be cold. We can talk more then.”

  “We really have to go soon.”

  “Please?” The pleading in his voice was startling, it came so suddenly.

  “All right,” Nellie said quickly. “We . . . really don't know you very well.”

  “That's true.”

  He got up with a nonfluid motion, gasping as he stood finally on his feet, using the back of his chair for support.

  “Are you all right?” Nellie asked.

  “Yes,” he said. His eyes seemed glued to her foot and then he hoisted himself erect, like a straw man. “I'll be back in a moment.”

  He disappeared into the rear of the house.

  “Do you believe me now?” Nellie said.

  “He does look like the picture in Mother's bedroom,” Willie admitted sulkily. “But I don't like him.”

  “I do.” She overemphasized this last word. “He just hasn't seen us in a long time.”

  Willie rose. “I don't like the way he walks. Like a stiff man.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Bathroom,” Willie stated.

  “Wait till he comes back.”

  “If he's really Father, I can go to the bathroom.”

  “He has to be.”

  Willie moved off, shaking his head.

  He quickly became lost. Going through the door the man had gone through, he found himself in a mazelike corridor unlike the rest of the house. Cracked green and white tiles covered the floor, and the walls were peeling with paint. One corridor led off to another, and another, and soon Willie found himself surrounded by branching passageways in an ever-increasing darkness; dim fireflylike bulbs overhead gave illumination.

  Willie moved slowly, fingering the walls, until a sound down one corridor pulled him toward it.

  A high, singing sound and, behind that, the sound of metal against metal.

  Willie stopped before a door, eased it open a crack and peered in. There were steps leading down, faintly lit, and an area below with more light spread around it.

  Down there, someone was singing.

  A happy voice—but like the sound a cat makes when you step on its tail accidentally.

  The clashing metal stopped.

  The singing stopped.

  There was a grunt and the sound of something being lashed and tied, the whipping of ropes, and then footsteps.

  Little, dancing footsteps, more grunting, and then steadier steps.

  Someone was on the stairs.

  Willie arched back around the doorway, leaning into the darkness.

  After a long, long time, in which Willie counted twenty slow steps, the door was eased open in front of his face. It was closed, and Willie found himself staring at the back of the man who was Father. The man's flannel shirt was hiked up, and Willie could see a network of fine straps crisscrossing his back, pulled tight.

  The man moved off toward the front of the house.

  Willie counted to fifty and then emerged from the shadows. Holding his breath, he edged open the cellar door and peered down. The light was still on. He edged himself down two steps and crouched, cocking his head. There were no sounds in the cellar.

  He went all the way down.

  Gasped.

  Though he knew she was
n't there, he called out involuntarily, “Oh, Nellie.”

  On the walls of the room, on every wall in the room, hanging on pegs, in rows, sticking out from boxes, piled in corners, were—

  There were hundreds, maybe thousands of pairs of legs. In all lengths and sizes, they were squatty and wrist-thin and beefy and babylike. Each was dressed appropriately, in pants and stockings, socks and shoes, ballerina slippers, bedroom slippers, Italian leather shoes or cordovan penny-loafers. Willie could almost see the rest of the people they should be attached to: bankers and bakers and newspaper delivery boys; shoe salesmen; funeral directors. There was a pair with big brown thick boots that looked like they belonged to the man who cleans sewers. There were two or three tap dancers. A gas station attendant. A janitor. All had straps at the top and fine webbings and clasps and snaps and thongs.

  There was just about one pair of legs for anything you could imagine.

  “Oh, Nellie,” Willie breathed, wanting his sister to be there, to hold his hand.

  The only other thing in the room besides legs was a small table in the far corner, laid out neatly under a low neon lamp which caught the clean white light off its racks of toothy blades, perfectly outlining them.

  Saws. Racks and racks of long and sinewy saws, special bright silver ones that liked to do their work.

  “Oh Nellie, Nellie,” Willie whispered.

  From above, a sound sounded.

  A light step on the stair.

  A sneaky step.

  Holding his breath, Willie turned.

  A face peeked under the stair at him, upside down.

  “Nellie!”

  “Shhh!”

  She disappeared back up the stair. Willie heard the dick of the dosing door, and then she was down in front of him.

  Willie began to pull her toward the walls of legs. “Nellie, he—”

  “He told me,” she said, hushing him. “He told me everything.”

  “'Where is he?” Willie gasped.

  “Upstairs.” Her eyes got a sly look. “I told him the bus driver was Mother's boyfriend and that he'd be coming for us now unless someone waved him on.”

  “What are we going to do?” Willie said fearfully.

  “He wants us to stay,” Nellie said simply.

  “No!”

  “He's not bad, Willie. Most of his legs he dug up, or found on people who were already dead.”