Pursuit Of The Cygnus Thief

Chapter 16 - Toy Box

Chapter 16

“Toy Box” By Roseyone

      Freddy started his rant without a preamble, he refused to listen to me, then with any chance at progress stymied, with his faulty premise regarding John Woodstock even more entrenched, Freddy finished things just as abruptly. It happened so swiftly that I was left holding the telephone receiver, he hadn’t said it but I knew what would happen next, Freddy was on his way over. I had to tell my father and warn John but before I could hang up I heard something, someone had coughed on the telephone line. I paused, hoped in vain that Freddy had reconsidered his next move.

“Fred?” I asked. Someone exhaled. I pressed the receiver to my ear, listened, waited. He, and I was sure by then that it was a he, sucked breath, this time I heard a clammy wet flapping from the breather’s lungs. We listened to one another. The instinct, the urge, to repeat my question whelmed but I resisted. I covered the receiver the way I might have pulled a rumpled skirt down to shelter a length of suddenly exposed leg. He listened. Breathed. Freddy had made the call, interrogated, accused, hung up. It took no brilliance to realize that Mr. Abel had been there, was still there via another telephone extension in their house. He’d listened, he’d stolen. A moment passed. He waited. Then another moment gaped wide with possibility. His stench, his breath, the taste of him swirled rancid in my memory. I shivered. Froze. He groaned, then there was the beginning of a word, the suggestion of a sigh. A vowel. It unwound upward slowly, coldly, from very low, snake-like, the sound of my name was on his tongue. I hung up, clapped a hand across my mouth, wretched, rushed to the kitchen sink, clutched it and fought until his ugliness shrank away from my immediate thoughts. I lifted a paring knife from a kitchen drawer. Matilda’s meticulous housekeeping be damned, I tucked it into my dress pocket, shunted the accompanying thought aside well before it had words then, I grabbed my school books and ran to the front door.

     My father had just started the truck when I caught up to him in the driveway. Quickly, I told him about Freddy’s call, Freddy’s car, Freddy’s anger, Freddy on the way to confront John. If anyone could redirect him after I had failed, it was my father who Freddy respected to a point that only diverged when it came to seeing me on the sly.

“You run along to school.” my father said. He cut off the ignition, his expression grew unreadable, remote.

“Aren’t you going to let John know? Freddy will be here any minute!” I fretted. My father stepped out of his truck and tugged gently at one of my braids before he spoke.

“Don’t worry about it.” he pulled a cigarette from the pack jammed into the breast pocket of his coverall and stuck it between his lips as if it were a cork, he made no attempt to light it.

“Galina’s got her mother’s car today…I’m waiting for a ride.” I said. We leaned against the truck bed and took turns glancing at the mouth of the cul-de-sac for sight of Freddy. I assumed that John, finished with his breakfast had taken to our basement for a shower. I wondered how he would spend the day without wheels, without a job. What would he do toward midday when the sun peaked and scorched everything trapped beneath its direct gaze? Somehow, probably when he’d laughed at me, I’d forgotten to mention that the public library boasted air conditioning on most days and that he, whether stranger, beatnik, fugitive or devil would not be turned away from its doors.

“John talked a lot last night but he said almost nothing at the same time.”I ventured.

“He said plenty Amelia.” my father replied. On one hand, I wanted my father to know that John’s Baja plans seemed like bullshit, on the other, I feared I would lose John if I said it. John had stopped Mr. Abel and kept his promise to keep quiet about it, I owed him something for that.