The Weight of Him(73)

“Dad! Dad!” Ivor shouted. Billy scanned the pool. “Up here! Look!” Billy found Ivor at the diving board, on the top rung of the ladder.

“Get down out of there,” Billy shouted, trudging through the water.

Ivor rushed along the diving board. At its end, he stretched out his arms and tucked his head.

“No, Ivor, don’t!” Billy shouted.

Ivor dropped through the air.

Billy dipped under the surface and powered through the water. On reaching Ivor, he wrapped his arms around the boy’s legs, pinning Ivor to his shoulder, and lunged at the pool wall. They surfaced and hooked their elbows to the edge of the pool, both breathing hard. Fresh grief cut at Billy. So many times he had imagined wrapping his arms around Michael’s legs and raising the boy, slackening the rope and saving him.

Ivor pumped his free arm in the air. “I did it.”

Billy smiled, hiding the state he was in. “Well done, son, well done.”

*

Billy quick-stepped to the garage. He had resumed taking the seconds from the factory, pocketing one for every two he threw away. Even if Bald Art realized the numbers in the bin weren’t what they should be, what was he going to do, strip-search Billy? Billy snorted, picturing the scene. Then just as quickly the pall returned. Too many people always wanted to keep things the same. They didn’t want change. Even if it was change for the better. Bald Art wanted to keep throwing away the seconds just because that was the way things had always been done. What a spectacular lack of imagination. And that problem wasn’t particular to the seconds, either. All the toys needed to be recast.

The factory needed to do more with the dolls and soldiers to get children more interested and excited—to get the toys to transport them. Right now the toys were nameless and storyless, and didn’t have movable parts. Aside from the great craftsmanship that went into creating them, there was nothing to make the toys stand out, nothing to make children or adults hanker to bring them home. As Billy brooded, the toys in his miniature village seemed to look up at him, impatient to be brought to life.

Sometimes he had the urge to visit the real village of Inistioge. He imagined sitting on the scenic bridge and looking down on the rushing River Nore. Saw himself visit the ancient castle and sacred priory, and walk among the various clusters of trees and the period cottages and stately homes—the place more magical and picturesque in person than he could ever have conjured in his head, or in this replica. He couldn’t bring himself to visit, though. To go to Inistioge itself would only drive home the pretense of everything he’d created here in his garage.

The seconds continued to stare, waiting. “All right.”

Inside the cottage, tiny Michael calls out. Tiny Billy and tiny Tricia abandon their game of chess and rush to his bedroom. Michael stands at the window and points at something in the night. On the other side of the room, his brothers remain asleep, the moon a spotlight on their faces. Billy and Tricia look, but cannot see. “It’s a light,” Michael insists, shining amid the trees on the distant hill.

Tricia coaxes him back to bed. “It’s just the full moon reflecting off of something.”

He insists it’s not the moon. “Can’t you see it?”

Billy fights his panic. It’s his kingdom and yet he cannot see it. He tells Tricia to return to the warmth of the fire, promising to rejoin her shortly to finish their game of chess.

Michael tugs on the sleeve of his father’s shirt. “There!”

Billy leans in close to the window, his breath blurring the glass, and pretends to see the light.

“Do you think it’s a fallen star?” Michael asks.

Billy continues to play along, his unease growing. “Could be.”

Michael wants to find the star and bring it home. Billy marvels at the mind of a child, able to think of rescuing a stray star and having it live among them.

Outside, they walk through the village, across the bridge, and into the woods, the air tinged with the silence of sleep and the thick and heady, almost rotting, smell of hawthorn. With the glow from the full moon and a flashlight, and the supposed fallen star that only Michael can see, they creep through the woods.

Every now and then the boy startles at the scurry of unseen creatures in the branches and foliage—birds, mice, and rabbits that sound impossibly large. The boy turns his head left and right, his shoulders pulled up to his ears, and asks in a frightened voice if there are foxes, or worse.

Billy forces a laugh. “Don’t worry, I brought only friends here.” He, too, finds himself unnerved, though. The scuttle in the trees and shrubbery sounds too loud and menacing. His worry builds. How can there be anything in his kingdom he didn’t bring here?

Moments later, Michael covers his eyes and holds on to the tail of his father’s coat, blindly following. He claims they are almost at the fallen star and its bright light is too much. “How can you stand it?” he asks, sounding ever more afraid.

Billy’s fear also pitches. Something is wrong in his kingdom, his wonderful world.

“Daddy?”

Billy collects himself. He is the ruler here. Nothing bad can happen. The trick, he tells his son, is to not look straight at the light, but at its edges.

Michael risks a peek, and smiles. “It works.”

Billy feels he can breathe again, feels everything might be all right again.